The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit recently held that a hospital business analyst was not entitled to trial on an FMLA claim related to her termination.

The employee worked in the Information Resources Department, where she was required to be on-call for one week every three months One night that the employee was scheduled to be on-call, she texted a supervisor that she could not complete this work because her father was in the emergency room. The Company provided alternate coverage for the evening and the employee swapped on-call weeks with another worker. Several weeks later, the employee had an altercation with a manager during which she expressed frustration at how the manager responded to her informing him of the family emergency several weeks prior. The employee walked off the job. While she claims that she went immediately to EAP, the manager had no knowledge of her whereabouts and considered the walk-off to be a separation. The employee filed suit alleging wrongful termination under FMLA, among other things. The trial court dismissed her claims on summary judgment, and the Fifth Circuit affirmed the decision. In so doing, the court reasoned that the employee failed to make a prima facie showing for an FMLA interference claim because her text message to a supervisor requesting to be taken off call on one evening was insufficient to put the employer on notice that she was seeking FMLA leave. This was particularly the case where the employee had taken unrelated FMLA leave in the past and was familiar with the proper course for requesting leave. Read more.