Acrophobic bridge worker protected by ADA
Common sense tells us that a worker with an irrational fear of heights isn’t qualified to hold a job that requires him to climb around highway bridges.
But the Americans with Disabilities Act, with its devil’s playground of legalisms, has little to do with common sense. So that’s why a jury will have to listen to an acrophobic bridge worker’s tale of woe in his lawsuit against the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT).
The department fired Darrell Miller in 2007.
The department claims that Miller was fired for making threats against a superior. In particular, it is alleged that Miller commented to a co-worker that he would like to “knock the teeth out” of a female personnel manager who was having trouble finding accommodations for Miller’s acrophobia in a job that regularly required the performance of tasks at extreme heights.
Miller claims that this was all a pretext and that he was really fired because his superiors regarded him as being disabled. So he sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The employee had worked on a bridge maintenance crew for IDOT since 2002. And he always had problems with heights.
To be fair, it must be pointed out that his co-workers on the crew informally accommodated Miller’s fears for five years before his termination, excusing him from performing tasks in the most exposed positions.
But that still left Miller having to perform bridge maintenance from a hydraulically lifted “snooper bucket” that extended up to 80 feet. And Miller had to crawl along catwalks to get to repair sites and work around exposed holes in bridge decking.
Unfortunately, Miller suffered a panic attack in March 2006 when he was assigned the job of changing light bulbs on a bridge that spanned the Mississippi River. It was at this time that an IDOT medical examiner formally diagnosed Miller as suffering from acrophobia. The doctor further concluded that Miller was unfit to work in highway maintenance because of his condition.
Miller insisted he could still perform most aspects of his job without a problem, and requested a reasonable accommodation in the form of not being assigned tasks on bridge beams and other extreme places over 20-25 feet in height.
The department denied the request and fired him after learning about the alleged threat against the personnel manager.
Miller’s ADA lawsuit didn’t fare well at all in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois. A federal judge decided that Miller’s discrimination claim failed because his requested accommodation was unreasonable and that working at heights above 25 feet was an essential function of the job.
So IDOT was granted a summary judgment.
Yesterday, the 7th Circuit took a look at Miller’s appeal and the result was not good news for IDOT.
The court decided that Miller could satisfy the “regarded as” prong of an ADA claim, explaining that “IDOT treated Miller as though he was unable to perform a wide range of jobs. A reasonable jury could find from this evidence that IDOT regarded Miller as disabled by his acrophobia under the law before the 2008 amendments [to the ADA].”
Regarding whether Miller was capable of performing the essential functions of his job, the court found that he could in light of the “team” environment under which bridge maintenance crews worked.
“Here, a reasonable fact-finder would have to conclude that some members of the bridge crew had to be able to work at heights in exposed or extreme positions so that the bridge crew — as a unit — could do its job, just as some members of the crew had to be able to weld, ride in the snooper bucket, spray, mow, and rake. …
“That conclusion does not mean that the fact-finder would be required to conclude that each member of the bridge crew had to be able to do every task required of the entire team. … On this record, a reasonable jury could find that working at heights in an exposed or extreme position was not an essential function for Miller as an individual member of the bridge crew,” the court said. (Miller v. Illinois Department of Transportation)
For similar reasons, the court decided that a jury could give the thumbs up to Miller’s requested accommodation that other members of his crew substitute for him when a task required working above 25 feet in an exposed or extreme position.
Now, this all may sound mighty fine when trotted out in the marble halls of the 7th Circuit, but in a former life this writer toiled in heavy construction. And I can tell you from experience that formalizing this sort of “reasonable accommodation” on the jobsite can be a real pain in the behind, both for foremen and co-workers.
Miller needs to find a job that allows him to keep his feet firmly on the ground and let IDOT concentrate on figuring out how to keep the state’s crumbling bridges from becoming an even greater hazard than they are now.
– Pat Murphy
