Family of Late Esalen Employee Sues Retreat Center for Damages

The family of a former Esalen Institute employee is suing the Big Sur retreat center for punitive damages, alleging the administration falsified records to prevent him from qualifying for its health-care plan.

The lawsuit, filed Oct. 8, alleges Esalen administrators misclassified Jim Probst as a temporary employee part of the week and as an independent contractor for the other part, thus rendering him ineligible for health benefits and state-mandated protections including family medical leave and workers' compensation.

"The employer's fraudulent concealment of facts concerning health insurance coverage induced the employee's reliance in delaying medical treatment, thereby proximately causing and hastening the employee's untimely death of cancer at 47 years of age," the lawsuit states.

As the Weekly reported last year, Probst died uninsured in December 2011, his eighth year working at Esalen. His supervisor in the maintenance department alleged administrators scheduled him just below the 32-hour work week that would have triggered coverage.

At the time of that report, Esalen CEO Gordon Wheeler said the center offered Probst several positions with health benefits, but he turned them down because he earned a higher hourly rate as a consulting sound engineer.

Probst's mother, Geraldine Ross, notes Esalen CEO Tricia McEntee got a 22-percent pay raise, from about $134,000 to $165,000, between 2010 and 2011. Wheeler counters that McEntee's compensation, including salary and benefits set by the Esalen board, is at the low end compared with nonprofits of similar size, and that her 2011 increase was actually 4.7 percent.

"The manner in which my son was treated as an employee at the Esalen Institute, contrasted with the increases in the CEO’s salary during the last two years of my son’s life, seem antithetical to Esalen’s mission…'We work towards the realization of a more humane and all-embracing world,'” Ross writes by email.

According to Wheeler, the Esalen administration maintains the allegations in the lawsuit are untrue but cannot comment further on a legal issue.

"Jim Probst was a beloved member of the Esalen staff and community for a number of years, and our hearts go out to his family and his many friends for this sad loss, which many of us share personally," he adds.