Last month the Seventh Circuit – the most active appellate court interpreting the FMLA – dismissed a claim by an employee who claimed that his supervisor’s conduct exacerbated his pre-existing serious health condition. Breneisen v. Motorola Inc., 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 18301 (7th Cir. Sept. 2, 2011). This was a case of first impression for the court, but it followed the Sixth Circuit’s reasoning in Edgar v. JAC Prods. Inc., 443 F.3d 501 (6th Cir. 2006) in noting that the court shared that court’s “concerns about permitting recovery to an FMLA plaintiff on ‘exacerbation’ grounds and adopt its holding that exacerbation is not a valid theory of liability under the FMLA.”
Breneisen claimed that alleged mistreatment by supervisor when Breneisen returned from his second FMLA leave exacerbated his pre-existing condition, requiring him to take a third leave, from which he never returned. This argument resembled the plaintiff’s argument in Edgar, who claimed that she was unable to return to work after FMLA leave due to her employer’s “persistent discriminatory and retaliatory conduct toward her, which exacerbated her condition.”
Holding that the cause of the injury under the FMLA is not relevant, the court rejected Breneisen’s claim. “When serious medical issues render an employee unable to work for longer than the twelve-week period contemplated under the statute, the FMLA no longer applies. This is true regardless of the cause of the infirmity,” said the court.