Opinion ID: 768712
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Reasonable Accommodation and Undue Hardship

Text: 31 The parties requested that the court determine the issue of liability on the basis of the facts before it. While the burden of showing reasonable accommodation is on the plaintiff, 13 this is a case in which the employer did not contest the reasonableness of the accommodation except to embrace a per se rule that any leave beyond its one-year reservation period was too long. The employer, Lederle, has the burden of proof on the issue of undue hardship, and it did not put on any evidence of undue hardship from Garca's proposed accommodation. See Ward v. Massachusetts Health Research Institute, Inc., 209 F.3d 29 (1st Cir. 2000) (reversing summary judgment in an ADA case where the employer had produced no evidence of undue hardship). 32 While on different facts, a request for an extended leave could indeed be too long to be a reasonable accommodation and no reasonable factfinder could conclude otherwise, that is not this case for a number of reasons. It does not appear that Garca expected to be paid for the additional weeks away from work beyond those allowed under the employer's disability benefits program and while her job functions were being performed by temporary help. There is no evidence that the temporary employees were paid more than Garca or were less effective at her job than she. Indeed, Lederle's continued use of temporary employees and Lederle's failure to replace Garca indicates the contrary. There was, therefore, no financial burden on the employer from paying an employee who was not performing. It is true that an employer usually needs to have the functions of a job filled, and the fact that essential functions have gone unfilled for a lengthy period could well warrant judgment for an employer. But here, the essential functions of the job were filled, to all indications satisfactorily, by temporary employees. The use of temporary employees is not, of course, always a satisfactory or even a possible solution. But here, there is no evidence that Lederle was under business pressure to fill the slot with another permanent employee (indeed, it never did). In other situations, temporary replacements may be unavailable or unsuited to the position; here, the available evidence is all to the contrary. In addition, as said, there is no evidence that the cost of the temporary help was greater than the cost of a permanent employee; one might suppose it was less. Thus, the requested accommodation of a few additional months of unsalaried leave, with the job functions being satisfactorily performed in the meantime, is reasonable. 33 The employer presented the court with no evidence of any hardship, much less undue hardship. On this record, we see no basis for the court to do other than enter judgment for Garca. Under the EEOC guidelines, 29 C.F.R. § 1630.2(p), factors to be considered as to undue hardship include the cost of the accommodation, the effect on expenses and resources, the impact of the accommodation on the operation of the facility (including on other employees' ability to do their jobs) and the impact on the facility's ability to conduct business. On this record there is no discernible negative impact on any of these factors; indeed, the record shows hardly any discernable impact at all on the employer from the requested accommodation. As it was the employer's burden to produce evidence of hardship, we hold that it must bear the responsibility for the absence of such evidence here. 34 We stress that the Act does not require employers to retain disabled employees who cannot perform the essential functions of their jobs without reasonable accommodation. Applying this rule to the prolonged disability leave situation is tricky, however. An absent employee obviously cannot himself or herself perform; still, the employer may in some instances, such as here, be able to get temporary help or find some other alternative that will enable it to proceed satisfactorily with its business uninterrupted while a disabled employee is recovering. In situations like that, retaining the ailing employee's slot while granting unsalaried leave may be a reasonable accommodation required by the ADA. If, however, allowing the sick employee to retain his or her job places the employer in a hardship situation where it cannot secure in some reasonable alternative way the services for which it hired the ailing employee, and yet is blocked from effecting a rehire, the ADA does not require the retention of the disabled person. Hence, where it is unrealistic to expect to obtain someone to perform those essential functions temporarily until the sick employee returns, the employer may be entitled to discharge the ill employee and hire someone else. An exception to this might be if the requested disability leave was so brief that no undue business harm could reasonably be expected to occur from not filling the vacancy. We add that our analysis, while applicable to these facts, may not be applicable in other cases. Undue hardships are not limited to financial impacts; the term includes accommodations that are unduly extensive, substantially disruptive, or that would fundamentally alter the nature or operation of the business. See 29 C.F.R. pt. 1630, App. 35 Other factors to be considered as to whether requests for leaves of absence unreasonable include, for example: where the employee gave no indication as to when she might be able to return to work, and, instead, she simply demanded that her job be held open indefinitely, see, e.g., Taylor v. Pepsi-Cola Co., 196 F.3d 1106, 1110 (10th Cir. 1999); Watkins v. J & S Oil Co., 164 F.3d 55, 62 (1st Cir. 1998) (citing Myers); Corder v. Lucent Techs. Inc., 162 F.3d 924, 928 (7th Cir. 1998); Duckett v. Dunlop Tire Corp., 120 F.3d 1222, 1226 (11th Cir. 1997) (per curiam); Rogers v. International Marine Terminals, Inc., 87 F.3d 755, 759-60 (5th Cir. 1996); where the employee's absences from work were erratic and unexplained, see, e.g., Waggoner v. Olin Corp., 169 F.3d 481, 484-85 (7th Cir. 1999); where, upon the employee's return to work, she would be unqualified, see, e.g., Tyndall v. National Educ. Ctrs., Inc., 31 F.3d 209, 213-14 (4th Cir. 1994); and where the employee was hired to complete a specific task, see, e.g., Stubbs v. Marc Ctr., 950 F. Supp. 889, 893-95 (C.D. Ill. 1997). Cf. generally Micari v. Trans World Airlines, Inc., 43 F. Supp. 2d 275, 281-82 (E.D.N.Y. 1999) (collecting cases); Powers v. Polygram Holding, Inc., 40 F. Supp. 2d 195, 199-201 (S.D.N.Y. 1999) (same). In addition, this court has inquired into whether the company had made earlier policy decisions that it was more profitable to permit an employee additional leave than to hire and train a new employee. See Criado, 145 F.3d at 444. 36 These are difficult, fact intensive, case-by-case analyses, ill-served by per se rules or stereotypes. We emphasize that the stipulated record here contains no evidence whatever of any form of hardship to Lederle as a result of the requested accommodation. Were this not so, we would feel obligated to return the case to a factfinder for further evaluation. But given the employer's failure to meet, even minimally, its burden of proof on the issue of hardship, we award judgment to Garca as a matter of law.