Answer: The employee must complete a year of work before the leave starts.

That’s the conclusion of one recent court case. Ten months after he started working, an employee was injured and requested leave starting immediately. His employer refused, because he was still two months shy of being eligible.

He sued, claiming he’d become eligible while on leave, and the first two months of time off would be “transformed” into FMLA-qualifying leave.

The court disagreed: To be eligible, an employee must have worked for 12 months before the leave was set to start.

Cite: Adly v. Supervalue, Inc.

Consider the real-life case of an employee who was rehired after having worked several years for the company in the 1980s. Less than a year after she started again, she suffered an injury and needed medical leave.

The request was turned down, because her current period of employment had lasted less than a year. She sued the company.

The court ruled in her favor. Why? Because there’s nothing in FMLA that says that the 12 months of employment have to be consecutive, and other courts, as well as the Department of Labor, have said that they don’t.

Also, there’s no time limit set for when periods of working do or don’t count. Therefore, a period of service that occurred even 20 years in the past (and, interestingly enough, before the FMLA was even passed) must be counted.

Cite: O’Connor v. Busch’s Inc.