Sauzek & Koski
| Citation | 202 F.3d 913 |
| Decision Date | 02 February 2000 |
| Docket Number | No. 98-3119,98-3119 |
| Parties | (7th Cir. 2000) Curtis Sauzek and Julian Koski, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Exxon Coal USA, Inc., Defendant-Appellee |
| Court | United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (7th Circuit) |
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois. No. 95-CV-3114--Richard Mills, Judge. [Copyrighted Material Omitted]
[Copyrighted Material Omitted] Before Bauer, Ripple, and Diane P. Wood, Circuit Judges.
Curtis Sauzek ("Sauzek") and Julian Koski ("Koski") (collectively, "plaintiffs") sued their former employer, Exxon Coal USA, Inc. ("Exxon"), alleging that Exxon violated the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, 29 U.S.C. sec. 621 et seq. ("ADEA"). Plaintiffs claim that Exxon laid them off, failed to transfer them, and refused to rehire them because of their age. Sauzek and Koski also charge that Exxon's failure to rehire them constituted retaliation for their administrative complaints of age discrimination. The district court awarded summary judgment to Exxon on the retaliation claim, but allowed the other claims to proceed. Shortly before trial began, the district court granted Exxon's motion in limine to preclude any evidence regarding Exxon's failure to transfer plaintiffs to different jobs. Then, during trial, the district court granted summary judgment for Exxon on plaintiffs' failure to rehire claim. At the conclusion of a five-week trial, the jury sided with Exxon on plaintiffs' remaining claim and found that Exxon had not terminated plaintiffs because of their age. Plaintiffs moved for a new trial, contesting these and several other rulings, which the district court denied. Sauzek and Koski now appeal. For the following reasons, we affirm.
Exxon operated two coal mines in southern Illinois until a contract dispute with a major customer forced the company to close one of the two coal mines and lay off most of that mine's employees as part of a reduction in workforce ("RIF"). Since Exxon was closing one of its two coal mines and laying off so many workers, Exxon also decided to perform a company-wide reorganization of its operations. Faced with the need to restructure its organization and lay off hundreds of workers, Exxon had to decide what criteria it would use to select the employees that would be retained and those who would be terminated. Exxon ultimately opted to use employee performance ratings as the standard by which to make the decision.
The system Exxon uses to measure employee performance assigns each employee an annual Rank Group Percentile ("RG%"). To calculate an employee's RG% for a given year, that employee's supervisor evaluates the employee's work performance relative to other employees in the same or similar positions. In other words, the RG% that each employee receives depends on the quality of that individual's own work performance during that year and how that performance compared to the performance of other employees doing the same job. Under this ranking system, the employee in a designated position with a RG 100% would be considered the best employee in that position, while a worker doing the same job with a RG 1% would be considered the poorest performer in that position.
To determine which Exxon employees would be terminated during the RIF, a committee of six managers attended a weekend-long meeting in February 1993. At this meeting, the committee established guidelines to evaluate candidates for available jobs at the newly-restructured Exxon. Rather than assess each candidate's performance over the employee's entire career with Exxon, the committee decided to fill the available jobs by looking only at each candidate's performance ranking from the previous year. Thus, Exxon decided to keep only those employees with the highest RG% for the year 1992. The committee decided to use the 1992 RG% rankings because those performance ratings had been prepared before the supervisors knew that Exxon would have to close the coal mine and lay off so many workers. Exxon's RIF became effective in March 1993 when it closed the mine and laid off about 350 employees with the lowest RG% for the previous year.
As a part of the March 1993 RIF, Exxon terminated plaintiffs Sauzek and Koski. By the time of the RIF, Sauzek and Koski had both worked for Exxon for more than 20 years and both had worked in a variety of jobs. When they were terminated, both Sauzek and Koski were working as underground front line supervisors in the coal mine that Exxon closed. Sauzek was 48 years old at the time and Koski was 52. Sauzek's 1992 performance evaluation had given him a RG 17% and Koski's 1992 evaluation ranked him the worst in his group at RG 1%. None of the front line supervisors that Exxon retained after the RIF had a lower RG% than Sauzek or Koski. In fact, of the front line supervisors that survived the RIF, the lowest RG% among them was 39%.
Shortly after the RIF, Sauzek, Koski, and 22 other terminated Exxon employees filed charges of employment discrimination with the EEOC. In their administrative charges, Sauzek and Koski alleged that Exxon had both terminated them and denied them transfers because of their age.
A few months after the RIF and corporate restructuring (and after Sauzek and Koski had filed their EEOC charges), Exxon prevailed in its contract dispute and re-opened the coal mine in August 1993. As a result of the mine re-opening, Exxon recalled many, but not all, of the workers it had laid off in the March 1993 RIF. Exxon did not rehire all of its employees because its newly-restructured organization required fewer workers. When deciding which employees to rehire, Exxon considered an employee's RG%, prior job experience, and any special skills that the employee had. Plaintiffs Sauzek and Koski were not rehired.
About a year after Exxon re-opened the mine and refused to rehire either Sauzek or Koski, plaintiffs filed new charges of discrimination with the EEOC on August 30, 1994. These new EEOC charges were identical to their original charges except the new EEOC charges added a claim of retaliation. According to Sauzek and Koski, Exxon knew that they filed charges of age discrimination and helped other terminated employees file their own charges of employment discrimination with the EEOC after the March 1993 RIF. Sauzek and Koski's new claim asserted that Exxon retaliated against them by refusing to rehire them when Exxon re-opened the mine.
Sauzek and Koski eventually filed a lawsuit in federal district court. Plaintiffs' First Amended Complaint alleged that Exxon violated the ADEA by (1) terminating them because of their age; (2) refusing to transfer them to different jobs during the RIF because of their age; (3) refusing to rehire them during the recall because of their age; and (4) retaliating against them for filing their own EEOC charges of discrimination and organizing other terminated employees to do the same. The district court granted summary judgment in Exxon's favor on plaintiffs' retaliation claim, but allowed the other three claims to go to trial. Before trial, Exxon moved to preclude plaintiffs from presenting any evidence relating to their failure to transfer claim and the district court granted the motion. Then, during plaintiffs' case, the district court granted summary judgment in Exxon's favor on plaintiffs' claim that Exxon refused to rehire them because of their age. Finally, at the close of the five week trial, the jury found in Exxon's favor on plaintiffs' remaining claim that Exxon had terminated them because of their age. Plaintiffs filed a motion for a new trial which raised two dozen alleged mistakes by the district court. Judge Mills found all 24 arguments unpersuasive and denied the motion. Sauzek and Koski now appeal.1
Plaintiffs first challenge the district court's decision granting Exxon summary judgment on their claim that Exxon violated the ADEA by retaliating against them for filing charges of age discrimination and for encouraging their co- workers to complain of alleged discrimination. We review the district court's grant of summary judgment de novo, view the relevant facts in the light most favorable to plaintiffs, and draw all reasonable inferences in plaintiffs' favor. Trahant v. Royal Indem. Co., 121 F.3d 1094, 1097 (7th Cir. 1997).
The ADEA makes it unlawful "to discriminate against any individual . . . because such individual . . . has opposed any practice made unlawful by this section, or because such individual . . . has made a charge, testified, assisted, or participated in any manner in an investigation, proceeding, or litigation under this chapter." 29 U.S.C. sec. 623(d). To establish a prima facie case of retaliation, plaintiffs must show evidence from which a reasonable jury could find that (1) plaintiffs engaged in statutorily protected activity; (2) they suffered an adverse employment action; and (3) there is a causal connection between plaintiffs' protected activity and Exxon's decision not to rehire them. See Debs v. Northeastern Illinois Univ., 153 F.3d 390, 397 (7th Cir. 1998); Essex v. United Parcel Serv., Inc., 111 F.3d 1304, 1309 (7th Cir. 1997). While the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting framework applies to retaliation claims under the ADEA, Venasco v. National-Louis Univ., 137 F.3d 962, 968 (7th Cir. 1998), we need not proceed with the last two steps of that analysis because the district court concluded that plaintiffs failed to establish a prima facie case of retaliation. Specifically, Judge Mills found that plaintiffs did not provide sufficient evidence to reasonably conclude that there was a causal link between the plaintiffs' EEOC charges and Exxon's refusal to rehire Sauzek and Koski.
To demonstrate the requisite causal connection in a retaliation claim, plaintiffs must show "'that the protected activity and the adverse action...
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