Haggenmiller v. ABM Parking Servs., Inc.

• Decision Date: 14 September 2016
• Docket Number: No. 15–3107,15–3107
• Citation: 837 F.3d 879
• Parties: Sharilyn Haggenmiller, Plaintiff–Appellant v. ABM Parking Services, Inc., Defendant–Appellee
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

837 F.3d 879

Sharilyn Haggenmiller, Plaintiff–Appellant

v.ABM Parking Services, Inc., Defendant–Appellee

No. 15–3107

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

Submitted: May 17, 2016

Filed: September 14, 2016

Counsel who presented argument on behalf of the appellant was Joni Marie Thome, of Minneapolis, MN. The following attorney(s) appeared on the appellant brief; Frances Eva Baillon, of Minneapolis, MN., Matthew A. Frank, of Minneapolis, MN.

Counsel who presented argument on behalf of the appellee was Gregory L. Peters, of Minneapolis, MN. The following attorney(s) appeared on the appellee brief; Corie Jean Tarara, of Minneapolis, MN.

Before RILEY, Chief Judge, COLLOTON and KELLY, Circuit Judges.

RILEY, Chief Judge.

Sixty-three-year-old Sharilyn Haggenmiller was terminated from her job at ABM Parking Services, Inc. (ABM), a parking facility management company that operates parking facilities in the Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport (MSP airport). Haggenmiller sued her former employer in Minnesota state court, alleging she was unlawfully terminated based on age in violation of the Minnesota Human Rights Act, see Minn. Stat. § 363A.08. ABM removed the action, and the district court¹ granted summary judgment to ABM. Haggenmiller appeals. Having appellate jurisdiction, see 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

A. Facts

ABM operates parking garages throughout the country. On July 1, 2004, ABM entered into the Parking Enterprise Operation Management Services Agreement (agreement) with the Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC), a Minnesota public corporation that owns, operates, and maintains the MSP airport. Under the agreement, ABM operated the MSP airport parking facilities, and MAC reimbursed ABM for “authorized expenses,” including ABM employee salaries and benefits. Pursuant to the agreement, the ABM general manager at the MSP airport was “assigned only to and work[ed] exclusively for the MAC at this location” and was to report directly to MAC.

Sharilyn Haggenmiller began working as a human resources administrative assistant for the MSP airport facility operated by ABM in August of 2004. The approximately ten to twelve ABM office employees at the MSP airport worked in a two-story office building near the entrance of general parking in terminal one and supported the nearly 100 individuals working in parking operations. After a couple years, Haggenmiller started working with the auditing department. Though she kept many of her administrative responsibilities, according to Haggenmiller, her primary responsibility was auditing. Each week, the auditors received crates full of parking tickets that had been removed from cashiers' boxes in the parking facilities. Haggenmiller's job was to manually check the parking tickets against the cashiers' reports and balance the daily total. Haggenmiller then created a report by manually entering the information into a computer program called Citrix. Haggenmiller's other duties involved billing and administrative tasks—including sending bad checks to collections, answering the phone, communicating with customers about refunds, and maintaining the company bulletin board.²

During Haggenmiller's time at ABM, new technology and automation eliminated some of her duties. For instance, ABM began (1) using a computer program that automatically populated reports Haggenmiller formerly entered manually; (2) accepting credit cards at entrance and exit ramps; and (3) operating a cash-counting machine, eliminating the need for auditors to count the cash by hand.

Haggenmiller received positive performance reviews for her work. On her December 2012 performance evaluation, she received “Excellent” rankings in the categories of dependability, communication, and working with others, and a “Good” ranking in job knowledge and skill, quality of work, and work quantity. Delana Gerten, Haggenmiller's supervisor, described her as “helpful, cooperative, reliable and courteous.” Gerten wrote, “Our Audit team can count on her, with a smile, to help in any task asked of her.” In September 2011, Haggenmiller listed “work until retirement” as a short-range goal on her performance review, though she testified she did not remember doing so.

By June 2012, the last renewal term to the agreement between ABM and MAC had expired, and they were operating on a month-to-month basis. MAC hired Lumin Advisors (Lumin), an independent auditing and consulting firm, to perform an audit of MAC's “landside operations,” which included the MSP airport parking facilities.

In the fall of 2012, ABM's general manager left the company, and Greg Frankhauser, who at the time was the general manager of ABM in the St. Louis airport, became interim general manager at the MSP airport. In February 2013, Frankhauser officially became the general manager. Frankhauser knew Haggenmiller from when he worked at the MSP airport as ABM's assistant general manager from 2008 through 2011. Frankhauser testified that as general manager he had no part in Lumin's audit, other than being interviewed about his own job duties.

Lumin created an executive summary of the audit results, dated February 27, 2013, to present to the MAC finance group. Lumin made several recommendations to help MAC “benefit from [new] technology,” including changes to personnel. One of Lumin's recommendations was to eliminate the “Administrative Assistant/Auditor position”—Haggenmiller's position—because new automation systems replaced the need to manually enter the audit reporting information. Lumin also found the “new payroll system” eliminated the need for the “ABM Payroll and Purchasing position,” then occupied by the oldest ABM employee at the MSP airport, 64-year-old Monica Martinson. Lumin additionally suggested hiring two roving shift managers, one for first shift and one for second, to better address operational and customer needs on the parking ramps and throughout the terminals. Lumin recommended having the shift managers, instead of auditors, take over the daily cash counts to “reduce[ ] the number of people involved in cash handling and free[ ] up the Auditors to audit.”

The final Lumin audit report was presented to the MAC finance group in early April 2013. Sometime afterward, Rick Decker, MAC Assistant Manager of Parking, and Arlie Johnson, Assistant Airport Director of Landside Operations—the MAC officials to whom Frankhauser reported—brought Frankhauser into Johnson's office to discuss Lumin's audit, the implementation of Lumin's recommended changes, and, specifically, the elimination of the payroll and administrative assistant/auditor positions. Frankhauser testified he “had no choice” but to accept the changes MAC requested. In total, Lumin made 96 recommendations to MAC, and MAC implemented them all.

A few days later, Frankhauser asked Decker if MAC was “firm” on eliminating those positions, and Decker responded that they were and “wanted to make sure [Frankhauser] enacted all of those changes.” At the time MAC made the recommendation, they were unaware of which ABM employees were in the positions. When Frankhauser called Decker back to tell him who was in the positions, he asked to “confirm [if] there [was] any flux on this” and was told, “no.” Frankhauser then requested written documentation so he could process approval of Haggenmiller's termination through ABM's regional offices. Frankhauser also told Decker at some point he would check to see “if there was anything else for [Haggenmiller and Martinson], if we had something open.” Decker said that would be fine, as long as Frankhauser did not create new positions.

On April 12, 2013, Decker sent Frankhauser an email requesting that he eliminate the audit administrative assistant and accounting clerk, begin searching for two new shift managers “as soon as possible,” and look for a third to begin in August of that year. Frankhauser testified he began to look for open positions for Haggenmiller and Martinson beginning in May. He said he looked for “something along the lines of office work, something that they had been accustomed to,” including cashier and control room operator positions, but at the time, there was nothing open.

Frankhauser submitted a Termination Review Form for the elimination of Haggenmiller's position to ABM's regional human-resources office in Cleveland, Ohio, which was approved on May 30, 2013, effective May 31. Under the section Explain Reason for Termination, the form stated, in part, “As a result of [the Lumin audit] we have been instructed by the MAC to eliminate two positions that Lumin Advisors felt had no impact on the parking operation,” and that the office was “following the request of the MAC and Landside Operations in the elimination of these two positions.” The form stated Haggenmiller's current duties were the “ones that no one will specifically absorb,” including “[m]ail distribution, setting out of the daily tickets, SR entry, and other tasks [that] are currently ones in which [sic] different people do now depending on who recognizes that it needs to be done.”

On June 3, 2013, Frankhauser and Beth Sandeberg, a human resources manager for ABM, met with Haggenmiller in Frankhauser's office. They explained her job was being eliminated due to Lumin's audit and recommendations. Describing this meeting, Haggenmiller testified she was told she “was terminated for business reasons. I didn't really understand. I was pretty upset.” She also said Frankhauser told her there would be “a lot more [layoffs] in your auditing department and throughout the company so you're not the only one.” Shortly after, one of the new shift managers started.³ The new shift manager was more than 30 years younger than Haggenmiller.

Frankhauser and Sandeberg terminated Martinson the next day. Of all the ABM office employees who were working at the MSP airport at the time, Haggenmiller and Martinson were the two oldest. On July 15, 2013, Sandeberg sent Haggenmiller an email about a job opening for a cash...