Arnulfo Gradilla v. Ruskin Manufacturing, Business Entity Unknown

320 F.3d 951 Arnulfo GRADILLA, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. RUSKIN MANUFACTURING, business entity unknown, Defendant-Appellee. No. 01-56725. United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit. Argued and Submitted August 8, 2002. Filed February 14, 2003. COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED Bita N. Haiem, Beverly Hills, CA, for the plaintiff-appellant. Michelle R. Walker, Los Angeles, CA, for the defendant-appellee. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California; Virginia A. Phillips, District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. CV-00-00663-VAP. Before: REINHARDT, LEAVY and TROTT, Circuit Judges. Opinion by Judge LEAVY; Dissent by Judge REINHARDT LEAVY, Circuit Judge. 1 This case involves the right of an employee to take family and medical leave to care for a family member with a serious medical condition. We hold that under the California Family Rights Act ("CFRA"), an employee who leaves work to travel with and care for a family member with a serious health condition is not entitled to leave when the family member decides, in spite of her serious medical condition, to travel away from her home for reasons unrelated to her medical treatment. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL…

Opinion by Judge LEAVY; Dissent by Judge REINHARDT

This case involves the right of an employee to take family and medical leave to care for a family member with a serious medical condition. We hold that under the California Family Rights Act (“CFRA”), an employee who leaves work to travel with and care for a family member with a serious health condition is not entitled to leave when the family member decides, in spite of her serious medical condition, to travel away from her home for reasons unrelated to her medical treatment.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

Arnulfo Gradilla worked as a sheet metal assembler at Ruskin’s Mira Loma plant from August 1995 until his termination on October 27, 1999. He was a union member and was covered by a collective bargaining agreement. Ruskin had a policy that required employees to call in if they were going to miss work. The policy, referred to by Ruskin as the “three day no-call/no show policy,” provides that if a worker does not call in or show up for work for three days, he will be dismissed.

Gradilla’s wife had a serious heart condition, so serious that her doctor thought that she might require a heart transplant. Mrs. Gradilla took…

dissenting:

This case exemplifies compassionless conservatism. The majority reads the California Family Rights Act (sometimes referred to as the “Act”), a statute designed to afford a minimal amount of humane and decent treatment to working people with families, as if it were a rigid code intended to limit their rights. The majority ignores the plain language of the statute as well as its purpose and instead poses an imaginary chain of horrors, claiming that a plain reading of the statute would cause courts to have to (horrors!) make decisions “in each ease.” On that basis it grants summary judgment to the corporate defendant.

That a poor, hardworking, Hispanic man, struggling to support his family by performing manual labor, could be fired by his employer under the circumstances of this case is almost unimaginable. That a court could reach the decision the majority does here is even more incomprehensible.

The facts are simple. Arnulfo Gradilla, a loyal, non-English-speaking, employee of a corporate-owned machine shop who had several times been injured on the job but had always returned to work as soon as possible, suffered a comparatively minor fourth industrial accident.…