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Disabled wife's illness not linked to employee's firing: Appeals court

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CINCINNATI—An employee apparently discharged for poor job performance cannot claim the firing was due to his association with his disabled wife, a federal appeals court has ruled.

Wednesday’s decision by a panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati in Eugene Stansberry vs. Air Wisconsin Airlines Corp. focused on a rarely litigated provision of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibits discrimination against individuals because “the qualified individual is known to have a relationship or association” with someone who has a known disability.

Mr. Stansberry, who was an operations manager at Appleton, Wis.-based Air Wisconsin’s operations at Kalamazoo/Battle Creek International Airport in Michigan, unsuccessfully appealed his plan administrator’s decision not to pay for an expensive treatment for a rare, debilitating autoimmune disorder, polyartertis nodoasa, suffered by his wife.

Air Wisconsin fired Mr. Stanberry in 2007, asserting it was “for poor performance based on his failure to stay within budget, failure to report security violations and improper supervision of employees, which led to the security violations in the first place,” according to the ruling.

Mr. Stansberry sued in October 2008, alleging that Air Wisconsin terminated him because of unfounded fears that he would be distracted at work due to his wife’s disability.

Distraction a factor

One of the theories under which “association discrimination” plaintiffs generally fall, and on which Mr. Stansberry relied, is “distraction,” the appeals court ruled. This “is based on the employee’s being somewhat inattentive at work because of the disability of someone with whom he or she is associated.”

However, “the record is replete with evidence that Stansberry was not performing his job to Air Wisconsin’s satisfaction and devoid of evidence to suggest that his discharge was based on unfounded fears that his wife’s illness might cause him to be inattentive or distracted in the future,” the appeals court said in its ruling.

Because of this, “Air Wisconsin’s conduct is not prohibited by this section of the act,”’ the appeals court ruled unanimously in upholding a lower court ruling, which granted summary judgment in the airline’s favor.

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