Fite v. Digital Equip. Corp.
| Decision Date | 08 September 2000 |
| Docket Number | No. 99-1935,99-1935 |
| Parties | (1st Cir. 2000) DAVID B. FITE, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. DIGITAL EQUIPMENT CORPORATION, Defendant, Appellee. . Heard |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit |
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS. Hon. William G. Young, U.S. District Judge.
Christopher G. Mackaronis with whom Laura C. Fentonmiller and Bell, Boyd & Lloyd were on brief for appellant.
Daniel J. Jackson with whom David C. Casey and Bingham Dana LLP were on brief for appellee.
Before Torruella, Chief Judge, Boudin and Lynch, Circuit Judges.
On October 11, 1994, appellant David Fite was fired by the appellee Digital Equipment Corporation 1 after twenty years of employment. Fite had begun working for Digital as a controller in 1974 and was at first steadily promoted. But in 1986, Fite's job performance declined so far that he was asked to leave his department; he was given ad hoc assignments while searching for another permanent position at the company. In June 1988, at a supervisor's suggestion, Fite took a paid medical leave of absence.
Unbeknownst to Digital, the reason for Fite's poor performance was his addiction to cocaine. Two months into his leave, Fite checked himself into a drug addiction treatment program; he was treated and apparently did not use drugs illegally after 1988. Upon returning to Digital in early 1989, Fite informed his supervisor that he was a drug dependent in the process of recovery. Digital says that it sought to accommodate Fite's disability by providing him structured work with identifiable objectives and flexible working hours.
After a year and a half of temporary jobs, Fite was placed in a permanent position in September 1990 with Digital's financial management quality program group in Merrimack, New Hampshire, a location proximate to Fite's treatment center. In the first months, Fite's new supervisor, Bianca Lapham, rated Fite's work as "substandard," and in June 1991, Fite filed his first complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC") and with the Massachusetts and New Hampshire anti-discrimination commissions. In each instance, he alleged that he was being denied consideration for other jobs because of his age (then fifty-three) and disability (chemical dependency). Lapham gave Fite better evaluations in 1992 and 1993, but Fite filed another complaint with EEOC and both state agencies in August 1992, charging that Digital had retaliated against him for filing the previous complaint.
In August 1994, EEOC sent Digital copies of two documents that Fite's attorney had recently submitted to EEOC to support Fite's complaints. The first was a print-out of an e-mail message purportedly sent on August 9, 1992, by Lapham to her supervisor mentioning "the old, tired transfer" with "'quote' problems," which Fite asserts to be a reference to him. The second was a print-out of an April 9, 1992, e-mail message sent by Fite to co-worker Richard Cerra, into which Fite had imported the text of another e-mail allegedly sent the previous day from Lapham to Fite, urging him to take early retirement because "[a]t your age and as a result of your admitted addiction[,] you will not be considered for any positions of responsibility in the finance organization."
Digital investigated the e-mails and concluded that they were fabricated. 2 When Digital confronted Fite, he denied concocting the documents and allegedly threatened to expose Digital officers in cocaine dealing. Digital fired Fite on October 11, 1994, citing the forged e-mails. Fite responded with the present lawsuit. In it he alleged that Digital had violated federal and Massachusetts laws by firing him to retaliate for his complaints of discrimination and because he was old and chemically dependent. 3
On Digital's motion for summary judgment, the district court dismissed Fite's state-law discrimination claims for failure to file a timely complaint with the Massachusetts Commission. Following a trial on the remaining claims, the jury found separately for Digital on each of Fite's federal discrimination claims and on each of his federal and state claims for retaliation. On appeal, Fite challenges the court's partial summary judgment and its instructions to the jury on the claims that were tried.
The district court dismissed the state-law discrimination claims on the ground that Fite had not filed a complaint with the state agency "within six months after the alleged act of discrimination," Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 151B, 5, itself a precondition under state law for bringing an action in court, id. 9. Although Fite had filed complaints with the Massachusetts commission in 1991 and 1992, these related to denial of promotion and to retaliation; and the district court thought that Fite should have filed an amendment or a new complaint with the Massachusetts commission to preserve his claim that his discharge reflected unlawful discrimination.
On appeal, Fite says that he did not have to file a new complaint at all because the firing was simply a continuation of the prior "pattern or practice of discrimination." Further, he says that any necessary amendment was supplied by a letter from his lawyer to the EEOC on September 28, 1994, amending the pending federal complaint to add a charge of constructive discharge, Fite having anticipated his actual discharge two weeks later; the letter also asked that the amendment be forwarded "to the appropriate state agency, as necessary." Finally, because the Massachusetts commission had previously told Fite that his earlier charges were being investigated by the EEOC, Fite says that Massachusetts' six-month filing period should have been deemed tolled. See Christo v. Edward G. Boyle Ins. Agency, 525 N.E.2d 643, 645 & n.1 (Mass. 1988).
The arguments raise a number of issues of some complexity. In particular, the extent to which filing of the complaint with the EEOC should, under a worksharing agreement between the agencies, be deemed to constitute a filing with the Massachusetts commission is an issue on which this court specifically reserved judgment in EEOC v. Green, 76 F.3d 19, 23 & n.6 (1st Cir. 1996). We see no reason to reenter this morass, since it is perfectly clear that, even if Fite's state discrimination claims should not have been dismissed on partial summary judgment, any such mistake was harmless, given the jury's verdict in Digital's favor on the federal discrimination claims addressed to the very same discharge.
Broadly speaking, the federal and Massachusetts statutes governing discrimination for age and disability are similar. 4 Accordingly, timely complaints having been made to the EEOC with respect to the federal discrimination claims, Fite was able to present his full discrimination case to the jury based on the federal statutes, and the jury rejected those claims on the merits. Unless there was a pertinent difference in standards, or some other advantage to proceeding under the state scheme, failure to charge the jury under the state statutes, even in error, was harmless. See Wills v. Brown Univ., 184 F.3d 20, 30 (1st Cir. 1999). See generally 11 Wright, Miller & Kane, Federal Practice and Procedure 2881-83, 2888 (2d ed. 1995).
In the original briefs on this appeal, Fite plausibly argued that at the time of trial, state law was more favorable to plaintiffs than was federal law in situations where the employee presents a prima facie case of discrimination, the employer offers a non-discriminatory reason for the adverse action, and the jury finds that explanation to be pretext. Under federal law, a pretext finding did not automatically compel a verdict in favor of the plaintiff; the jury still had to conclude that this adverse action was based on discriminatory motive. Dichner v. Liberty Travel, 141 F.3d 24, 30-31 (1st Cir. 1998).
By contrast, Massachusetts was regarded as following a "pretext only" rule under which "a plaintiff who has established a prima facie case and persuaded the trier of fact that the employer's articulated justification is not true but a pretext, is entitled to judgment." Blare v. Husky Injection Molding Sys. Boston, Inc., 646 N.E.2d 111, 116 (Mass. 1995)(emphasis added). Unfortunately for Fite, less than a month after his reply brief was filed in this court,...
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