UH, Queen's sued in immigrant case
By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer
A former Queen's Medical Center physician says the University of Hawai'i tried to get him in trouble with immigration authorities after he complained that his civil rights were being violated because of his foreign nationality.
Dr. Shyamal Premaratne, a native of Sri Lanka, yesterday filed a federal suit against the university, while the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a related suit against Queen's.
Both institutions declined comment on the litigation yesterday, and three doctors and an attorney named individually in the suit against the university could not be reached.
According to the suit filed for Premaratne by Honolulu attorney Susan Ichinose, Premaratne received a Ph.D. from the university in 1992 and then accepted an offer of employment by Queen's through the university's residency program to perform medical research in the cardiovascular research laboratory.
Premaratne said his full-time position at Queen's enabled him to petition the Immigration and Naturalization Service for permanent resident status in the United States.
But after the dark-skinned Sri Lankan with a heavy accent was named an assistant clinical professor of surgery in 1994, the lawsuit said, colleague Sally Myers, M.D., began putting him down, along with his work, his native country and his Sri Lankan medical degree, and ultimately barred him from the laboratory.
Premaratne said he told UH Medical School Dean Christian Gulbrandsen what had happened and that he intended to file a discrimination claim with the federal commission.
Thereafter, Gulbrandsen and the UH surgery department chairman, Dr. J. Judson McNamara, gave confidential personnel information about Premaratne to Queen's attorney Craig Nakamoto, who contacted the Immigration and Naturalization Service "and strongly indicated (Premaratne) had committed a fraud on the INS," the suit says.
This "retaliation" disrupted his career and his efforts to gain U.S. citizenship, Premaratne said.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found in Premaratne's favor in 1998, the doctor's suit said.
The commission's lawsuit, being handled in Hawaii by EEOC trial attorney Elizabeth Jubin Fujiwara, said Queen's unlawfully retaliated against the doctor because he asserted his civil rights.
The commission's suit says the immigration agency began deportation proceedings against the doctor because of malicious or reckless actions by Queen's.
The EEOC asks that Queen's pay compensation and punitive damages and be ordered not to retaliate against employees who make discrimination complaints.
