Greenspan v. Automobile Club of Michigan

• Decision Date: 14 February 1980
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 5-72249.
• Citation: 495 F. Supp. 1021
• Parties: Carol GREENSPAN, Carolyn Madden, Ora Lee Jasper, Tommie Belleau, Diane T. Kula and Altha Brown, Individually and on behalf of all persons similarly situated, Plaintiffs, v. AUTOMOBILE CLUB OF MICHIGAN, Detroit Automobile Inter-Insurance Exchange, Motor Land Insurance and Group Insurance Company of Michigan, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of Michigan

495 F. Supp. 1021

Carol GREENSPAN, Carolyn Madden, Ora Lee Jasper, Tommie Belleau, Diane T. Kula and Altha Brown, Individually and on behalf of all persons similarly situated, Plaintiffs, v. AUTOMOBILE CLUB OF MICHIGAN, Detroit Automobile Inter-Insurance Exchange, Motor Land Insurance and Group Insurance Company of Michigan, Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 5-72249.

United States District Court, E. D. Michigan, S. D.

February 14, 1980.

Harry T. Ward, Jr., C. Michael Kimber, Ronald Reosti, Jane Burgess, Marilyn Mosier, Focus Hope, Neal Bush, Detroit, Mich., for plaintiffs.

Joseph A. Sullivan, Lloyd C. Fell, Detroit, Mich., for defendants.

OPINION

FEIKENS, Chief Judge.

Introduction

On December 4, 1972, a group of employees at the Automobile Club of Michigan filed a class action against their employer charging discrimination on the basis of race and sex in matters related to their employment. The Honorable Charles W. Joiner, to whom the case was assigned, entered an Order on July 30, 1974, denying Plaintiffs' motion for class certification on the ground that a serious possibility of conflict within the purported plaintiff class existed with respect to the claims of the female and black employees respectively. In particular, Judge Joiner noted the danger of competing and potentially contradictory objectives of the race and sex claimants which might arise during the course of trial or in the formulation of any relief to which the class might be entitled.

As a result of that order, female employees of the Automobile Club filed a separate action on November 17, 1975, alleging discrimination on the basis of sex in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq. That case was assigned to me by random draw. Named as Defendants in this suit are the Automobile Club of Michigan, the Detroit Inter-Insurance Exchange, the Motor Land Insurance Company, and the Group Insurance Company of Michigan.¹ The Club provides its members with various insurance and travel-related services. The Exchange is a reciprocal insurance exchange operating in this State which provides insurance to Club members and owns the property on which the Club headquarters is located. Both Motor Land Insurance Company and Group Insurance Company are wholly-owned by the Exchange and also provide insurance coverage to Club members.

Defendants have their corporate headquarters in Dearborn and also operate many branch offices throughout the State. Defendants share many of the same employees, management staff, and office facilities, including a single Personnel Department, which generally does the hiring for all employees below the rank of assistant manager. The Personnel Department is responsible for the completion and filing of various governmental reports concerning employment patterns.

The named Plaintiffs bringing this action are Carol Greenspan, Carolyn Madden Hall, Ora Lee Jasper, and Altha Brown, who are suing on behalf of themselves and all other women similarly situated. In an opinion of this Court entered on December 28, 1976, Plaintiff Jasper was designated the representative of women currently employed at the Club, Plaintiff Greenspan the representative of former employees, and Plaintiff Brown the representative of women who might be or might have been employed by the Club (i. e., applicants for employment). At the time of the opinion, Plaintiff Hall was a current employee of the Club, but has since terminated her employment and may therefore have interests similar to former employees. I do not believe that her status as a current or former employee is material to the resolution of the issues in this case, particularly as no segment of the class is left unrepresented by her termination.²

The class was finally defined on May 19, 1977, as being "all women employed by Defendants in Michigan who claim to have suffered discrimination based on sex on or subsequent to June 10, 1974;" "all women formerly employed by Defendants in Michigan who claim to have suffered discrimination based on sex on or subsequent to January 8, 1974;" and "all women who might be or might have been employed by Defendants in Michigan who claim to have suffered discrimination based on sex on or subsequent to January 8, 1974."³

Plaintiffs challenge the entire spectrum of employment practices at the Club which relate to hire, promotion, compensation, and other conditions of employment affecting Defendants' female employees. Plaintiffs allege that a majority of Defendants' employees are women, that the vast majority of these women are, in turn, relegated to low-paying clerical positions within the Company, and that nearly all of the supervisory positions occupied by women involve supervision of clerical employees. In addition, Plaintiffs allege that women are greatly underrepresented in the higher-paying professional, technical, and sales (hereinafter "PTS") positions, which, they claim, are the traditional routes of promotion to positions of greater responsibility and higher compensation in the company.

Plaintiffs claim that this situation is the result of certain policies and practices, among them: the use of various pre-employment techniques, including inadequate or non-existent posting of job openings, which cause females to be routed or assigned to positions traditionally occupied by women and to be systematically excluded from consideration for the higher-paying jobs at the Club; hiring and promotion practices which rely heavily on the subjective evaluations of primarily male supervisors and department heads, and which result in the denial of equal employment and promotional opportunities for women; compensation policies, which either pay male employees a higher wage than female employees doing the same job or which cause women to receive lower rates of pay for jobs which, though similar in function and performance to those held by men, have different job titles or descriptions; and a maternity policy which requires the termination of pregnant employees and the loss of employment benefits and opportunities upon rehire.

Plaintiffs seek declaratory and injunctive relief if this Court finds that Defendants' various policies and practices violate Title VII. Plaintiffs request a court-ordered affirmative action plan designed to increase the representation of women in those areas of the Company in which they presently appear in lesser proportion than their overall numbers might suggest. Finally, Plaintiffs seek back pay and other payments to compensate them for the loss of wages and employment benefits incurred as a result of Defendants' illegal discrimination against them.

At the close of their case, Plaintiffs sought to amend their complaint to reinstate a claim for mental distress caused by Defendants' alleged harassment as a result of the women's efforts to improve their conditions of employment. The claim had originally been made under Title VII, but was withdrawn by counsel following the holding in Schroeder v. Dayton-Hudson Corporation, 456 F.Supp. 652 (E.D.Mich. 1978), that such claims could not be raised under that statute. Nonetheless, in Freeman v. Kelvinator, Inc., 469 F.Supp. 999 (E.D.Mich.1979), claims for mental distress were held to be properly brought under the Michigan Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act, M.C.L.A. § 37.2101 et seq., and Plaintiffs base their motion on that authority. As Defendants point out, however, the motion was not timely raised in view of the fact that Plaintiffs had completed their direct case and Defendants were prepared to go forward with their evidence in response. In addition, Defendants are ready to assert their right to a jury trial on this damage issue, which conceivably would have entailed rehearing portions of Plaintiffs' case. Although Plaintiffs argue that no disruption of the trial needed to occur and that evidence relating to mental distress even now can be presented in separate proceedings, I agree with Defendants that the motion must be denied on the ground of untimeliness.

Defendants deny Plaintiffs' charges generally in their Answer, and respond further that certain of Plaintiffs' claims have been previously rejected by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or other agencies, and that others are barred or limited by applicable law. Over the course of the trial, Defendants took the position that the representation of women in clerical positions at the Club was not inconsistent with the representation of women across the State of Michigan in such jobs, and that the large amount of paperwork associated with the insurance industry virtually guarantees a heavily clerical work force dominated by women. As to the presence of women in the higher-paying jobs (including supervisory and management personnel), Defendants argue that women are represented in proportions similar to those which appear in the outside work force and that, in fact, women are being hired at rates equal to or greater than their rate of application to these jobs. Defendants contend, finally, that Plaintiffs have produced no evidence that the Club does discriminate against its female employees in the matters of hire, promotion, or compensation, or in any of the other ways suggested in the Complaint.⁴

Trial was commenced on May 15, 1979. Over the course of 46 days of testimony, the parties presented over 70 witnesses. Among them were the named Plaintiffs (except Ora Lee Jasper), other class members and employees of Defendants, various supervisory and management personnel from several departments within the Club, and representatives from the Personnel Department. In addition, Plaintiffs presented the expert testimony of Victor Meyer, instructor and computer systems analyst for Marygrove College, Detroit, Michigan, and the author or programmer of a number of the computer programs involved in the Plaintiffs' statistical case; Dr. John Dwyer, Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Detroit, who was...