Bogle v. Orange County Bd. of County Com'rs

• Decision Date: 09 December 1998
• Docket Number: No. 97-2577,97-2577
• Parties: 78 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. (BNA) 1081, 74 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 4571, 12 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. C 328 William J. BOGLE, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS as governing body of Orange County, Florida, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 653

162 F.3d 653

78 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. (BNA) 1081, 74 Empl.

Prac. Dec. P 4571,

12 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. C 328

William J. BOGLE, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS as governing body of Orange County, Florida, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 97-2577.

United States Court of Appeals Eleventh Circuit.

Dec. 9, 1998.

Carol Swanson, Orlando, FL, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

Bryan K. McMinn, Jeffrey G. Slater, Bobby G. Palmer, Jr., Banks, Hilyard, et al., Orlando, FL, for Defendant-Appellee.

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

Before EDMONDSON and BIRCH, Circuit Judges, and STAFFORD ^*, Senior District Judge.

BIRCH, Circuit Judge:

In this appeal we review the standards for granting judgment as a matter of law in a case arising under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, 29 U.S.C. § 621 et seq. ("ADEA"), and to determine whether the district court properly awarded sanctions against Carol Swanson, the plaintiff-appellant's counsel, pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 ("Rule 11"). We conclude that the district court properly entered judgment as a matter of law at the close of the plaintiff-appellant's case because he failed to introduce evidence that would have permitted a reasonable jury to disbelieve the defendant-appellee's reasons for the adverse employment action. We also conclude that we have no jurisdiction to entertain an appeal from the district court's sanctions order.

BACKGROUND

On August 31, 1993, plaintiff-appellant, William Bogle, lost his job as a corrections officer at the Central Booking Facility in Orange County, Florida. Bogle had worked as a corrections officer for the defendant-appellee, the Orange County Board of County Commissioners ("Orange County"), since November 9, 1987, when it hired him at the age of fifty-eight. Bogle was sixty-three and was the oldest male employee on his shift when Orange County terminated his employment.

Bogle's termination notice stated that Orange County discharged him for violating several policies and ethics rules that governed his conduct as a corrections officer. Although Orange County had disciplined Bogle on a few occasions during the course of his employment, his performance reviews consistently reflected that he met expectations and his coworkers testified that he was a competent worker. On June 26, 1993, however, Bogle's supervisors suspended him for throwing a chair at a door after his co-workers locked him out of a room. Later, on July 30, 1993, Bogle's supervisors and a co-worker reported him for five separate violations of Orange County rules. ¹

Upon Bogle's termination, Robert Scanlon took his position on the day shift. Scanlon was approximately thirty years younger than Bogle. Bogle's theory of the case was that Sergeant Frank Walker, who became one of Bogle's supervisors in 1993, terminated Bogle because of his age and his desire to replace him with Scanlon, a significantly younger friend. Bogle also sought to show that his supervisors had disciplined him selectively to justify his termination and that other, younger employees were not disciplined for engaging in similar behavior.

After filing an age discrimination complaint with the Orlando Human Relations Department and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Bogle filed this cause of action. Bogle's complaint alleges that Orange County terminated him because of his age in violation of the ADEA and Florida's Human Rights law, Fla. Stat. 760.10. Before trial, the district court denied Orange County's motion for summary judgment, finding that material issues of fact remained in dispute. In particular, the district court found that the trier of fact would have to determine whether Bogle had been replaced by a younger employee and whether Orange County's stated reasons for terminating him were pretextual. See R2-54 at 2-3. At the close of Bogle's case in chief, however, the district court granted Orange County's motion for judgment as a matter of law. The district court found that Bogle had failed to present evidence to establish a prima facie case of age discrimination and, alternatively, that Bogle had failed to cast doubt on Orange County's stated reasons for firing him. See R5-103.

On April 10, 1997, three days after the district court entered judgment as a matter of law, Orange County filed a notice of its intent to seek Rule 11 sanctions. On May 5, 1997, Bogle filed a notice of appeal that designated all orders of the district court, including the court's entry of final judgment, for consideration on appeal. Orange County filed its Rule 11 motion on May 8 and the district court granted the motion on July 1, 1997. The district court found that Swanson, Bogle's attorney, had violated Rule 11 by continuing to advance Bogle's age discrimination case after it became evident that his claims had no evidentiary support. The court also faulted Swanson's efforts to investigate Bogle's age discrimination claims and, in particular, her failure to depose Charles Perry, the Orange County employee who made the decision to terminate Bogle. As a sanction, the district court directed Swanson to complete twenty hours of continuing legal education on the subjects of federal employment discrimination law, office or case management, and federal trial or civil procedure. Bogle seeks to reverse the district court's entry of judgment as a matter of law and the imposition of Rule 11 sanctions against Swanson.

DISCUSSION

I. Judgment as a Matter of Law

As noted above, the district court granted Orange County's motion for judgment as a matter of law at the close of Bogle's case. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 50 provides for judgment as a matter of law at the close of the plaintiff's case if the plaintiff has failed to present evidence that would permit a reasonable jury to find for the plaintiff. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 50(a)(1). ² We review the district court's decision to grant judgment as a matter of law de novo and apply the same standards as the district court. See Richardson v. Leeds Police Dep't, 71 F.3d 801, 805 (11th Cir.1995). In evaluating a defendant's Rule 50 motion, made at the close of the plaintiff's case, we must consider all the evidence in the light most favorable to the plaintiff and grant the plaintiff the benefit of all reasonable inferences. Id. Finally, we may affirm a judgment as a matter of law only if the facts and inferences "point so overwhelmingly in favor of the movant ... that reasonable people could not arrive at a contrary verdict." Id. (citations and internal quotation omitted).

Since Bogle has presented no direct evidence that Orange County discharged him because of his age and relied, instead, on circumstantial evidence, the burden-shifting analysis set forth in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 93 S.Ct. 1817, 36 L.Ed.2d 668 (1993), governs his ADEA case. See O'Connor v. Consolidated Coin Caterers Corp., 517 U.S. 308, 311, 116 S.Ct. 1307, 1310, 134 L.Ed.2d 433 (1996) (assuming that the McDonnell Douglas framework applies to ADEA claims); Turlington v. Atlanta Gas Light Co., 135 F.3d 1428, 1432 (11th Cir.1998) (applying the McDonnell Douglas framework in an ADEA case). Pursuant to this familiar framework, Bogle had to establish a prima facie case of discrimination by showing:

(1) that he was a member of the protected group of persons between the ages of forty and seventy; (2) that he was subject to adverse employment action; (3) that a substantially younger person filled the position ... from which he was discharged; and (4) that he was qualified to do the job for which he was rejected.

Turlington, 135 F.3d at 1432 (citing Consolidated Coin, 517 U.S. at 313, 116 S.Ct. at 1310). We note that Bogle presented evidence that showed he was sixty-three years old when Orange County fired him, that a man thirty years younger than Bogle replaced him, and that Bogle received satisfactory performance reviews for all the years he worked for Orange County. Although the district court concluded that Bogle had not set forth a prima facie case of age discrimination, we will assume that Bogle presented sufficient evidence to carry his burden of production on this phase of the case. ³

Once Bogle made out his prima facie case of discrimination, Orange County had to respond with a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for its actions. See Turlington, 135 F.3d at 1432. Although the district court granted judgment as a matter of law before Orange County had the opportunity to present its case, it is clear that Orange County's stated legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason was before the district court in admissible form because Bogle introduced evidence regarding that reason during the presentation of his case. ⁴ Cf. IMPACT v. Firestone, 893 F.2d 1189, 1193 (11th Cir.1990) (noting that the defendant must introduce legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons for its actions in the form of admissible evidence) (quoting Burdine, 450 U.S. at 254-55, 101 S.Ct. at 1095). During the presentation of his case-in-chief, Bogle introduced into evidence a letter from Orange County that notified Bogle both of his dismissal and the reason for that dismissal. The letter lists several previous disciplinary problems and Bogle's violation of a number of policies and procedures as the grounds for his termination. The letter, therefore, established Orange County's position that it fired Bogle because of excessive disciplinary problems. ⁵ Indeed, Bogle devoted the majority of his efforts at trial to an attempt to demonstrate that this justification was pretextual and that he had been the victim of selective discipline.

Once Bogle introduced Orange County's legitimate nondiscriminatory reason for his discharge, the initial presumption of discrimination accompanying the prima facie case dissolved, and the McDonnell Douglas framework required Bogle to demonstrate that the stated reason was pretextual. Combs, 106 F.3d...