Erickson v. Farmland Industries Inc., 00-2716

• Citation: 271 F.3d 718
• Decision Date: 14 March 2001
• Docket Number: No. 00-2716,00-2716
• Parties: (8th Cir. 2001) ROBERT E. ERICKSON, PLAINTIFF - APPELLANT, v. FARMLAND INDUSTRIES, INC., A MISSOURI CORPORATION, DEFENDANT - APPELLEE. Submitted:
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (8th Circuit)

Page 718

271 F.3d 718 (8th Cir. 2001)

ROBERT E. ERICKSON, PLAINTIFF - APPELLANT, v. FARMLAND INDUSTRIES, INC., A MISSOURI CORPORATION, DEFENDANT - APPELLEE.

No. 00-2716

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

Submitted: March 14, 2001

Filed: November 14, 2001

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota. [Copyrighted Material Omitted]

[Copyrighted Material Omitted] Before Bye, Lay, and John R. Gibson, Circuit Judges.

John R. Gibson, Circuit Judge.

Robert E. Erickson appeals from the entry of summary judgment against him on his age discrimination suit against Farmland Industries, Inc. In February 1998, at the age of 49, Erickson was demoted from his managerial position to a sales job. Erickson argues that he presented sufficient direct evidence of discrimination to place the burden on Farmland to prove that it would have demoted him for legitimate reasons. He also contends that even if he has the burden of proving the demotion was discriminatory, he has carried that burden by showing the reasons Farmland gave for its action were pretextual. Finally, Erickson contends that Farmland retaliated against him for pursuing his discrimination claim by withdrawing the offer of the sales job. We affirm the judgment of the district court.¹

Farmland is a farmer-owned cooperative association that provides supplies and services to its members through local co-ops. Erickson went to work for Farmland in 1978 as a fertilizer sales specialist. Over the next twenty years he held various positions, including the position of regional account manager, which Farmland calls "RAM," for Minnesota. RAMs did not supervise other Farmland employees, and the job was not a managerial position. In 1997, however, Farmland restructured its sales force, eliminating the RAM job and creating the Regional Farmland Manager, or in Farmland's terminology, "RFM," position, with different duties and a different role. RFMs were required to supervise other Farmland employees working in the RFM's region, such as fertilizer or feed specialists. RFMs were also responsible for integrating sales programs with other programs Farmland was developing at the local co-ops. Erickson became an RFM on September 1, 1997. Shortly afterwards, Erickson's territory came under the jurisdiction of a new regional vice president, Curt Walther.

From 1990 until December 1997, Erickson was under the supervision of regional vice president Drue Sander. In the fall of every year from 1991 to 1997, Sander evaluated Erickson's performance as RAM, and each year Erickson had received an "achieves expectations" grade. According to Sander, these evaluations depended heavily on objective information about "retail development, sales manager involvement in wholesale activities, the sales volume numbers, and... the margin generation of... those activities." In assigning grades, Farmland "tried to be as objective as possible in terms of letting the numbers... call it at the end of the year." In the mid-1990's Sander perceived that the role of the account manager at Farmland was likely to evolve from merely focusing on retail development to directly supervising the sales force within the geographic area. Sander concluded that such a development would require the RAMs to build relationships within Farmland as well as with their customers. About that time Sander learned of incidents in which Erickson had behaved badly and had undermined his relationships with others within Farmland. At a training program for a new fertilizer sales program, Ag-21, Erickson had been so disruptive that the Ag-21 team sent Sander a two-page memo detailing Erickson's poor behavior. Sander also received copies of two e-mails Erickson had sent to other Farmland employees that were "destructive to relationships." Sander responded by sending Erickson a memo about the Ag-21 incident and the e-mails that said: "[T]hese kinds of events will not be acceptable methods of operation within my staff, and continued behavior of this type will result in disciplinary action." Also in response to concern about Erickson, Sander began including a peer review section in the annual performance reviews. Some of the peer review evaluations on Erickson were quite negative, and Erickson's 1995 performance evaluation showed a peer review evaluation that fell between #2 ("favorable") and #1 ("a problem for you").

In late 1997, a few months after the reorganization of the sales force, Farmland CEO Harry Cleberg received a phone call from Donald Gales, the manager of the local co-op in St. James, Minnesota, Farmland's biggest customer in Minnesota and its second biggest customer nationally. Gales complained that Erickson had not adapted to the expanded RFM role and that there was no point in creating the expanded role if the co-ops were only going to get what Erickson was providing. Gales told Cleberg that the St. James co-op was not "getting the kind of leadership and assistance from Mr. Erickson that we needed and expected." Farmland management attached special significance to Gales's call because the St. James co-op was such a large customer, because it was also a member of Farmland (which is owned by its members), and because Gales thought Erickson's deficiencies important enough to go straight to the CEO about them.

Also in the fall of 1997, four co-ops in Minnesota asked Cleberg to meet with them about grain business issues. Cleberg came to the meeting, as did Farmland's Executive Vice President for its world-wide grain business. Erickson did not attend the meeting. As Robert Honse, the Chief Operating Officer of Farmland, said: "When the CEO of a $10 billion Fortune 200 company is asked to come out to the field and the fellow responsible for that geography doesn't even think it's important enough [to attend], that raises a major concern."

Following the phone call from Gales, Cleberg spoke to Honse, who in turn spoke to Walther, about assessing Erickson's performance. Walther arranged to go with Erickson on a two-day tour around Erickson's territory. After the tour, Walther concluded that Erickson could not provide the leadership the co-ops were looking for. Walther decided that Erickson "was very naive about his job and that he really didn't understand his job. And the reason he didn't understand his job is because he detached himself from it." Walther also received a phone call from a fertilizer manager at a large co-op in Truman, Minnesota who said that the general manager of his co-op hadn't seen or heard from Erickson in a year.

Walther recommended that Erickson be moved to a fertilizer sales position in Wisconsin. The recommendation was approved by Honse and Cleberg.

Walther and Erickson met on February 25, 1998. Walther told Erickson he was being replaced as RFM for Minnesota and offered him the Wisconsin fertilizer sales job, which paid about $10,000 less than Erickson was making as RFM. As Erickson described the meeting, he asked Walther why he was making the change, and Walther brought up various things: "relations wore down, relations with co-ops not the best, you've been there too long, you're stale, those kinds of things, burned some bridges, accounts wanted a change, so those kinds of things." Erickson also quoted Walther as saying, "Twenty years is too long. You should have moved five years ago." For his part, Walther wrote a memo listing the following reasons for the reassignment:

1. Need a new focus in Minnesota.

2. Weak relationship with key Minnesota Accounts.

3. No projects underway for growth under his supervision.

4. Low employee morale in his area.

Farmland filled Erickson's RFM position with an employee who was thirty-nine years old.

Walther initially gave Erickson only two days to decide whether to accept the fertilizer sales position. Erickson asked for more time to consider, and Walther gave him until March 6, 1998. Erickson never responded to the offer, but instead filed a written complaint with Farmland alleging age discrimination. Walther sent a letter to Erickson on March 9, 1998 confirming that Erickson had not accepted the fertilizer sales position and stating that his employment was therefore terminated. Despite this letter, Erickson got in touch with Walther again and they agreed to hold the offer open. Finally, Farmland's Vice President for Human Resources wrote Erickson that if he did not accept the position by May 1, 1998, the offer would be withdrawn. Erickson never accepted the position. He said he "just ignored it."

Erickson filed suit against Farmland alleging age discrimination and retaliation in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, 29 U.S.C. §§ 623(a) & (d) (1994), and the Minnesota Human Rights Act, Minn. Stat. § 363.03 (2000). Farmland moved for summary judgment, which the district court granted.

We review the district court's grant of summary judgment de novo, using the same standards applicable in the district court. Breeding v. Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., 164 F.3d 1151, 1156 (8th Cir. 1999). Summary judgment is proper only if, taking the evidence in the light most favorable to the non-moving party, there is no genuine issue of material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Id.

I.

On appeal, Erickson first argues that he has come forward with direct evidence that suffices to shift the burden of proof on his federal age discrimination claim to the defendant under Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U.S. 228 (1989).² According to Justice O'Connor's controlling concurrence in Price Waterhouse, once a discrimination plaintiff shows "by direct evidence that an illegitimate criterion was a substantial factor" in the decision at issue, "the burden then rests with the employer to convince the trier of fact that it is more likely than not that the decision would have been the same absent consideration of the illegitimate factor." 490 U.S. at 276.

The direct evidence required to shift...