Horizon Health Reaches $800K Settlement In Wrongful Termination Suit

Horizon Health has settled with a former employee to the tune of $80,000 over allegations it fired her for not earning a required professional certification on time, despite a two-month disability leave that delayed her preparation for the test.

It will pay Nicole Fitchett $64,000 to cover lost wages and another $16,000 for pain and suffering, Attorney General Christopher S. Porrino and the Division on Civil Rights said.

Horizon has agreed as part of the settlement to revise its policy concerning reasonable accommodation of a disability. The company also will train its supervisors, managers, human resources personnel and others on the requirements of the updated policy, as well as New Jersey’s Law Against Discrimination, upon which the policy is based.

“This case centers on an important and potentially far-reaching issue -- the handling of disability in the workplace,” Porrino said. “Obviously, New Jersey employers are within their rights to set performance standards and benchmarks for their employees. However, in the case of workers with a disability – or workers who have been granted disability leave -- care must be taken to balance any employment requirements with the protections afforded the disabled under our laws.”

“What sometimes gets lost on employers and their HR departments is that the term ‘disability’ is more broadly defined under our state law than under the federal ADA,” Division Director Craig T. Sashihara said. “And of course, the promise of work benefits like sick leave is meaningless if an employee is punished for using it.”

Fitchett was hired to serve as Horizon’s Pharmacy Benefit Analyst in May of 2006, conditional on Fitchett earning her Pharmacy Technician Certification (PTC).

While Horizon encouraged Fitchett to obtain her PTC sooner than later, it did not begin enforcing the requirement until 2010. A Horizon supervisor told Division investigators the company had been short-staffed and management recognized Fitchett’s workload would make it difficult for her to prepare for the PTC exam.

Fitchett failed the exam in December of 2010, and was given until the end of the following March to retake the test. That ensuing deadline was relaxed after Fitchett said she’d been too busy with daily work duties to take the exam.

Then, in a memorandum dated May 9, 2011, Fitchett was given until Oct. 31, 2011, to obtain her PTC at the company’s expense. She was told she would be fired if she didn’t earn her PTC. Two other employees were told the same thing on the same date, and a fourth employee was told the same thing a week later.

Soon after that, Horizon offered all four employees an opportunity to take a preparatory course for the PTC at Horizon’s expense. Fitchett began taking the online course. However, in July of 2011, her doctor recommended a two-month medical leave of absence. Authorities didn’t disclose the reason for her leave for privacy reasons.

Horizon approved the request in the form of short-term disability leave. During her time off, Fitchett didn’t continue to prepare for the test because her doctor recommended she not engage in work-related activities.

She returned to work in October of 2011, She met with her immediate supervisor and a Horizon human resources manager, and was given a week to suggest a plan for obtaining her PTC. She then asked for a two-month extension to make up for the time lost during her leave. Her request was denied, and she was then fired, authorities said.

In an internal Horizon “Termination Review” form dated October 26, 2011, the company’s Employee Relations unit approved Fitchett’s firing “for failure to meet the minimum job requirements for the Pharmacy Benefit Analyst position.”

In a Finding of Probable Cause issued against Horizon in December of 2015, the Division found that Horizon’s failure to grant Fitchett the two-month extension denied her “the same amount of time that three other employees received to meet the PTC requirement.”

Authorities also determined that Horizon had provided no evidence to show that granting Fitchett an extension through Dec. 31, 2011, would cause an undue hardship on company operations.

Even if Horizon could point to such a hardship, company officials had a legal obligation to engage in an interactive process with Fitchett to determine if there were less burdensome alternatives available, authorities said.

Of the three other Horizon employees who received the same cautionary memo as Fitchett in May 2011, one worker obtained her PTC. Another Horizon employee who received the memo was dismissed in June 2011 for unrelated reasons, and another applied for, and was reassigned to, a job that did not require a PTC.

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