Canfield v. Robert Meyer, Jr. & Four Seasons Ford Lincoln Mercury of Cadillac, Inc.
| Decision Date | 18 September 2014 |
| Docket Number | Case No. 1:12-cv-162 |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Western District of Michigan |
| Parties | BARBARA J. CANFIELD, Plaintiff, v. ROBERT MEYER, JR. and FOUR SEASONS FORD LINCOLN MERCURY OF CADILLAC, INC., Defendants. |
HON. JANET T. NEFF
Plaintiff Barbara J. Canfield filed this sex discrimination/hostile work environment action against Robert Meyer, Jr. and Four Seasons Ford Lincoln Mercury of Cadillac, Inc. ("Four Seasons"), stemming from her former employment and business relationship with Defendants. Pending before the Court is Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment (Dkt 96). Plaintiff has filed a Response (Dkt 97), and Defendants have filed a Reply (Dkt 98). Having fully considered the parties' submissions, the Court concludes that oral argument would not assist in the disposition of the issues presented. See W.D. Mich. LCivR 7.2(d) (). For the reasons that follow, Defendants' motion is granted in part and denied in part. The motion is granted with respect to Plaintiff's Title VII claims against Defendant Meyer individually; the motion is denied with respect to Plaintiff's remaining claims.
This case has a lengthy and extensive background, set forth in the First Amended Complaint (FAC) (Dkt 36), and the complaint in the related state court actions in Wexford County Circuit Court (Defs. Brf., Dkt 96, Ex. 16). The litigation between the parties stems from joint business dealings surrounding two car dealerships in Cadillac, Michigan, and specifically, Plaintiff's stock ownership in Defendant Four Seasons and her former employment as the manager. In short, Plaintiff's relationship with Defendant Meyer became acrimonious, their business relationship went sour, and Plaintiff contends she was squeezed out of the business while Meyer and his cohorts allegedly conspired to drain its finances and deplete the value of Plaintiff's stock holdings. Defendants, however, contend that the Four Seasons dealership suffered under Plaintiff's leadership and her removal as the manager was a fundamental business and financial decision.
Until December 2010, Four Seasons owned and operated a Ford dealership in Cadillac, Michigan. Meyer is Four Seasons' 78 % majority shareholder, an officer of the Company, and a member of its board of directors. Meyer is/was also the majority shareholder of two other car dealerships in Northern Michigan, Gateway Chrysler Dodge Jeep, Inc. ("Gateway") and Cadillac Motors Enterprises, Inc. ("Cadillac Motors"), which operated as a Toyota dealership ("Swaffer's Toyota of Cadillac"). Plaintiff is the 22 % minority shareholder of Defendant Four Seasons, and until her termination in April 2010, she was its president and a member of its board of directors. She was also Four Season's Dealer Principal and General Manager, dating back to 2002, but she reported to Meyer as her superior.
According to Plaintiff, in 2001, Meyer approached her to become involved in Four Seasons, telling her that having a woman as a dealer principal would be beneficial in dealings with Ford and "we need to use the woman thing" with Ford (Pl. Aff., Dkt 97-2 ¶¶ 1-2).2 At the time, Plaintiff had more than 15 years of experience in automotive sales and automotive dealership management and a reputation as a successful and respected dealer and businesswoman (id. ¶ 3).
In and around 2004, Meyer began exploring the purchase of another automobile dealership, Cadillac Motors. As with Four Seasons, Meyer wanted to "use the woman thing" to obtain Toyota's approval, and he listed Rosalyn Swaffer as the Dealer Principal even though Rosalyn's husband, Kris Swaffer, operated and managed this dealership (FAC ¶ 22). The Swaffers are named defendants in Plaintiff's state court action, and alleged cohorts of Meyer.
Plaintiff states that her problems with Meyer began in late 2004/early 2005, when Meyer began negotiations to acquire a building to house both Four Seasons (run by Plaintiff) and Cadillac Motors (run by Kris Swaffer) (FAC ¶¶ 23-24; Pl. Aff. ¶ 9). Meyer needed the agreement of Ford and Toyota, and as Dealer Principal, Plaintiff was responsible for obtaining Ford's approval (FAC ¶ 23; Pl. Aff. ¶ 10). When Ford refused approval, Meyer's anti-female animus began to permeate Plaintiff's working environment:
For example, when Ford's initial response to combining the two dealerships on one property was "absolutely not," Meyer remarked that "I should have known better than to send a woman to do a man's job." Defendant Meyer then told Ms. Canfield that her husband, Howard Canfield, an experienced salesman at Four Seasons, needed to be involved in the discussions with Ford because "men do not appreciate having to deal with women."
(FAC ¶ 24; Pl. Aff. ¶¶ 12-13).
Plaintiff asserts numerous specific instances of what she terms "a painful and tumultuous four-plus years of severe and pervasive gender-based contempt by Defendant Meyer directed toward [Plaintiff] and other female employees at Four Seasons" (FAC ¶ 26). She asserts that from mid-2005 to March 2010, Meyer made countless degrading, disparaging and sexist comments about Plaintiff, other female employees and women in general, and he otherwise engaged in conduct that demonstrated clear anti-female animus, such as routinely calling her a bitch and cunt and using vulgar language to disparage her work performance; telling her she was overpaid as a woman, that women should never have been given the right to vote, she was just "hormonal" and that "women tend to be paranoid during certain times of the month"; asking whether she was "PMS'ing" or "bleeding"; stating that "women have no credibility" and should not be used at the dealership to sell or explain vehicle service issues; telling her she needed to "quit bleeding" and "grow some balls" if she wanted to be part of the "big boy world" (id. ¶¶ 27, 27(a)-(x); Pl. Aff., Dkt 97-2).3
Plaintiff states that by the middle of 2009, Meyer's conduct escalated to outright intimidation and physically threatening conduct toward Plaintiff, including threats of bodily harm to her daughters (FAC ¶ 28; Pl. Aff. ¶ 31). Meyer told Plaintiff that he would do whatever it took for Kris Swaffer to be running Four Seasons instead of Plaintiff (Pl. Aff. ¶ 44).
In March of 2010, without any notice to Plaintiff, Meyer hired a man by the name of Tom Vanderhyde to apparently supervise Plaintiff's work (Pl. Aff. ¶ 46). Plaintiff left on a scheduled vacation on March 27 or 28, 2010 and when she returned on April 9, 2010, Vanderhyde was moved into her office and had taken control of the dealership (id. ¶¶ 46-48). On April 5, 2010, Meyercalled a meeting of the stockholders of Four Seasons, the purpose of which was to officially vote to remove Plaintiff as Dealer Principal and General Manager (id. ¶ 51). Meyer, as the controlling shareholder, cast the votes necessary to remove Plaintiff from her positions at Four Seasons (id. ¶ 52). Plaintiff states she was advised that her employment was terminated (id. ¶ 49), although Defendants dispute that Plaintiff was ever "terminated" (Defs. Brf. at 11-12).
Plaintiff obtained a Right to Sue letter from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and filed this sex discrimination/hostile work environment action. Plaintiff previously filed a lawsuit against Meyer, Four Seasons, several related companies, and the Swaffers, in Wexford County Circuit Court. That case was consolidated with two other cases in Wexford Circuit Court and remains pending (see Dkt 17).
In December 2012, this Court denied Defendants' motion to abstain in favor of the parties' pending state court litigation (Or., Dkt 31). In January 2013, Plaintiff filed an amended complaint (FAC, Dkt 36), which added Plaintiff Howard Canfield, additional Defendants and general allegations, and thirteen counts duplicative of those in pending state court lawsuits. The Court declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the added state law claims, and dismissed them without prejudice (Dkt 41).
The original four counts of the discrimination case remain before this Court:
(FAC, Dkt 36; Op. & Or., Dkt 41).
A moving party is entitled to a grant of its motion for summary judgment "if the movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." FED. R. CIV. P. 56(a); see also Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 247-48 (1986). The court must consider the evidence and all reasonable inferences in favor of the nonmoving party. Burgess v. Fischer, 735 F.3d 462, 471 (6th Cir. 2013); U.S. S.E.C. v. Sierra Brokerage Servs., Inc., 712 F.3d 321, 327 (6th Cir. 2013) (citation omitted).
The moving party has the initial burden of showing the absence of a genuine issue of material fact. Jakubowski v. Christ Hosp., Inc., 627 F.3d 195, 200 (6th Cir. 2010). The burden then "shifts to the nonmoving party, who must present some 'specific facts showing that there is a genuine issue for trial.'" Id. (quoting Anderson, 477 U.S. at 248). "There is no genuine issue for trial where the record 'taken as a whole could not lead a rational trier of fact to find for the non-moving party.'" Burgess, 735 F.3d at 471 (quoting Matsushita Elec. Indus., Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574, 587 (1986). "The ultimate question is 'whether the evidence presents a sufficient disagreement to require submission to a jury or whether it is so one-sided that one party must prevail as a matter of law.'" Back v. Nestle USA, Inc...
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