Court Sets Forth a Formula For Employers to Avoid Liability in Disability Discrimination Claims

Employers who take proactive measures and engage in an interactive process with their employees could avoid liability in disability discrimination lawsuits.  One recent case, Grau v. AHS Hospital, Docket No.: A-3959-15T1, sets forth a good model of how employers should approach an employee’s demand for disability accommodation for purposes of avoiding liability.  Grau involved a long time employee, a hospital nursing assistant, who suffered a shoulder injury after she fell at her workplace.  The employee’s physician cleared her to work on light duty, and restricted her from lifting and pushing, key functions of her daily work activities.  Despite the fact that she could not perform these key functions, the employer accommodated the employee by placing her on a light duty desk position, but could only do so for ninety days.  The employer had also tried to find the employee a permanent sedentary position but no such positions were available.  It also tried to retrain the employee for a computer job, but the employee could not be retrained because of her limited ability to use a computer.  Because the employee was unable to find another position at the hospital, the employee retired and successfully applied for social security benefits.  She thereafter filed a disability discrimination lawsuit against the hospital system, which was ultimately dismissed on summary judgment by the trial court.  The employee appealed and the Appellate Division affirmed the dismissal, agreeing with the trial court that the employer had offered the employee sufficient reasonable accommodation, actively engaged with her in the interactive process, and ultimately finding that the employee was unable to perform the essential functions of the job.  The court agreed that even with reasonable accommodations, the employee could not perform the job of a nursing assistant in her disabled state, and was satisfied that the employer had no other open positions for which the employee was qualified. In other words, the hospital had done absolutely all it could to reasonably accommodate the employee, but her condition would not allow her to perform the essential functions of the job. It would benefit all employers facing claims for accommodation based on disability to immediately consult qualified employment law counsel, so that reasonable accommodations may be planned, and the interactive process could be commenced with the employee.  As the Grau case demonstrates, a proactive strategy could avoid substantial liability and headaches down the road.