Bates v. Dura Auto. Sys., Inc.
| Decision Date | 26 August 2014 |
| Docket Number | No. 11–6088.,11–6088. |
| Citation | 30 A.D. Cases 821,767 F.3d 566 |
| Parties | Velma Sue BATES; Claudia Birdyshaw; Mark Long; Jon Toungett; Carolyn Wade ; Richard White, Plaintiffs–Appellees, v. DURA AUTOMOTIVE SYSTEMS, INC., Defendant–Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit |
ARGUED:Robert E. Boston, Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis, LLP, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellant. John A. Beam, III, Equitus Law Alliance, PLLC, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellees. James M. Tucker, United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Washington, D.C., for Amicus Curiae. ON BRIEF:Robert E. Boston, Andrew S. Naylor, Tera Rica Murdock, Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis, LLP, Nashville, Tennessee, Ben Boston, Boston, Holt, Sockwell & Durham, PLLC, Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, for Appellant. John A. Beam, III, Equitus Law Alliance, PLLC, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellees. James M. Tucker, United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Washington, D.C., for Amicus Curiae.
Before: BOGGS, GIBBONS, and COOK, Circuit Judges.
COOK, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which BOGGS, J., joined. GIBBONS, J. (pp. 583–85), delivered a separate dissenting opinion.
In 2007, Dura Automotive Systems, Inc., (“Dura”) began testing employees at its manufacturing facility in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, for substances appearing in both illegal drugs and in prescription medications packaged with warnings about operating machinery. Plaintiffs-appellees, none of whom has a disability under the Americans with Disability Act (“ADA”), worked at the facility and took prescribed medications for a variety of conditions. After these employees tested positive, Dura directed the employees to disclose their medications to Freedom From Self (“FFS”), a third-party company hired to administer the drug tests. FFS reported the machine-restricted drugs to Dura, and Dura warned plaintiffs to discontinue using the offending medications. After retests came back positive, Dura terminated the plaintiffs' employment.
Plaintiffs filed suit in district court, alleging, among other claims, that Dura violated ADA § 102(d)(4)(A), 42 U.S.C. § 12112(d)(4)(A), which prohibits employers from requiring “medical examination[s]” or “mak[ing] inquiries of an employee as to whether such employee is an individual with a disability ... unless such examination or inquiry is shown to be job-related and consistent with business necessity.” The claim reduces to two essential inquiries: (1) whether the employer performed or authorized a medical examination or disability inquiry (“the regulated conduct”); and if so, (2) whether the exam/inquiry was job-related and consistent with business necessity (“the justification”).
During trial, Dura moved for judgment as a matter of law on the drug-testing claims, arguing that the tests qualified as neither medical examinations nor disability inquiries. Despite its earlier rulings deferring judgment on this point, the district court denied the motion and sua sponte ruled in plaintiffs' favor. The court then submitted the justification question to the jury.
The jury found for all but one of the plaintiffs and awarded compensatory and punitive damages in excess of $870,000.1 Dura moved for judgment as a matter of law or a new trial, renewing its opposition to the medical-examination/disability-inquiry ruling and challenging jury instructions, damages, and the verdict. The district court denied relief, and Dura appeals. We affirm in part, reverse in part, vacate the district court's judgment, and remand with instructions.
Dura manufactures glass windows for cars, trucks, and buses at its Lawrenceburg facility. Between the end of 2006 and early 2007, Dura received reports of employees' drug and alcohol abuse. The facility experienced some property damage and a few workplace accidents attributable to employees' use of illegal and prescription drugs.
In response, Dura implemented a new substance-abuse policy, which appeared in the March 2007 revision of the employee handbook and a July 2007 document issued by the Human Resources Department. The new policy prohibited employees from “being impaired by or under the influence” of alcohol, illegal drugs, or legal drugs—including prescription medications and over-the-counter drugs—to the extent that employees' use of such drugs endangered others or affected their job performance. (R. 241, Substance Abuse Policy at 2–3.) Dura reserved the right to enforce its policy via employee drug testing. The new policy provided that “tests showing positive indication of drug/alcohol use will be confirmed” and that employees who tested positive could confidentially report to a medical review officer (“MRO”) their use of prescription medications that may have affected their test results. Dura claims that it designed its new policy to comply with the Tennessee Drug Free Workplace Program.2 The parties dispute when the new policy took effect and whether Dura properly notified employees about the possibility of drug testing.
The actual drug-testing differed from the written policy. In May 2007, Dura ordered a plant-wide drug screening of the Lawrenceburg facility's more than 400 employees. Dura instructed FFS to test for twelve substances—amphetamines, barbiturates, benzodiazepines, cocaine, ecstasy, marijuana, methadone, methamphetamine, opiates, oxycodone, phencyclidine, and propoxyphene —some of which appear in prescription medications. FFS conducted the urinalysis testing in private at the facility's technology center and reported to Dura representatives Mark Jent and Lindy Boots. Following the results of the “instant panel” test, Boots and/or Jent sent home those employees who tested positive.
FFS followed a set protocol after non-negative instant panel tests. First, it sent the samples to Quest Diagnostics for confirmatory testing to reveal which of the twelve substances triggered the non-negative result and the amount of that substance in the employee's system. Then, a Total Compliance Network MRO reviewed the chain of custody and interpreted the test results. In reviewing the test results, MROs questioned employees about medical explanations, sometimes requesting prescription information or documentation from the employee's physician. If the MRO determined that the employee had a valid reason for the non-negative result, including use of prescription medications, the MRO changed the final test result to negative. FFS forwarded these results to Dura, but Dura disregarded the MRO's revisions, opting instead to prohibit any employee use of machine-restricted drugs.
To that end, Dura instructed positive-testing employees to bring their medications to FFS for documentation. Affected employees produced their medications to FFS employee Lisa Peden, who identified the medications packaged with machine-operation warnings and reported those to Dura. Dura then informed the employees that it would terminate them if they continued to use these medications.
Plaintiffs-appellees—Velma Sue Bates, Claudia Birdyshaw, Carolyn Wade, Richard White, Mark Long, and Jon Toungett—worked at the Lawrenceburg facility when Dura instituted its new substance abuse policy. All but Toungett tested positive during the plant-wide screening, and Toungett tested positive during a “random” retest performed a few days after he informed Dura about a doctor appointment for back pain. Plaintiffs-appellees' machine-restricted medications included oxycodone, Cymbalta, Didrex, Lortrab (acetaminophen /hydrocodone ), Soma, and Xanax. Though Dura warned most of these employees to discontinue using the machine-restricted medications, it called Long back to work to complete a project, only to terminate him after a “random” retest that targeted other positive-testing employees. Dura terminated the other plaintiffs-appellees after positive retests with the exception of Wade, who discontinued her medication.
No one pressed plaintiffs-appellees for their underlying medical conditions, and Dura denies questioning them directly about their medications. Dura acknowledges, however, that Peden disclosed plaintiffs-appellees' machine-restricted medications, and its safety specialist, Jent, admitted that Dura had a “blanket policy” of terminating employees who tested positive for such medications.
Plaintiffs-appellees sued Dura in federal district court in May 2008. Their amended complaint asserted claims under state and federal law, including the ADA. They alleged that Dura subjected them to unlawful drug testing to determine whether they took lawfully prescribed medications. They also averred that Dura refused to reassign them and terminated them on the basis of their disabilities or perceived disabilities.
The procedural history of this case implicates two ADA provisions: (1) § 12112(d)(4)(A), which prohibits employers from requiring medical examinations or making disability inquiries of employees unless such examinations or inquiries are job-related and consistent with business necessity; and (2) § 12112(b)(6), which prohibits employers from using qualification standards, employment tests, and other selection criteria that screen out individuals with a disability or a class of individuals with disabilities unless the standard, test, or criterion is job-related and consistent with business necessity. Plaintiffs brought their claim regarding Dura's drug testing under subsection (d)(4)(A), but the district court reclassified it as a(b)(6) claim in ruling on the parties' cross-motions for summary judgment. Shortly thereafter, Dura asked the district court to clarify whether non-disabled plaintiffs have standing to bring a(b)(6) claim challenging an employer's job-qualification standard. The district court ruled in favor of standing but certified the issue for interlocutory review, staying the case pending...
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