Another blog hosted by HRHero is Northern Exposure. Its posts are written by my Canadian friends with the law firm of McCarthy Tetrault. Last week, there was a post on Northern Exposure that caused quite a firestorm of comments. Since the post addressed a disability case filed under Canadian human rights legislation similar to our Americans with Disabilities Act ( requiring employers to accommodate disabled employees unless the accommodation causes an “undue hardship”), I thought that sharing it with you would be worthwhile.

After 20 years of work at McDonald’s, an employee developed a skin condition (diagnosed as contact dermatitis, acquired dermatitis or some other form of eczema) that prevented her from complying with the restaurant’s strict hand-washing policy. Medical treatments didn’t work. Wearing gloves didn’t help. Her doctor finally opined that she couldn’t work in a restaurant, so McDonald’s terminated her employment.

The employee filed suit and won an award of $55,000. For the most part, Northern Exposure’s readers couldn’t believe it and let their feelings be known. A follow-up post addressed the comments that had been received (which ranged from allegations that Canadian human rights tribunals are filled with “post modern ideologues” to fears that restaurant food in Canada would never be safe again), concluding that the tribunal probably got it right because of McDonald’s poor attempts to accommodate the employee.

Under the ADA, the regulations of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission say that a skin condition can be a disability if it substantially limits a major life activity. To emphasize this (and to tie in directly with the Canadian case), the EEOC provides a restaurant guide on how employers can accommodate employee skin conditions. So, what happened in Canada could theoretically happen in the U.S., but I have found no case where the court, after considering a claim that a skin condition was a disability, agreed with the claim. The reason given is that, while a skin condition could be a disability, the one at issue in the case didn’t substantially limit a major life activity.

But let’s go back to the Canadian case. While I don’t think the employee in that case would have been successful in a lawsuit in the U.S., we can learn from that case how to prevent a lawsuit from ever being filed. The Canadian employee had been employed at McDonald’s for a long time. She was a hard worker. She had glowing evaluations. She tried her best to come back to work, but her skin condition just wouldn’t permit it. Without question, she’s the kind of employee all employers want. When an employer cuts such an employee loose (like McDonald’s did), she’ll be mad as fire, and she’ll sue. That means you will have lost a good employee, received some bad publicity, and then spent a lot of money defending the case. Rather than going through all that–even if you win–it just might be better to find another job for the employee that doesn’t require constant hand-washing. I think that’s called a win, win.