Opinion ID: 2771330
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Dispute Over Medical Leave

Text: Daniels took another medical leave beginning December 20, 2011. During the leave, Daniels expected to receive wage continuation benefits, which cover 75 percent of an employee’s salary after the employee has exhausted other sick leave. Under SDP’s leave policy, if an employee misses ten consecutive workdays due to personal illness, notice automatically is sent to Carol Kenney, SDP’s director of employee health services. When Kenney’s office receives such a notice, it schedules an appointment for the employee with an SDP physician to determine whether the employee has a need for continued leave. An employee who disagrees with the conclusion of the SDP physician can request that another physician, not in SDP’s employ, evaluate her. If the employee makes such a request, SDP selects that physician from a list of physicians on which SDP and the teachers’ union previously had agreed. In keeping with this policy, Kenney’s office scheduled an appointment for Daniels to see Dr. Aribelle Jones, an SDP physician, on January 18, 2012. Although Jones is not a psychiatrist and, according to Daniels, merely spoke with Daniels without examining her, she concluded that Daniels would be fit to return to work on February 1, 2012. Daniels did not accept this 2 Although Daniels alludes to this letter in her statement of disputed facts, the parties did not include the letter in the appendix, and Daniels does not rely on it in her brief. In any event, as we explain below, this letter does not affect the outcome of this case. 11 evaluation and consequently requested that a physician not in SDP’s employ evaluate her. Accordingly, SDP scheduled an appointment for her for this purpose with a psychiatrist, Dr. Burton Weiss, from the Penn Diagnostic Center. Before Daniels’s appointment with Weiss, Kenney wrote a letter to him with “background information” about Daniels to the effect that she had taken sick leave the previous school year and had “stated that she was not supported by the principal at her last school.” Id. at 244. Kenney also wrote that Daniels “went out again on sick leave in December 2011 with the same complaints of being harassed by her new principal.” Id. at 244. The letter asked that Weiss specifically opine on whether Daniels should have returned to work on February 1, 2012. Weiss examined Daniels on February 13, 2012, and, two days later, he wrote a letter to Kenney opining: “Ms. Daniels’s symptoms of anxiety and depression arise from her dispute with the Principal and not from a definable psychiatric illness. Her problem is legal and administrative, not psychiatric.” Id. at 247. He therefore determined that Daniels should have returned to work on February 1, 2012, reasoning that psychiatric treatment would not solve the source of her distress. On February 21, 2012, Kenney notified Daniels of Weiss’s conclusion and informed her that if she did not return to work on February 27, 2012, SDP would institute disciplinary proceedings against her. In reliance on Weiss’s determination, Kenney also denied Daniels wage continuation benefits. Daniels, however, did not return to work as directed. Rather, based on the opinion of her own physicians, Daniels did not return to work until March 27, 2012. Due to Daniels’s failure to return to work as directed, Kenney, who testified that she did not know at that time of 12 Daniels’s PHRC complaints, recommended that SDP terminate her employment. On May 2, 2012, Daniels received notice that SDP had initiated the proceedings that ultimately led to the termination of her employment.