Legal Question in Medical Leave in Wisconsin

Re: Can FMLA be denied for Mental Breakdown?

In order for you to get protection under FMLA laws, your company must have 50 or more employees. This applies to the Federal and State laws.

For the federal law, you need to have a serious health condition that causes you to miss 3 days of work. You missed 2.5 so perhaps the federal law doesn't apply to this first situation. The other issue is perhaps you need to get a clearer statement from your doctor. He states you have a chronic condition and yet you are not 100% incapacitated. He needs to address what incapacity means under the federal law - does the condition make you unable to do work? If you have a job description, take it to himm and have him give an opinion of how many of those job functions you were not able to handle and how many you cannot handle when the condition flares up again.

Having the doctor redo the evaluation may give you a second chance with the employer and may even make the employer send you to another doctor for a second opinion. The second opinion would be a proper legal option for the employer.

Even if the Federal law doesn't apply (which I think it does), you would be protected by the Wisconsin law b/c it simply requires a "disabling condition". You should check out this link and make a case to your employer that the leave should be granted, that you should not be disciplined and that you should be appproved for intermittent leave in the future.

http://www.dwd.state.wi.us/er/family_and_medical_leave/publication_erd_9680_p.htm

If you have other questions, please contact me. Please note, I have provided an informal opinion based on the information you gave. However, this is not legal advice as I have not had a chance to properly interview you.