According to the Free Press’s Tresa Baldas, former Red Wings Zamboni driver Al Sobotka’s getting his day in court:
More than three years after getting fired for urinating in a drain at work, ex-Detroit Red Wings Zamboni driver Al Sobotka heads to trial this week in Wayne County Circuit Court, where he hopes to convince a jury that he was wrongfully axed from a job he held for 50 hockey seasons.
A jury of five women and three men was seated on Tuesday, Oct. 7 in the high-profile employment dispute, which pits a beloved Zamboni driver and octopus twirler and hurler against a multibillion-dollar entertainment company.
Sobotka is suing Olympia Entertainment, alleging he was let go because the higher-ups at the company thought he was too old, and used the 2022 peeing debacle as an excuse to get rid of him. Moreover, he alleges the company engaged in a cover-up by having an executive who knew nothing about him fire him, just so they could wall off another executive who allegedly called him “old” just weeks before the incident, and then replaced him with a 37-year-old underling after he was fired.
According to court records, Sobotka’s younger replacement was hired in at the exact same salary that it took Sobotka five decades to attain: $81,000.
Olympia Entertainment maintains in court records that Sobotka was fired for “egregious misconduct” that he admitted to, and that his age had nothing to do with it. It also argues the following: “Olympia has a right not to have its employees urinating in its building other than in a restroom.”
Olympia Entertainment has tried multiple times to get the lawsuit thrown out. But the courts — including the Michigan Supreme Court — have rejected those requests, concluding Sobotka’s case should be decided by a jury.
