A recent case out of the District of Columbia underscores the importance of establishing policies and documenting performance-related issues.\u00a0 Stephanie Waggel is a former resident in the Psychiatry Residency Training Program of The George Washington University (GW).\u00a0 She alleges that through a series of actions culminating in her termination from the program, GW violated her rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Family and Medical Leave Act, as well as their local analogues, the District of Columbia Human Rights Act and the District of Columbia Family and Medical Leave Act.\u00a0 Both parties moved for summary judgment, and GW prevailed on all counts.\u00a0 The Court found that Waggel failed to request reasonable accommodation of her alleged disability and failed to show that GW\u2019s Clinical Competency Committee discriminated on the basis of disability when it recommended her termination after reviewing 12 issues with her performance.\u00a0 Additionally, GW granted FMLA leave each time Waggel requested it.\u00a0 Waggel was unable to show that GW retaliated against her because of that leave, or that GW interfered with her rights under the FMLA.\u00a0 The Court\u2019s incredibly lengthy decision is an impressive display of how well-documented decision-making can stifle largely unsupported, self-serving assertions.<\/p>\n
Shortly after beginning her second year in the program, Waggel underwent surgery for the removal of a cyst in her kidney.\u00a0 She took various kinds of leave from the program during her two years, including sick leave during the surgery and FMLA leave at other times.\u00a0 In the meantime, GW identified a number of problems with Waggel\u2019s performance in the program, which were documented in, among other places, four Letters of Deficiency and a Notice of Unprofessional Conduct.\u00a0 As a result of these deficiencies, aspects of Waggel\u2019s clinical duties were suspended multiple times, her promotion to her third year in the program was delayed, and she was ultimately dismissed from the program.<\/p>\n
The Court found that GW could not be liable for failing to make a reasonable accommodation when Waggel never went to GW\u2019s Office of Equal Employment Opportunity to pursue the procedure GW offered to all of its residents and other employees to present a claim of disability and a request for any reasonable accommodation they might need.\u00a0 Nor could Waggel prove she suffered an adverse employment action because of her disability.\u00a0 Rather, GW established that, among other things, Waggel (1) did not show up for an Emergency Medicine shift, did not give notice that she would be absent, was not responsive to efforts to reach her over the course of several hours, and upon contact simply stated that she was \u201cnot feeling well and decided not to come to work as a result;\u201d (2) failed to submit required documentation for hospital health forms despite having been granted extension of the deadline for submission; (3) was involved in an incident with an agitated patient while she was on call, which incident resulted in a root cause analysis that identified knowledge deficiencies, disorganized thought, and lack of insight; (4) failed two courses; (5) made certain misrepresentations to faculty; (6) engaged in \u201cdisruptive\u201d behavior, including a series of emails and texts to the program director and her classmates, threatening to \u201cbring down the program;\u201d and (7) had patient care\/safety issues raised with regard to her performance.<\/p>\n
In her pleadings, Waggel repeatedly disputed or offered \u201cclarification\u201d regarding GW\u2019s assertions about her conduct and performance, but she could not dispute the material points.\u00a0 Nor could she dispute that at least certain of the letters of deficiency included plans for remediation, and that she failed to comply with those plans, as well.<\/p>\n
As to the FMLA claims, neither party disputed that Waggel applied for, and was granted, FMLA leave in both October 2015 and March 2016.\u00a0 Nevertheless, temporal proximity between Waggel\u2019s FMLA leave and GW\u2019s decisions could, under other circumstances, have been sufficient to establish the causal element of Waggel\u2019s prima facie case.\u00a0 In light of the record, however, the Court was not persuaded that temporal proximity was sufficient evidence for a jury to find that GW\u2019s seemingly legitimate, non-discriminatory justifications for their decisions were instead pretextual.<\/p>\n
Client Tip:<\/strong>\u00a0 GW had a policy for requesting reasonable accommodations.\u00a0 GW had a policy for requesting FMLA leave.\u00a0 GW documented Waggel\u2019s performance issues and took contemporaneous action, providing Waggel with, for example, Letters of Deficiency, a Notice of Unprofessional Conduct, and remediation plans.\u00a0 All institutions should take note of how strongly GW was able to refute Waggel\u2019s allegations with reference to documentary evidence. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A recent case out of the District of Columbia underscores the importance of establishing policies and documenting performance-related issues. Stephanie Waggel is a former resident in the Psychiatry Residency Training Program of The George Washington University (GW). She alleges that through a series of actions culminating in her termination from…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":1296,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[23,256,218],"class_list":["post-1295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-discrimination","tag-disability-discrimination","tag-fmla","tag-reasonable-accommodations"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n