A central Maine employer obtained a summary judgment against a former employee's disability discrimination claims. The case was Garside v. Bill Martin Chevrolet, Inc., decided by the U.S. District Court in Portland, Maine on April 2, 1997. A report on the case is this:

     Employee Rusty Garside worked as the General Manager of Chambers Parts Distributors before and in 1991. In September of that year, Mr. Garside suffered a work-related back injury, which caused him to start missing time from work later that year. He missed a substantial amount of time from work in late 1991 and throughout 1992. The company, which had only about nine employees, did not hire any replacement General Manager, but rather eliminated the job position as unnecessary in early 1992. During 1992 Mr. Garside worked in a couple of light-duty work positions (not the General Manager's position) for only a few months. In December, 1992, he underwent surgery on his back. He was totally disabled from work thereafter until about July, 1993, when he applied to Chambers Parts Distributors to be rehired as General Manager. The company refused to rehire him, on the ground that his General Manager position had been eliminated.

     In January, 1994 Mr. Garside filed a disability discrimination charge against Chambers Parts Distributors with the Maine Human Rights Commission. In February, 1994, he made a similar filing with the EEOC. The Maine Human Rights Commission investigated the matter, found in favor of the company, and dismissed the charge. In early 1996, the EEOC dismissed its charge also. In June, 1996, Mr. Garside sued the company and other related companies for disability discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA"). He alleged multiple disability discrimination claims based on various alleged 1992 acts and a claim arising out of his failure to be rehired to the General Manager's position in 1993.

     The defendants had many probable defenses to Mr. Garside's various claims, but the best and simplest defenses were (1) that the 1993 failure-to-rehire claim was without merit because the company had no relevant job opening at the relevant period of time, and (2) that the various 1992 claims were all barred by the statute of limitations. After an appropriately limited amount of discovery, the Defendants filed a motion for summary judgment based on these two arguments.

     The U.S. District Court agreed with the Defendants' motion. In support of their argument concerning the 1993 failure-to-rehire claim, the defendants cited to Woods v. Friction Materials, Inc., 30 F.3d 255, 259 (1st Cir. 1994)(in a failure-to-hire case a claimant must show that there was a job position which "remained open" after claimant was rejected), and Smith v. F.W. Morse & Co., Inc., 76 F.3d 413, 422-425 (1st Cir. 1996)(employer lawfully eliminated employee's job position found to be unnecessary by the employer while employee was out of work on pregnancy leave). The Court ruled that Mr. Garside's 1993 failure-to-rehire claim was without merit because the undisputed facts showed that at the time Mr. Garside applied for his old position, the position did not exist because it had been eliminated a year earlier. As to the 1992 claims, those claims were all barred by the statute of limitations of the ADA and Title VII, which bars any claim arising more than 300 days before the filing of a charge with the EEOC (and since the EEOC's charge was filed in February, 1994, all of the 1992 claims were barred). The plaintiff tried to argue that his 1992 claims should not be barred under a so-called "continuing violation theory," but the Court rejected that argument because once the 1993 failure-to-hire claim was dismissed, there was no timely claim left to be a "continuation" of the alleged earlier violations.

     LESSONS LEARNED: Sometimes the best defenses to unfounded discrimination claims are the simplest. In this case, the failure-to-rehire claim was defeated by the absence of a relevant job opening at the relevant time, and the other claims were all untimely under the 300-day statute of limitations. Also, this case shows that an employer may lawfully eliminate the job position of an absent worker who is disabled, if the employer does so for a legitimate and non-discriminatory reason, such as a determination by the employer that the job position is "unnecessary." In the Smith v. F.W. Morse case and in this case the employers eliminated absent workers' job positions, and those job position eliminations were upheld.

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Dated: January, 2000
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