The March ruling in Dollar's favor was handed down by a federal appeals court in the 8th District. The ruling upheld, for the most part, a district court verdict awarding Dollar nearly $300,000 in back pay and damages.

Dollar was a driver-manager for Smithway, a trucking company, supervising as many as 40 truck drivers. She had begun to miss a day or two of work here and there, explaining to her bosses that she was experiencing depression that made her unable to work. The absences escalated, but she always provided medical excuses. Meantime, she kept getting raises and positive performance reviews.

Eventually, Dollar's depression led to a trip to the ER, followed by a doctor-ordered week-long absence from work. Smithway's HR department began looking for another position where Dollar wouldn't be supervising workers.

Then her condition took a serious turn for the worse. The depression was exacerbated by the death of her father. Another doctor told her to take a much longer break from work. When she informed her direct supervisor of this, the supervisor — in the presence of a good friend of Dollar's — told her she might not have a job when she got back.

A few days later, her boss fired her. Then he blocked her attempt to get unemployment benefits, saying she'd been canned for "misconduct."

Oops.

Dollar invoked the FMLA in filing her initial complaint, and the courts held that in fact Smithway had totally blown it from an FMLA standpoint.

At the time of her termination, Nelson did not offer FMLA leave to Dollar or provide Dollar with any materials regarding FMLA leave or forms for physician certification of FMLA leave," the appellate court ruled.

"Dollar did not expressly request FMLA leave," the court found. Nonetheless, it was up to the company to anticipate an FMLA situation and provide paperwork and anything else Dollar needed to make such a claim.

Writing for the online publication FMLA Insights, Chicago attorney Jeff Nowak warns that Dollar's case — while unique in some respects — should be studied and understood by HR professionals if they want to avoid a similar litigation disaster.

"I've witnessed a disturbing trend lately in the court cases I'm reading and in your FMLA practices: too many of you are not recognizing when an employee's leave request may be covered by the FMLA," Nowak wrote this week. "Employees are not required to cite specifically to the 'FMLA' as a reason for their absence; a bullhorn also is not necessary. The employee need only provide enough information to indicate that the leave of absence might be covered by the FMLA. If the employee has provided this information, the employer then has an obligation to either inquire further to determine whether the FMLA is in play or provide the employee a notice of her FMLA rights and a certification form."