Allen v. Highlands Hosp. Corp.
| Decision Date | 21 October 2008 |
| Docket Number | No. 07-6414.,07-6414. |
| Citation | 545 F.3d 387 |
| Parties | Jo Ann ALLEN and Debra Slone, Plaintiffs-Appellants, Tammy Davis, Individually and as Next Friend of Emily Davis, Plaintiff, v. HIGHLANDS HOSPITAL CORPORATION, Defendant-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit |
Earl M. McGuire, Prestonburg, Kentucky, for Appellants. Vincent Candiello, Post & Schell, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for Appellee.
ON BRIEF:
Earl M. McGuire, Prestonburg, Kentucky, for Appellants. Vincent Candiello, Post & Schell, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for Appellee.
Before: GILMAN, KETHLEDGE, and ALARCÓN, Circuit Judges.*
Jo Ann Allen and Debra Slone (collectively the plaintiffs) sued their employer, Highlands Hospital Corporation (HHC or the Hospital), for age discrimination under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) and the Kentucky Civil Rights Act (KCRA). In November 2003, both women were terminated after they allegedly violated HHC's confidentiality policy. HHC determined that Allen and Slone had breached the confidentiality of one of its patients, Allen's minor granddaughter, by permitting the removal of the girl's x-rays from the Hospital without written authorization from the girl's mother.
Allen and Slone each filed a state-court action against HHC. They claimed that the Hospital's stated reason for discharging them was a pretext designed to hide age discrimination. Both cases were removed to federal district court and consolidated for trial. HHC subsequently filed a motion for summary judgment, which the court granted. For the reasons set forth below, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.
1. Allen's and Slone's terminations
Allen was hired by the Hospital in 1977. She worked in various nursing and supervisory positions until her termination. Slone was hired in 1987 to work as a transcriptionist in the radiology department, where she was responsible for filing, typing, and working at the front desk of the department. At the time of their terminations, Allen and Slone were 63 and 53 years old, respectively.
Emily Davis, Tammy Davis's 10-year-old daughter and Allen's granddaughter, injured her left arm on Wednesday, October 29, 2003. Allen picked up Emily from school and urged Tammy Davis to take the child to the emergency room. Davis complied by taking her daughter to the emergency room at the Hospital, where x-rays were taken of Emily's arm. She then made an appointment for Emily to see a doctor the following Monday. Although Davis was told to pick up Emily's x-rays before leaving the Hospital in order to have them for the appointment, she forgot to do so.
Having realized that she forgot the x-rays, Davis asked Allen to pick them up while Allen was at work on Friday, even though Davis had not signed a release permitting Allen to obtain the records. The next morning, Allen went to the radiology department in order to retrieve the x-rays. She was told by a member of the radiology department that she could not get a copy of the x-rays without a signed release form. Despite being informed that releasing the x-rays without proper authorization would violate the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), a statute protecting patient privacy, Allen continued her efforts to retrieve the films. She was ultimately able to get a copy of the x-rays from Slone.
Allen later signed Davis's name on a release form, backdated the document, and put it in the x-ray jacket. Throughout the course of this litigation, Allen has maintained that her actions did not constitute a "forgery" because she had Davis's oral permission to sign the release. Davis, however, did not recall whether she had given Allen permission to sign her name, but she did give Allen permission to pick up the x-rays.
HHC investigated Allen's and Slone's conduct for breach of patient privacy. Harold Warman, the President and CEO of HHC, decided to terminate the plaintiffs based on the recommendation of the Hospital's Vice President of Human Resources. The Hospital has maintained that Allen's and Slone's policy violation constituted a "Group I" offense, the worst category of offenses that an employee can commit, and one that authorizes termination upon the first infraction.
Warman, however, could not remember the exact details of the policy and conceded that, in an emergency situation, verbal authorization might be allowed. Other employees also stated that they did not know whether there was a written policy detailing how authorization for the release of medical records was to be obtained, and no written policy of this type appears in the record. But every HHC official involved in the disciplinary process agreed that Allen and Slone had committed a Group I offense and should be terminated.
2. HHC's cost-cutting strategies and employee-turnover rates
Warman became the President and CEO of HHC in 1998. Soon after he arrived at HHC, he implemented a series of measures to cut costs at the Hospital. Mary Jarvis, a budget manager who reported to Warman, testified that these cost-cutting measures included increasing employee turnover, reducing the amount of sick and vacation time used by employees, closing departments, eliminating positions, and using fewer staff members per shift than had previously been required.
Jarvis also said that one of Warman's strategies was to terminate employees based on seniority to facilitate the hiring of new, less costly employees. In fact, Warman increased the annual turnover rate from 2% to 28%. Jarvis did not know whether the cost-cutting measures had a disproportionate effect on older employees, but she said that Warman's focus was at all times on improving HHC's financial situation.
As the district court noted, the cost-cutting measures implemented by Warman "did not necessarily disproportionately affect" older employees at the Hospital. HHC's expert presented the following statistics reflecting the change in the Hospital's workforce from the time that Warman became CEO in 1998 through the end of 2004:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total Number Employees Age Employees Younger
Date of Employees 40 and Older than Age 40
------------------------------------------------------------------------
July 1998 672 273 399
------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 2002 488 253 235
------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 2004 530 267 263
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The district court summarized this data as follows:
[F]rom 1998 to 2004, there was a decrease of 136 employees in the under forty category and a decrease of six employees in the forty or over ... category. Just under 89% of the 184 employees terminated or leaving HHC from 1998 until 2002 were under forty, and if the longer time period is examined, from 1998 to 2004, just over 95% of employee loss took place within the under forty category. The percentage of those employed within the forty and over class rose from just over 40% to just over 51% and back down to just over 50% from 1998 to 2002 to 2004, respectively.
Allen filed a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in December 2003, claiming that HHC had violated the ADEA by discharging her on the basis of her age. She received a Right to Sue Letter in April 2004 and filed suit in a Kentucky state court three months later. In addition to the age-discrimination claim, Allen also brought state-law claims for emotional distress, defamation, and wrongful discharge.
Slone filed an EEOC charge in June 2004. Like Allen, Slone contended that she had been discharged because of her age. Slone received an EEOC Right to Sue Letter in October 2004. In February 2005, she filed suit in a Kentucky state court, alleging that HHC had violated both federal and state law by discriminating against her on the basis of her age.
HHC removed both suits to the appropriate federal district court, where the cases were consolidated for trial. Following a substantial period of discovery, the Hospital moved for summary judgment. The district court granted the motion in March 2007, concluding that Allen's and Slone's disparate-treatment and disparate-impact claims were without merit. With respect to their disparate-treatment claim, the district court determined that Allen and Slone had failed to demonstrate that HHC's legitimate, nondiscriminatory explanation for their terminations—their alleged violation of patient privacy—was pretextual. In particular, the court explained that the plaintiffs had failed to produce circumstantial evidence that the motivating factor behind the Hospital's action was based on their age.
As for the disparate-impact claim, the court explained that the plaintiffs had failed to identify a sufficiently specific practice that disproportionately disadvantaged HHC's older employees. The court also concluded that the Hospital's goal of cutting costs by increasing turnover and discouraging employees from using sick and vacation time was not unlawful. This timely appeal followed.
This court reviews de novo the district court's grant of summary judgment as to Allen's and Slone's disparate-treatment and disparate-impact claims. See Int'l Union v. Cummins, 434 F.3d 478, 483 (6th Cir.2006). Summary judgment is proper where no genuine issue of material fact exists and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Fed. R.Civ.P. 56(c). In considering a motion for summary judgment, the district court must construe all reasonable inferences in favor of...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Equal Emp't Opportunities Comm'n v. La Rana Haw., LLC
...on Arbaugh, that held that another Title VII pre-suit requirement was not jurisdictional. [ Id. at 19 (citing Allen v. Highlands Hosp. Corp., 545 F.3d 387, 400–02 (6th Cir.2008)).] The EEOC argues that, since the filing of the ALTRES Motion, the interpretive approach has been embraced by se......
-
Wrobbel v. International Broth. of Elec. Workers
... ... v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574, 106 S.Ct. 1348, 89 L.Ed.2d 538 (1986); Anderson v ... Baptist Hosp. of E. Tenn., 302 F.3d 367, 379 (6th Cir.2002) that "federal courts do ... can reasonably be expected to grow out of the EEOC charge," and in Allen v. Highlands Hosp. Corp., 545 F.3d 387, 401-02 (6th Cir.2008), held, ... ...
-
Shweika v. Dep't of Homeland Sec.
...at 644–45;Hoogerheide, 637 F.3d at 636–37;Spengler v. Worthington Cylinders, 615 F.3d 481, 489 (6th Cir.2010); Allen v. Highlands Hosp. Corp., 545 F.3d 387, 400 (6th Cir.2008). Our recent opinion interpreting 26 U.S.C. § 7429 is particularly instructive. See Abraitis, 709 F.3d at 644. This ......
-
Emswiler v. CSX Transp., Inc.
...suit, previously considered a jurisdictional restriction, is now considered mandatory but nonjurisdictional. Allen v. Highlands Hosp. Corp., 545 F.3d 387, 401–402 (6th Cir.2008) (overruling prior precedent in light of Arbaugh). Further, a taxpayer's failure to exhaust IRS administrative rem......
-
Filing charges and lawsuits
...does not state a limitation on federal courts’ subject matter jurisdiction over such claims.” Allen v. Highlands Hosp. Corp. , 545 F.3d 387, 401 (6th Cir. 2008). In Allen , the employer argued that because plainti൵s failed to allege disparate impact claims in their EEOC charges, they could ......
-
Proving age discrimination
...F.3d 134, 139 (2d Cir. 2006) (“We see nothing in City of Jackson that casts doubt on this holding”). In Allen v. Highlands Hosp. Corp., 545 F.3d 387, 405 (6th Cir. 2008), the Sixth Circuit described the plainti൵’s burden to identify a speciic practice as “nontrivial.” Plainti൵s alleged that......