TVA Employee Seeks $4 Million in Smoking Suit

A Tennessee Valley Authority employee filed a $4-million suit against the federal utility Friday, charging that smoking by colleagues had caused her to develop emphysema and that supervisors ignored requests to provide a smoke-free workplace.

Anna Carroll, 46, TVA Washington affairs coordinator who has worked with the agency for 28 years, is also seeking a court order that would force TVA to make changes to remove passive smoke at its Washington office.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, contends that Carroll is handicapped by the chronic lung disease and that a failure by supervisors to ban smoking violated federal laws protecting handicapped workers.

‘Smoke-Filled’ Offices

Neither Carroll nor her family members smoke, but doctors assured her that her disease is smoke related, the suit said. It contends that, during much of her tenure with TVA in Alabama, Tennessee and Washington, Carroll’s offices were “smoke-filled and poorly ventilated.”

Carroll said that, beginning in April, 1985, when she learned of her illness, she asked in writing that her supervisor, Kenneth Gray, enforce a TVA policy, established in 1979, of banning smoking in office spaces and corridors on request.