De Anda v. St. Joseph Hospital
Decision Date | 03 March 1982 |
Docket Number | No. 80-1639,80-1639 |
Citation | 671 F.2d 850 |
Parties | 28 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. 317, 28 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 32,524 CORRECTED OPINION Leyla B. DE ANDA, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. ST. JOSEPH HOSPITAL, Defendant-Appellee. Summary Calendar. |
Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
David T. Lopez, Houston, Tex., for plaintiff-appellant.
Fulbright & Jaworski, A. J. Harper, II, Susan J. Piller, Houston, Tex., for defendant-appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
Before CLARK, Chief Judge, REAVLEY and RANDALL, Circuit Judges.
This appeal is taken from a decision of the district court in favor of St. Joseph Hospital ("St. Joseph"), Defendant-Appellee, in an action brought under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and § 1981 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 by Plaintiff-Appellant, Leyla De Anda ("De Anda"), a pharmacist formerly employed by St. Joseph. De Anda sued, claiming that because she had complained to hospital administrators of alleged racial discrimination in hiring practices of the director of pharmacy, Scotty Slater ("Slater"), she had subsequently been harassed by unwarranted counseling reports and ultimately discharged in retaliation for her protests initially to St. Joseph and ultimately to EEOC. 1 She also sought declaratory and injunctive relief against alleged racially discriminatory practices of St. Joseph.
The trial court, after hearing evidence, held that De Anda failed to establish a prima facie case of retaliation, that even if a prima facie case had been established, St. Joseph had articulated legitimate, non-discriminatory reasons for its counseling reports and termination that were not motivated by De Anda's actions protesting alleged discrimination.
The court further held that it lacked jurisdiction over De Anda's § 1981 claims and that even if the court had jurisdiction under § 1981, De Anda had failed to establish a prima facie case of retaliation under § 1981.
On appeal, De Anda asks us to reverse the trial court's findings of no retaliation and lack of jurisdiction under § 1981. We hold that the case must be remanded to the trial court for further findings of fact and conclusions of law as to the Title VII claim. Further, we vacate the trial court's judgment that it had no jurisdiction under § 1981 and remand that claim for supplemental briefing, findings of fact and conclusions of law.
Leyla De Anda, after receiving a degree in pharmacy, was employed as a technician in the pharmacy department at St. Joseph in February, 1970 filling prescriptions. In 1972, after passing the pharmacy registry, De Anda became a staff pharmacist in the intravenous ("IV") room of the pharmacy. As a staff pharmacist, De Anda filled IV mixtures to be given to the patients in St. Joseph. In April, 1976 De Anda was promoted to supervisor of the 7 a. m. to 3:30 p. m. shift in the IV room of the pharmacy department. At the same time De Anda was appointed supervisor for the IV room on one shift, supervisors were appointed in the main dispensary and the IV room for other shifts. During the first seven-and-one-half years of her employment (until November, 1977), De Anda received good to outstanding evaluations and as late as May, 1977 was considered a potential assistant director of the pharmacy department. Until that date she had no written reports in her file detailing any problems in her positions as staff pharmacist and supervisor.
In January, 1977 the hospital hired Slater as director of the pharmacy department. At the time of Slater's hiring, the hospital was concerned about possible racial tensions in the pharmacy department, medication errors, financial problems and lack of accountability for drugs.
In May, 1977 contemporaneous with De Anda's evaluation indicating potential for promotion to assistant pharmacy director, Slater and Steve Eckerd, then assistant director of pharmacy, told De Anda that she had twenty-four hour responsibility for the IV room. This twenty-four hour responsibility was acknowledged by De Anda, though she maintained it had been pushed upon her without appropriate compensation or promotion.
In September, 1977 the hospital hired John Glorioso ("Glorioso") as an associate director of pharmacy. He was in charge of the operational aspects of the pharmacy department, including the IV room. Glorioso was the "number-two" person in the department and reported directly to Slater. De Anda, as a supervisor in the IV room, reported directly to Glorioso.
In September, 1977 Slater gave De Anda authority to hire a staff pharmacist for the IV room during his absence from the hospital. De Anda apparently reviewed several applications and discussed the potential hiring with Slater. According to De Anda, Slater told her to pay different wages to a black potential pharmacist than would be paid to a white potential pharmacist. De Anda, sometime in late September, reported what she perceived as racial discrimination in hiring to the hospital administration. 2
Subsequent to De Anda's report of Slater's alleged racial discrimination, she received verbal and written counseling pertaining to alleged errors in her job performance and in the performance of pharmacists on other shifts because of her 24-hour supervisory responsibility. 3 The written reports followed closely after complaints were made by De Anda initially to the hospital concerning Slater's racial discrimination in hiring and subsequently to the EEOC concerning his alleged harassment of De Anda in retaliation for her earlier complaints. 4
Ultimately, De Anda was terminated by Slater for an incident detailed in the written report of November 18, 1977. Briefly, the uncontroverted report of the incident showed that a nurse showed a syringe containing a brown substance to De Anda on November 13, 1977. The syringe contained a brown substance which had been withdrawn into the syringe from an IV tubing solution being administered to a patient. The nurse asked De Anda for her advice in determining the foreign substance from the IV tube. De Anda determined that the substance was probably a blood clot and returned the syringe to the nurse, telling her to show the syringe to her supervisor. 5 De Anda also prepared an identical IV to the one which had been given to the patient to replace the one containing the foreign substance. De Anda did not further investigate the matter until the next day, November 14, and never determined the source of the foreign substance.
Slater received a report of the "foreign substance" incident on November 15. On November 18, he prepared a written report detailing the incident, describing possible problems of incompatibility of two solutions which were being administered together in the IV and which might be indicated by the foreign substance, noting De Anda's failure to investigate this possible incompatibility, describing possible dangers to patients from her failure to investigate the cause of the foreign substance, and dismissing her "for failure to take reasonable action, based on your experience and professional knowledge to protect this and possibly more patients." Def. Exb. 1, p. 3.
The EEOC subsequently issued a "right to sue" letter and De Anda brought suit alleging racial discrimination and retaliation against her by St. Joseph in violation of of Title VII, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-3(a) (1976), and § 1981, 42 U.S.C. § 1981 (1976). At trial, several witnesses testified that Slater treated blacks different than whites, that several black employees had left the hospital after his employment, and that the overall number of blacks in the pharmacy department had decreased. Additionally, there was testimony that one pharmacist had told another that De Anda would be and was fired because of her "embarrassing" complaints against Slater, and that at least one person, Willis Jackson, a former employee, noticed Slater treating De Anda differently before the complaints than he did after her complaints.
The testimony presented by St. Joseph included a denial by Slater of De Anda's charge of discrimination, an explanation by Slater and Glorioso of the various counseling reports and specifically an explanation of the reasons that they determined De Anda had acted in a manner which could have placed patients' lives in jeopardy.
De Anda did not introduce any experts to testify about her reaction to the "foreign substance" incident, nor did St. Joseph. De Anda introduced written evidence that the solutions being given in the troublesome IV were, in fact, compatible and St. Joseph introduced evidence that the solutions could be incompatible. 6
After reviewing the sequence of events described above and the testimony relevant to them, the trial court found no actionable retaliation by St. Joseph against De Anda and no jurisdiction to decide the § 1981 claim. De Anda appeals, claiming that the trial court erred in its determination that no retaliation existed because it failed to complete the legal analysis required in a Title VII case, i.e., to consider whether St. Joseph's articulated reasons for De Anda's discharge were pretextual. De Anda also appeals the court's determination that it did not have jurisdiction under § 1981. We address each argument in turn.
We first note that our standard of review of the findings of fact of the trial court in this Title VII case is dependent upon whether the finding at issue is one of ultimate fact or subsidiary fact. Wilkins v. University of Houston, 654 F.2d 388 at 389-90 (5th Cir. 1981). In a Title VII case, the ultimate finding of fact, whether there was unlawful discrimination, is subject to independent review by this court. Wilkins, 654 F.2d 388 at 389-90; Gupta v. East Texas State University, 654 F.2d 411, 414 (5th Cir. 1981); Rhode v. K. O. Steel Castings, Inc., 649 F.2d 317 (5th Cir. 1981); Danner v....
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