Opinion ID: 203640
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Requests for Accommodation

Text: It is undisputed that Tobin repeatedly asked Liberty Mutual to help him achieve his performance goals by giving him two forms of assistance: (1) providing him with increased support staff to respond to customer service calls, which would allow him to devote more time to new sales, and (2) assigning him to manage a Mass Marketing account. Mass Marketing (MM) accounts are group insurance programs offered to businesses and other institutions in which employees or members are able to purchase insurance policies at a discount. Both the insurance company as a whole and individual sales representatives highly value MM accounts because they offer access to a large volume of potential clients in a single location. It is not uncommon for more than a dozen individuals whose employer has newly signed up for an MM account to meet with a sales representative at their workplace in back-to-back time slots on a single day. Tobin sought to prove at trial that he would have been able to overcome the difficulties caused by his disability, and could have met his quotas, if Liberty Mutual had given him adequate customer service support and assigned him to an MM account. He claimed that these accommodations would have compensated for the disadvantages caused by his disability without altering the essential functions of his job. He elicited testimony indicating that he had difficulty finding prospective clients, but that he had good closing skills once he was engaged in a sales call. He also suggested that the time he had available to prospect for new clients was disproportionately consumed by his need to respond to service calls from his large number of long-time clients. In response, Liberty Mutual offered evidence that Tobin was provided with the support staff he needed and that he was not qualified to handle an MM account. Liberty Mutual argued that MM accounts were distributed solely on the basis of merit to sales representatives who were actively pursuing other such accounts and who otherwise were meeting their sales quotas. In addition, company representatives testified that managing an MM account required strong organizational and time-management skills because of the sales representative's need to move from task to task when meeting in rapid succession with many individuals. Such circumstances also made MM sales encounters particularly stressful. In effect, the company attempted to show that Tobin could not have done the job even with the accommodation of an MM assignment and Liberty Mutual was therefore not obliged to make such an accommodation. Liberty Mutual witnesses also testified about the service support that Tobin received. In addition to service representatives specifically assigned to Tobin, a pool of representatives was available to him and other sales agents  to handle service calls when his own representatives were busy. Liberty Mutual sought to show that Tobin did not effectively take advantage of this support, choosing to handle too many service calls himself. The company also elicited testimony that the need for additional service help was a common problem among sales representatives because of the limited number of service representatives at the company.