Erickson v. Wisconsin Dept. of Corrections

• Citation: 469 F.3d 600
• Decision Date: 14 November 2006
• Docket Number: No. 05-4516.,05-4516.
• Parties: Georgia ERICKSON, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. WISCONSIN DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (7th Circuit)

Page 600

469 F.3d 600

Georgia ERICKSON, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. WISCONSIN DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 05-4516.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued September 6, 2006.

Decided November 14, 2006.

Beth Eyster Shore, Brennan, Steil & Basting, Janesville, WI, Robert J. Kasieta (argued), Madison, WI, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

Richard Briles Moriarty (argued), Office of the Attorney General Wisconsin Department of Justice, Madison, WI, for Defendant-Appellant.

Before ROVNER, EVANS, and SYKES, Circuit Judges.

EVANS, Circuit Judge.

Georgia Erickson, a payroll and benefits specialist at the Wisconsin Correctional Center System (WCCS), a division of the Wisconsin Department of Corrections (WDC), brought suit against her employer under Title VII's hostile work environment doctrine and § 1983 after she was raped by John Spicer, an inmate at the Oregon Correctional Center (OCC). The OCC, an all-male minimum security prison also under the authority of WDC, is housed in the same building as WCCS. A jury ultimately found for Erickson, and the district court (Chief Judge Barbara B. Crabb) denied WDC's Rule 50 motion for judgment as a matter of law after concluding that "the evidence was sufficient to support the jury's verdict that [WDC's] agents knew of a significant risk of serious harassment, were in a position to take remedial action and failed to act to prevent the sexual harassment from occurring." WDC has appealed the denial of its Rule 50 motion.

We review de novo the district court's denial of WDC's motion for judgment as a matter of law. Appelbaum v. Milwaukee Metro. Sewerage Dist., 340 F.3d 573, 578 (7th Cir.2003); Filipovich v. K & R Express Sys., 391 F.3d 859, 863 (7th Cir.2004). We view the facts, however, in the light most favorable to Erickson. Molnar v. Booth, 229 F.3d 593, 597 (7th Cir.2000). We must determine "whether the evidence presented, combined with all reasonable inferences permissibly drawn therefrom, is sufficient to support the verdict when viewed in the light most favorable to the party against whom the motion is directed." Mack v. Great Dane Trailers, 308 F.3d 776, 780 (7th Cir.2002) (citations omitted). We will overturn the verdict only if no reasonable jury could have found in Erickson's favor. Millbrook v. IBP, Inc., 280 F.3d 1169, 1173 (7th Cir. 2002).

Erickson started working for WDC in 1996. She was a payroll and benefits specialist at WCCS between July 2001 and December 2001 (she had worked intermittently for WCCS for approximately 4 years prior to that time). In December 1997, Erickson successfully completed training sponsored by WDC regarding interactions between inmates and nonsecurity employees. The 3-day training stressed that male inmates often fantasized about female employees and that employees should take care not to be too friendly with inmates at the facility. WDC implemented this training in part because it understood the increased risk that male inmates posed to female employees. WCCS supervisors also testified at trial that they understood that "increased vigilance" of an employee by an inmate was a sign that an inmate might be planning to harm the employee.

Erickson worked long hours at her payroll and benefits position at WCCS. Her supervisors gave her permission to work flexible hours in order to complete her heavy workload. Erickson's supervisors also authorized her to work in the WCCS offices after 4:30 p.m., and Erickson often did. The doors to the WCCS offices were typically locked at 4:30 p.m. OCC, which housed the male inmates, was located directly across the hall from the WCCS offices. Most of the employees in the WCCS office where Erickson worked were female. The WCCS offices were off-limits to OCC inmates—except those few who had specific authority to be there.

One way for an inmate to get authorization to be in the WCCS office was to be assigned to work duty there. Inmates performed certain jobs at WDC, including the job of janitor at the WCCS offices. Inmate janitors did typical janitor sorts of things like emptying waste baskets and vacuuming floors. Because they had contact with nonsecurity employees at WCCS, OCC reviewed an inmate's file first to determine if a particular inmate should get the job. When OCC considered Jonathan Spicer for the job, his file contained certain pieces of negative information. For example, OCC often put inmates on work release as part of their rehabilitation program in order to help reintegrate them back into the community. Spicer had been put on work release but lost that status when he committed a major violation of work release rules: he was AWOL for 3 hours from an assigned workplace in February of 2001. Spicer was classified as a high-risk inmate as of December of 2001, and at least one social worker concluded that he only be put back in a work-release situation where he could be "closely monitored." The parole board denied Spicer's parole application in July of 2001 because he was an "unreasonable risk to the community." But many inmates probably have a certain amount of negative baggage, so OCC apparently thought Spicer was qualified for the inmate janitor position after it completed a review of his file. Spicer worked as an inmate janitor for around 7 weeks. His job ended, as we will see, on December 28, 2001.

Although OCC had no specific policy preventing inmate janitors from being in the WCCS offices after 4:30 p.m., Erickson does not recall ever seeing an inmate in or near her workspace after hours before Spicer appeared there on December 20, 2001. A coworker of Erickson also testified that Spicer typically completed his job between 10 and 11 a.m. and that when she saw Spicer in the WCCS offices on December 28 at 4:35 p.m., it struck her as very unusual. Andrea Bambrough, Human Resources Director, had never, before December 28, 2001, seen inmate janitors in the WCCS offices after 4:30 p.m.

On December 20, Erickson was at her cubicle in the WCCS offices finishing up her work for the day. Her supervisors had invited her earlier that day to an after-work party at a local bar, Hack's, for some "Christmas cheer." Some time between 4:45 p.m. and 5:15 p.m., Erickson, who thought she was alone in the office, turned around to find Spicer "fiddling with a vacuum" and looking back and forth between her and the vacuum in a way that made her very uncomfortable. Erickson testified about her shock at seeing Spicer there:

I was, you know, working at my desk trying to finish up some things because I had the next day off as vacation . . . but I needed to check something in somebody's file or something and I turned around in my chair and that is when I became aware that I wasn't alone like I thought I was. That there was an inmate there just looking like he was trying to look busy with a vacuum, and it really freaked me out. It scared me because as far as I understood, I never should have been left alone with an inmate. And I mean it's like he was—I felt like he was stalking me because he was looking at me and then would kind of look down a minute, too, and I didn't know, you know, what he had on his mind or anything. And I could remember from the training that they had talked about these prisoners and inmates fantasizing and I was scared. All I could think of was getting out of there.

Erickson immediately got out of her chair and told Spicer she had to leave to meet some friends. She left her desk in disarray, pointed Spicer out of the door, locked the door herself, and left. She then went directly to Hack's. The whole gang was there: Todd Johnson (assistant superintendent at OCC who had the ability to place or remove inmates from work assignments), Margaret "Mickey" Thompson (the warden at WCCS, who had primary responsibility for preventing sexual harassment there), Andrea Bambrough (director of human resources at WCCS and Erickson's supervisor), Wayne Mixdorf (sector chief), and Cindy Schoenike (sector chief). The first thing Erickson did when she arrived at the bar was tell the assembled group what happened:

When I got there they were all at a table, the ones that I mentioned, and sat down, you know, took my coat off and then I, you know, told them what happened. I told them right away that I was, you know, freaked and scared because the inmate, that I didn't know his name,¹ but that the inmate was in there, in my work area, into my work area and that—I mean, that is mainly it. I just told them I was scared and really freaked. That he was monkeying around—he kind of looked like he was just monkeying around with a vacuum.

When asked "whether you communicated to them that you had come directly from work," Erickson testified: "Oh, yes, yes. I came right from work directly there. I think I might have even, you know, commented on how I just kind of didn't finish things and shut up things and closed up things and left." Erickson characterized her demeanor at the bar as "[s]cared and excited or, you know, kind of probably a little bit emotional." When the people at Hack's heard the story, according to Erickson, they seem surprised and "their mouths kind of dropped." Warden Thompson told Erickson that she was "so sorry" and that "they would make sure nothing like this ever happened again." Erickson left the bar shortly after this discussion and did not return to work until December 27.

Erickson testified that, based on her conversation with her supervisors in the bar on December 20, she did not expect to see Spicer in the WCCS offices again: "I had, you know, told everybody at Hack's what had happened and they said they would make sure it would never happen again so I trusted that that meant it would never happen again period." On December 28, 1 day after her return to work and 8 days after their first encounter, Spicer appeared in the office again after hours. Erickson was again alone. This time he attacked and brutally raped her. He then escaped from the OCC in Erickson's car.

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