Court Opinion

ID: 9400207
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-06-07 18:00:28.428377+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:19:42.998614
License: Public Domain

Not for Publication in West's Federal Reporter

          United States Court of Appeals
                      For the First Circuit

No. 21-1415

                        SARA VITLLOCH ROQUE,

                       Plaintiff, Appellant,

                                    v.

        METROHEALTH, INC. d/b/a HOSPITAL METROPOLITANO,

                        Defendant, Appellee.

          APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
                 FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO

       [Hon. Jay A. García-Gregory, U.S. District Judge]

                                 Before

               Gelpí, Thompson, and Montecalvo,
                        Circuit Judges.

     Jorge L. Marchand Heredia for appellant.
     Lloyd Isgut-Rivera, with whom Nannette Rodríguez Rodríguez
and Pizarro & González were on brief, for appellee.

                             June 7, 2023
           THOMPSON, Circuit Judge.         We write this nonpublished

opinion just for the parties (their names appear in the caption,

as one would expect).      They know the facts, procedural history,

and appellate issues.      So we share only what is needed to explain

why we must affirm the district judge's grant of summary judgment

against    Plaintiff   —   after    reviewing   the       decision    de   novo,

confirming that the record (read in the light most agreeable to

Plaintiff) reveals no genuine dispute of material fact and reflects

Defendant's right to judgment as a matter of law.             See, e.g., Lang

v. Wal-Mart Stores E., L.P., 813 F.3d 447, 454 (1st Cir. 2016).

                                      I

           The short version of a longer story is this (we will

mention more details later in discussing Plaintiff's specific

claims).

                                      A

           Plaintiff worked as an information management clerk in

an   information   management      department   at    a    hospital     run   by

Defendant.    She had to handle lots of paper records.               Because of

the devastation wrought by Hurricane María — which struck Puerto

Rico in September 2017 — medical records got wet.             And that caused

them to become moldy.

           In October 2017 — when she was over 40 years old —

Plaintiff gave Defendant a medical certificate from her doctor

explaining that because of "a respiratory condition" she "should

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not be exposed to vapors, odors, smoke and/or areas of high

humidity" and "must have a reasonable accommodation."        Over the

next several weeks in October and November 2017, Defendant did

some things of note:

  •   Defendant had Plaintiff's doctor complete a form to help

      assess her request, as part of "the interactive process of a

      reasonable accommodation" — on it, the doctor wrote that

      "[s]he must avoid smoke, vapors, reluctant odors, humid areas

      which can unleash the worsening of her pulmonary condition."

  •   Defendant then informed Plaintiff by letter that because of

      the problems caused by the hurricane, it could not "comply

      with" her physician's "specifications" — "the medical records

      are not exempt from humidity," Defendant added, and her "tasks

      inevitably impl[ied] contact[] with humidity."

  •   Defendant's letter also told Plaintiff that she was placed on

      unpaid leave for three months, though she could return sooner

      if her health changed.

Also in November 2017, Plaintiff for her part filed administrative

charges   with   federal   and   commonwealth   employment   agencies,

basically alleging that Defendant unlawfully suspended her because

of her disability and age.

                                 - 3 -
             We skip ahead to February 2018, when Plaintiff showed up

for   work   again.1   Defendant    said   that   she   needed   a    medical

certificate from her doctor before she could return.         She got that

certificate four days later.         The certificate stated that she

"could perform her work in a reasonably clean environment, free of

smoke and of vapors, all according to the normal Federal and/or

state laws." She gave the certificate to Defendant. And according

to her deposition testimony, she "went straight to work that day"

or the next.

                                    B

             Unhappy with Defendant's actions, Plaintiff filed the

lawsuit now before us.     She alleged various claims, none of which

survived summary judgment below (as we said above).                  The only

claims relevant here are those charging disability discrimination

under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA"), age

discrimination under the federal Age Discrimination and Employment

      The parties spar over whether Plaintiff is correct in saying
      1

that Defendant agreed to reinstate her following discussions at a
January 2018 administrative hearing. But because their dispute
does not matter to the result in this appeal anyway, we need not
resolve it.

                                   - 4 -
Act ("ADEA"), and unlawful retaliation under the commonwealth Law

115.2

                                        II

                 Time for our take on the situation (and because we

believe Plaintiff's arguments lack a supportable basis in law or

fact,       we   respond   somewhat   summarily   —   without   a   full-blown

explication of the accepted legal principles in this area, which

already fill many pages of the federal reporter series).

                                        A

                 Plaintiff insists that Defendant failed to reasonably

accommodate her disability, as required by the ADA.                 Put aside

that a leave of absence — even an unpaid one — may be a reasonable

accommodation in some scenarios.              See García-Ayala v. Lederle

Parenterals, Inc., 212 F.3d 638, 647 (1st Cir. 2000).               Put aside

as well that an employer need not give an employee her preferred

accommodation.         See Ansonia Bd. of Educ. v. Philbrook, 479 U.S.

60, 68 (1986); Feliciano v. Rhode Island, 160 F.3d 780, 787 (1st

Cir. 1998).         Instead focus on how Plaintiff — not Defendant (as

       Plaintiff also briefs an unjust-dismissal claim under the
        2

commonwealth Law 80, "Puerto Rico's Unjust Discharge Act." See
Zampierollo-Rheinfeldt v. Ingersoll-Rand de P.R., Inc., 999 F.3d
37, 59 (1st Cir. 2021). But her complaint did not allege a Law 80
claim, though her summary-judgment opposition tried to.        And
because a plaintiff is "not entitled to raise new and unadvertised
theories of liability for the first time in opposition to a motion
for summary judgment," see Calvi v. Knox County, 470 F.3d 422, 431
(1st Cir. 2006), we have nothing more to say about Law 80.

                                      - 5 -
she suggests) — had to show that a reasonable accommodation existed

that would let her do her job within her restrictions, which again

(according to her doctor) were that she "avoid smoke, vapors,

reluctant odors, humid areas which can unleash the worsening of

her pulmonary condition."   See, e.g., Echevarría v. AstraZeneca

Pharm. LP, 856 F.3d 119, 127-28 (1st Cir. 2017); Phelps v. Optima

Health, Inc., 251 F.3d 21, 26 (1st Cir. 2001).   A big problem for

her is that she identified no accommodation that fit the bill

(Defendant made this point in its brief, and Plaintiff did not

even file a reply brief trying to rebut the point) — an omission

that dashes her reversal hopes for this claim.    See, e.g., Jones

v. Walgreen Co., 679 F.3d 9, 19 n.6 (1st Cir. 2012).

          Plaintiff implies that if only Defendant had engaged

with her in the "interactive process" that federal disability law

"sometimes" requires, see Lang, 813 F.3d at 456 (quotation marks

omitted), the two could have explored options other than unpaid

leave — which (she continues) Defendant imposed "unilaterally" by

letter, "without having any discussion" (thus depriving her of an

interactive process). She fails to appreciate that the interactive

process (when required) is an "informal," "flexible" one, intended

to "identify the precise limitations resulting from the disability

and potential reasonable accommodations that could overcome those

limitations," see Freadman v. Metro. Prop. & Cas. Ins. Co., 484

F.3d 91, 104 (1st Cir. 2007) (quotation marks omitted) — with the

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"degree          of     interaction"         differing       "accord[ing]      to    the

circumstances of each case," see Enica v. Principi, 544 F.3d 328,

339 (1st Cir. 2008).                  And not only does she fail to offer a

convincing reason why Defendant's actions were not sufficient

under the case-specific circumstances.                    See Franchina v. City of

Providence, 881 F.3d 32, 51 n.15 (1st Cir. 2018) (deeming waived

an    argument         "made   in    conclusory      terms,"    with    no   "persuasive

reasoning").           But she ignores that "[w]here, as here, the employee

fails       to   satisfy       her    burden   of     showing    that    a   reasonable

accommodation existed, [she] cannot maintain a claim for failure

to engage in an interactive process."                   See Echevarría, 856 F.3d at

133.3

                                               B

                 Plaintiff's ADEA claim fares no better.                 Her theory is

that Defendant treated her (a person within the ADEA's protected

age     group)        adversely      while   treating    a   "younger    employee"   or

"younger employees" "more favorably" or "better and preferably."

But her brief does not identify the employee or employees, let

alone explain whether he, she, or they was or were similarly

       To the extent Plaintiff's brief could be read as suggesting
        3

a hostile-work-environment theory under the ADA, we consider it
waived for lack of development.         See, e.g., Rodríguez v.
Municipality of San Juan, 659 F.3d 168, 175 (1st Cir. 2011). The
parties also debate whether the leave was really a "termination"
and so constituted an "adverse employment action" under the
statute. But given how we have decided her ADA claim, we have no
need to weigh in.

                                             - 7 -
situated to her, see Alvarez-Fonseca v. Pepsi Cola of P.R. Bottling

Co., 152 F.3d 17, 24 (1st Cir. 1998) (discussing how an ADEA

plaintiff must show that her comparator was "similarly situated in

all relevant respects") — a defect (highlighted by Defendant but

left unchallenged by Plaintiff, because she filed no reply brief)

that makes her ADEA claim a nonstarter, see generally Soc'y of

Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Inc. v. Gregory, 689 F.3d 29, 52

(1st Cir. 2012) (stating our oft-repeated "admonish[ment]" that

"it is not the job of this court to do [appellant's] work for

[her]" (quotation marks omitted, and first and third alterations

added)).4

     4  Plaintiff's summary-judgment opposition named "Karelys
Hernández" as the "much younger" employee who got to move her work
area. But Plaintiff's counsel candidly admitted at oral argument
that Hernández was not a similarly situated employee, which makes
sense: Plaintiff and Hernández had different jobs and duties, and
their accommodation requests were also different (Hernández
requested and received an accommodation that let her move her
office from the second to the first floor, because her doctor
wanted her to avoid the stairs during her pregnancy). Plaintiff
also suggests that Defendant subjected her to a hostile work
environment because of her age.      Such a claim is "factually
complicated and legally intricate."      See Rodríguez-Machado v.
Shinseki, 700 F.3d 48, 49 (1st Cir. 2012) (per curiam) (explaining
that   the   law  "distinguish[es]   between   the  ordinary,   if
occasionally unpleasant, vicissitudes of the workplace and actual
harassment" (quotation marks omitted)). But she "provides neither
the necessary caselaw nor reasoned analysis to show" that her
suggestion is correct.   See Rodríguez, 659 F.3d at 176. So we
consider her suggestion waived. See id.

                              - 8 -
                                      C

            That leaves Plaintiff's claim based on Law 115, which is

"Puerto Rico's general anti-retaliation statute."           See Rodríguez-

Cardi v. MMM Holdings, Inc., 936 F.3d 40, 45 (1st Cir. 2019).

According   to   Plaintiff,   Defendant      retaliated   against   her   for

administratively filing discrimination charges by "unjustifiably

delay[ing] her reinstatement by 4 days," and then "not assign[ing]

her any duties to do" when she returned and telling her supervisor

to "mistreat her."    Again, this area of the law is "complex" (to

say the least). See Rodríguez-Machado, 700 F.3d at 49.            And again,

her briefing is unhelpful.       On the unjustifiably-delaying-her-

reinstatement    front,   Plaintiff       leaves   uncontested   Defendant's

justification that she herself caused the delay by not having a

doctor's certificate (clearing her to resume work) at the ready

(remember she filed no reply brief).           And on the not-assigning-

her-duties and mistreating-her fronts, Plaintiff neither compares

her workload before and after reinstatement, nor explains what her

mistreatment involved (despite the fact that the district judge

flagged those problems in his summary-judgment decision).                 So

again, "[w]hat she has done is not the type of serious effort that

allows us to decide difficult questions."             See id.    Which means

her reversal bid on this claim fails too.

                                  III

            We affirm, awarding Defendant its costs on appeal.

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