An employee asked for and was granted 12 weeks of FMLA leave. However, after about 10 weeks, she was told by her doctor that she would need extra time away from work.

When she informed her manager, the company terminated her. The employee wouldn’t have been able to return until almost a month after she ran out of leave.

However, the company did pay her health benefits for the full 12 weeks.

The employee sued, claiming she was fired after using only 10 weeks of FMLA leave.

The company argued that she wouldn’t have returned to work in time to keep her job anyway, and she wasn’t denied any benefit she would’ve received if it had waited 12 weeks to fire her.

Who won?

The court agreed with the company. It was undisputed that the employee’s doctor didn’t clear her to return to work until almost a month after she would’ve run out of leave. The company gave her all the benefits she was owed and had no reason to delay the termination.

Cite: Roberts v. The Health Association

Many employers choose to have leave policies that are more generous than what the FMLA requires. But as a recent case shows, that doesn’t mean those companies are immune to lawsuits.

An employee needed two months off work after complications during surgery. His boss told him he could take paid leave for whatever time he needed.

Though the employee was eligible for FMLA, neither he nor his boss ever mentioned it as a possibility. Instead, he took time off and was paid his full salary until he was able to come back to work.

The manager told him his job would be open for him when he returned.

The problem: The supervisor couldn’t live up to his promise. Once he went back to work, the employee was put in a different position and given a pay cut.

He sued under FMLA, claiming he was unfairly denied reinstatement to his former position.

The company tried to have the case thrown out, arguing the employee had no right to reinstatement because he never took FMLA leave.

But the judge didn’t buy it. As the court ruled, most likely, the only reason he didn’t take FMLA is that his manager never offered it — and he was obligated to after he learned the reason the employee needed time off.

The company may have acted generously by giving the employee seemingly indefinite paid leave, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t entitled to the FMLA’s job protection.

Generosity’s not enough

The lesson for managers: It’s easy to think employees don’t need FMLA because the company’s offering a more generous leave policy and plans to keep the employee in the same job no matter what.

But as this case shows, those plans don’t always work out. And that makes employers an easy target for lawsuits.

Managers need to notify HR whenever they think an employee qualifies for FMLA so leave can be offered — no matter what the employer’s individual leave policy.

Cite: Smith v. Primecare Medical, Inc.

The answer, according to a federal court in Georgia, is “no.” Here’s what happened in a recent case:

A department manager took 2 months of FMLA after she adopted a child. While she was gone, her duties were shifted to other employees. Due to various factors, the department shrank in size during her absence, resulting in even less work for the woman to do. So as a cost-cutting measure, when the leave was over, the company decided not to bring her back on.

She sued. The company claimed the position was eliminated completely. But the court ruled for the woman, saying it looked like the woman wouldn’t have lost her job if she hadn’t taken leave – so it’s now up to a jury to review the facts.

Sticky situation

It’s not always illegal to let an employee go while on FMLA leave. For example, if someone’s picked for inclusion in a reduction in force (RIF) – for reasons unrelated to taking leave – than a court will usually find that to be legit.

However, it can be very tough to prove that the leave had nothing to do with it. In this case, the woman wasn’t let go in a larger RIF (in fact, the company was apparently growing, overall) and no formal organizational review was done to determine whether or not her position was no longer necessary.

Had either or those things happened, the outcome could have been different.

Cite: Conner v. Sun Trust Bank