Coleman v. Home Depot, Inc.

• Decision Date: 09 October 2002
• Docket Number: No. 00-3656.,No. 00-3496.,00-3496.,00-3656.
• Parties: Mary A. COLEMAN v. HOME DEPOT, INC. Mary A. Coleman, Appellant Home Depot U.S.A., Inc.,<SMALL><SUP>*</SUP></SMALL> Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit

306 F.3d 1333

Mary A. COLEMAN v. HOME DEPOT, INC.

Mary A. Coleman, Appellant

Home Depot U.S.A., Inc.,^* Appellant.

No. 00-3496.

No. 00-3656.

United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.

Argued: April 25, 2002.

Filed: October 9, 2002.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

David A. Krenkel (Argued), Arbus, Krenkel & Monaghan, LLC, Ocean, for Appellant/Cross-Appellee Mary Coleman.

Patrick G. Brady (Argued), John M. O'Connor, Clara H. Rho, Carpenter, Bennett & Morrissey, Newark, for Appellee/Cross-Appellant Home Depot U.S.A., Inc.

Before BECKER, Chief Judge, SCIRICA and RENDELL, Circuit Judges.

OPINION OF THE COURT

BECKER, Chief Judge.

Plaintiff Mary Coleman, an African American female, who claims that defendant Home Depot discriminated against her on the basis of race, gender and age when it refused to give her a job in sales and when it terminated her from her position as a cashier, brought suit against Home Depot in the District Court for the District of New Jersey, alleging employment discrimination. The jury found for Home Depot. Coleman's appeal from the judgment of the District Court entered on the jury verdict turns on the District Court's exclusion from evidence of an EEOC Letter of Determination in which the Agency concluded that reasonable cause existed to believe that Home Depot had discriminated against Coleman because of her sex and race in connection with her hiring, request for transfer, and discharge. The District Court excluded the evidence, which was otherwise admissible pursuant to Fed.R.Evid. 803(8)(C), primarily because it found that its probative value was low and that any such value was outweighed by confusion and unfair prejudice. See Fed.R.Evid. 403. Coleman contends that this ruling was an abuse of discretion.

This appeal presents the question whether an EEOC Letter of Determination, which is presumptively probative when not challenged as untrustworthy under Rule 803(8)(C), can nonetheless be excluded due to the considerations identified in Rule 403. See id. (listing the considerations as "unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, or misleading the jury, or consideration of undue delay, waste of time, or needless presentation of cumulative evidence"). Although the Circuits are divided on the issue, we conclude that an EEOC Letter of Determination is not per se admissible under Rule 403, and that, like other probative evidence, it may be excluded if the countervailing 403 factors substantially outweigh its probative value. While the District Court found that the letter should be excluded because of the risk of unfair prejudice and confusion, instead we find that other Rule 403 factors — undue delay and waste of time — are sufficient on the record to tip the scales in favor of finding that the District Court did not abuse its discretion when it excluded the letter. The judgment of the District Court will therefore be affirmed.

I. Background Facts

Coleman applied for a position with Home Depot's Lakewood, New Jersey store on July 15, 1996. On her application, she stated that she was applying for "any" position, and represented that she had prior work experience/skills on a cash register, in hardware, plumbing, lumber, paint, and electrical. [SA491]. Within a week of submitting her application, Home Depot called Coleman to its Lakewood store for an interview. Vincent Kobera, the Store Manager, conducted the hiring interview. [SA96].

During the interview, Coleman stated that she was most interested in a sales position, but was told that there was only an opening as a cashier. [A47-48]. She was also told that she would have the opportunity down the line to transfer into a different department. [A48]. Kobera testified that his goal, as an employer, was to "try to put people in where they're going to be most comfortable. I mean when customers come in, they want to deal with someone in electrical who has some working knowledge or some point of reference for that. So, part of the interview process is to try to find that person's — call it niche, if you like, and where they are going to fit with us. And that's why during the interview, we talk about everything that's on the application." [SA185-186]. During the interview Kobera questioned Coleman about her experience in electrical, plumbing, and hardware as indicated on her application form. [SA97-98].

At the end of the interview, Kobera decided not to offer Coleman a position in sales, but offered her a position as a cashier instead. His decision with respect to sales was based on the fact that during the interview, Mary was "polite, courteous ... [but] when I questioned her about [hardware], she couldn't answer the questions and even told me that she didn't have a lot of knowledge on that, so that was part of it." [SA184]. In this regard, Kobera testified that the hardware department at Home Depot "is really hand tools, power tools, stationary tools in that very specialized area," but when he asked Mary "if a customer came in and wanted to buy a power tool for a gift and they wanted to buy one of the most versatile tools they could buy, what would she suggest. And Mary said she did not know. And then I asked her the same thing with hand tools... and she told me that when she worked at the hardware store, she really didn't get in to the power tool part of the business.... she said it was more of a small family business. They carried like nuts and bolts and did like pots and pans type — like a little mom and pop hardware store." [SA 227-228]. Thus, at the end of the interview, Kobera offered Coleman a position as a part-time cashier, which she accepted on the spot. [SA99-100].

Coleman began working at Home Depot on July 31, 1996. Before actually beginning work, she received training on the use of the cash register system, including the operation of function keys, paperwork associated with certain types of transactions, and procedures on the use of the register drawer and counting to close the register. [SA127; see also Cashier Training Checklist, SA492]. Notwithstanding the training, Coleman received several warnings about her poor job performance as a cashier with respect to handling monies (shortages and overages in her register at the end of the day). [SA102]. Indeed, Coleman received at least nine separate written warnings about her performance in her six month career with Home Depot. [SA133-134; 135; 136-137; 137-138; 138-139; 147; 142; 145; 150-151]. These performance warnings indicated that future problems with her cash transactions would result in more written warnings, and possibly termination.

Despite her poor performance on the cash register, Coleman asked for a transfer from the cashier position into the Hardware Association position. [SA131-132]. This request was denied. The Assistant Store Manager, Kevin McCann, testified that Home Depot does not transfer employees having performance problems from one department to another:

[W]e do not transfer associates from area to area if they have performance issues.... [H]aving a performance problem, and in her case, a basic skill such as cash handling, which really relates to paying attention to detail and, you know, basic math skills, that could be a problem on the sales floor, as well.

[SA303]. Kobera testified to the same:

Q: And during the time that you were the floor manager at [the] Lakewood [store], did you ever transfer an individual from a department who was having performance problems as the solution to that problem by putting them in another department?

A: No.... it doesn't solve the problem, you don't get to the root of it, you're just moving the problem and letting someone else deal with it.

[SA221].

Home Depot's employee handbook states that after three counseling sessions for the same performance warning, the employee could be terminated. [SA224]. In addition to her six-month performance review, which indicated that Coleman needed improvement, she also received additional training and assistance on the cash register on four or five separate occasions by Jean Amato, an employee at the Lakewood store. [SA158]. Moreover, Anne O'Neil, the Store Customer Service Manager, worked with Coleman to remedy her accuracy problems [SA154-155], as did the head cashier, Sue Gibberson. [SA158]. Despite all this help, Coleman's performance continued to fall short and she continued to receive written warnings. Ultimately, after a customer called the store to complain that Coleman had short-changed him $10.00, Coleman received her last warning and was terminated. [SA151]. With respect to her discharge, Kobera testified:

We had had like — by now it was nine or ten write-ups. And we have given her lots of counseling. She had lots of training.... We had done that, and [her performance] was affecting the customers. I mean when customers start calling the store and saying I'm not happy... there comes a point where we looked at — I looked at Mary — Kevin and I, we talked about it. But ultimately it was my decision to look at Mary's performance and say I didn't see that it was going to get any better, giving her another chance wasn't going to correct the problem.

[SA230-231].

II. Procedural History

A. Agency Level

On May 28, 1997, Coleman filed a charge of employment discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC"). She claimed that Home Depot discriminated against her on the basis of her sex, race, and age in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e, et seq., and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, 29 U.S.C. § 621, et seq. by: (i) hiring her as a cashier instead of as a sales associate in the Hardware Department; (ii) refusing to transfer her to a sales associate position within the Hardware Department; and (iii) terminating her employment. [A28]. Following an investigation, the EEOC issued a Letter of Determination on January 26, 1998, in which it concluded that reasonable cause existed to believe that Home Depot...