Text message failed to give employer sufficient notice of intention to take FMLA leave – Lanier v. University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, 2013 WL 2631316 (5th Cir. June 12, 2013)

Lanier reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend who manages a local restaurant.  He was bemoaning the lack of professional courtesy displayed by his twentysomething employees.  “They don’t call in to say they’ll be late to a shift.  They text me!”

My friend now can say that the courts agree with him.  At least when it comes to invoking rights under the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), a federal appellate court recently ruled that a text message doesn’t do the job.  Chrisanne Lanier was scheduled to be on call when her father fell ill.  She sent a text message to her supervisor saying that her father was in the emergency room and that she would be unable to be on call that night.  Her supervisor responded that another employee would cover her shift.

Lanier failed to log in for her make-up call rotation several weeks later.  This led to a confrontation between Lanier and her supervisor and Lanier abandoning her job duties.  After Lanier was asked to resign, she sued her employer under various theories of recovery, including interference with her FMLA rights.

At issue was whether Lanier gave proper notice to her employer of her intention to take FMLA leave.  The Fifth Circuit held that she did not.  Although an employee doesn’t need to say the words “FMLA leave,” she must give notice that sufficiently gives her employer notice that her request to take time off could fall under the FMLA.  The employer may have a duty to inquire further if the employee’s statements warrant it, but “the employer is not required to be clairvoyant.”

In Lanier’s case, a text message saying that her father was in the emergency room was not sufficient notice of her intention to take FMLA leave, the court said.  Lanier argued that her supervisor should have inquired further because she had previously told him about her father’s advanced age, his poor health, and that he was having breathing problems that morning.  Even with these facts, the court ruled that it would be unreasonable to expect Lanier’s supervisor to know that she meant to request FMLA leave.  Lanier had taken FMLA leave before and was familiar with the proper way to request it, and yet she did not take those steps.  Finding that no reasonable jury could conclude that Lanier’s text message was sufficient to notify her supervisor of her intent to request FMLA leave to care for her father, the court granted summary judgment to the employer on the FMLA interference claim.