Archive for the ‘Disability & Medical Leave’ Category
Employee’s Utter Lack of Evidence Leads to Dismissal of All Claims
MSJs certainly aren’t granted as much as they used to be, particularly in the employment context. In this case, however, the employee’s failure to produce more than a scintilla of evidence in support of her claims led to a successful MSJ for the individual and entity employer defendants. A former purchasing officer had hypertension, mental [...]
EEOC Announces Strategic Enforcement Plan
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) recently approved a Strategic Enforcement Plan. This Plan establishes national enforcement priorities and promotes more strategic use of agency resources, all with the goal of remedying unlawful discrimination. The EEOC identified, through the Plan, six national priorities, which include: 1) eliminating barriers in recruiting and hiring; 2) protecting vulnerable workers [...]
Employer Successfully Defends Termination of Employee at Conclusion of FMLA Leave
The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals recently held that an employer did not violate the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) by terminating an employee who failed to return to work after exhausting her leave. The employee, a billing specialist, sued her employer for FMLA interference and retaliation after she was fired for failing to return to [...]
Employee’s Facebook Pictures Reflecting Conduct Inconsistent with FMLA Leave Supports Employer’s Termination Decision
Recently, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that an employer did not retaliate against an employee who had taken intermittent leave nor did it interfere with her rights under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) when it fired the employee for fraud. In this case, the employee took intermittent FMLA leave [...]
Thirteen Month Gap Between Protected Activity and Alleged Retaliation Leads To Summary Judgment For Employer
In Anderson v. Donahoe, a U.S. Postal Service employee suffered from asthma. The employee claimed his employer failed to accommodate his disability which allegedly arose due to flare ups of his condition that he experienced while working as a part-time mail processor. For seven years, from 2002 through 2009, the employee filed multiple complaints with [...]
Transferring Employee to Different Geographical Location for Better Access to Medical Care Found to Be Reasonable Accommodation
Recently, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit held that an employee’s request for a transfer to a different geographical location in order to have better access to medical treatment was not unreasonable. The employee, who sustained irreversible brain damage after falling at work which resulted in her losing the left half [...]
Right-to-Sue Letter Directed to Attorney Constituted Notice to Employee for Purposes of Filing Timely Lawsuit
After she was denied sick leave, a doctor filed a complaint with the anti-discrimination unit of the Puerto Rico Department of Labor and Human Resources, alleging unlawful discrimination and unwarranted refusal to make a reasonable accommodation for her disability. The local agency referred the matter to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), and without considering [...]
Employer Did Not Discriminate or Retaliate Against Disabled Employee Who Was Unable to Perform In-Person Supervision Tasks
A supervisor of released adult offenders suffered from sacroiliac joint dysfunction, a condition causing pain in the joints that limited her ability to walk and forced her to work from home. After surgery she made a full return to work, but roughly a year and half later she fell down stairs at work and the [...]
Are Bonuses Part of “Earnings” for the Purposes of Calculating Disability Benefits?
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently had cause to consider this very issue. Unfortunately, we did not get a clear answer, as the matter was sent back down for the district court to reconsider a whole host of issues before deciding whether the insurance company had the right to calculate benefits based on salary alone. [...]
Physicians Allowed to Proceed with Discrimination Claims Against Health System, Despite Being Employed by Physician Service
A recent decision out of a federal court in Pennsylvania demonstrates that large corporate health systems who rely on the use of subsidiaries to limit liability for employee misconduct do so at their own peril. In Ginsburg v. Aria Health Physician Services, E.D. Pa., No. 2:12-cv-1140 (Aug. 31, 2012), the federal judge found that a [...]
