Three months after the territory's human rights panel ordered Yukon College to give Farley Hayes his job back, the computer technician is still unemployed, and still fighting with the school.

Last December, a panel of three human rights adjudicators decided that Hayes had been unfairly laid off from his position in the college's IT department.

The case goes back to late 2001, when Hayes was hired at the college.

Within months of starting the job, he began suffering from severe pain and bleeding in his guts.

At first, he was diagnosed with having an ulcer, but soon it become clear he was suffering from liver failure due to Hepatitis C, and needed a liver transplant immediately.

By the summer of 2002, Hayes could no longer work. He applied for and was granted long-term disability benefits, and began waiting for the transplant he needed to save his life.

Twenty-four months passed, during which time Hayes was told of two possible donors, but neither came through until his brother stepped forward with a live-liver donation.

In August of 2004, Hayes finally underwent surgery. It was successful, but there were some complications, and Hayes remained in hospital in Edmonton until Oct. 18.

He returned home a couple of weeks later to find an e-mail - sent Oct. 5 - announcing he had been fired from his job at the college, "due to operational requirements."

Hayes went to the Yukon Human Rights Commission with the complaint that he had been discriminated against based on the disability caused by his liver transplant.

He argued that officials at the college never did any direct investigation or analysis to determine if and when Hayes would be able to come back to work. Instead, they simply fired him on the assumption he was out of commission.

In the ensuing human rights case the college, represented by human resources director John Pereira, said it had kept Hayes' job open for the required two years, a wait period established by the college's insurance company. After that, it was no longer reasonable, or feasible, to wait for him to return.

His job at the college's computer help desk was a vital one, and the person who had filled it in his absence was threatening to leave unless offered a permanent position, the college told the panel.

Furthermore, it had waited more than two years for Hayes to return to his job, and still had no indication of when he would be able to work again.

In the college's view, it had fulfilled its responsibility to accommodate Hayes' condition, and needed to move on in order to maintain "business continuity."

Yukon College went so far as to contact Hayes' union, where a representative said the college "had done what it could" and gave the nod to go ahead with the firing.

The insurance company which was paying out his disability benefits also agreed.

But two of the three members on the human rights panel did not.

They found the college did discriminate against Hayes, and agreed with his assessment that the school had not taken done enough to find out how Hayes was doing and when he expected to be on his feet again.

The two-year mark was "arbitrary" and "discriminatory on its face, particularly in circumstances where minimal efforts were made to assess the employee's situation," wrote adjudicators Barbara Evans and Darcy Tkachuk.

They ordered the college to give Hayes his job back immediately.

But that hasn't happened. Instead, the college filed an appeal of the panel's decision in Yukon Supreme Court on Jan. 9.

"The board failed to apply the doctrine of frustration of contract, (and) the board incorrectly applied the law regarding the duty to accommodate," the notice of appeal states.

Hayes promptly filed a cross appeal, basically suing the college for injuring his dignity and wasting the court's time.

While the human rights decision sticks to dates and facts, the appeal is quickly veering into mudslinging territory.

Included in the file is a detailed account of Hayes' interactions with the college, from Pereira's perspective. The human resources director mentions several instances where Hayes acted "belligerent," "aggressive," and "confused."

These interactions, he writes, "have caused me to question whether Mr. Hayes is able to work at all."

Whether these comments will be accepted as evidence is still to be seen.

Hayes says all he wants is to return to his job as a computer technician at the college, but after going on for 4 1/2 years, the case doesn't look to be anywhere near its end.