A Wayne County jury has found that longtime Detroit Red Wings Zamboni driver Al Sobotka was not discriminated against because of his age and disability when he was fired for peeing in a drain in the Zamboni garage in 2022.
The mostly young jury deliberated for less than an hour Tuesday after a five-day civil trial before coming back with a 5-2 verdict against Sobotka, said Sobotka’s attorney Deborah Gordon. The jury doesn’t need to be unanimous in a civil lawsuit.
Sobotka filed the discrimination lawsuit in 2022, just a few months after Olympia Entertainment fired him when he admitted to urinating into an area drain that led to a sewer designed to handle ice runoff from the Zamboni machines. Gordon said Sobotka, then 69, had prostate issues and urinated in the Zamboni garage. One of Sobotka’s direct reports walked by the outside of the Zamboni garage while Sobotka was urinating and saw him, then reported him to the Human Resources department.
Sobotka has been the popular Zamboni driver at Little Caesars Arena, Joe Louis Arena and the Olympia, having worked with the Red Wings for five decades before being fired in February 2022.
“The case was that Al was a dedicated 50-year employee who’d just recently, within months before this happened, received absolutely excellent reviews as to all factors of his performance,” Gordon said. “The jurors who voted against us were quite young. I just can’t help but wonder if the people who don’t have life experience just didn’t grasp the nuances of this.”
Daniel Cohen, an attorney for Olympia Entertainment, the Ilitch family-owned sports and entertainment company tied to the Red Wings, did not respond Wednesday for comment.
Gordon said Tim Padgett, vice president of venue operations at Olympia, allegedly told Sobotka in January 2022 that Sobotka was getting old. At the trial, Gordon said Padgett said during his deposition that he told Olympia President Keith Bradford that Sobotka should not get a second chance.
Olympia officials did not follow its own policies and procedures during its investigation of Sobotka, Gordon said. They never interviewed Sobotka about the incident, just asked him if he did it, but never completed an investigative report or follow-up interview, she said.
Senior Vice President of Human Resources Michele Bartos recommended Bradford fire Sobotka because “it was misconduct, it was unprofessional, and it was poor judgment from a manager level. We have an expectation level that our managers conduct themselves in a certain way,” according to a Michigan Court of Appeals opinion on the case from February. Bradford said in his mind, urinating in an open space at work with the potential for other people to see it is a fireable offense.
Sobotka is “devastated” about the verdict, Gordon said, and he was already devastated after losing the job he’d held for 50 years.
“I was extremely shocked by the jury given the overwhelming evidence that this termination never should’ve happened,” Gordon said. “The jury was only out for 45 minutes. They didn’t look at any of the evidence. I wonder if they even read the jury instructions. I don’t think they really grasped my opinion on what really happened.”
Sobotka was long known for twirling an octopus and igniting the crowds at Joe Louis Arena and Little Caesars Arena, specifically during the playoffs.
The entire tradition of the octopus twirling dates to the 1950s, but Sobotka raised its popularity in the early 1990s during a playoff series against the Chicago Blackhawks when he picked up an octopus and gave it a little twirl over his head.
kberg@detroitnews.com