Rousseau v. Fleetwood Motor Homes of Indiana, Inc., Cause No. 1:01-CV-283 (N.D. Ind. 7/26/2002)

• Decision Date: 26 July 2002
• Docket Number: Cause No. 1:01-CV-283.
• Parties: JULIE L. ROUSSEAU, Plaintiff, v. FLEETWOOD MOTOR HOMES OF INDIANA, INC., Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Indiana

Page 1

JULIE L. ROUSSEAU, Plaintiff, v. FLEETWOOD MOTOR HOMES OF INDIANA, INC., Defendant.

Cause No. 1:01-CV-283.

United States District Court, N.D. Indiana, Fort Wayne Division.

July 26, 2002.

MEMORANDUM OF DECISION AND ORDER

ROGER B. COSBEY, Magistrate Judge.

I. INTRODUCTION

This case, brought under 42 U.S.C. § 12101, et seq., the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA"), is before the Court¹ on the motion of Fleetwood Motor Homes of Indiana, Inc. ("Fleetwood") for summary judgment filed May 17, 2002. The motion was accompanied by the declaration of Mary Ann Talamantes ("Talamantes Dec. ¶ ___"), Fleetwood's former Human Resource Manager.

On June 19, 2002, the Plaintiff, Julie Rousseau ("Plaintiff"), filed a response accompanied by her affidavit (Pl. Aff. ¶ ___"), and the affidavit of Helen Johnson ("Johnson Aff. ¶ ___.").

On July 3, 2002, Fleetwood filed its reply brief.

For the reasons hereinafter provided, the Motion for Summary Judgment will be GRANTED in part and DENIED in part.

II. FACTUAL BACKGROUND

Because no discovery has occurred in this case, the record on summary judgment is confined to the Talamantes declaration, the Plaintiffs affidavit, Johnson's affidavit, and the Plaintiffs complaint. Consequently, since we must view the facts in a light most favorable to the Plaintiff, much of the following recitation borrows heavily from her affidavit.

The Plaintiff began her employment at Fleetwood in April 1996, starting in the wire harness department. (See Pl. Aff. ¶ 2.) Eventually, she transferred to the cabinet shop as a framer, but in November 1997, she suffered a work related injury to her elbows. (Id. ¶ 4.)

Ultimately, she had surgery on her elbows, and was thus unable to work from approximately April to July 1998. (Id. ¶ 5.) When she returned to work her medical condition resurfaced and in September 1998, was deemed permanent. (Id. ¶ 6.) At that time, the Plaintiffs doctor imposed work restrictions limiting the amount of weight she could lift and pull, and prohibited her from operating any power tools. (Id.; Talamantes Dec. ¶ 6.) It is this medical condition which the Plaintiff believes constitutes a disability under the ADA. (Pl. Aff. ¶ 7.)

Fleetwood was informed of the Plaintiffs restrictions and because it was apparent she could no longer perform the essential functions of a framer, Fleetwood placed her in a different position within the cabinet shop, in charge of cabinet blueprints.² (Pl. Aff. ¶ 9-10.)

In December 1998, after a couple months of handling blueprints, the stiles machine position became available in the cabinet shop. (Id. ¶ 11.) Fleetwood asked the Plaintiff to be the stiles machine operator, and she agreed. (Id.)

The stiles machine operator is one of a number of "assemblers" in the cabinet shop. (Id. ¶ 12.) The assemblers put together cabinets that are ultimately placed in Fleetwood motor homes. (Id.) As the Plaintiff describes it, the essential functions of the job involved working with small bundles of pre-cut wood for eventual assembly into cabinets. (Id.) The stiles machine operator was required to cut and inventory the pieces, measure them, and inspect each piece for color coordination. (Id.) After these tasks were completed, the Plaintiff then operated the stiles machine to drill screw holes in the pieces, followed by inserting screws in the holes. (Id.) The Plaintiff then would rebundle the pieces and the bundle would move to the next assembler who would use them to assemble the cabinets.³ (Id.) The Plaintiff contends that notwithstanding her alleged disability, she could perform all of the essential functions of a stiles machine operator. (Id. ¶ 13.) However, when the supervisory personnel in the cabinet shop changed around March or April 1999, Fleetwood embarked on a pattern of conduct designed to harass the Plaintiff and subject her to disparate treatment based on her disability. (Id. ¶ 15.)

The Plaintiff contends that this harassment took the form of being assigned tasks that were not essential to the operation of the stiles machine, such as unloading heavy pallets, and delivering the wood piece bundles in such bulk that the Plaintiff could not lift or manipulate them. (Id. ¶ 16.) The Plaintiff contends that these changes were pointless, and thus infers they were imposed for the purpose of violating her work restrictions, or to harass her, and as retaliation for seeking accommodations. (Id. ¶¶ 17-18.) Even though the Plaintiff complained to Fleetwood management, no corrective action was taken. (Id. ¶¶ 20-22.) In fact, the only apparent change was that the Plaintiffs immediate supervisor instructed her to stop complaining and threatened her with reprisals, retaliation and termination. (Id. ¶ 22.) Indeed, the Plaintiff contends that her immediate supervisor embarked on a course of action to reconfigure her work space so as to exacerbate the Plaintiffs alleged claustrophobia. (Id. ¶¶ 23-28.) Even though the Plaintiff complained, no action was taken except the harassment by her immediate supervisor increased. (Id.)

It was apparently during this time, around August 1999, that the Plaintiff again complained about elbow pain. (Talamantes Dec. ¶ 11.) The Plaintiff was referred to a Dr. Darvin Suter for examination, and he imposed a maximum lifting restriction of no more than eleven pounds, no power tools, and no heavy pulling or lifting. (Id.) Since the maximum weight involved in the stiles machine job was 7.5 pounds, and because the job allegedly involved no heavy pulling, these restrictions did not preclude the Plaintiff from the stiles machine. (Id. ¶ 12.)

Nonetheless, if the Plaintiff did encounter an item too heavy to lift, her supervisor instructed the Plaintiffs co-workers not to assist her. (Pl. Aff. ¶ 30.)

In any event, due to a drop in orders, Fleetwood cut back production at the plant beginning in May 2000. (Talamantes Dec. ¶ 13.)

On June 15, 2000, after the Plaintiff expressed certain safety concerns relating to the stiles machine job, a meeting was held to discuss other work she might be able to do within her restrictions to give her eight hours of work under the reduced production schedule then in existence at Fleetwood. (Id. ¶ 14.; Pl. Aff. ¶ 32.) As a result, the Plaintiff was given the added responsibility of operating a glue gun, a device which did not violate her restrictions since it did not rotate, or vibrate, and was not considered a power tool. (Talamantes Dec. ¶ 14.) Nevertheless, the Plaintiff doubted, although she does not say why, that she could operate the glue gun given her disability, and expressed this doubt to Fleetwood. (Pl. Aff ¶ 33.)

Shortly thereafter, the Plaintiff filed her first EEOC charge on June 19, 2000, complaining that her supervisors had violated her work restrictions by adding more responsibilities to her job and that other employees had been instructed not to help her. (See Pl. Complaint, Exh. A.)

Shortly thereafter, Fleetwood shut the plant down (again, a lack of orders) from June 26 to July 8, 2000. (Talamantes Dec. ¶ 15.)

In response to the Plaintiffs EEOC charge, a meeting was held on July 17, 2000, between the Plaintiff, Talamantes, and Fleetwood's Production Manager. (See Talamantes Dec. ¶ 16.) Based on the Plaintiffs complaint, Fleetwood contacted the Plaintiffs physician, Dr. Couch, and he ordered a Functional Capacity Evaluation ("FCE") and a follow-up appointment for August 18, 2000. (See Talamantes Dec. ¶ 17.) In the meantime, the Plaintiff performed the jobs assigned to her, but noticed that even though she had been assigned glue gun work, ostensibly because there was insufficient work for the stiles machine, Fleetwood employees were operating the stiles machine the entire time she was working the glue gun. (Plnf Aff. ¶¶ 34-35.)

The Plaintiff eventually told Fleetwood that she could not operate the glue gun due to her disability. (Pl. Aff ¶ 36.) However, when she told Fleetwood that she wanted her stiles machine position back, she was told that the position was not being filled even though she could see other Fleetwood employees working the machine. (Id. ¶ 36.) On top of that, the Plaintiff noticed that the non-essential job duties that had been imposed on her when she operated the stiles machine were not being imposed on the replacement operators. (Id. ¶ 37.)

Nonetheless, Fleetwood was shut down again from July 24 through August 21, 2000. (Talamantes Dec. ¶¶ 18-19.) It was during this time that the Plaintiffs family doctor, Dr. Zurcher, imposed additional restrictions, the Plaintiff was now no longer to do "continuous or repetitive, forceful, squeezing or gripping." (Talamantes Dec. ¶ 15.) This restriction applied to both power and manual tools. (Id.)

On August 17, 2000, the Plaintiff submitted to the FCE, but the examiner reported that the evaluation was invalid because the Plaintiff did not put forth maximum effort, (Talamantes Dec. ¶ 20), a point the Plaintiff contests. (Pl. Aff. ¶ 38.)

When the Plaintiff returned to the stiles machine on August 21, 2000, she was sent home after working only a few hours and this happened again on August 22, supposedly because there was not enough work to do. Fleetwood contends that due to the invalidity of the FCE and because her new job restrictions prevented her from operating the glue gun, all that was left for the Plaintiff was the stiles machine, and there was not enough work there for her to do. As a result, the Plaintiff was terminated. (Talamantes Dec. ¶¶ 21-25.)

Of course, the Plaintiff contests Fleetwood's assertion by contending that there was ample work for her to do at the machine given the amount of product stacked there. (Pl. Aff. ¶¶ 40, 42.) This observation is somewhat confirmed by a fellow co-worker of the Plaintiff who saw the stiles machine operating at least six hours a day from August 2000, to April 2001. (See Johnson Aff ¶ 7.)

In its motion, Fleetwood focuses entirely on the Plaintiffs termination and contends that it was due...