Takeaway: To render a decision an appellate court would cite as “meticulous,” a trial court must be supplied with an equally meticulous evidentiary record. Here, the employer’s various representatives did so with apparently scrupulous communications and documentation during more than 10 years of accommodation requests, administrative hearings and investigation of reported misconduct.
The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld termination of an employee with a disability who was discharged for work dishonesty, finding neither evidence of pretext nor any other error in the trial court’s “meticulous,” in the words of the appeals court, summary judgment decision.
An individual formerly employed as a nurse sued her federal government employer for disability discrimination after her removal from service in November 2016. Having started work as a floor nurse in 2006, the employee experienced a work injury and was assigned temporary light duties. In 2008, during treatment for her injury, the employee was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS), one symptom of which is heat intolerance and resulting fatigue.
After accepting a role and working for many years in quality management, the employee was transferred to patient care services in January 2015. There, she began to experience temperature issues in her work environment and reported so to an accommodation coordinator. She provided a doctor’s letter requesting an environment in which temperature would not be a problem. The...
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