She cut her medical leave short to keep her job - then says she was demoted
Daiichi Sankyo demoted a longtime associate director after she took medical leave for a mental health crisis, then fired her, a new lawsuit claims.
The former clinical operations employee sued the pharmaceutical company on September 9, 2026 in the US District Court for the District of New Jersey. She says the company pushed her aside after she took medical leave, ignored her request for support when she came back, and fired her while that request was still open. Her claims fall under three laws: the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which covers disability discrimination; the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), which protects job-protected medical leave; and New Jersey's anti-discrimination statute.
By her account, it started well. She joined Daiichi Sankyo in December 2022, earned a positive first-year review and a raise, and got a strong mid-year review in October 2023 with nothing flagged to fix. The filing says she has lived with depression, anxiety and PTSD since 2016, following the sudden death of her son.
That changed in February 2024, the complaint says, when she had a mental health crisis and her doctor told her to take leave straight away. She told her supervisor the leave was "personal" and "necessary." According to the filing, the supervisor reacted with open hostility on the video call and, the same day, asked IT for access to the worker's email, citing an "unknown return date."
She took FMLA leave in early February and returned on April 15, 2024, two weeks early - she says out of fear for her job. Instead of her old role, the complaint alleges, she was locked out of the company's systems and told she had been "permanently replaced" and was "no longer needed." When she pushed back that demoting someone for taking leave was unlawful, the filing says, the supervisor replied that she was "not comfortable" discussing it and "not going to talk about it anymore," then hung up.
From there, she says, she was handed junior-level work with no title. Days after she complained to HR, the complaint alleges, a retroactive year-end review rated her a "Partial Achievement" and cut her bonus to 9% against an 18% target - a review two managers allegedly said they "don't necessarily agree with" but could not defend, because they were not on the calibration committee.
She disclosed her disability to HR in writing in August 2024 and filed a formal request for accommodations that October, asking for more time to take on new work, longer training and deadlines, and help on urgent tasks, the filing says. She alleges the company never opened a real back-and-forth about those requests and left them marked "under review."
Then came a performance improvement plan, or PIP - a formal warning that sets deadlines to fix performance or face dismissal. Issued on November 14, 2024, it demanded major improvement within 30 days while stating on its face that her accommodation request was "still under review," according to the complaint. The next day, she alleges, she was cut from the distribution list for the very project the plan told her to deliver.
She was fired on January 14, 2025, five days after telling HR she was being left off team emails. The company pointed to the PIP. She was offered three months' pay and three months of paid health coverage in return for signing a release, the filing says.
The suit seeks at least $1.5 million on each of six counts. It also names three of the company's managers as individuals, saying they took part in or enabled the treatment she describes. She filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) before suing and received a right-to-sue notice in June 2026.
For HR teams, the case lands on four familiar pressure points: putting someone back into the same or an equivalent job after FMLA leave, running a genuine conversation about accommodations, the timing of a PIP against an open accommodation request, and whether a worker still had the access and information needed to meet it.
These are allegations. They have not been tested in court, and no court has ruled on them.
