Opinion ID: 170788
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The nature and severity of the potential harm;

Text: (3) The likelihood that the potential harm will occur; and (4) The imminence of the potential harm. 29 C.F.R. § 1630.2(r). Though the burden of showing that an employee is a direct threat typically falls on the employer, “where the essential job duties necessarily implicate the safety of others, then the burden may be on the plaintiff to show that [he] can perform those functions without endangering others.” McKenzie v. 22 Benton, 388 F.3d 1342, 1354 (10th Cir. 2004) (quotation marks, alterations, and citation omitted). In the present case, it may be appropriate to assign Justice the burden of showing that he does not pose a direct threat, as he personally acknowledged that the position of electrician in the Worland plant can be “deadly” and that “lives are at stake.” Aplt. App’x at 151. Even so, based on the same evidence already noted in the preceding section, we conclude that a triable issue of material fact exists as to whether Justice actually posed a direct threat to plant safety. There is, as noted, a question whether Ms. Wakai’s opinion can be considered “objective.” In addition, there is much evidence indicating that Justice’s restrictions, as recognized by Drs. Williams and Spratt, may not have limited his ability to perform safely in his environment and that Crown’s application of the medical judgments to the workplace was unreasonable. 5 Applying the factors set forth in 5 The district court, in ruling on Crown’s motion for summary judgment, concluded that it was “not in a position to second-guess the judgment of those medical professionals or the employer, Crown, in deciding what would be acceptable safety risks to Justice and/or others in the Worland plant.” Aplt. App’x at 815. This presents several difficulties, which ultimately lead us to disagree with the district court’s ruling. First, allowing the case to go to a jury would not require second-guessing the medical judgments involved—it would only require second-guessing Crown’s application of those judgments to the workplace, or, in Ms. Wakai’s case, examining the objectivity of the facts that formed the basis of her opinion. Second, to hold that one cannot second-guess an employer’s conclusion regarding the safety risks posed by an employee would eviscerate the ADA’s protections by permitting the employer to assert in nearly every case that it believed the employee’s medical limitations posed a credible threat to his safety or the safety of others. 23 29 C.F.R. § 1630.2(r), while the risk of harm may have been permanent and the severity of the harm great, a reasonable jury could conclude that the likelihood of the harm was extremely small and that Justice therefore did not pose a “direct threat” to the safety of himself or others in the Worland plant.