Opinion ID: 1028082
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Intermittent Leave Under the FMLA

Text: The FMLA allows eligible employees 12 weeks of leave during any 12-month period [b]ecause of the placement of a son or daughter with the employee for adoption or foster care. 29 U.S.C. § 2612(a)(1)(B). [1] An employee cannot take such leave intermittently unless the employee and the employer . . . agree otherwise. Id. at § 2612(b)(1). The parties do not dispute that Dotson took intermittent pre-adoption leave. Pfizer, though, suggests that Dotson's preadoption absences were taken intermittently without Pfizer's consent and thus fall outside the FMLA. Testimony showed, however, that Dotson kept the company informed of his need for adoption-related leave. In its brief, Pfizer acknowledged that other than for one work-related dinner, it permitted Dotson to take all of the leave that he requested. Pfizer claims that even though it allowed Dotson to take accrued leave intermittently, it could not have approved intermittent FMLA leave because he never specifically requested the use of intermittent FMLA leave. Pfizer's argument fails because the FMLA does not require Dotson to specifically invoke its protections in order to benefit from it. Regulations promulgated by the Department of Labor repeatedly emphasize that it is the employer's responsibility to determine the applicability of the FMLA and to consider requested leave as FMLA leave. Price v. City of Fort Wayne, 117 F.3d 1022, 1026 (7th Cir. 1997) (citing 29 C.F.R. § 825.303(b)). Read in context, subsection (b)(1) to § 2612 does not create an additional hurdle for employees asking for adoption-related leave beyond the requirement that they make a request or requests for leave that is intermittent. Instead, the statutory language makes it clear that employers may, at their option, require that employees take FMLA leave for certain reasons (birth, adoption or foster care placement under § 2612(a)(1)(A)-(B)) in one block of up to twelve weeks rather than intermittently. The requirement that employer and employee must agree on intermittent leave means that employers can refuse to allow this type of leave in birth, adoption and foster care placement cases. By contrast, employees have an unfettered right to take FMLA leave because of a serious health condition intermittently when medically necessary, with or without employer consent. [2] 29 U.S.C. § 2612(a)(1)(C)-(D). When the provisions are read side by side in this manner, the requirement that employer and employee must agree on intermittent leave does not clash with the generally-accepted position that no magic words are necessary to invoke the protections of the FMLA. See Sarnowski v. Air Brooke Limousine, Inc., 510 F.3d 398, 402 (3d Cir.2007); see also Rhoads v. F.D.I.C., 257 F.3d 373, 382-83 (4th Cir.2001). Pfizer could not point to any evidence showing that it refused to allow Dotson to take adoption-related leave intermittently. Courts that have allowed employers a defense based on the statute's requirement that the employer and employee agree on intermittent leave have done so when the employer expressly refused to agree to intermittent leave. See Maynard v. Town of Monterey, Tenn., 75 Fed.Appx. 491, 493 (6th Cir.2003); Beyst v. Pinnacle Airlines, Inc., 2008 WL 2433201 at -8 (E.D.Mich., June 11, 2008) (granting an employer's motion for summary judgment on an intermittent FMLA claim where the employer expressly forbade intermittent leave in its Employee Handbook). [3] Here, evidence showed that Pfizer agreed that Dotson could take his adoption-related leave intermittently. Dotson kept his supervisors informed about his need for adoption-related absences, which included two separate trips to Russia. No one at Pfizer suggested he could not take either trip. Dotson also contacted Pfizer's employee benefits contractor with questions related to his planned adoption. During the trial, he offered evidence that a Pfizer HR official misinformed him about available FMLA benefits, after which he did not seek to designate any of his time off as FMLA-protected. The jury, then, heard evidence from which it could reasonably infer that Pfizer either granted Dotson's requests for intermittent adoption-related leave or failed to properly inquire concerning the designation of leave. If Dotson was improperly dissuaded from pursuing his FMLA options, he could not have come to an agreement on a more formal intermittent leave schedule. [4] In either case, Pfizer cannot now claim that it did not agree to allow Dotson to take the intermittent pre-adoption leave he requested and took.