San Francisco Employment Law Firm Blog
An employer who isn’t aware of your disability prior to firing you for taking several days off work due to that condition cannot possibly be held liable for disability discrimination based on the disability that the employer simply didn’t know about. This is both logical and fair.
In Avila v Continental Airlines, Inc. (2008), the employee was terminated for missing seven days at work, four of which were due to hospitalization for acute pancreatitis. That employee had provided to his employer two medical forms that only indicated that he was seen for illness or injury and that he was unable to work for a number of days. Avila further stated that he gave the two medical notes to his supervisor, but could not recall if he gave them to the supervisor directly or left them on the supervisor’s desk. Avila also told his coworkers about his pancreatitis, but he did not directly discuss the illness with his supervisors.
After Avila was terminated he informed his supervisor that he was absent due to pancreatitis, but the employer refused to reinstate him anyway. In its opinion dismissing the disability discrimination portion of that case, the court found that Avila could not establish that the managers who terminated him knew about his disability, because the medical notes provided lacked diagnostic information or other information indicating the nature of the plaintiff’s illness or injury, and the plaintiff never told his supervisors about his pancreatitis.
