An insurance agency’s claim investigator suffered from a chronic illness. When the agency fired her, she believed her disability was the reason and she sued them.
Complications during the employee’s pregnancy caused her to suffer from sciatica, a compression of a spinal nerve root that causes pain in the lower body. During her eleven-month stint with the agency, she primarily worked from home and occasionally in the field. Her job was to investigate suspected cases of insurance fraud.
She took sick leave for two days one month and a brief absence in another after receiving an injection. The court’s opinion indicated that she did not notify the agency of her chronic illness.
There were also tensions with her supervisor. She filed an anonymous ethics complaint against the supervisor after a vacation request was denied and she was allegedly verbally harassed during a phone call, though she did not mention her disability. She also complained to the agency’s human resources department about her supervisor’s “mean and confrontational” style and behavior.
However, she also brought her children to work meetings, drove them around in her company car, and ran personal errands during times when she was expected to work. Her work was below training guidelines and company standards.
Despite all this, the agency extended her probationary period. Only after several months did they terminate her employment, judging her work performance to be poor. She subsequently sued the agency under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act for discrimination and under Nevada state law for failure to accommodate her disability.
The agency responded by asking the court for “summary judgment;” a ruling in its favor based on the law when both parties agree on the facts. They argued that they could not have accommodated her disability because she never told them about it.
The trial court judge ruled in the agency’s favor. He noted that, when she took sick leave, she did not request accommodations or even tell her supervisor she was disabled. She even told the supervisor that her sciatica would not present an ongoing problem. The supervisor and agency, the judge wrote, “… could have only concluded that plaintiff had experienced some isolated health problems, not that she was disabled.”
She had tried to argue that she feared that the supervisor would retaliate against her if she claimed disability. However, her internal agency communications showed that she really believed that the supervisor was targeting her out of a belief that she was gossipping and having “negative interactions” with coworkers. She did not produce contradictory evidence, and that was enough for the judge to rule for the agency.
An insurance agency, like any business, must make reasonable accommodations for an employee’s disability. However, it cannot accommodate what it does not know about. This agency held this employee to the same performance standards to which it held non-disabled employees. Given what it knew, this was the reasonable approach to take. Had it known the full story of her health, it might have acted differently.
Insurance agencies must follow the law on reasonable employment accommodations, but they do not have to be mind readers. This agency acted prudently and won its case in court.
