Castle v. Sangamo Weston, Inc.

• Decision Date: 26 February 1988
• Docket Number: Nos. 86-3543,86-3579,s. 86-3543
• Citation: 837 F.2d 1550
• Parties: 46 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. 139, 45 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 37,839, 56 USLW 2510, 10 Fed.R.Serv.3d 704 Charles A. CASTLE, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. SANGAMO WESTON, INC., a Corporation, Defendant-Appellee. Chris PAPASTRAT, Shelby Bass, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. SANGAMO WESTON, INC., A Corporation, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 1550

837 F.2d 1550

46 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. 139,

45 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 37,839, 56 USLW 2510,

10 Fed.R.Serv.3d 704

Charles A. CASTLE, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. SANGAMO WESTON, INC., a Corporation, Defendant-Appellee.

Chris PAPASTRAT, Shelby Bass, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. SANGAMO WESTON, INC., A Corporation, Defendant-Appellee.

Nos. 86-3543, 86-3579.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

Feb. 26, 1988.

Carlton Fields Ward Emmanuel Smith & Cutler, PA, Mark E. Grantham, Tampa, Fla., and Icard, Merrill, Cullis, Timm & Furen, PA, James E. Aker, Sarasota, Fla., for plaintiff-appellant.

Hill, Ward & Henderson, PA, Benjamin H. Hill, III, Tampa, Fla., Kelley Drye & Warren, Ned H. Bassen, New York City, Shackleford Farrior Stallings & Evans, PA, Thomas C. MacDonald, Jr., Tampa, Fla., for defendant-appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida.

Before FAY and HATCHETT, Circuit Judges, and MORGAN, Senior Circuit Judge.

MORGAN, Senior Circuit Judge:

This appeal arises from the district court's determination of appellants' ¹ consolidated suits against appellee Sangamo Weston, Inc. ² for willful violation of the Age Discrimination Employment Act of 1967, 29 U.S.C. Sec. 621, et. seq. ("ADEA"). ³ In a unique procedural maneuver the district court judge rendered judgment for appellants pursuant to the jury's verdicts while simultaneously granting appellee's motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict. We find there was sufficient substantial evidence to support the jury's verdicts for all ten appellants. Therefore, the grant of the motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict was inappropriate. We conclude the district court's conditional rulings on liquidated damages, reinstatement, front pay, and pension benefits were essentially advisory opinions and, thus, are invalid. We reverse and remand this case back to the district court to reinstate the jury verdicts and to determine appellants' claims for liquidated damages, reinstatement, front pay, and pension benefits.

I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND

In 1979 appellee Sangamo Weston, ⁴ headquartered in Atlanta, consisted of several operating divisions including the Data Systems Division, the focal point of this litigation. This division, primarily located in Sarasota, Florida, designed, manufactured, and marketed highly sophisticated telemetry equipment used for the transmission, reception, and recording of data.

In the fall of 1978, approximately six months prior to appellants' dismissals by the company, a key management change occurred at the company's Sarasota facility. Anthony J. ("Tony") Martin, who had previously worked in his native England for another subsidiary of Sangamo Weston's parent corporation, was named the new General Manager for Sangamo Weston's Sarasota facility. Martin's appointment coincided with an apparent plan for business reorganization by the company to reduce its recent losses. At his first meeting with personnel in Sarasota, Martin commented that his task would be to review the make-up of the staff and see what he could do to streamline the company. At this meeting and at various other times Martin showed a distinct bias against anyone over forty years of age despite the fact that he himself was in his early forties. Martin stated that he saw too many older employees whom he termed the "old guard" in the management and engineering staff, that he did not care to have managers reporting to him that were older than he was, and that the company needed "new, young blood." Martin often referred to various employees at the Sarasota plant as "old farts," "old bastards," "little old ladies," "old cows," and even declared during management meetings that "everyone over 35 should be sacked." Martin believed that the older employees lacked an aggressive approach to business, that they were part of the "cancer" and the "malaise" that existed at the Sarasota plant, that the older employees were "set in their ways," that "they were the reason that the business wasn't going forward," and that "they would have to be replaced with younger people" in order for the company's business to progress. Martin was warned by successive personnel directors in Sarasota that the United States had laws against age discrimination and that his comments were out of place and he needed to be more careful with his language. The personnel directors testified that Martin's response was "rather blase, saying it wasn't a concern of his, that that wasn't important."

Early in 1979 Martin launched the plan to reduce the number of the company's employees in the Engineering and Data Systems Departments. Martin delegated responsibility for selecting the employees for the reduction in force ("RIF") to the directors of those departments, Charles Gilmore and Kent Morgan. During a series of meetings, Gilmore and Morgan brought proposed lists for the selections to Martin. Martin would then ask why certain employees, including some of the appellants, were not on the proposed lists. At these meetings, Martin also made derogatory, age-related remarks about many of the employees being considered for termination. The lists were finalized in the spring of 1979.

Just prior to the RIF, appellant Charles A. Castle was fired by his immediate superior's boss, Jim Williams, who had been brought to Sarasota from England by his friend, Tony Martin, only the month before Castle's dismissal. Eight of the other appellants were dismissed during the actual RIF which occurred in June 1979. The tenth appellant, Harry K. Moore, was demoted from his position of Eastern Regional Sales Manager for "data recorders" to position of salesman by his immediate superior, Dan Gincig, in October 1979. Moore testified that he quit after he was demoted because he was too humiliated to work for the company any longer, he could not sell either himself or the company, and the demotion entailed a $5,000 decrease in pay, decrease in certain other company perks, and loss of management responsibilities.

All ten of the appellants were exempt at the time of dismissal. Nine of them were in middle management or were senior engineers on the staff of the Data Systems Division in Sarasota. Appellant Moore, as Eastern Regional Sales Manager, was based at the company's branch office near Washington, D.C. At the time of their dismissal appellants ranged in age from forty-one to fifty-seven.

On May 11, 1981, appellant Castle filed an individual age discrimination complaint against Sangamo Weston. On June 5, 1981, the other nine appellants filed their joint complaint against the company. All ten appellants alleged that the company discharged them during 1979 because of their age. These actions were consolidated on July 24, 1981.

Following certain procedural disputes, see Castle v. Sangamo Weston, Inc., 744 F.2d 1464 (11th Cir.1984), which need not concern us here, a jury trial was commenced in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida. At the close of all the evidence Sangamo Weston moved for a directed verdict. The district court reserved decision on this motion and proceeded to submit special interrogatories to the jury. On March 5, 1986, the jury returned verdicts of willful age discrimination in favor of each of the appellants and found that back pay damages should be awarded to appellants in amounts ranging from $0 to $181,451. Castle v. Sangamo Weston, Inc., 650 F.Supp. 252, 255 (M.D.Fla.1986). The district court then excused the jury. On the following day a hearing was held concerning appellee's motion for directed verdict. At the beginning of this hearing appellee made an oral motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict. Pursuant to the trial judge's request the parties gave arguments on all issues raised by Sangamo Weston's motion for directed verdict and also on all issues raised by Sangamo Weston's motion for judgment n.o.v. "This was done to accommodate the judge who presided over the trial and avoid a return trip from Omaha, Nebraska, to Tampa, Florida, to hear argument on a motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict." Castle v. Sangamo Weston, Inc., 650 F.Supp. at 254-55. The parties also filed extensive post-trial legal memoranda on these issues.

On July 17, 1986, by an order entitled "Judgments," the district court entered judgment for each of the ten appellants in amounts equal to the back pay damages awarded by the jury and an additional equal amount for liquidated damages to each appellant, and front pay to appellants Fearn, Gregory, and Ridgewell. ⁵ On the very same day, however, the trial judge entered a separate "Order and Judgment" and accompanying "Memorandum Opinion" which granted in full Sangamo Weston's motion for judgment n.o.v. as to each of the appellants and dismissed the action. See Castle v. Sangamo Weston, Inc., 650 F.Supp. at 277.

In a most peculiar approach, the trial judge in his "Memorandum Opinion" ruled that the liquidated damage and front pay awards included in the "Judgments" were made on condition that "the jury's verdict is allowed to stand [on appeal]." Id. at 255, 258. In further anticipation of the possibility of his order granting Sangamo Weston's motion for judgment n.o.v. might be reversed on appeal, the district judge made several other conditional rulings including denying reinstatement of appellants into their former jobs and into the company's pension plan, and rejecting the appellants' claim for an award of pension benefits in lieu of reinstatement into the pension plan. Id. at 255-261.

The procedural posture of this case then took a more complicated twist. On July 25, 1986, Sangamo Weston filed a second, written motion for judgment n.o.v. to "avoid any possible contention that Defendant did not timely move for post-trial relief." On August 12, 1986, the appellants, in "an abundance of caution," filed their first notice of appeal, No. 86-3543, specifically appealing from both the "Judg...