Where the accommodations requested by a disabled employee were not reasonable under the circumstances, an unpaid leave of absence constituted a reasonable accommodation.
Background
When Jay Hannah, a package delivery driver for United Parcel Service Inc., or UPS, injured his hip and buttocks, he requested that he be allowed to drive his route with a smaller truck that would have a softer suspension or, alternatively, that he be assigned to an “inside job.” UPS instead accommodated Hannah by allowing him to take an unpaid leave of absence until his hip and buttocks healed.
Hannah commenced this action under the Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA. The district court granted summary judgment to UPS, concluding that Hannah had not shown that the accommodations he requested were reasonable and that Hannah’s unpaid leave of absence constituted a reasonable accommodation in the circumstances.
Reasonable accommodation
In carrying out the burden of establishing a reasonable accommodation in the context of a workplace governed by a collective bargaining agreement, the employee must show either that the requested accommodation would not violate the agreement or that some “special circumstances” exist that nonetheless make “the requested accommodation … reasonable on the particular facts.”
Hannah did not meet this burden. While he did request an accommodation of driving a smaller van with a softer suspension, he acknowledged that such a van would have a cargo capacity of 300 to...
A night in watching boxing ended with a champagne-fuelled thug raining punches on his blameless friend after falsely accusing him of spiking his drink. Robert Gibson turned violent on his pal of m...