Cardona Jimenez v. Bancomerico de Puerto Rico

• Decision Date: 02 March 1999
• Docket Number: No. 98-1693,98-1693
• Parties: 79 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. (BNA) 1358, 75 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 45,845 Rosa CARDONA JIMENEZ and Charles E. Casellas Rosario, Plaintiffs, Appellees, v. BANCOMERCIO DE PUERTO RICO, Defendant, Appellant. . Heard
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

Page 36

174 F.3d 36

79 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. (BNA) 1358,

75 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 45,845

Rosa CARDONA JIMENEZ and Charles E. Casellas Rosario, Plaintiffs, Appellees, v. BANCOMERCIO DE PUERTO RICO, Defendant, Appellant.

No. 98-1693.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard March 2, 1999.

Decided April 6, 1999.

William Santiago Sastre with whom Marcos Valls Sanchez was on brief for appellants.

Fernando L. Gallardo for appellee.

Before SELYA, Circuit Judge, COFFIN and CYR, Senior Circuit Judges.

COFFIN, Senior Circuit Judge.

Plaintiff-appellee Rosa Cardona Jimenez ("Cardona") was fired from her employment with defendant-appellant Bancomercio de Puerto Rico ("Bancomercio"). She subsequently brought suit under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, 29 U.S.C. §§ 621-34, ("ADEA"), and under Puerto Rico Law 100, P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 29, §§ 146-51, ("Law 100"). Cardona prevailed at trial, and on appeal Bancomercio claims that the court incorrectly denied its motion for judgment as a matter of law, in addition to committing other errors. We agree that Cardona failed to present sufficient evidence for a jury to find she had been the victim of age discrimination, and therefore reverse.

I. Background

The following facts are undisputed. Cardona was originally hired to work in the banking industry in 1972. Through a series of bank mergers and acquisitions, she eventually became an employee of Bancomercio in 1991. The following year Bancomercio promoted her to manager of the Puerto Nuevo branch, where she was in charge of half a dozen tellers and other employees. During her tenure at Bancomercio and its predecessors, Cardona had consistently received highly positive evaluations of her performance.

From 1993 to 1995, Bancomercio was not performing as profitably as it should have been, due apparently in part to periodic discrepancies between cash inventories in tellers' drawers and the amounts that ought to have been there. As a consequence, the bank began concentrating on those discrepancies to reduce unaccounted for losses. Bancomercio instructed the branch managers to implement three specific procedures to safeguard the money against possible theft. First, the tellers had limits on the cash they were allowed to have in their drawers. If a teller received deposits which increased the amounts in the drawer above that limit, the manager would transfer some cash from that teller's drawer to the vault. Second, the manager was supposed to engage in periodic verifications of the tellers' cash levels. Managers did not personally reconcile the actual cash in the drawers with the teller's transactions on a daily basis. To ensure that the tellers were not dipping into the till, managers were instructed to conduct random surprise counts of the drawers to check for discrepancies. Third, managers were responsible for checking daily whether each drawer contained roughly the correct number of bundles of large denomination bills.

Consistent with these actions to be taken by managers, Bancomercio also instituted a policy to be implemented by the Human Resources department. In light of the fact that Bancomercio permitted its tellers to maintain personal accounts at the bank, the Human Resources department was instructed to monitor the tellers' accounts periodically, looking for unusual or suspicious activity.

Despite these procedures, a teller supervised by Cardona at the Puerto Nuevo branch stole a significant amount of money. An auditor of the branch noticed that the teller, Lorna Ramirez ("Ramirez"), had developed a habit of making small deposits into her bank account two or three times a week. The auditor found this pattern suspicious and informed the assistant vice president of operations. The assistant vice president, in turn, instructed Cardona to perform a surprise cash verification the following day. When the check was performed, it was discovered that Ramirez's drawer was more than $8,000 short of the $13,000 it should have contained. Ramirez was immediately dismissed, consistent with bank policy.

Bancomercio conducted an internal investigation and found that Cardona had failed to take the three precautions required to prevent precisely this sort of theft. First, Cardona had permitted Ramirez to retain $13,000 in her cash drawer, well in excess of her $10,000 limit. Second, Cardona had established a pattern for the "surprise" cash verifications, thereby allowing Ramirez to determine when such audits would take place and eliminating the benefit of any surprise. Third, the bank concluded that Cardona had not counted the bundles of $20 bills, and consequently Ramirez had placed rolls of coins under the bundles to artificially inflate their appearance. Ramirez, in fact, admitted that she had been able to steal the money because she knew Cardona was not taking these precautions. The auditor also criticized the Human Resources department for failing to give adequate attention to the pattern of deposits in Ramirez's account.

Bancomercio's Human Resources Committee met to discuss the situation. The members testified that they decided to fire Cardona for failure to supervise her tellers adequately. Cardona was summoned to the bank's central offices and informed of the bank's decision. At that meeting, the bank told her that she would receive her week's pay and all accrued vacation pay. Bancomercio also offered to pay her an extra $5000 in return for a release from any claims against it, but she refused. At the time of firing, she was 41. She was temporarily replaced by another employee, Wilfredo Robles, who was also 41. Her permanent replacement was Luisa Guerrero, age 37. Although Cardona was dismissed, the bank merely reprimanded Giselle Lebron ("Lebron"), the head of Human Resources, for failure to monitor Ramirez's account.

Cardona sued Bancomercio, claiming age discrimination. The parties consented to trial before a magistrate judge. See 28 U.S.C. § 636(c). At trial, the parties stipulated that, of the 166 employees hired between 1993 and 1995, 49 were born before 1955. Testimony also revealed that 9 of the 33 employees fired between 1993 and 1995 were born before 1955.

At the close of Cardona's case, Bancomercio presented a motion for judgment as a matter of law. It renewed the motion at the close of its case, and after the jury verdict. Each time the court denied it.

II. Discussion

Bancomercio is entitled to judgment as a matter of law only if there is no legally sufficient evidentiary basis for a reasonable jury to find for the plaintiff. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 50(a). We review the court's denial of the bank's motion de novo, taking the facts in the light most favorable to Cardona. See Russo v. Baxter Healthcare Corp., 140 F.3d 6, 7-8 (1st Cir.1998). Cardona must provide "more than a mere scintilla of evidence and may not rely on conjecture or speculation to justify the submission of an issue to the jury." Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). Although she had other related subsidiary claims, Cardona's verdict was premised on either her ADEA or her Law 100 claim, and our analysis must start there.

A. ADEA. In relevant part, the ADEA prohibits Bancomercio from discharging Cardona because of her age. In a wrongful discharge case such as this one, Cardona bears the ultimate burden of proving that she would not have been fired but for her age. See Serrano-Cruz v. DFI Puerto Rico, Inc., 109 F.3d 23, 25 (1st Cir.1997). When the plaintiff has direct evidence of discriminatory animus, the case may be put to the jury without further ado. See Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Thurston, 469 U.S. 111, 121, 105 S.Ct. 613, 83 L.Ed.2d 523 (1985). When, as here, direct evidence is lacking, the plaintiff's ADEA claim is governed by the familiar McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting framework. See McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 802-05, 93 S.Ct. 1817, 36 L.Ed.2d 668 (1973); Alvarez-Fonseca v. Pepsi Cola of Puerto Rico Bottling Co., 152 F.3d 17, 24 (1st Cir.1998).

Under McDonnell Douglas, Cardona must first present a prima facie case of age discrimination, which requires that she show: 1) she was a member of a protected age group, i.e., at least 40 years old; 2) she was meeting Bancomercio's legitimate job expectations; 3) she was fired; and 4) the employer had a continuing need for the same services, and they subsequently were performed by one with the same or similar qualifications as the plaintiff. See Brennan v. GTE Government Systems Corp., 150 F.3d 21, 26 (1st Cir.1998). Once she has met this modest burden, a presumption of discrimination attaches, and Bancomercio must articulate a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for firing her. See id. If it does so, the presumption of discrimination vanishes and Cardona must show by a preponderance of the evidence both that the bank's reason was a pretext and that the real reason was age-based animus. See Alvarez-Fonseca, 152 F.3d at 24; Brennan, 150 F.3d at 26. While Bancomercio briefly has the burden of producing a legitimate reason for her discharge, Cardona shoulders the burden of persuasion throughout. See St. Mary's Honor Ctr. v. Hicks, 509 U.S. 502, 511, 113 S.Ct. 2742, 125 L.Ed.2d 407 (1993); Serrano-Cruz, 109 F.3d at 26.

Bancomercio concedes that Cardona has established her prima facie case but argues that it has articulated a legitimate reason which she failed to rebut. We note that, even considering the evidence in the light most favorable to Cardona, the bank's reason is compelling. The bank instructed branch managers to undertake three specific measures to safeguard its capital, which is the bank's very raison d'etre. Whatever her previous evaluations, the uncontested evidence showed that Cardona failed to implement any of the three in the manner required by the bank. ¹ As a result of her dereliction, a teller under her supervision stole more than $8,000.

Cardona highlights two additional pieces of evidence to meet her responsibility of demonstrating...