SDG&E; Says Drug Test in Error, Worker Is Reinstated

A San Diego Gas & Electric Co. employee who sued the utility after she was fired when a drug test showed signs of marijuana use was reinstated after company officials apologized and admitted that the test was faulty.

Collette Clark, who had worked as a clerk at the utility for 17 months after gaining the job through a temporary agency, applied for a higher-paying temporary position in May. She applied for the new job through another temporary agency and was required by SDG&E; to submit to a urinalysis performed by a laboratory that no longer contracts with SDG&E.;

A week after submitting to the test, Clark, a single parent, was told that the urinalysis showed that she had been smoking marijuana. Although she insisted that she had not been using the drug, Clark was fired. She sued the utility in September.

An SDG&E; attorney acknowledged Tuesday that there “were problems with the lab test” that led to Clark’s dismissal. According to an SDG&E; letter of apology that accompanied the settlement, the unidentified lab failed to perform a second test to confirm the results of the first. In addition, the letter mentioned the “possibility of sample contamination of this particular specimen.”

Terms of the settlement included a money award to Clark, the size of which both sides agreed not to reveal. Both sides also refused to say if Clark was required to pass another drug test before she was rehired.

“We just very recently learned of the unreliability of the test given in May,” said Larry Davis, an attorney for the utility. After learning of the faulty test, SDG&E; officials moved quickly to correct the situation and reinstated Clark, Davis said.

Elizabeth Schulman, Clark’s ACLU attorney, said that her client returned to work Monday and added that “justice was served by the speedy settlement” of the lawsuit.

“But I think that after the suit was filed, SDG&E; decided to take a closer look at the case,” said Schulman. “ . . . But out of fairness to them, they recognized that there were some errors in the test and moved quickly to rectify what they did. That’s admirable.”

However, Schulman charged that Clark’s case shows the general unreliability of drug testing. She said there are simply too many problems, stemming from quality control and human error, that hamper the tests’ reliability.

“The problems with these tests have been shown over and over,” Schulman said. “As with my client, employees can be put in untenable positions that result in tragic changes in their lives by unreliable testing. . . . It happened here. Collette went from a $6-an-hour job to waiting on tables for $3.50 an hour.”

Although Davis said that Clark’s case was the only instance where an employee or job applicant was fired or not hired because of faulty drug testing, Schulman said that she knows of at least one other person who was not hired when he failed the utility’s test.

Initially, SDG&E; officials attempted to brush aside Clark’s lawsuit by praising the company’s drug tests as highly accurate. Mary Wood, another SDG&E; attorney, called the chances of a false-positive reading “virtually nil.” But in settling the suit, SDG&E; officials admitted that “no positive conclusion” could be drawn from the test given to Clark.

The company apologized to Clark for “any pain and anguish” caused by the faulty test and said that her “feelings about maximizing privacy and human dignity whenever drug testing is performed have been communicated to and have been considered by SDG&E; management.”

Davis said the utility will continue to use drug tests on new applicants and when company officials suspect that an employee’s job performance is being hampered by drug use. However, he said that SDG&E; is using a different laboratory to perform the tests.