Here’s what happened:

In a fairly cut-and-dry FMLA case, a sick employee requested FMLA leave and was turned down. He sued, and the court ruled the leave was wrongfully denied.

But that wasn’t all. The employee was also awarded $1,110 in back pay “for days he missed work because of stress or other mental problems resulting from the wrongful denial of FMLA leave.”

The court noted that FMLA doesn’t allow plaintiffs to collect money for punitive damages or emotional distress. But in this case, the judge said, the stress caused the employee actual monetary losses in the form of missed work. Therefore, he was entitled to collect the extra cash.

Cite: Farrell v. Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon

Under FMLA, some employees aren’t eligible for leave. But that doesn’t mean they can’t sue their employers for FMLA mistakes.

In one recent case, an employee took some time off for surgery. While he was gone, the company put someone else in his position.

When he came back to work, his boss told him his job had been filled. The company offered him a new position, which he turned down. He was terminated, and he sued under FMLA.

The company’s defense was clear-cut: The employee wasn’t on FMLA leave, since he wasn’t eligible for FMLA. The company’s headquarters had more than 50 workers, but the man worked out of his home, more than 75 miles away.

The company claimed it had just given him some time off — without the obligation to put him back in the same or similar position.

But the employee won the case. Why? A glitch in the handbook.

The company’s leave policy explained employees’ rights under FMLA and listed all the eligibility requirements — except the “50/75″ rule. When the employee told his boss he needed leave for surgery, he was sent a letter restating the handbook’s FMLA policy.

That gave him reason to assume he was taking FMLA-protected leave, the court ruled — so the company had essentially trapped itself into offering it.

Prevent managers’ mistakes

As if FMLA wasn’t tricky enough, there are ways employers get in trouble even when employees aren’t covered by the law, as this case shows.

In other cases, employees who hadn’t worked for 12 months or 1,250 hours have been mistakenly told by managers they could take FMLA — and then sued when they came back and didn’t get put in their old jobs.

To avoid this costly blunder, here are three steps all employers can take:

• Check policies. A good FMLA policy tells employees their legal rights and all the requirements they need to meet to be eligible. If you have to, give employees at different locations different versions of the handbook so there’s no confusion.
• Train managers. Managers need to know who’s eligible for leave and who isn’t. Otherwise, employees might be told something that conflicts with the law.
• Make sure HR handles all leave requests. Managers should always come to HR first when an employee needs leave. Make sure they understand the problems that can come up when supervisors approve or deny leave on their own.

Cite: Peters v. Gilead Sciences, Inc.

Human Resources pros do whatever they can to keep their companies safe from lawsuits. But some courts are raising the stakes — and holding HR managers personally liable for legal slip-ups.

In one recent case, a company’s HR manager had to defend himself in front of a judge after a communication mix-up resulted in an FMLA suit by an ex-employee.

The employee was hospitalized following a medical emergency. Her doctor submitted the FMLA certification and told the company when she’d return to work.

The woman had already used several weeks of leave earlier in the year. The company’s HR manager told the employee’s supervisor that she’d run out of protected FMLA leave about two weeks before her expected return date.

However, neither HR nor the supervisor ever told the employee (seemingly, the company planned to reinstate her anyway.) But when she returned to work on the planned day, she was fired.

She sued the company, claiming she should’ve been told she’d lose her job if she used the extra two weeks of leave. The court ruled in her favor.

The twist: In addition to the company, both the HR manager and the employee’s boss were listed as individual defendants. The judge also ruled against them, saying they were to blame for the decision to fire the employee and the failure to let her know she’d lost her FMLA protection (Cite: Spagnoli v. Brown and Brown Metro, Inc.).

Individual liability for HR execs

Courts across the country have held that individuals with significant decision-making authority can be held personally liable in FMLA, wage and hour, and (in some states) discrimination and harassment suits. Under FMLA, for example, the definition of who can be sued includes “any person acting directly or indirectly in the interest of an employer in relation to an employee.” Often, the plaintiff’s supervisor is the target, but in many cases, so is HR.

There are steps all HR pros can take to avoid getting a personal invitation to court, says attorney Denise Kay, who spoke at this year’s Society for Human Resources Management conference. Her advice:

• Don’t just “follow orders” — Of course, everyone in HR knows to stand up to managers who want to take potentially litigious action. But the threat of being involved in an individual suit should be an added incentive.
• Know how to respond to authorities — Not answering correctly to requests from government agencies (like the EEOC) could get HR pros hit with obstruction of justice charges.
• Communicate — In the above case, making sure the manager’s plans were understood and communicated to the employee on leave would have saved the HR manager — and the company — a lot of trouble.