prevented her from performing her
usual duties for Hughes.

In mid-1993 Edmonds' mother became gravely ill, and, more or
less simultaneously, she was assigned a new supervisor at work.
According to Edmonds, her new supervisor was not sympathetic to
her need for occasional time off to care for her mother. The supervi-
sor yelled at and often humiliated her.2 Edmonds' depression grew
steadily worse. Her mother died, and the abuse at work continued. By
July 1994 she could take it no longer, and she stopped working. Her
treating psychiatrist, Dr. Barry Gorman, and her counselor, Catherine
Thomsen,3 agreed that her depression precluded her from continuing
her current work.
_________________________________________________________________
1 Employee Retirement Income Security Act, 29 U.S.C. §§ 1001 et seq.
2 If Edmonds' account be true, the supervisor's comments reached a
shocking level of cruelty. For example, after Edmonds returned from an
absenceto Dr. Gorman for his comments.

Edmonds prepared an eight-page, handwritten response to Dr.
Smoller's report. Among other things, she asserted that (i) Dr. Smol-
ler had erroneously posited that the severity of her symptoms had not
changed through her lifetime, (ii) his opinion that she would "find
some problem with her next supervisor" was belied by her positive
_________________________________________________________________
6 The differences in this paragraph's format are discussed in Section III
below.

                    6
relationship with the majority of her twenty-one prior supervisors at
Hughes, and (iii) he had mentioned to her that he would provide his
findings to her lawyer, though she was not represented by counsel at
the time.7

But soon she was. On June 14, 1995, her lawyer formally