California Comfort Animal ADA Suit

Sticking with the ADA theme on the blog for a moment, NewsDash from PlanSponsor.com has the following interesting summary of a case involving the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the use of comfort animals at work:

MALTESE "FINDING."  Jurors on Friday awarded $45,000 to a woman who said she was fired for bringing her dog to work as a way to ease her anxiety and depression.  According to the Sacramento Bee, Chris Storm argued in her lawsuit that the Consumers Self Help Center, a mental health clinic, and its director, Meghan Stanton, had retaliated against her because she asked to keep Lacey, a 4-year-old Maltese, in her office (Stanton had testified that the dog was not properly house trained, and that its waste was an office hazard).  However, they rejected Storm's claims that she was the victim of disability discrimination.

Two thoughts: (1) ironic (sad?)  that the defendant was a mental health clinic; and (2) this is a classic split the baby case: no on discrimination, but yes on retaliation.  A way for the jurors to award something to a sympathetic plaintiff (though, just to be clear, I don't know enough about the case to say whether the retaliation claim  was meritorious).

Apparently, because the jurors did not find there was a mental disability, the issue of whether those suffering from anxiety and depression should be allowed to have comfort animals in the workplace was never reached.

The complete article can be found here.

PS