Opinion ID: 203640
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Eligibility for MM Accounts

Text: We have little difficulty in dismissing the first rationale. Ample evidence supports the conclusion that Tobin's illness significantly impaired his ability to meet his sales goals. Indeed, he requested an MM assignment in the belief that the logistical convenience of such accounts would offset the deficits in his performance that were attributable to his disability. [18] A request for an accommodation cannot be deemed unreasonable solely because the disabled employee has failed to satisfy standard eligibility requirements for the benefit. Such a conclusion would turn the ADA's accommodation requirement on its head. See Barnett, 535 U.S. at 397, 122 S.Ct. 1516 ([P]references will sometimes prove necessary to achieve the Act's basic equal opportunity goal.); id. at 398, 122 S.Ct. 1516 (The simple fact that an accommodation would provide a `preference'  in the sense that it would permit the worker with a disability to violate a rule that others must obey  cannot, in and of itself, automatically show that the accommodation is not `reasonable.'). A disabled employee may not be entitled to an otherwise reasonable accommodation, however, if granting the accommodation would result in displacing employees with superior rights. Id. at 393, 122 S.Ct. 1516. The Supreme Court held in Barnett that, with some exceptions, a seniority system will prevail over an accommodations request that conflicts with the system's rules, protecting employee expectations of fair, uniform treatment. Id. at 394, 404, 122 S.Ct. 1516. Liberty Mutual equates the assignment of MM accounts with such a system, asserting that Tobin should not be allowed to circumvent the company's established assignment policy. Even accepting the analogy between the Barnett seniority system and the MM assignment policy for purposes of our discussion, Liberty Mutual's argument is unavailing. The Court acknowledged that its holding in Barnett, which applied to the uniform, impersonal operation of seniority rules, id. at 404, 122 S.Ct. 1516, might be inapplicable where special circumstances altered employees' expectations of consistent, uniform treatment, id. at 404-05, 122 S.Ct. 1516. The Court cited as examples of such circumstances the employer's retention of the right to change the seniority system unilaterally, along with its exercise of that right fairly frequently, and also when a system already contained exceptions such that, in the circumstances, one further exception is unlikely to matter. Id. at 405, 122 S.Ct. 1516. Both of those examples are relevant here. Despite the performance eligibility criteria for MM assignments articulated by Liberty Mutual's witnesses, [19] the evidence at trial showed that the accounts were awarded on a case-by-case, discretionary basis and not always as a reward for sales performance. Robin, who was Tobin's sales manager through 1998, testified that new sales representatives sometimes were assigned MM accounts to jump-start their business. He stated: [W]e had an inducement to give the Mass Marketing accounts to some of the newer people because it helped them get off to a fast start and make it in the insurance industry. Robert Nadeau, the assistant regional sales manager during the relevant period, testified that some low-producing sales representatives also received MM accounts because they had sold MM accounts themselves and did not have Tobin's extended history of failing to meet minimum standards. Both Robin and Nadeau indicated that they had the discretion to give Tobin an MM account, but chose not to do so. Thus, unlike in a fixed seniority system, allocating an MM opportunity to Tobin could not have frustrated any individual's expectation of receiving that assignment. Based on this evidence, the jury permissibly could conclude that giving Tobin an MM opportunity would be a feasible accommodation.