Cassano v. DeSoto, Inc., 93 C 4485.
Decision Date | 19 July 1994 |
Docket Number | No. 93 C 4485.,93 C 4485. |
Citation | 860 F. Supp. 537 |
Parties | Karyn A. CASSANO, Plaintiff, v. DeSOTO, INC., et al., Defendants. |
Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois |
John Malevitis, Bernard R. Nevoral & Assoc, Ltd., Chicago, IL, for plaintiff.
William Cirignani Seyforth, Shaw, Fairweather, & Geraldson, Chicago, IL, for defendants.
Mark Renfro ("Renfro") and T. Farrell Shoffeitt ("Shoffeitt") have moved for summary judgment against Karyn Cassano ("Cassano"), seeking to be dismissed from her Title VII1 Complaint charging them as well as DeSoto, Inc. ("DeSoto") with sex discrimination. For the reasons stated in this memorandum opinion and order, their motion is denied.
Cassano's assertions of discrimination presented to EEOC (as reflected in her Affidavit, P.Ex. B) expressly identify both Renfro and Shoffeitt as the architects of DeSoto's assertedly discriminatory adverse employment action:
Cassano's Charge of Discrimination named only DeSoto itself in the box provided immediately below the legend reading "Named as the employer, labor organization, employment agency, apprenticeship committee, state or local government agency who discriminated against me." But here is what Cassano testified at her deposition in this case (Dep. 130-31, 134):
"Employers" under Title VII
Title VII's definition of "employer" reads this way in relevant part (Section 2000e(b), emphasis added):
(b) The term "employer" means a person engaged in an industry affecting commerce who has fifteen or more employees for each working day in each of twenty or more calendar weeks in the current or preceding calendar year, and any agent of such a person....
And Section 2000e-2(a) defines "unlawful employment practice" in terms of discriminatory conduct by "an employer." Finally, Section 2000e-5(e) calls for the EEOC filing of unlawful employment practice charges against "the person against whom such charge is made."
Read in the normal way (that is, as a matter of plain meaning), those provisions would appear to make individuals Renfro and Shoffeitt as well as corporate employer DeSoto potentially liable for their asserted discrimination here. Our Court of Appeals has not had occasion to opine directly on that question.3 But despite the statutory language a substantial number of courts (perhaps a majority) have rejected such personal liability. As this Court's colleague Honorable Marvin Aspen put it in Pommier v. James L. Edelstein Enterprises, 816 F.Supp. 476, 480-81 (N.D.Ill.1993) ( ):
The only court within this district to address the issue has held that such supervisors are not "employers" against whom a Title VII action may be maintained in their individual capacities. The Court in Weiss reasoned that, to the extent that such a supervisor is an "agent" of the employer, such individual stands only as a surrogate for the employer and, hence, may only be held liable in their official capacity.
That approach is unpersuasive to this Court. Like its other colleague Honorable James Moran, and in part for the reasons that he has set out in Vakharia v. Swedish Covenant Hosp., 824 F.Supp. 769, 785-86 (N.D.Ill.1993), this Court opts to uphold the prospect of individual personal liability stemming from a discriminatory decision made by a responsible decisionmaker on behalf of an employer corporation. After all, there is no compelling reason for importing into employment discrimination cases the "official capacity" concept that plays a role in Section 1983 jurisprudence:
So this Court does not share the point of view of such decisions as Pommier and Weiss as a means of explaining away the normal reading of the statutory provisions.
DeSoto Mem. 3 misleadingly cites this Court's opinion in Zakutansky v. Bionetics Corp., 806 F.Supp. 1362 (N.D.Ill.1992) as standing for the same proposition as Weiss and Pommier. That citation (significantly lacking any specific page reference) is frankly both bogus and offensive — what Zakutansky, id. at 1365 actually did was to uphold a complaint that had included a decisionmaking fellow employee in his individual capacity as a Title VII "employer" — though this Court there recognized the reality (id. at 1365 n. 7) that the only potential for enforcing such individual liability might be if the corporate employer proved financially incapable of satisfying plaintiff's entitlement on the Title VII claim. It is bad enough for a lawyer to miscite any precedent (perhaps suspecting that the judge may not read the case?) — but to miscite a judge's own decision to him or to her must be viewed as foolhardy in the extreme.
Thus rejecting a nonliteral reading of the statutory provisions does not fully answer the present question, however. Still another literal reading, this time of Section 2000e-5(f)(1) (emphasis added), suggests the dismissal of Renfro and Shoffeitt because they were not named in Cassano's charge filed with EEOC:
Within ninety days after the giving of such notice of right to sue a civil action may be brought against the respondent named in the charge (A) by the person claiming to be aggrieved....
But this time the authoritative case law in this Circuit recognizes an exception that creates the prospect of defendant status for persons such as Renfro and Shoffeitt...
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