Williams v. General Motors Corp.

Decision Date14 September 1981
Docket Number80-7192,Nos. 79-2857,s. 79-2857
Citation656 F.2d 120
Parties26 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. 1381, 27 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 32,126 James L. WILLIAMS, Jr., L. C. Allen, Roy B. Davison, Jacob C. Johnson, William W. Landers, William N. Bailey, Ralph Dodd, William J. Bales, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, Cross-Appellees. v. GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION, Defendant-Appellee, Cross-Appellant. . Unit B
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Charles E. Moore, Atlanta, Ga., Bruce D. Duncan, Doraville, Ga., for plaintiffs-appellants, cross-appellees in both cases.

Otis Smith, General Motors Corp., J. R. Wheatley, Detroit, Mich., for defendant-appellee, cross-appellant in 79-2857.

Charles H. Kirbo, William A. Clineburg, Jr., L. Joseph Loveland, Atlanta, Ga., for defendant-appellee, cross-appellant in both cases.

King & Spalding, Atlanta, Ga., for defendant-appellee, cross-appellant in 80-7192.

Appeals from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

Before GODBOLD, Chief Judge, and HILL, Circuit Judge, and SHOOB, * District Judge.

JAMES C. HILL, Circuit Judge:

In this case, we explore the contours of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), 29 U.S.C. §§ 621-634 (1976 & U.S.C.A.Cum.Supp.1980), and resolve questions concerning the intended scope of that Act. Our conclusion, in brief, is that plaintiffs have failed to establish a prima facie case of age discrimination, and we accordingly affirm certain orders of the district court and reverse others, as detailed infra.

The trial of this cause was tortuously complex; the many thousands of pages of trial testimony, depositions, and exhibits bear witness to that. The record reveals a most patient and thorough trial judge whose detailed inquiries and reasoned orders at all stages of this cause have facilitated greatly our own decisional process. To the facts and factors of that process, we now direct our attention.

I. BACKGROUND

A. Factual Overview and Procedural History

In January 1975, plaintiffs 1 were employed by the General Motors Corporation (GM) in salaried, supervisory positions at two Atlanta-area plants, one located on Lakewood Avenue in the city, the other located in Doraville, Georgia. At about this time GM in an effort to cope with the deepening economic recession introduced at both plants a series of "personal adjustments" which affected all plaintiffs and precipitated this lawsuit. The "adjustments," which entailed elimination of one of two shifts in operation at each plant, left three plaintiffs 2 jobless and relegated the others to hourly wage employee status. 3 The effect of this action on the size of the salaried supervisory staff at the two plants was profound: personnel was cut approximately 50 percent; a total of 397 salaried employees were either reduced to hourly wage status or laid off.

On May 30, 1975, fifteen of the plaintiffs in this case filed a voluminous complaint charging unlawful age discrimination by defendant General Motors, seeking damages, attorneys' fees, back pay, and injunctive relief. The complaint, which was subsequently amended to embrace four additional party-plaintiffs, was brought under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, 29 U.S.C. §§ 621-634 (1976), and was grounded jurisdictionally upon 29 U.S.C. § 633a(c) (1976). The operative allegations of plaintiffs' complaint, which appeared in paragraphs 11, 12, and 13 of each of the counts, charged:

11.

The action taken by defendant in altering plaintiff's job position was based upon said employee's age.

12.

The mentioned change in plaintiff's job position from a salaried position was made by defendant, while defendant retained employees younger than plaintiff and with less seniority than plaintiff in salaried positions which plaintiff was capable of fulfilling as adequately as, if not better than, said retained younger employees.

13.

The above mentioned activity of defendant in changing plaintiff's job position was part of a general scheme of defendant to either lay off or demote from salaried positions to hourly wage positions employees of defendant whose age was forty (40) years or greater but less than sixty-five (65) years.

Plaintiffs' Complaints, Record, Vol. I, at 3091, 3094. A jury trial of plaintiffs' legal claims commenced on February 22, 1979, and lasted three weeks. At the very outset, plaintiffs called six GM "managing agents" to testify, on cross-examination, as to certain of defendant's internal procedures. The district court denied GM's request to question these witnesses at that time since GM would later, in presenting its own case, have opportunity to call its own agents to testify.

Plaintiffs' theory, propounded at trial, is that GM embraced two discriminatory policies in effecting its job reductions. The first of these was GM's secret computerized rating systems maintained for salaried employees. The ratings stored on this system were not available to a subject employee and differed from the official personnel ratings also kept on an employee. The numerical composite rating score crucial to this system reflected three factors: potential, or long-range ability to advance; promotability, or the immediacy with which an employee could advance; and, job performance, or ability to perform assigned duties. Plaintiffs' statistical expert, Frank Millard, testified that he examined relevant rating figures for the two GM plants in question, constructed an age classification statistical system consisting of nine intervals covering employee ages 21 to 63, determined a mean age for each classification, and undertook regression and Chi-square analyses to determine the relationship, if any, between age and one of the three rating factors, "potential." The expert's conclusion was "that as a person's age increased their (sic) potential rating became worse." Record, No. 79-2857, Vol. XV, at 2230. On cross-examination, however, plaintiffs' expert's testimony was subjected to careful scrutiny. Millard first admitted that, in the personnel actions under investigation, an older GM employee had a greater likelihood of retention during the reduction than a younger employee. He then acknowledged that he found no relationship between an employee's "potential" rating and how that employee fared during the reduction. Finally, GM's counsel asked plaintiffs' expert to address the other two factors in the composite personnel score, "job performance" and "promotability."

Q. ... (Y)ou made a study of that, didn't you?

A. Yes.

Q. And you determined from that study that there was no correlation between someone's promotability rating and his age, did you not?

A. Yes.

Q. And you also determined that there was no correlation between someone's job performance rating and his age, did you not?

A. That's correct.

Id. at 2259.

The second GM policy theorized to constitute unlawful age discrimination was the insulation of recent college graduates and graduates of the General Motors Institute from job reductions. This policy was evidenced by two documents the so-called "Fuller letters" written by Stephen Fuller, GM's vice-president of personnel administration and development staff.

Employee transfer schemes were used in tandem with both the secret rating system and the insulation of recent graduates, plaintiffs allege. To prevent a younger employee's reduction, GM would rotate him either within or between departments, depending upon the situation at hand. If slots were unavailable, younger employees alternatively would be placed in the personnel department or on training budgets, often only to be returned to manufacturing and service departments at a future time.

At the close of plaintiffs' case, GM moved the court to direct a verdict against fifteen 4 plaintiffs. The motion addressed two alleged shortcomings in the cases of the relevant plaintiffs: failure by plaintiffs Collins and Johnson to establish any monetary loss resulting from their respective job reductions, and failure by all fifteen of the plaintiffs embraced by the motion to offer proof that they were replaced by persons outside the age group protected by the ADEA. 5 The district court granted the motion as to plaintiffs Collins and Johnson 6 but declined to rule on GM's broadside attack on the evidence presented by the other plaintiffs. The district court indicated it would take the latter motion under advisement and would reconsider it on motion for judgment non obstante veredicto or new trial, should the outcome of the trial necessitate such motions.

As the lengthy and complicated trial neared conclusion, the parties stipulated as to each individual plaintiff, amounts disbursed by GM in layoff or reduction benefits, vacation pay, and unemployment benefits. 7 While the jury clearly was instructed that it was permitted to deduct from a plaintiff's back pay award amounts actually received in unemployment benefits, the jury was not instructed on the handling of "vacation pay" in the damages calculus. In fact, plaintiffs attempted to admit the testimony of Dick Wintersteen, who was prepared to testify inter alia that vacation pay is actually "earned" by an employee in the year preceding its grant. The trial court, however, refused to permit this testimony.

Following trial of the issues, the jury returned a verdict awarding back pay and liquidated damages to all seventeen remaining plaintiffs. GM moved for new trial or judgment N. O. V. The district court on June 19, 1979 entered judgment denying the motion for new trial but granting in part the J. N. O. V. motion by ordering amounts received as vacation pay by each successful plaintiff deducted from his award of back pay and liquidated damages. Because ten of the plaintiffs had accrued vacation time that translated into monetary payments in excess of their back pay awards, the district court's partial grant of the J. N. O. V. motion stripped those ten of their jury awards. At this point, two important issues still remained for the...

To continue reading

Request your trial
235 cases
  • Gilyard v. South Carolina Dept. of Youth Services, Civ. A. No. 3:84-992-15.
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — District of South Carolina
    • September 5, 1985
    ... ... 867, 104 S.Ct. 2794, 81 L.Ed.2d 718 (1984); McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 93 S.Ct. 1817, 36 L.Ed.2d 668 (1973). Plaintiff ... Lovelace v. Sherwin-Williams Co., 681 F.2d 230, 238-39 (4th Cir.1982); Smith v. University of North ... General Motors Corp., 656 F.2d 120 (5th Cir.1981), cert. denied, 455 U.S. 943, ... ...
  • Libront v. Columbus McKinnon Corp.
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — Western District of New York
    • March 12, 1993
    ... ... He argued that this exhibit raises an inference that defendant's officers conceived of a general plan to eliminate older workers. Nonetheless, the list does not indicate which employees were ... Supp. 622 facilities at different times. Plaintiffs' argument is answered by Williams v. General Motors Corp., 656 F.2d 120, 128 n. 17 (5th Cir.1981), cert. denied, 455 U.S. 943, 102 ... ...
  • Barnes v. Federal Express Corporation, Civil Action No. 1:95cv333-D-D (N.D. Miss. 4/__/2001)
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — Northern District of Mississippi
    • April 1, 2001
    ... ... Celotex Corp. v. Catrett , 477 U.S. 317, 325, 106 S. Ct. 2548, 2553, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 ... Co. , 760 F.2d 633, 642 (5th Cir. 1985) (citing Williams v. General Motors Corp. , 656 F.2d 120, 129 (5th Cir. 1981)), cert ... ...
  • Hansard v. Pepsi-Cola Metropolitan Bottling Co., Inc.
    • United States
    • U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit
    • February 21, 1989
    ... ...         Before GEE, SNEED, * and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges ...         SNEED, Circuit Judge: ... Westinghouse Elec. Corp., 832 F.2d 258, 262 (3d Cir.1987) ("Evaluation of witness credibility is ... 1026, 104 S.Ct. 1284, 79 L.Ed.2d 687 (1984); see Reeves v. General Foods Corp., 682 F.2d 515, 523 n. 12 (1982). To repeat, our test is to ... II Tr. 147. In Williams v. General Motors Corp., we stated that "the bare fact that an employer encourages ... ...
  • Request a trial to view additional results
10 books & journal articles

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT