She may be 78, but a Doctor at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas also has a feisty side as she is pressing ahead with a sex and age discrimination suit against her employer.
Immunologist and microbiologist Doctor Ellen Vitetta says she was hit with a salary cut, a lab and staff reduction and retaliation from UT Southwestern because of her age.
Court papers say Dr. Vitetta is nationally renowned as a researcher and has instructed a Nobel Prize winner in her 40-plus years of teaching and working. Yet Vitetta says several years ago she was iced-out by the Medical Center, in favor of younger doctors who "younger faculty members in their thirties and fifties have received more favorable treatment—most of them men" quoting from an appellate opinion.
Dr. Vitetta filed lawsuit and UT Southwestern asked that it be dismissed before going to trial. But in a series of rulings, the courts have come down on Doctor Vitetta's side, ruling the cancer researcher has enough grounds to at least take the case to trial.
