Williams v. Boeing Co.

• Decision Date: 27 February 2008
• Docket Number: No. 06-35196.,06-35196.
• Citation: 517 F.3d 1120
• Parties: Solomon WILLIAMS, Plaintiff, and Mara Ferrari; Rhonda Capps; Kevin Biglow; Doreen Ferguson; Beverly Trotter, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. The BOEING COMPANY; Boeing North American, Inc., a Delaware corp.; McDonnell Douglas Corporation, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

517 F.3d 1120

Solomon WILLIAMS, Plaintiff, and Mara Ferrari; Rhonda Capps; Kevin Biglow; Doreen Ferguson; Beverly Trotter, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. The BOEING COMPANY; Boeing North American, Inc., a Delaware corp.; McDonnell Douglas Corporation, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 06-35196.

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted January 11, 2008.

Filed February 27, 2008.

Steve W. Berman, Craig R. Spiegel (argued), Ivy D. Arai, Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, Seattle, WA, for the appellants.

Michael Reiss (argued), David C. Tarshes, Kristina Silja Bennard, Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, Seattle, WA, for the appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington; Marsha J. Pechman, District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. CV-98-00761-MJP.

Before: ROBERT R. BEEZER, A. WALLACE TASHIMA, and RICHARD C. TALLMAN, Circuit Judges.

TALLMAN, Circuit Judge:

Nearly ten years ago, Plaintiffs filed suit against The Boeing Company ("Boeing") claiming that they had been discriminated against in their employment on the basis of their race. The case has a complicated procedural history and has, at times, involved a number of different claims and plaintiff classes. The issues on appeal are fairly narrow. Specifically, Plaintiffs allege that between June 4, 1994, and May 28, 2000, Boeing paid African-American salaried employees less than similarly situated Caucasian employees.

We address two separate questions. First, whether the named Plaintiffs had standing to challenge Boeing's allegedly discriminatory compensation practices for the period prior to May 28, 2000, in the district court and whether they continue to have standing on appeal. Second, whether the district court properly held that the pre-May 28, 2000, compensation discrimination claim is barred by the statute of limitation.

I

On June 4, 1998, sixteen individual plaintiffs filed a class action against Boeing alleging that they had "been denied the opportunity for promotion, . . . subjected to a hostile work environment, and . . . retaliated against because of Boeing's policy and practice of racial discrimination." In November 1998, the plaintiffs filed a First Amended Complaint, which included substantially the same factual allegations, named additional plaintiffs, and included additional causes of action for negligent misrepresentation and breach of contract. The five Plaintiffs named in this appeal — Mara Ferrari, Rhonda Capps, Kevin Biglow, Doreen Ferguson, and Beverly Trotter — were included in the First Amended Complaint.

In January 1999, before substantial discovery had been undertaken, the parties sought court approval of a class settlement. The district court certified a settlement class and approved the proposed Consent Decree. Several class members objected to the settlement and appealed the district court's order. In Staton v. Boeing Co., a prior panel of our court affirmed certification of the settlement class but rejected the Consent Decree. We determined that the distribution of proceeds between named and unnamed class members and the manner in which attorneys' fees were to be awarded did not meet the "fair, adequate, and reasonable" standard of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(e). 327 F.3d 938, 959, 972, 974, 978 (9th Cir.2003).

On remand, Plaintiffs, represented by new lead counsel and before a different district judge, filed a Second Amended Complaint, which explicitly included a claim of compensation discrimination. The Second Amended Complaint included factual allegations relevant to the compensation discrimination claim, but did not include additional factual allegations on behalf of the individually named Plaintiffs.

In response to the Second Amended Complaint, Boeing moved for partial summary judgment. Boeing argued Plaintiffs had not previously alleged compensation discrimination and, therefore, the statute of limitation barred a claim for conduct occurring more than four years before the Second Amended Complaint was filed. The district court granted partial summary judgment in favor of Boeing on January 10, 2005. The district court dismissed Plaintiffs' compensation discrimination claim "relating to conduct or actions prior to June 11, 2000 (four years before the Second Amended Complaint was filed)." On February 15, 2005, the district court denied Plaintiffs' Motion for Reconsideration, but amended its prior order to hold the limitation period ran from May 28, 2000, four years before Plaintiffs lodged their Second Amended Complaint, and not June 11, 2000, four years before the complaint was actually filed.¹

At the same time Boeing was seeking partial summary judgment on the pre-2000 compensation discrimination claim, the parties were briefing the issue of class certification. On January 21, 2005, the district court certified a class of "African-American salaried employees employed . . . from June 6, 1994 to the present . . . seeking injunctive relief for racial discrimination in compensation and promotions." It is unclear why the district court certified a class including employees making a compensation discrimination claim from 1994 forward given that eleven days earlier it had determined that there was no viable claim for compensation discrimination arising between June 6, 1994, and May 28, 2000. Neither party contested this aspect of the class certification decision.

After the district court issued its certification order, Boeing again moved for partial summary judgment and argued that Plaintiffs' post-2000 compensation discrimination claim could not meet the legal standard required to prove a pattern and practice of disparate treatment under § 1981. In the alternative, Boeing sought dismissal of the individual Plaintiffs' post-2000 compensation discrimination claims for lack of standing and decertification of the compensation discrimination class.² The district court found that "the named Plaintiffs [did] not offer[ ] affidavits or other evidence that, even if taken as true, would show that they themselves have suffered injury after May 28, 2000 due to compensation discrimination" and therefore "[had] not demonstrated standing to maintain such individual claims during the relevant liability period." Because the named Plaintiffs all lacked standing to maintain individual compensation discrimination claims, the district court decertified the class with regard to the class claim.³ The district court also denied Plaintiffs' request for leave to move for intervention by an absent class member with a post-2000 compensation claim. Because the district court decertified the compensation discrimination class, it determined that "it would not be necessary or appropriate . . . to reach Boeing's request for summary judgment on the class compensation discrimination claim," and left open the possibility that absent class members could pursue "compensation discrimination against Boeing, either as individuals or as a putative class action."

In December 2005, Plaintiffs' class pattern and practice promotion discrimination claim was tried to a jury. The class disparate impact promotion discrimination claim was tried to the court. Both the jury and the court found in favor of Boeing. After trial, the district court directed entry of final judgment by the parties' stipulation under Rule 54(b) "as to all claims alleged by all members of the class" originally certified, specifically excluding compensation discrimination claims of absent class members. Plaintiffs then appealed challenging only: 1) the district court's determination that the pre-2000 compensation discrimination claim is barred by the statute of limitation, and 2) the district court's order decertifying the class.

After this appeal had been fully briefed, the district court ordered the parties to submit a joint status report, indicating Plaintiffs Ferrari, Capps, Biglow, Ferguson, and Trotter "may have individual claims remaining." The parties responded, stating that Ferrari, Capps, Biglow, and Ferguson "informed plaintiffs' counsel that they do not wish to proceed with [their] claims on an individual basis." Trotter did not respond "as to whether . . . she wants to pursue . . . her claim[ ] on an individual basis, despite plaintiffs' counsel's repeated efforts to contact [her] by phone, letters and in some cases email." Pursuant to the proposal in the joint status report, Ferrari, Capps, Biglow, and Ferguson filed an unopposed motion to dismiss their remaining individual claims with prejudice, which the district court granted on January 8, 2007. The order contained the following sentence: "This Order does not affect these plaintiffs' rights to pursue an appeal (Ferrari, et al. v. The Boeing Co., No. 06-35196), which is pending in the Ninth Circuit." Trotter's claims were dismissed without prejudice the same day.

Almost a year later, and a month before oral argument was scheduled, Boeing moved to dismiss claiming that because Plaintiffs had dismissed their individual claims they lacked standing to pursue this appeal and the appeal was moot. At oral argument Boeing urged that Plaintiffs had never sufficiently demonstrated standing to challenge Boeing's pre-2000 compensation practices, requiring dismissal of their claim for lack of standing. Plaintiffs contended that the allegations in their Complaints were sufficient to establish standing on the pre-2000 compensation discrimination claim, that they had not abandoned that claim, and that the claims they had voluntarily dismissed were "only [the] remaining claims, i.e., their individual claims for discrimination in areas other than compensation."

II

Article III of the United States Constitution "requires a litigant to have `standing' to invoke the power of a federal court." Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 750, 104 S.Ct. 3315, 82 L.Ed.2d 556 (1984) (quoting Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 498, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975)). To have standing, a "plaintiff must allege...