DaPrato v. Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, the Supreme Judicial Court made clear that employers should not be substituting their own prejudices for the opinions of medical professionals, and that even an allegedly "honest mistake" as to whether an employee was abusing medical leave by spending it on vacation, did not shield the employer from liability for retaliatory discharge.  While the Court did recognize that an employer may consider whether an employee's activities are inconsistent with the medically documented reasons for the leave, the Court also observed that "an employee recovering from a leg injury may sit with his leg raised by the sea while fully complying with FMLA requirements..." 

Negotiated Settlements Based on Fraud May Not Bar Greater Recovery in Court: On May 3, 2019, in Conway v. Planet Fitness, a Massachusetts jury awarded a former CFO ten times the amount for which she settled based on a theory of fraud in the inducement. The CFO alleged that she settled her potential wrongful termination claims, including those involving her profit interest in the company, for $500,000 because her employer intentionally concealed from her the status and value of a pending private equity transaction. The jury found that the correct settlement value would have been $5.36 million, not $500,000, had the correct information about the pending transaction been revealed. If you think something like this happened to you, consult legal counsel as soon as possible. The time frame for filing such claims can be very short.