Daniels v. Essex Group, Inc.

• Decision Date: 24 July 1991
• Docket Number: No. 90-2663,90-2663
• Citation: 937 F.2d 1264
• Parties: 56 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. 833, 56 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 40,896 Robert DANIELS, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. ESSEX GROUP, INCORPORATED, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 1264

937 F.2d 1264

56 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. 833,

56 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 40,896

Robert DANIELS, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. ESSEX GROUP, INCORPORATED, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 90-2663.

United States Court of Appeals,

Seventh Circuit.

Argued April 16, 1991.

Decided July 24, 1991.

Steven L. Jackson, Baker & Daniels, Fort Wayne, Ind., for plaintiff-appellee.

Herbert C. Snyder, Jr., Richard P. Steele, Barnes & Thornburg, Fort Wayne, Ind., for defendant-appellant.

Before CUMMINGS, FLAUM and EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judges.

CUMMINGS, Circuit Judge.

In 1978, Robert Daniels, a thirty-seven-year-old black man, began working in the Wire and Cable Division of the Essex Group, Inc., located in Columbia City, Indiana. Ten years later, in April 1988, Daniels resigned. He subsequently brought suit against his former employer under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C. Sec. 2000e et seq.). Daniels' complaint enumerated multiple instances of racial harassment at Essex and also alleged the existence of a hostile work environment. The harassment of which Daniels complained extended over the course of his tenure at Essex but intensified in the months immediately preceding his resignation. Moreover, the specific acts cited by Daniels were of both a generalized and particularized nature. Some of the slurs were directed at him by name. Others were general racist symbols, but because Daniels was the only black working in the particular division of Essex in which the harassment took place, he saw himself as the target of all of the incidents. Daniels' case came before Judge Lee of the Northern District of Indiana. Plaintiff received a bench trial on November 13, 1989. The court issued its findings of fact and conclusions of law on June 27, 1990, 740 F.Supp 553, finding against Essex and agreeing with Daniels that he had been unduly harassed on account of his race. In accordance with Title VII, Judge Lee awarded back pay of $38,548.84, prejudgment interest of $3,782.76, and front pay and attorneys' fees in the amount of $35,455.20. For the following reasons, we affirm.

I. FACTS

Even before the first of the three most serious incidents occurred, Daniels' work environment was not discrimination-free. In his ten years at Essex, Daniels' colleagues told "nigger jokes," nicknamed the plaintiff "Buckwheat" and teased him because he conversed with white women at work. During this time, Daniels did not stand idly by and soak up the epithets without protest. On the contrary, he complained to his co-workers, to his supervisor, and to the Personnel Director at Essex, none of whom did anything to nip the discriminatory treatment in the bud. Notwithstanding his complaints, Daniels endured the frequent harassment, choosing to remain in his job throughout the ten-year period. As he testified at trial, "deep down inside they [bothered me]. It wouldn't be enough to make me want to quit working with the guys" (Tr. 53-54). During this time, Daniels consistently earned high marks for his on-the-job performance.

The harassment escalated and intensified beginning in the fall of 1987 when events began to occur that were of a more menacing character than the ribbing Daniels endured. One morning Daniels clocked in at his usual arrival time of 7:00 a.m. and made the following discovery en route from the time clock to his work station. Hanging from a doorway was a human-sized dummy with a black head. The dummy wore white overalls and had what appeared to be simulated blood dripping on it. Daniels reported the existence of the dummy to his immediate supervisor, Mike Rohrer. Rohrer claimed to know nothing of the dummy and reassured Daniels: "Well, Bob, don't get excited. I will take care of it. Don't worry about it" (Tr. 57).

When Daniels left his work station at the end of his eight-hour shift, the dummy was still hanging. Twelve hours later, at 3:00 a.m. the next day, Daniels reported to work early in response to a supervisor's request. Upon arrival, plaintiff discovered that the dummy was still hanging from the same spot.

The second of the three most grave incidents involved graffiti written on the bathroom walls of Daniels' department. Daniels found the initials "KKK" and the slogan "All niggers must die" scrawled onto the bathroom walls. From Daniels' testimony and from the supervisor's admission that he could not recall all of the slogans written on the bathroom walls over the years, the court concluded that someone wrote racial slurs onto the bathroom walls on several occasions. Describing the effect that the graffiti had upon him, Daniels said, "[i]t put a little fear into me" (Tr. 60). As with the dummy, Daniels reported these slogans to his supervisor, who again said to the plaintiff: "Oh, Bob, don't get excited. I will take care of it" (Tr. 61). The slogans were painted over, but according to the plaintiff, they reappeared three or four times (Tr. 61). The district court found that no reasonable effort was made "to discourage further incidents despite the repetitive nature of their occurrences." 740 F.Supp. at 556.

While the graffiti on the bathroom wall did not specifically mention Daniels by name, the writing on the scale-house wall did. ¹ It appeared sometime before the dummy. The exact words were "hi Bob KKK." As with the other racial incidents, Daniels reported the graffiti to Rohrer, who said, "Bob, don't worry about it. You are getting excited about nothing. Don't worry about it. I will take care of it" (Tr. 66). According to Daniels, the writing was still on the scale-house wall when he resigned in April 1988 (Tr. 85).

Daniels reported two other events during the same time that he began to feel threatened and harassed by the dummy, the bathroom graffiti, and the writing on the scale-house wall. The first of these events took place at work when a co-worker by the name of Art Reimer ("Art") approached Daniels and called him a "nigger" and threatened to "whip" Daniels, "take [him] out on [route] 30" and "beat" him (Tr. 64). Art also threatened to injure the plaintiff's four-year-old son. This incident was reported to Essex supervisors, who brought Art and Daniels together in an attempt to resolve their differences. Daniels testified in court that Art continued to call him racist names such as "dumb nigger" after the meeting occurred (Tr. 118).

The final incident testified to by Daniels occurred off the premises of Essex three to four weeks before Daniels quit his job. At about 2:30 one morning, Daniels heard a loud noise on the porch of his home. When he investigated the noise later in the day, he found that someone had shot a bullet into the wall near his bedroom window (Tr. 65). Although Daniels had no proof that an Essex employee had fired the shot into his house, he claimed that the incident precipitated his resignation. On appeal, counsel for defendant argued that because Daniels had failed to prove that an Essex employee had actually fired the shot, the district court improperly considered the evidence as probative of racial harassment. However, the district court discussed the incident, not as part of its legal analysis of racial harassment at work, but in its summary of Daniels' testimony. As we will show below, the incident has bearing in its effect on plaintiff's own fear and feeling of persecution.

All of the incidents took their toll on Daniels. He testified that the events described above made him nervous and that "I just couldn't work there and look around my shoulder all the time and what not. I didn't want to be out there no more. It was a threat to me. It was a threat to * * * my family. I didn't want to go through that stress and strain" (Tr. 71).

Daniels met with Vickie Churchward, who worked in the Personnel Department at Essex, two to three weeks before he quit. He proclaimed his intent to resign because he was "tired of the employees [sic ] harassment and racial jokes" (Tr. 68). Churchward suggested a transfer to another department. ² When he submitted his formal resignation, Daniels wrote that he couldn't take it anymore: "I just got tired of the harassment and the writings on the walls and threats to me and it just kept me nervous all the time" (Tr. 70).

Daniels left Essex in April 1988. The district court found that at no time before his departure did a meeting of the Essex workforce take place to condemn the racial harassment. Nor did the management of Essex ever issue a warning announcing the employer's abhorrence of racial harassment. 740 F.Supp. at 556. Churchward testified that Essex and the employees' union issued a joint resolution condemning discrimination in the workplace to all employees. Id. at 556-557. However, the district judge noted that Daniels never received the memo, and that it was not signed by the union until March 31, 1988, a few weeks before Daniels resigned and well after the specific events complained of by Daniels. Id. at 557 n. 7. As for the resolution's content, the district judge found it to be "a completely ineffective response to racially discriminatory incidents by the very nature of [the resolution's] generic message and distribution." Id.

In addition to the evidence introduced by Daniels concerning the racial harassment directed at him, he also introduced evidence of general racial prejudice. Id. at 558. The first of these instances concerned James Alexander, a black employee of Essex. Alexander worked at the Fort Wayne division of Essex and sought a transfer to the Columbia City plant, where Daniels worked. At his interview, Alexander was told that the Columbia City plant, along with all of the other Essex plants in the country, was "extremely prejudiced" (Tr. 20). Alexander responded that he could withstand prejudice so long as he received the backing of management. The interviewer, who was one of Alexander's supervisors at the Fort Wayne plant, neither confirmed nor denied that the backing of management would be forthcoming in Columbia City. Ultimately,...