In a ruling that defines the scope of individual liability under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), a federal judge has refused to dismiss claims against individual human resources executives and a manager who allegedly set out to find a reason to fire a worker soon after learning that he needed to schedule a leave for a surgery.
In the suit, plaintiff, an industrial designer, claims that just a few days after he informed his bosses at Cardone Industries of his need for surgery, he was called in to a meeting and confronted with a pornographic e-mail found on his work computer. Plaintiff responded by filing a suit that named not only the company, but also the company president and four other individuals who, he claims, each played a role in orchestrating and carrying out a plan to violate his rights under the FMLA and the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). Defendants filed answer to the suit for Cardone Industries that denied the allegations, but argued in a separate motion that the individual defendants should be dismissed from the case.
Plaintiff argued that each of the five named individuals qualifies as an "employer" under the FMLA, and that the allegations in the suit went beyond merely citing their job titles.
The District Court found that while "conclusory" allegations are insufficient, Plaintiff had gone further by alleging that each of the individual defendants "participated in the forensic search of his computer with the goal of finding a reason to justify his termination because he had requested FMLA leave." The Court concluded that all five of the individuals were properly named as defendants because each one is alleged to have had the power to fire and to have played a role in the decision to oust the plaintiff.
Similarly, the Court concluded that all five must answer ERISA claims of interfering with his plan benefits because the suit properly alleged that they were the "decisionmakers" who allegedly decided to conduct a forensic search of the plaintiff's computer within a few days of learning that he was planning to take a medical leave. Timing was the crucial issue for the Court.
The significance of the case is that the Court refused to follow a string of decisions from federal courts in Utah, Minnesota and Kansas that have said FMLA's individual liability provisions apply only to corporate officers.
This case represents a crack in the door for opening liability under FMLA to individuals who are not corporate officers.
Narodetsky v. Cardone Industries, No. 09-4734, February 24, 2010
