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Medley v. Valentine Radford Communications7/19/2005
paced. That type of job is not conducive to being done part-time or from home.
Her continued health problems and her failure to comply with the leave policies created a situation where there was no reasonable accommodation that would have allowed her to do her essential job functions. And the fact that she later got better is irrelevant because Valentine Radford had no way of knowing at that time how long this health problem would continue.
Ms. Medley relies on Garcia-Ayala v. Lederle Parenterals, Inc., 212 F.3d 638 (1st Cir. 2000), to claim that summary judgment should be reversed. In Garcia-Ayala, the plaintiff was out of work on short-term disability for over a year and was terminated under a company policy to not hold a job open for more than one year, even after she asked for additional leave. Id. at 642. The First Circuit found that because Lederle did not contest the reasonableness of the accommodation of giving her more leave time, instead just saying that any leave past the one year was unreasonable, summary judgment for Lederle was inappropriate and plaintiff was entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Id. at 648-50. But Garcia-Ayala is different from the present case because the plaintiff in that case did comply with all of the company's policies to take her short-term leave and also was easily replaced by temporary workers while she was out. Id. at 642. Ms. Medley, on the other hand, missed a lot of work without following company policies to miss that work, and temporary workers could not fill her position. So she is not entitled to the same result.
Ms. Medley's case is more like Kinnaman. In Kinnaman, the plaintiff claimed that the defendant discriminated against her because of her disability, violating both the ADA and the MHRA. 79 F. Supp. 2d at 1097. The plaintiff was a full-time hourly assembler at the Ford plant. Id. at 1098. In 1990, she began having various problems with her wrists, making it difficult for her to do certain assembler jobs. Id. at 1099. She took numerous medical leaves of absence, some related to her health problems and some not related. Id. After one such leave where she did not attempt to return until a month after her leave ended, defendant terminated her. Id. at 1100. When plaintiff objected, a settlement was reached wherein she would be reinstated if she successfully passed a physical and drug screen. Id. Based on restrictions placed on her due to her wrists, she was not reinstated. Id. The defendant moved for summary judgment. Id.
The court first focused on whether the plaintiff was a qualified individual under the ADA. Id. at 1101. That question involves two steps: does the person possess the requisite skill and experience for the position and can the individual, despite her impairments, perform the essential functions of her job either with or without reasonable accommodation. Id. The court assumed that the plaintiff met the first step and focused on the second, finding that she could not prove that she could perform the essential functions of her job with or without reasonable accommodations. Id. at 1101-02. Plaintiff argued that the issue of her absenteeism was irrelevant because it was not raised as the reason that the defendant refused to reinstate her. Id. at 1102. But the court stated that plaintiff missed the point because her chronic, excessive absenteeism was "highly relevant to plaintiff's prima facie case which must first be addressed before any consideration can be given to the merits of the defendant's reason for refusing to reinstate plaintiff." Id.
The court discussed the essential functions of a job, which means the fundamental job duties of a particular position and noted that the Eighth Circuit
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