March 3 — A former Pfizer sales representative in North Carolina who developed an eye disorder that left her unable to drive may be able to show the company should have assigned her a driver to make sales calls, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled March 2.
The decision reaffirms the importance of employers engaging in an interactive process with disabled employees in an effort to identify a reasonable accommodation, Barbara Sloan, an appellate attorney in the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s Office of General Counsel in Washington told Bloomberg BNA March 3. It also highlights that just because a particular job function has traditionally been performed a certain way doesn’t mean that’s the only way a disabled worker can fulfill that duty, she said.
