Huston v. Procter & Gamble Paper Products Corp.

• Decision Date: 08 June 2009
• Docket Number: No. 07-2799.,07-2799.
• Citation: 568 F.3d 100
• Parties: Priscilla HUSTON, Appellant v. The PROCTER & GAMBLE PAPER PRODUCTS CORPORATION.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit

568 F.3d 100

Priscilla HUSTON, Appellant v. The PROCTER & GAMBLE PAPER PRODUCTS CORPORATION.

No. 07-2799.

United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.

Submitted Pursuant to Third Circuit L.A.R. 34.1(a) June 30, 2008.

Filed: June 8, 2009.

Lori K. Serratelli, Esq., Serratelli, Schiffman, Brown & Calhoon, P.C., Harrisburg, PA, for Appellant.

John J. Myers, Esq., Ryan J. Siciliano, Esq., Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott, LLC, Pittsburgh, PA, for Appellee.

Before: RENDELL, SMITH, and FISHER, Circuit Judges.

OPINION

SMITH, Circuit Judge.

This is a Title VII suit for sexual harassment and retaliation. Priscilla Huston appeals from a grant of summary judgment in favor of her former employer, Procter & Gamble Paper Products Corporation (P & G). Huston's appeal hinges on whether two P & G employees qualify as "management level" so that their knowledge may be imputed to P & G for purposes of liability under Title VII. The United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania determined that the two employees were not management level and that P & G took prompt and adequate remedial measures as soon as it had notice of Huston's harassment allegations. We will affirm the District Court's judgment, and in so doing, clarify the definition of "management level." We will also affirm the District Court's judgment that Huston cannot make out a retaliation claim.

I.

The events underlying Huston's lawsuit allegedly occurred in the spring of 2004, by which time Huston had been employed at P & G's Mehoopany plant for more than a decade. Huston worked as a technician on the teams that operated large paper manufacturing machines. The teams worked shifts monitoring the machines and their gauges and instruments to make sure that they ran smoothly and safely to manufacture paper products.

The first incident Huston relies on to support her Title VII claim allegedly occurred on May 13, 2004. Although she did not witness this incident, Huston alleges that she heard that one of her male teammates had exposed himself in the plant control room in the presence of three other male teammates.¹ According to Huston, someone informed supervising technicians Pete Romanchick and Jack Traver of this incident the next day. Huston indicates that a similar incident occurred on May 22, 2004. Once again, she was not a witness and contends only that she heard that another male teammate had similarly exposed himself in front of four male teammates.

Huston also alleges that, on June 7, 2004, she was in the control room with her teammates when one of them exposed himself while explaining that he had shaved his testicles. She further alleges that the same man exposed himself again the next day in front of her and three male P & G employees.

Huston reported these incidents to senior-level manager Regina Gray and human resources manager Linda Sheehan on June 30, 2004. At the same time, she complained that her male teammates looked at pornography using the control room computer and that they kept pornographic magazines on the work site as well. P & G launched an investigation into Huston's allegations on the same day — June 30, 2004. Francisco Lanza, the manager of Huston's team, assisted Gray and Sheehan with the investigation. They interviewed various individuals named by Huston in her allegations. Each interviewed employee denied either exposing himself or witnessing another teammate expose himself. One teammate did admit making sexually explicit comments to two female temporary employees in the control room, and another teammate admitted sending male co-workers an e-mail containing images of topless women.

At the conclusion of its investigation, in July 2004, P & G sanctioned everyone on Huston's team — including Huston — within the framework of its five-step disciplinary program. Under this program, an employee in breach of P & G policies is disciplined by being placed on a step with attendant sanctions and notice. An employee who is already on one of the steps can be advanced to a higher step if P & G decides that a more stringent warning is called for. The fifth step in the program is termination.

Each of Huston's teammates was placed on, or advanced, a disciplinary step for various transgressions discovered through the investigation into Huston's allegations. Huston herself was disciplined along with her teammates because P & G determined that the entire team used vulgar language at work — a practice P & G sought to eliminate. Huston was already on step four due to prior transgressions, including a "life-threatening" safety violation from 2003. She was not advanced to step five, however; instead, her file was simply annotated to record that she was asked to be mindful of her language at work.

In the fall of 2004, P & G identified a costly problem with production quality at the Mehoopany plant. Management traced this problem to a lack of care on the part of technicians monitoring and maintaining the machines. As a result, the plant's management convened a meeting for all technicians working on the machines. The purpose of the meeting was to reiterate that the technicians were to be diligent and thorough in monitoring gauges and recording machine data to ensure that the manufacturing processes ran properly. To drive the point home, management warned technicians, including Huston, that they risked termination if they were caught fabricating data for the machine data logs.

Notwithstanding this warning from management, Huston falsified machine log data on October 21, 2004. When confronted by Romanchick about her log entries, she admitted to the falsified data. P & G terminated her employment.

On November 17, 2005, Huston filed a complaint against P & G in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania asserting claims for sex discrimination and retaliation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII), 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e-2(a)(1), 2000e-3(a), and under the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act (PHRA), 43 Pa. Cons.Stat. § 955. The District Court granted summary judgment against Huston on May 24, 2007. Huston now appeals from that judgment.

II.

The District Court exercised jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1331 and 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(f)(3). We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and our review is plenary. Knabe v. Boury Corp., 114 F.3d 407, 410 n. 4 (3d Cir.1997). Summary judgment is proper "if the pleadings, the discovery and disclosure materials on file, and any affidavits show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c). We draw all reasonable inferences from the record in favor of Huston, the non-moving party. Knabe, 114 F.3d at 410 n. 4. "Where the record taken as a whole could not lead a reasonable trier of fact to find for the non-moving party, there is no `genuine issue for trial.'" Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574, 587, 106 S.Ct. 1348, 89 L.Ed.2d 538 (1986) (citation omitted).

III.

Under Title VII, an employer may not "discharge ... or ... discriminate against any individual with respect to ... compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment because of such individual's ... sex [.]" 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(1).² A plaintiff may further establish that an employer violated Title VII by proving that sexual harassment created a hostile work environment. Kunin v. Sears Roebuck & Co., 175 F.3d 289, 293 (3d Cir.1999) (citing Meritor Sav. Bank v. Vinson, 477 U.S. 57, 66, 106 S.Ct. 2399, 91 L.Ed.2d 49 (1986)). To establish a hostile work environment claim against an employer, a plaintiff must prove the following:

(1) the employee suffered intentional discrimination because of their sex; (2) the discrimination was pervasive and regular; (3) the discrimination detrimentally affected the plaintiff; (4) the discrimination would detrimentally affect a reasonable person of the same sex in that position; and (5) the existence of respondeat superior liability.

Weston v. Pennsylvania, 251 F.3d 420, 426 (3d Cir.2001) (citing Andrews v. City of Phila., 895 F.2d 1469, 1482 (3d Cir.1990)). The first four elements of this claim establish that a hostile work environment existed. The fifth element, which is the only element at issue in this appeal, establishes the basis on which to hold the employer liable. The basis of an employer's liability for hostile environment sexual harassment depends on whether the harasser is the victim's supervisor or merely a coworker. Parkins v. Civil Constructors of Ill., Inc., 163 F.3d 1027, 1032 (7th Cir.1998) (citations omitted). In the present case, Huston concedes that the employees who performed or witnessed the alleged harassing incidents were not supervisors; all were merely co-worker technicians. When the hostile work environment is created by a victim's non-supervisory coworkers, the employer is not automatically liable. Kunin, 175 F.3d at 293. Rather, employer liability for co-worker harassment exists only if the employer failed to provide a reasonable avenue for complaint or, alternatively, if the employer knew or should have known of the harassment and failed to take prompt and appropriate remedial action. See Weston, 251 F.3d at 427 (citing Kunin, 175 F.3d at 293).³ That is, an employer may be directly liable for nonsupervisory co-worker sexual harassment only if the employer was negligent in failing to discover the co-worker harassment or in responding to a report of such harassment. Huston does not argue that P & G failed to provide a reasonable avenue for complaint. Instead, she contends that P & G knew or should have known of harassment through the technicians Romanchick and Traver, as of May 14, 2004, and that P & G failed to take prompt and appropriate remedial action.

We have explained that an employer knew or should have known about workplace sexual harassment if "management-level employees had actual or...