Reed v. LePage Bakeries

• Decision Date: 09 February 2001
• Docket Number: No. 00-1966,00-1966
• Citation: 244 F.3d 254
• Parties: (1st Cir. 2001) MANUELLA DIONISIO REED, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. LEPAGE BAKERIES, INC., Defendant, Appellee. Heard
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

Page 254

244 F.3d 254 (1st Cir. 2001)

MANUELLA DIONISIO REED, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. LEPAGE BAKERIES, INC., Defendant, Appellee.

No. 00-1966

United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit

Heard February 9, 2001

Decided April 5, 2001

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS

[Hon. D. Brock Hornby, Chief U.S. District Judge]

John R. Lemieux for appellant.

Peter Bennett, with whom Frederick B. Finberg and The Bennett Law Firm were on brief, for appellee.

Barbara L. Sloan, with whom C. Gregory Stewart, General Counsel, Philip B. Sklover, Associate General Counsel, and Vincent J. Blackwood, Assistant General Counsel, were on brief for Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, amicus curiae.

Before Boudin, Stahl, and Lynch, Circuit Judges.

LYNCH, Circuit Judge.

Manuella Reed was fired by LePage Bakeries for insubordination and threatening her supervisor. Reed says her conduct should be forgiven because she is mentally ill, disabled within the meaning of the Americans with Disabilities Act. She sues on the claim that her termination resulted from LePage's failure to reasonably accommodate her disability and hence was discriminatory. The district court granted summary judgment against Reed. Reed appeals, and the EEOC has filed an amicus brief on her behalf on the issue of the allocation of burdens of proof in ADA reasonable accommodation cases. We reject the position of the EEOC on this issue, find that Reed neither adequately requested nor was prevented from exercising the accommodation she now claims, and affirm.

I.

In 1987, Reed was hired by LePage Bakeries, a large commercial baking company, as an assembly line worker. Seven years into her employment, Reed began receiving mental health treatment. She was eventually diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a condition characterized by exaggerated mood swings and agitated emotional states. She has been on medication ever since. As a result of her disorder, Reed fares badly in stressful situations, and when involved in a personal confrontation, she is prone to lose her temper and become verbally abusive.

The first time Reed had such an episode at work was in March 1995. After a muffin-bagging machine broke down during her shift and a mechanic was unable to fix it, Reed flew into a profanity-infused rage, in which she angrily accused the mechanic of being incompetent. Shaken by the incident, Reed left work for the day, apparently with the permission of a manager. She quickly became depressed and, after having thoughts of suicide, had to be hospitalized for five days. On her release, according to Reed, her therapist advised her to ask her employer to accommodate her disability by allowing her to walk away from stressful situations in order to avoid losing control of herself.

After returning to work, Reed met with Mike Pelletier, the plant manager, to discuss her poor attendance record. Reed did not initiate a request for an accommodation at the meeting, but Pelletier on his own brought up Reed's altercation with the mechanic as an aside, and told her that in the future she should walk away from such situations before they became aggravated. Reed agreed, mentioning that she had planned to propose the idea herself, and offered to get a note from her therapist if necessary. She was told it would not be. Pelletier then took Reed to meet with her floor supervisor, Jerry Norton, about the incident. Again, all agreed that Reed should walk away from any such altercation in the future; in addition, Reed was told that after walking away she should immediately get hold of either Pelletier or Norton so that they might help settle the problem.

Reed cannot recall with certainty whether she used the term "accommodation" during either of the meetings. Nor can she unequivocally remember whether or to what extent she revealed that she needed an accommodation due to her mental illness. But she did mention during the first meeting that she had a therapist, and LePage had on earlier occasions made adjustments to Reed's work schedule upon receiving notes from her therapist indicating that she was being seen for "depression." Although Pelletier and Norton knew that Reed had left work for several days after the altercation with the mechanic, they did not know much beyond that; they thought she had left due to a heart condition or problems at home.

Reed did not have another stressful episode at work until June 1, 1996 -- the incident resulting in her termination. Having been on workers' compensation leave for a week after sustaining a work-related injury to her arm, Reed met that day with Norton and a human resources director, Cindi Callahan, to discuss her return. The meeting was pursuant to standard practice at LePage; its purpose was to determine the extent of the duties Reed would be able to assume coming off of her injury.

Upon entering the meeting, Reed stated that she wished to discuss whether she could swap shifts with another employee so that she could work in the mornings, when child care was available to her. Callahan responded that they were meeting to discuss Reed's injury-related work restrictions, not her schedule. Reed insisted on discussing scheduling arrangements; Callahan repeatedly tried to steer the conversation back to the issue of restrictions; the situation grew heated. Despite Norton's pleas that Reed calm down, Reed stood up, yelled "Fuck this," and placed her hand on the door to leave.

At that point, Callahan told Reed that she would not be able to begin working if she did not stay at the meeting and discuss her work restrictions. Reed replied, "What are you going to do, fire me?", to which Callahan answered no. Reed then yelled "Fuck you" and flew into a rage. Standing on the tips of her toes, Reed dared Callahan to fire her, telling her that if she did, Reed would sue. Callahan felt threatened by Reed's conduct.

Norton called human resources personnel to have Reed escorted from the building, but before they arrived, Reed left the room on her own volition. She then sought out Tony Nedik, head of personnel, and attempted to account for her conduct. She told Nedik that she had a mental illness that caused her to lose control of herself, that she needed an accommodation for it, and that she had tried to exercise such accommodation during the meeting but Callahan had prevented her from doing so. Reed asked if she could come back to work tomorrow; Nedik answered no. Reed was fired the next workday for insubordinate and threatening conduct.

Reed brought suit more than two years later, in December 1998. She alleges that LePage discriminated against her in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. § 12101 et seq., by failing to reasonably accommodate her disability. The gist of her case is that she claims to have requested and been granted a reasonable accommodation after her March 1995 altercation with the mechanic; that accommodation, she says, consisted in permission to walk away from stressful confrontations at work, whether or not those confrontations were with co-workers or supervisors. LePage discriminated against her, Reed claims, by not allowing her to exercise that accommodation at the June 1 meeting and by firing her for attempting to do so.

LePage moved for summary judgment, arguing, inter alia, that Reed was not disabled within the meaning of the ADA, that she was never prevented from exercising any accommodation, and that in any event the accommodation she claims to have been prevented from exercising was unreasonable. The motion for summary judgment was initially reviewed by a magistrate judge, who recommended denying the motion as to these issues.

The district court, disagreeing with the magistrate as to the reasonableness of the accommodation in question, granted defendant's motion for summary judgment. The bulk of the district court's opinion focused on whether an ADA plaintiff fully carries the burden of proving that her proposed accommodation is reasonable and, if so, how to distinguish that burden from the defendant's burden of proving that the accommodation would impose an undue hardship. Noting that this circuit has yet to rule definitively on the issue, the district court held that the plaintiff must put on some evidence that her proposed accommodation is reasonable, or at least plausible. Applying this standard to the facts of the case, the court went on to find that Reed had not put forward sufficient evidence that it was reasonable to demand an accommodation permitting her to walk away from supervisors when feeling stressed. The only evidence Reed had put forward, the court found, was that Reed's supervisors had advised her, as they commonly advised all employees, to walk away from conflict situations; but such evidence, in the court's view, went only toward showing the reasonableness of being permitted to walk away from conflicts with co-workers, not from conflicts with supervisors.

II.

We review the district court's order de novo, "consider[ing] the facts in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party, drawing all reasonable inferences in that party's favor." Thomas v. Eastman Kodak Co., 183 F.3d 38, 42 (1st Cir. 1999), cert. denied, 528 U.S. 1161 (2000).

Section 102(a) of the ADA states: "No covered entity shall discriminate against a qualified individual with a disability because of the disability of such individual in regard to . . . discharge of employees . . . ." 42 U.S.C. § 12112(a). Discrimination is defined to include "not making reasonable accommodations to the known physical or mental limitations of an otherwise qualified individual with a disability . . . , unless [the] covered entity can demonstrate that the accommodation would impose an undue hardship on the operation of the business of such covered entity." 42 U.S.C. § 12112(b)(5)(A).

For purposes of summary judgment we accept that Reed has put forward sufficient evidence that she had a...