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Benefits May 2, 2005
Santana Employee Sues over 'Enlightenment' Firing
May 2, 2005 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - A former employee of
Carlos Santana has sued the Grammy-winning star for wrongful
termination, claiming that he was fired for not being
sufficiently "enlightened."
Reported by Fred Schneyer
According to an E!Online report, plaintiff Bruce Kuhlman was fired by Deborah Santana because her spiritual guru – identified in the report only as “Dr. Dan” – decided he was insufficiently enlightened and his consciousness level was too low, and that he was too old to change either one.
Kuhlman, who was hired as an assistant in 1988 and later promoted to director of licensing before being fired in April 2004, is asking for damages in excess of $100,000.
Under California law, it is illegal to “bar or to discharge a person from employment” when it comes to “race, religious creed, color, national origin, ancestry, physical handicap, medical condition, marital status, or sex of any person.”
Kuhlman maintains in the suit that Deborah Santana based her hiring and firing decisions solely “on evaluation by Dr. Dan and his measure of the applicant’s ‘consciousness level.'”