Legal Question in Employment Law in Maine
Harassment
While on vacation overseas, I became ill. I was treated
by a certified physician abroad and provided my
employer with medical lab reports, doctor's notes,
course of treatment, prescription medication which I
was given and, ultimately, a doctor's note clearing me
medically from illness and approved to return to
employment and all other physical activities. My
employed now demands a doctor's note from an
American doctor. My contract at work specifies that a
note from a certified doctor must be provided from long
term illness. I provided this note from the doctor
overseas. My employer has told me that if I do not
comply and provide them with a U.S. doctor's note I will
be fired. I have a 15 month history of being harassed by
my employer and this seems to be further harassment,
as no other employee has had to provide two different
doctors notes for the same illness.
1 Answer from Attorneys
Re: Harassment
This doesn'tsound at all like harassment, it sounds like a reasonable enough requirement, but you're taking it as compounding a pre-existing problem at work, when it wouldn't be had you not already had trouble. If everyone else had a foreign doctor, then the situations would be the same and you might have something. However, there is a big differenc between requiring a doctor's opinion that can be checked, and a foreign doctor's opinion that cannot really be checked.
Simply go to your doctor, have him or her review the records of the foreign physician and then issue a local letter.