{"id":196,"date":"2009-10-16T23:07:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-16T23:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/\/2009\/10\/16\/failure-to-accommodate-employee-on-single-instance-can-constitute-failure-to-accommodate-under-feha-despite-history-of-accommodations\/"},"modified":"2021-02-09T22:55:08","modified_gmt":"2021-02-09T22:55:08","slug":"failure-to-accommodate-employee-on-single-instance-can-constitute-failure-to-accommodate-under-feha-despite-history-of-accommodations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/?p=196","title":{"rendered":"Failure to Accommodate Employee on Single Instance Can Constitute Failure to Accommodate under FEHA Despite History of Accommodations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, in A.M. v. Albertsons<\/em>, a California Court of Appeal affirmed a $200,000 judgment against Albertsons for failing to accommodate an employee\u2019s physical disability under California\u2019s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA).<\/p>\n

The plaintiff in Albertsons<\/em> was \u201cdiagnosed with cancer of the tonsils and larynx. She underwent chemotherapy and radiation treatment. The treatment affected her salivary glands, which left her mouth very dry. To counter this, [plaintiff] had to constantly drink water. As a result of the large volumes of water she consumes, she has to go to the bathroom to urinate frequently.\u201d<\/p>\n

As an accommodation, Albertsons agreed to allow plaintiff to have a beverage at her checkstand and allowed her frequent bathroom breaks (\u201csometimes as often as every 45 minutes\u201d). After providing these accommodations for over a year, an Albertsons\u2019supervisor at the store in which plaintiff worked\u2014who apparently was unaware of plaintiff\u2019s disability or the prior accommodations afforded by Albertson\u2014refused to allow plaintiff a bathroom break after several requests. As a consequence, plaintiff urinated on herself while standing at the checkstand. A full account of what happened is truly appalling and those interested should refer to the opinion published by the Court of Appeal.<\/p>\n

Abertsons had made an unsuccessful motion for a nonsuit to the trial court arguing that \u201ca single incident could not constitute a failure to accommodate.\u201d The Court of Appeal rejected this argument as follows:<\/p>\n

In our view, to adopt this interpretation of a failure to accommodate would be inconsistent with the FEHA. The statute does not speak of a pattern of failure and Albertsons cites no case authority supporting its interpretation of the FEHA failure to accommodate statute requiring one.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Accordingly, disabled employees need not demonstrate a \u201cpattern of failure\u201d to provide accommodations on the part of their employers in order to prevail on a failure to accommodate claim under FEHA. A single failure to accommodate\u2014provided that it is not merely trivial\u2014is actionable as a violation of FEHA.<\/p>\n

<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, in A.M. v. Albertsons, a California Court of Appeal affirmed a $200,000 judgment against Albertsons for failing to accommodate an employee\u2019s physical disability under California\u2019s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA). The plaintiff in Albertsons was \u201cdiagnosed with cancer…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":288,"href":"https:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions\/288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidlevylaw.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}