NC Restaurant Settles Suit with HIV-Positive Cook

Aron Pelela, 31, worked as a prep chef at The Causeway Café in Wrightsville Beach. But when the restaurant’s owners learned that Pelela was HIV-positive, they were worried about their liability and the potential risk to their customers. A local health ordinance prohibits someone with a contagious disease from working in the food industry, and HIV is a contagious disease, so the restaurant’s owners contacted the local health department for advice.

The health department would not give them clearance to employ Pelela, but they also refused to give them a statement saying it was not a violation to employ him. The restaurant’s owners felt they had no choice but to let him go, so Pelela was fired in October 2005. Attorney Joyce L. Davis of Raleigh, NC, then enlisted the help of Lambda Legal to sue the restaurant under the Americans With Disabilities Act. Lambda Legal is a national legal organization that sues businesses for perceived civil rights infringements, on behalf of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people, and people who are HIV-positive.

Attorney Andrew Hanley of Wilmington, NC, who represented the restaurant, said that the owners felt they had done the right thing by firing Pelela, and they thought they had a strong defense. But they could not afford to fight Lambda Legal in federal court, so they were forced to settle with Pelela out of court for an undisclosed amount of money. "It’s just one of those issues," Hanely said, "Where if you’re a mom-and-pop business, it’s hard to fight these national interest groups." In addition, the restaurant had to promise that it will conduct training sessions about how HIV is transmitted, and will ensure that it does not discriminate against employees who are HIV-positive.

"There is no risk of transmission of HIV through the preparation of food, yet myths about transmission are clearly running rampant," said Greg Nevins, senior staff attorney in Lambda Legal's Southern Regional Office in Atlanta. "We are happy to see the owners of this restaurant instituting a policy based on the facts and training their employees on the truth about HIV transmission."

The website of the Centers for Disease Control says people can be infected with HIV if "infected blood gets into a worker’s open cut or a mucous membrane (for example, the eyes or inside of the nose)." The site also says that "CDC has investigated only one case of HIV infection that may be attributed to contact with blood during open-mouth kissing." So evidently there has been at least one person who contracted HIV after HIV-positive blood made contact with their mouth. Since a prep chef might knick his finger without knowing it, and the salad he just prepared might be eaten by a patron who doesn’t know there could be a drop of HIV-positive blood in it, the restaurant’s decision to fire Pelela seems overwhelmingly reasonable. What doesn’t seem reasonable is for the owners of a small restaurant to have to pay him a large sum of money just because they were trying to protect their customers.

The settlement was reached in January. In the meantime, Pelela has found another job and will not return to work at The Causeway Cafe.