SHRM ‘fundamentally disagrees,’ weighs appeal after jury finds it failed to accommodate job applicant
A federal jury has found that the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) violated disability law when it withdrew a job offer from an applicant who asked to bring her diabetes alert dog to work. SHRM says it will consider an appeal.
The jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, in Alexandria, unanimously found that SHRM failed to provide Fiona Torres with a reasonable accommodation under both the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Virginia Human Rights Act, according to the verdict form.
The jury also found that SHRM rescinded Torres's job offer because of its need to accommodate her disability, and that it discriminated against her on the basis of disability under the Virginia law.
But the jury did not find that SHRM rescinded the offer because of her disability itself. It also did not find that SHRM failed to engage in a timely, good-faith interactive process with Torres.
The jury awarded Torres US$400,000 in compensatory damages and no punitive damages in the Oct. 9 decision.
"This outcome penalizes an organization for executing a rigorous, good-faith, multi-step interactive process — exactly the kind of process the ADA was designed to require," SHRM said in a statement after the verdict.
The verdict form put six liability questions to the jury across four counts. The jury answered yes to four:
[OSEN=Choi Lee-jung Reporter] As past remarks by singer Yang Hong-won expressing his dislike of infidelity resurface, reactions continue to grow that the recent 'motel infidelity allegations' agai...