Sears Agrees To Settle Disabilities Case.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said Sears Roebuck & Company had agreed to a $6.2 million settlement in a case under the Americans with Disabilities Act. A federal court judge approved a consent decree in the case, in which Sears was accused of firing employees instead of providing reasonable accommodations for them. In a statement, the commission said the settlement was the largest ever among the disability-related cases it had handled. Agency lawyers said they had found more than 100 cases of Sears employees who sought to return to work with an accommodation and were fired. A spokeswoman for Sears, Kimberly Freely, said that although the company ''continues to believe that it reasonably accommodates'' employees on leave because of work-related injuries or illnesses, it settled the case because the legal proceedings could have taken another five years and ''considerable expense'' to resolve. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]