Williams v. W.D. Sports, N.M., Inc.

• Decision Date: 07 August 2007
• Docket Number: No. 05-2127.,05-2127.
• Citation: 497 F.3d 1079
• Parties: Rosann, WILLIAMS, Kathryn Hunter, Moira Daly and Maria Marquart, Plaintiffs-Appellants, Robert Haddock, Plaintiff, v. W.D. SPORTS, N.M., INC., d/b/a New Mexico Scorpions, William Douglas Frank, Patrick J. Dunn, and Tyler Boucher, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit

497 F.3d 1079

Rosann, WILLIAMS, Kathryn Hunter, Moira Daly and Maria Marquart, Plaintiffs-Appellants, Robert Haddock, Plaintiff, v. W.D. SPORTS, N.M., INC., d/b/a New Mexico Scorpions, William Douglas Frank, Patrick J. Dunn, and Tyler Boucher, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 05-2127.

United States Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit.

August 7, 2007.

Maureen A. Sanders, of Sanders & Westbrook, P.C. (Kathryn Hammel, of The Hammel Law Firm, P.C., with her on the briefs), Albuquerque, New Mexico, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.

Alex C. Walker (Lisa Mann and Emil J. Kiehne with him on the briefs), of Modrall, Sperling, Roehl, Harris & Sisk, P.A., Albuquerque, New Mexico, for Defendants-Appellees.

Before KELLY, EBEL, and GORSUCH, Circuit Judges.

GORSUCH, Circuit Judge.

Several female former employees of the New Mexico Scorpions, a minor league hockey team, filed suit against the team and various of its managers, alleging that they engaged in sexual harassment and other conduct proscribed by Title VII and state law. After a 10-day trial, a jury found for defendants on all counts. In this appeal, plaintiffs direct us to no fewer than thirty rulings they argue were mistaken and require reversal. We find one such argument meritorious. After the district court's decision, and during the pendency of this appeal, the Supreme Court issued Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway Company v. White, ___ U.S. ___, 126 S.Ct. 2405, 165 L.Ed.2d 345 (2006), setting forth a new rubric for analyzing Title VII retaliation cases. In White, the Court held that an employee subjected to employer conduct, whether inside or outside the workplace, that well might dissuade an objectively reasonable worker from making or supporting a charge of discrimination suffers a sufficiently adverse action to state a claim under Title VII. Because a reasonable jury could find that the employer in this case took such an action against one of the plaintiffs before us, Rosann Williams, we reverse and remand her retaliation claim for trial. On all remaining scores, we affirm the judgment of the district court.

I

In a 26-count complaint, plaintiffs — female employees who handled ticketing, box office, and office manager duties, among others, for the Scorpions — alleged a pattern of hostile, gender-based activity implicating their rights under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq., and state law. They directed their suit against the team's owner, W.D. Sports, N.M., Inc. ("W.D. Sports"); its president William Douglas Frank; Patrick Dunn, a retired player who served as the team's general manager; and Tyler Boucher, another retired player who served as assistant to the president.¹ After six months of discovery, defendants moved for summary judgment, which the district court granted in part and denied in part. R. 911-13, 954-55, 995-97, 1021-04.²

Most pertinent among the district court's rulings for our purposes is the disposition of Ms. Williams's claim for unlawful retaliation under Title VII. Ms. Williams began this suit alleging various retaliatory acts. Underlying them all is the fact that, sometime in early 2002, Ms. Williams complained to her supervisors, and later to government officials, about gender-related discrimination at her workplace. Specifically, months prior to her termination, Ms. Williams voiced discomfort over Mr. Boucher's and the players' repeated use of gender-specific profanity when addressing her to Mr. Dunn and Mr. Frank. R. 2543-44, 2555. Upon her supervisors' alleged failure to remedy the problem, Ms. Williams took her grievance to the Human Rights Division of the New Mexico Department of Labor ("NMDOL") in January 2002. R. 2623-24, 2747. In March of the same year, Ms. Williams filed an official complaint with the Human Rights Division charging W.D. Sports with gender discrimination and sexual harassment. R. 2596-97, 2624-26, 2747-48.

Shortly after her filing, Ms. Williams testified that she and Mr. Frank had two discussions; that Mr. Frank explained that there were rumors circulating about Ms. Williams being intimately involved with the team coach and some players, as well as certain season ticket holders; and that he suggested that Ms. Williams resign, offering her a severance package if she did so. R. 2591-93. Ms. Williams refused to resign and asked for a written explanation why she was being fired. Mr. Frank allegedly responded that she did not "need" a piece of paper to know that she was fired and to "[g]et the [expletive] out of [his] office." R. 2593-94. Ms. Williams's last day of work was March 29, 2002. R. 1734.

Ms. Williams contends that, after firing her, Mr. Frank then told her not to "fight" him on "this," and that if she did fight him, all the rumors about her sexual activities would be made public, whether or not they were true. R. 2594. He also threatened, "I will ruin your marriage. . . . You have kids and you have a husband to worry about." Id. Ms. Williams alleges that W.D. Sports proceeded to carry out Mr. Frank's threats by opposing her application for unemployment benefits with the NMDOL. Specifically, W.D. Sports submitted a written statement asserting it had fired Ms. Williams "for cause" because of Ms. Williams's supposed "failure to heed warnings or correct behavior regarding, among other incidents, repeated instances of sexual misconduct w[ith] peers and subordinates amounting to sexual harassment; drinking [and] alcohol[; and] theft of company property, proprietary information." R. 1734. The company's filing represented that W.D. Sports could support these allegations through the testimony of junior employees, peers, and superiors. As it happens, however, the company never provided any such evidence to the NMDOL, and Ms. Williams alleges that these allegations were false and retaliatory in design.

Because of W.D. Sports's opposition to her application, the NMDOL scheduled and held a hearing on Ms. Williams's unemployment benefits application. At that hearing, though apparently not on the record, W.D. Sports's counsel, John Phillips, allegedly asked Ms. Williams, "What do you want to just shut up and go away?" R. 2600. After Ms. Williams expressed her belief that W.D. Sports could not "give [her] back what [it has] taken away," Mr. Phillips purportedly proposed a quid pro quo: "If you will drop your Human Rights [discrimination] claim, I won't fight you on your unemployment." Id. Ms. Williams declined the offer, and in spite of the hearing and W.D. Sports's opposition, the NMDOL ultimately determined Ms Williams was entitled to unemployment benefits. R. 2601.

Throughout its proceedings, the district court treated W.D. Sports's termination of Ms. Williams as a functionally separate claim of retaliation from Mr. Frank's threats and W.D. Sports's opposition to her unemployment benefits application; Ms. Williams did not contest this procedure before the district court and does not do so before us. With respect to the first alleged act of retaliation — Ms. Williams's termination — the district court proceeded to grant summary judgment to W.D. Sports on the ground that, in its view, Ms. Williams had failed to adduce evidence of a causal link between her firing and her protected Title VII right to pursue claims of gender discrimination. While raising many other arguments for reversal, Ms. Williams chose not to appeal this decision. The remaining acts of alleged retaliation — concerning Mr. Frank's threats and W.D. Sports's opposition to her unemployment benefits application — proceeded to trial along with a variety of other causes of action and forms the crux of this appeal.

At trial, plaintiffs testified to sexually charged comments and behavior by a number of the defendants and other Scorpions team members and employees. They also presented evidence seeking to establish that their work environment caused them to suffer from post traumatic stress disorder. In contrast, defendants offered evidence seeking to portray the office as rowdy and informal, emphasizing the plaintiffs' own use of foul language. Defendants also elicited testimony from the plaintiffs regarding other potential causes, besides their work environment, that might have induced plaintiffs' claimed emotional distress.

At the close of plaintiffs' case in chief, defendants moved for judgment as a matter of law on Ms. Williams's remaining retaliation claim and various other counts. The district court granted the motion with respect to Ms. Williams's retaliation claim, and in doing so reasoned that

my review of the case law leads me to conclude that one of the requirements [of a retaliation claim based on the opposition to unemployment benefits] is that the plaintiff's benefits, at the very least, have to have been delayed, suspended, or not paid; and in this case, that didn't happen. Therefore, with respect to the unemployment benefits, I find and conclude that Plaintiff Williams suffered no delay or cessation in the benefits and, therefore, did not suffer an adverse employment action with respect to the opposition for unemployment.

R. 3969-70.

Plaintiffs' counsel orally responded to the court's ruling by representing that Ms. Williams's unemployment benefits had been suspended, to which the district court replied that it was open to reconsidering its ruling, inviting Ms. Williams's counsel to "bring [the evidence in the transcript establishing this] to [its] attention," R. 3972, adding that, "if I'm wrong on that, you can ask me to reconsider the retaliation claim." R. 3973. Ms. Williams's counsel took the district court up on this offer, asking it to reconsider its ruling and pointing the district court to four pages of Ms. Williams's testimony purporting to show that she had testified as to an interruption in her benefits. R. 4576. The district court found, however, that none of this testimony established "any cessation, suspension, or diminution" of Ms. Williams's benefits and denied the motion to...