Both had strong track records — one even won a company award just months earlier
Two federal lawsuits accuse Sedgwick Claims Management Services of firing employees after they returned from medical leave.
The cases, both filed on April 15 in federal courts in Illinois and Michigan, share a striking thread: workers with solid performance records who say they came back from protected leave to find themselves under sudden scrutiny — and out of a job.
In the first case (Lemke v. Sedgwick Claims Management Services, Inc., No. 1:26-cv-04217, N.D. Ill.), Debra Lemke, a former Claims Manager, says she was let go on September 15, 2025 — just one week after returning from roughly six weeks of approved FMLA leave. According to the filing, Lemke went on leave on July 23, 2025, for severe anxiety and stress-related symptoms. While she was out, her appendix ruptured, requiring an emergency appendectomy and leaving her with lasting complications affecting her digestive and colon functions.
According to the filing, just months before — on April 30, 2025 — Lemke had received a "Shining Star Recognition" award from management for her exceptional contributions. When she returned, the filing says she was handed a large backlog of claims, asked to train new employees, and blamed for problems that had come up during her absence. She was then told she was being let go for "misconduct" linked to an internet reimbursement document found on her work computer — described in the filing as a personal Xfinity bill that she says she never submitted for reimbursement. Her lawsuit raises claims of disability discrimination, harassment, and retaliation under the Americans with Disabilities Act, along with interference and retaliation under the FMLA.
In the second case (Carrier-Torrealba v. Sedgwick Claims Management Services, Inc., No. 2:26-cv-11231, E.D. Mich.), Theresa Carrier-Torrealba, a Utilization Review RN who spent nearly 13 years at Sedgwick, says she was terminated on July 16, 2024. Carrier-Torrealba, 66, says she was the oldest Utilization Review Nurse on the General Motors Team and routinely scored 100 percent on audits.
According to the lawsuit, when she came back in April 2024 from a 10-week leave for a total left knee arthroplasty, her Team Lead told her "the entire team had to cover for you while you were off." She says management then began scrutinizing her phone system logins and internet upload speeds — even though her role was not phone-dependent — and placed her on a Performance Management Plan that flagged no concerns about the actual quality of her work. She was ultimately let go for alleged performance issues tied to undisclosed "internal metrics" the company refused to define. Her lawsuit raises claims under the ADA, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, and the FMLA.
No determination has been made in either case, and Sedgwick has not yet responded to the filings.
