The plaintiff, Kari Sehie ("Sehie"),
worked as an emergency dispatcher for the
City of Aurora, Illinois ("Aurora"). In
December 2000, Sehie's supervisor approached
Sehie at the end of her eight hour shift and
informed her that she would have to work a
second eight hour shift that night because
another dispatcher had called in sick.
Sehie became angry and upset about having to
work the second shift that day and abruptly
left work without authorization. After
leaving work, Sehie consulted her therapist
who instructed her to take medication for
her stress. When Sehie reported back to work
the next day, she claimed that the absence
was due to a work-related injury. Pursuant
to city policy concerning work-related
injuries, Aurora required Sehie to undergo a
fitness for duty evaluation before she could
return to work. The physician who conducted
the evaluation concluded that Sehie was fit
for duty, but recommended that she undergo
weekly psychotherapy for a period of six
months. Pursuant to the doctor's
recommendation, Aurora ordered Sehie to
attend counseling sessions with a therapist
of its choosing during Sehie's non-working
hours.
Sehie attended 16 sessions with Aurora's
therapist. Each session was one-hour in
length and required Sehie to spend two hours
traveling back and forth by car. After
Sehie resigned from her position with Aurora
in June 2001, she filed suit under the Fair
Labor Standards Act ("FLSA") claiming that
Aurora should have paid her for the time
spent attending and traveling to and from
each counseling session.
The Seventh Circuit's Opinion
In Sehie v. City of Aurora, the
United States Court of Appeals for the
Seventh Circuit ruled that Aurora must
compensate Sehie for her time spent
attending and commuting to and from the
counseling sessions because those sessions
were primarily for the benefit of Aurora,
not Sehie. 2005 U.S. App. LEXIS 28781 (7th
Cir. 2005). The Court found that the FLSA
requires all employers to compensate
employees, who they "employ" for workweeks
greater than forty hours, at a rate of one
and a half times the employees' regular
rates of pay. The United States Supreme
Court has interpreted "employ" under the
FLSA to mean that employers must pay
employees for the employees' time spent "in
physical or mental exertion, whether
burdensome or not, controlled and required
by the employer, and pursued necessarily
and primarily for the benefit of the
employer or his business." Tennessee
Coal, Iron, & R.R. Co. v. Muscoda Local No.
123, 321 U.S. 590, 598 (1944) (emphasis
added).
In this case, the Court found that the
counseling sessions were primarily for the
benefit of Aurora. Aurora argued that the
counseling sessions primarily benefited
Sehie, because the sessions minimized the
chance that she would lose her job by
leaving work again without authorization.
However, the Court noted that Aurora's
substantial shortage of available
dispatchers and the nature of the counseling
sessions as a mandatory condition of Sehie's
employment created a strong inference that
the sessions were primarily for the benefit
of Aurora. The Court also stated that
Aurora's refusal to allow Sehie to see her
own therapist with whom she had a prior
medical relationship and payment of ninety
percent of the cost of each session
supported the Court's conclusion that the
sessions were for Aurora's benefit. The
Court found that the underlying purposes of
the counseling sessions were to strengthen
Sehie's ability to perform her job and
communicate effectively with co-workers.
The Court reasoned that both of these
underlying purposes primarily benefited
Aurora by maintaining a qualified employee
in a position that was significantly
understaffed. The Court concluded that this
evidence taken together was sufficient to
show that the counseling sessions were
primarily for the benefit of Aurora and not
Sehie. Therefore, the Court stated that
Sehie could recover compensation for the
counseling sessions, even if the sessions
occurred during non-working hours.
Implications for Employers
Employers should take note that cases
such as the one above depend heavily on
their particular facts. Compensability of
an employee's time spent during non-working
hours receiving medical treatment for a
work-related injury will ultimately depend
on who benefits primarily from the
treatment. Employers should carefully
consider the compensation problems that
arise under the FLSA before requiring an
employee to undergo medical treatment for a
work-related injury on the employee's
personal, non-working time.
Employers should be aware of the factors
that courts will likely focus on to
determine which party primarily benefits
from the required medical treatment. The
Court in Sehie paid significant
attention to the fact that the underlying
purpose of the treatment in that case was to
retain an employee that the employer could
not afford to lose. Courts are more likely
to require employers to compensate employees
for their time spent in treatment if the
underlying purpose of the treatment is to
secure or improve performance of employees
in important or understaffed positions.
Courts will also focus on whether the
employer paid for the medical treatment and
whether the employer selected the medical
provider. Although these are important
factors for employers to consider, courts
will ultimately determine the compensability
of an employee's time based on the facts of
each case.
