The litigation claimed that older lifeguards were targeted, but a city spokesman denies the allegations.
By Donald Wittkowski
A former Ocean City lifeguard who lost his job after he narrowly failed a swimming test has been awarded nearly $128,000 by a Superior Court jury in his age-discrimination lawsuit against the municipality.
Paul McCracken claimed in his litigation that city officials “concocted a scheme” to get rid of older lifeguards by imposing new fitness requirements that made the running and swimming tests required of the Beach Patrol members more rigorous.
McCracken, of Linwood, who was 52 at the time, passed the running test but fell 3 seconds short of meeting the swimming requirements. He was fired in 2011 after failing the swim test, according to the suit.
In a statement Wednesday, city spokesman Doug Bergen denied McCracken’s allegations. Bergen said the Ocean City Beach Patrol has maintained “an impeccable safety record in more than a century of protecting the island’s residents and visitors.”
“For obvious reasons, the city maintains that it is not good practice to employ ocean lifeguards who are unable to pass the swimming test,” Bergen said. “The same standard applies to all returning guards who work on the beach.”
The suit alleged that McCracken and other older lifeguards were forced to retire or take a cut in their pension benefits after the city removed $53,000 from the Beach Patrol’s budget during a fiscal crisis in 2008. The budget cut intentionally targeted the veteran lifeguards, the ligation stated.
Lifeguards who “did not bow to the pension pressure” faced tougher running and swimming requirements so they could not qualify for their jobs, according to the suit.
However, Bergen said the city unified the fitness requirements so that all of the lifeguards were required to meet the same standards. Previously, the requirements were based on a “tiered” system in which lifeguards took different tests based on their rank.
McCracken’s suit, though, asserted that the city imposed the new standards under the “guise” that they were supposed to be a uniform test for all lifeguards.
