The Essential Guide to Family & Medical Leave

chapter 9 | managing an employee’s leave | 205
Lessons from the
Real World
An employee can be fired for problems discovered
during FMLA leave.
Candis Smith worked as an Administrative Secretary at the Memorial
Foundation of Allen Hospital. She was responsible for sending a receipt
and thank-you card to hospital donors. In December 1998, Robert
Justis, the Executive Director of the Foundation, told Smith that he had
received complaints from donors whose had not been acknowledged
for their contributions. Smith told him that she would try to send out
acknowledgments as soon as possible.
Smith took FMLA leave starting January 1, 1999, to adopt a child from
Romania. She left a stack of donor receipts that had to be sent out and wrote
a note asking another employee to type thank-you cards and mail them,
along with the receipts, to donors. One week into Smith’s leave, another
employee found another pile of donor receipts in Smith’s work area. There
were approximately 400 receipts, for donations totaling more than $350,000,
going back a couple of months. One of the receipts was for a gift of $136,000,
from one of the donors who had complained about not receiving a receipt.
Justis and Richard Seidler, the CEO of the hospital, decided to terminate
Smith’s employment immediately. On January 14, when she returned from
Romania, they called her in for a meeting and fired her for failing to send out
the receipts.
Smith sued, claiming that she was fired illegally for taking FMLA leave. As
evidence, she pointed out that she was fired just two weeks after starting her
leave and that she was fired for problems that came to light only because
she took leave. The court didn’t buy these arguments. Instead, the court
noted that Smith was fired shortly after she started her leave because the
Foundation didn’t know how serious the problem was until it discovered
the unsent receipts, which put the Foundation in a difficult position with its
donors. In light of these facts, the timing of the decision did not demonstrate
that Smith was fired for taking leave.
Smith v. Allen Health Systems, Inc., 302 F.3d 827 (8 th Cir. 2002).