Opinion ID: 4686682
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Unforeseeable Leave

Text: When the need for leave is “not foreseeable, an employee must provide notice to the employer as soon as practicable under the facts and circumstances of the particular case.” 29 C.F.R. § 825.303(a). Notice “shall provide sufficient information for an employer to reasonably determine whether the FMLA may apply to the leave request.” 29 C.F.R. § 825.303(b). The unforeseeable-leave standard permits a plaintiff to cure a notice default by showing that she could not give notice before the absence or leave. But the record refutes Koch’s claim that her major depressive episode and fear to leave her house justified her failure to abide by the FMLA’s notice requirement. Over the course of that week, Koch sent and received 702 text messages and placed and received over ten phone calls to a variety of third parties. See Acker v. Gen. Motors, LLC, 853 F.3d 784, 789–90 (5th Cir. 2017) (rejecting claim of unusual circumstances when the employee could not explain why “‘unusual circumstances’ left him capable of calling one line, but not the other”). The district court properly concluded that Thames did not interfere with Koch’s FMLA rights.