Racial/Retaliation Discrimination
$552,500 JURY VERDICT REVERSED IN RACE/RETALIATION SUIT
CAPTION: In Bryant v. Compass Groups USA Inc., 413 F.3d 471 (CA 5 2005), the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the district court’s ruling on the employer’s judgment as a matter of law and wiping out a half million dollar plaintiff’s verdict.
Brandon Bryant, a white male, worked as a cook for Compass Group USA Inc., doing business as Chartwells. Bryant was specifically employed at Chartwells’ Lamar University food services operation. Chartwells’ main business was to provide food and beverage services to educational institutions as an independent contractor.
During his employment with Chartwells, Bryant applied for a promotion to an open executive chef position. Bryant did not receive the promotion as Chartwells chose to fill the position with Ricardo Saldana, an Hispanic employee. Apparently please with Saldana’s work, Chartwells transferred his sister-in-law, Francelia Madrigal, to its Lamar operation one month later. Sensing favoritism towards Hispanics on the part of Chartwells, Bryant file a charge of discrimination with the EEOC on March 26, 2002. In his charge, he charged Chartwells with reverse race discrimination. Unfortunately, the court opinion does not indicate the race of the individual(s) at Chartwells that made these decisions.
In his charge of discrimination, Bryant alleged that Chartwells subjected him to disparate terms and conditions of employment and that it denied him a promotion to the executive chef position because of his race, Caucasion.
Ten days after filing his charge of discrimination, Bryant found himself working a bat mitzvah alongside Saldana and Madrigal at a recreational area on the Lamar Campus. Following the bat mitzvah, Madrigal approached her brother-in-law and indicated that she observed Bryant take an envelope from the gift table. She believed Bryant, after taking the envelope, later disposed of it in a trash receptacle behind the dining hall. She later tried to locate the envelope but could not in the darkness. Madrigal returned the next day and found not one, but three envelopes and three checks in the trash. She reported her findings to her brother-in-law and gave a statement to Max Mitchell, food services director for Chartwells.
Maria Ortiz, another employee of Chartwells, gave a statement to Lamar University police officer Daniel Bowden. Officer Bowden spoke with Bryant the following day. Bryant agreed to pay back the $26 that he claimed represented the missing cash from the envelopes but he included a note to the girl’s mother stating that he was paying the money under duress and that he maintained his innocence. Bowden informed Chartwells that Bryant confessed to taking the money and agreed to make restitution. Chartwells later terminated Bryant’s employment, claiming their decision was based on the police officer’s statement that Bryant confessed to the theft.
Bryant filed suit against Chartwells alleging that Chartwells racially discriminated against him by subjecting him to adverse terms and conditions of employment, denying him a promotion to executive chef, and terminating his employment. Bryant further alleged that Chartwells unlawfully retaliated against him for filing a discrimination charge with the EEOC by terminating his employment.
The case proceeded through trial. At the conclusion of trial, the district court submitted Bryant’s claims of unlawful reduction in work hours, denial of promotion, and termination of employment claims to the jury for their consideration.
The jury found:
(1) for Bryant on the termination claim; (2) for Chartwells on the promotion claim; and (3) for Bryant on the unlawful discrimination in the reduction in hours claim, but that Chartwells would have reduced Bryant’s hours regardless of the unlawful motivation.
The jury awarded Bryant:
(1) $42,500 in actual damages; (2) $160,000 in compensatory damages; and (3) $350,000 in punitive damages.
In addition, the court awarded Bryant $36,500 in attorneys’ fees and $3,093.16 in costs. The district court granted Chartwells’ motion for judgment as a matter of law (“JMOL”) on punitive damages and granted a remittitur on the compensatory damage award to $150,000 and actual damages to $32,556.22. Bryant accepted the remittitur. Chartwells appealed the trial court’s decision to deny its motion for judgment as a matter of law.
The appeals court for the Fifth Circuit began its review by reciting the standard for reviewing a lower court’s denial of a motion for JMOL:
We review a district court’s denial of a motion for JMOL de novo. Thomas v. Tex. Dep’t of Criminal Justice, 220 F.3d 389, 392 (5th Cir.2000). A motion for JMOL should be granted if “there is no legally sufficient evidentiary basis for a reasonable jury to find for a party.” Fed.R.Civ.P. 50(a). Thus, “if reasonable persons could differ in their interpretations of the evidence, then the motion should be denied.” Thomas, 220 F.3d at 392 (citing Baltazor v. Holmes, 162 F.3d 368, 373 (5th Cir.1998)). “A post-judgment motion for judgment as a matter of law should only be granted when ’Äòthe facts and inferences point so strongly in favor of the movant that a rational jury could not reach a contrary verdict.’ ” Id. (quoting Waymire v. Harris County, Tex., 86 F.3d 424, 427 (5th Cir.1996)). The jury’s verdict is afforded great deference. Thus, when evaluating the sufficiency of the evidence, we view all evidence and draw all reasonable inferences in the light most favorable to the verdict. Id.
Chartwells argued that the district court erred in not granting its motion on Bryant’s unlawful termination claim because there was insufficient evidence to support Bryant’s claim that race or his EEOC claim was a motivating factor in the termination decision. Specifically, Chartwells argued that (1) Bryant did not establish a prima facie case of unlawful termination; (2) Bryant did not offer sufficient evidence to prove that Chartwells’ reason for termination was a pretext for discrimination or if true, that plaintiff’s race or retaliation for the filing of the EEOC complaint was not a motivating factor in the termination decision; and (3) Chartwells offered sufficient evidence that it would have made the same decision regardless of any discriminatory animus.
The appeals court quickly dispatched with Chartwells’ first argument by indicating that after a case has been tried upon the merits, the issue is whether the record contains sufficient evidence to support the jury’s ultimate findings. In other words, the final question is whether the employer discriminated against the employee and not whether an employee met the individual elements of a prima facie case.
The reviewing court then moved on to the question of whether the record contained sufficient evidence for a reasonable jury to determine that Chartwells’ stated reason for terminating Bryant was pretext or that while true, it was only one of the reasons for its conduct, and another “motivating factor” was the plaintiff’s race or retaliation for his filing of an EEOC claim.
Chartwells asserted that it terminated Bryant’s employment because he was suspected of committing theft or that he had committed theft. To establish pretext, Bryant relied on the close proximity in time between his filing of the EEOC charge and his termination. Proximity in time between such events rarely carries the day for plaintiffs. Bryant also maintained that he was innocent of the charges and that his confession came under duress. The appeals court pointed out that the real issue was what Chartwells’ management relied upon when they determined to fire Bryant and not whether Bryant was under duress or innocent of the charges. The testimony of Officer Bowden was that he told Chartwells’ management that Bryant had confessed to the crime. Chartwells reasonably relied upon that information. The appeals court thus found that ” there is no legally sufficient evidentiary basis for a reasonable jury to find that Chartwells unlawfully terminated Bryant in retaliation for filing an EEOC charge of discrimination.”
Of interest was Bryant’s argument that his co-employees conspired against him to have him fired. Chartwells argued, as is typical amongst employers, that none of the employees were decision-makers and therefore what they did or said had no relevance. The court responded: “‘[i]f an employee can demonstrate that others had influence or leverage over the official decisionmaker, and thus were not ordinary coworkers, it is proper to impute their discriminatory attitudes to the formal decisionmaker…. If the [formal decisionmakers] acted as the conduit of [the employee's] prejudice-his cat’s paw-the innocence of the [decisionmakers] would not spare the company from liability.’ ” Russell v. McKinney Hosp. Venture, 235 F.3d 219, 226-27 (5th Cir.2000) (citing Shager v. Upjohn Co., 913 F.2d 398, 405 (7th Cir.1990)). “Bryant’s “cat’s paw” theory is that Saldana, Madrigal, and Ortiz had unlawful racially motivated intent and that, because the decisionmakers relied on tainted information from these employees, the termination decision itself was tainted.”
A useful theory for plaintiffs in employment discrimination cases; however, Bryant provided little evidence to demonstrate such a conspiracy among the co-workers. With no conspiracy and, more importantly, no management involvement in the conspiracy, there was nothing for management to be tainted with.
Bryant’s final argument was that management had previously treated another Hispanic employee less harshly for similar transgressions. Bryant compared himself to an Hispanic woman, Ms. Ortiz, who had pilfered food, alcoholic beverages, and/or table decorations. No action was taken, and Chartwells presented no credible evidence that Ms. Ortiz did not do these things, that any disciplinary action was administered, or that there was good reason for not administering disciplinary action. In response to this argument, the court determined that Bryant’s comparison was not nearly that comparable and required a higher degree of similarity:
However, the alleged theft of alcohol, party decorations, and table decorations is not the same as stealing money from a client’s gift table at a catered event. The allegations leveled against Ortiz involved an internal situation compared to the allegations of theft from a client in Bryant’s situation. A key distinction is that the latter can result in a significant loss of business and clients for Chartwells due to the devastating effect such actions would have on its reputation as well as exposing it to civil legal liability. Moreover, since Ortiz never admitted the theft to the police or anyone else, no reasonable jury could conclude that the two events are “nearly identical.”
It appears that the appeals court reversed the district court’s judgment with the thought that the jury may have relied upon the unfairness of Bryant’s termination as a result of the police officer lying to Chartwells when he claimed that Bryant had confessed to the theft of the checks. Of benefit to plaintiffs in this case would be the cat’s paw theory where discriminatory attitudes of employees can be attributed to management, similarly situated employees standard can be very exacting, and that employers are not liable for making wrong decisions just discriminatory ones.
White employee failed to establish reverse race discrimination against college
Plaintiff Carol Ekstrom sued Cuyahoga County Community College for reverse race discrimination. Ekstrom claimed that she was terminated because of her race, disability, retaliation discrimination, in violation of public policy and suffered emotional distress as a result. As part of her prima facie case, Ekstrom needed to demonstrate that the college was the unusual employer that discriminated against white employees. Problem was that the college hired four white employees to fill some of the positions for which the plaintiff applied. In addition, plaintiff’s original supervisor during the time period in which she made her initial complaints was a white female. Finally, plaintiff’s job performance suffered from poor attendance, tardiness, insubordination, disciplinary problems and suspensions.