Excerpted from Alabama Employment Law Letter, written by attorneys at the law firm Lehr Middlebrooks Price & Vreeland, P.C.

You're already familiar with your basic obligations under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA): If an employee has a covered disability, you as the employer have a duty to provide a reasonable accommodation if necessary so the individual can perform the essential job functions. Although never that easy in practice, the ADA's central tenet is at least logical. If the employee shows that he has a disability, you have a duty to accommodate - within reason.

But what about an employee who has physical or mental conditions that don't rise to the level of a disability? Do you owe her an accommodation as well? Both Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court have made it clear that the ADA wasn't meant to protect every employee, only those whose limitations are significant.

Despite that intent, the 11th circuit federal court of appeals recently expanded the duty to accommodate beyond actual disabilities to misperceptions about disabilities - setting a trap for the well-meaning but unwary employer.

When vertigo strikes, employee becomes fish out of water

Cris D'Angelo was diagnosed with vertigo shortly before she began working at ConAgra's seafood processing plant. She was treated by a doctor and received a prescription for the vertigo but didn't fill it because she began to feel better without it. She didn't disclose her condition to the company when she was hired.

D'Angelo experienced no problems with vertigo until several months into her employment, when she informed her supervisor that she was experiencing sickness and dizziness while working on a conveyor belt. She could perform other functions at the plant but became sick when she was required to stare continuously at a moving belt.

D'Angelo was later promoted to product transporter, which involved using a pallet jack to move products from one area of the plant to another. At times, she also was expected to perform several secondary functions, including monitoring machines to ensure that fish traveling down a chute didn't clog the machines, operating the box-forming machine, and weighing, stacking, and dumping products onto conveyor belts.

After three years of employment, D'Angelo was assigned by a new supervisor to monitor a conveyor belt known as the "box-former belt," a job that she had never performed. She had another episode of vertigo. When she reported to her supervisor that the task was making her sick and dizzy, he asked for documentation of her condition.

D'Angelo provided a copy of her vertigo medication prescription to her supervisor and then delivered a note from her doctor to the plant manager. The doctor's note stated that she had a vertigo condition that "affects her when her eyes have to look at moving objects such as belts. She should avoid this situation since it could cause her to fall and sustain injury."

The plant manager and the HR manager reviewed the note from D'Angelo's doctor. They interpreted the restrictions to prevent her from working around moving equipment - not only conveyor belts but also forklifts, pallet jacks, and other such equipment. The managers discussed whether any jobs were available in the plant that wouldn't require D'Angelo to look at and work around moving equipment but concluded that there were none.

Employer finds itself in a fine kettle of fish

The next day, ConAgra fired D'Angelo because it didn't have a job within her restrictions. She sued the company under the ADA, alleging that it discriminated against her based on her disability. The trial court ruled in the employer's favor, but the federal court of appeals viewed the case differently.

Court finds something fishy in D'Angelo's firing

The case boiled down to the question of whether D'Angelo was entitled to a "reasonable accommodation." The ADA requires employers to provide employees covered by the Act with reasonable accommodations necessary for them to perform their essential job functions. D'Angelo contended that she should have been exempted from any tasks that required her to stare continuously at moving belts.

In the past, most courts have found that to be entitled to a reasonable accommodation, the employee must have an impairment that substantially limits one or more of her life activities. In this case, the court agreed with ConAgra that D'Angelo's vertigo wasn't a substantial limitation.

But the court of appeals disagreed with the majority of other courts that have confronted the issue, ruling that the ADA also requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to employees whom they regard as having such an impairment, even if their judgment is mistaken. The court found that ConAgra regarded D'Angelo as being unable to perform any job that involved working around moving equipment when in fact she could perform any tasks that didn't involve staring continuously at moving conveyor belts.

Although ConAgra was mistaken about the extent of D'Angelo's limitation and her vertigo didn't substantially limit her ability to work, she was still entitled to a reasonable accommodation.

Was the reason for firing D'Angelo a red herring?

Although reasonable accommodations may include exempting employees from performing nonessential functions of their jobs, they still must be able to perform the essential job functions to qualify under the ADA. ConAgra argued that even if it was obligated to give D'Angelo a reasonable accommodation, it couldn't do so because working on a conveyor belt was an essential function of her job.

The court disagreed. It noted that ConAgra's written job description didn't include working on conveyor belts. The testimony indicated that:

• D'Angelo was asked to work on a conveyor belt only once in a year and a half;
• any other employee in the plant was qualified to work on conveyor belts and could have filled in for her; and
• her position existed for the purpose of moving products around the plant, not working on a conveyor belt.

D'Angelo v. ConAgra, Inc. (11th Cir., 2005).

How can you stay out of hot water?

First, you should ensure that any written job description for a particular position includes all essential functions of that job. ConAgra's argument that working around conveyor belts was an essential function of D'Angelo's job was significantly undercut by the fact that it wasn't listed in the job description.

When you think of job descriptions, think broadly. Job descriptions may not be labeled as such. In D'Angelo's case, the court looked at a handwritten job description that someone had posted on a company bulletin board and a "job safety analysis" that purported to list the functions of the position.

Also, don't try to analyze an employee's limitations based on sketchy information. Once you're notified of a disability, you're obligated to engage in an interactive process to determine how the employee's limitations might be reasonably accommodated. That is, you're obligated to communicate with her to determine the nature of the limitation, her desired solution, and the feasibility of various alternatives.

In D'Angelo's case, ConAgra interpreted her doctor's note to mean that she couldn't work around any moving equipment when in fact she could perform any task that didn't involve staring continuously at moving belts. Had the two parties communicated better about her true limitations, the whole situation might have been avoided.

Finally and most important, don't play doctor. You need not assess whether an employee's condition is severe enough to be substantially limiting. Once you do, you then have a duty to provide accommodation even if your assessment is wrong. Leave the assessment to the medical professionals. Also, choose your words carefully - any overstatement of the condition by you may be used later to show that you regarded the employee as disabled, even if she isn't.