Jameson v. Arrow Co.

• Decision Date: 28 February 1996
• Docket Number: No. 94-8772,94-8772
• Parties: 70 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. (BNA) 153, 67 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 43,904, 64 USLW 2579, 34 Fed.R.Serv.3d 401 Ann C. JAMESON, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. The ARROW COMPANY, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 1528

75 F.3d 1528

70 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. (BNA) 153,

67 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 43,904, 64 USLW 2579,

34 Fed.R.Serv.3d 401

Ann C. JAMESON, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. The ARROW COMPANY, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 94-8772.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

Feb. 28, 1996.

Todd Mitchell Johnson, Cook & Palmour, Summerville, GA, Cynthia Noles Johnson, Waycaster Corn Murray & Morris, Dalton, GA, for appellant.

James B. Spears, Jr., Haynsworth Baldwin Johnson & Greaves, Charlotte, NC, for appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

Before KRAVITCH and BIRCH, Circuit Judges, and GOODWIN ^*, Senior Circuit Judge.

BIRCH, Circuit Judge:

This appeal presents the question of whether an employer's failure to rehire or to transfer an employee whose position is eliminated as part of a reduction in force can give rise to an inference of age and race discrimination. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the employer on all claims. For the reasons that follow, we determine that material questions of fact remain for resolution with respect to the former employee's age and race discrimination claims. We AFFIRM in part, REVERSE in part, and REMAND for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

I. BACKGROUND

Plaintiff-appellant, Ann C. Jameson, a white female over the age of fifty, was employed by defendant-appellee, The Arrow Company ("Arrow"), at several of its plant locations in Georgia from May 19, 1969, until her termination on January 31, 1991. In July of 1987, Jameson was assigned to the "Quick Response Project," a team task force designed to improve efficiency in various company facilities. Bidermann Industries Corporation ("Bidermann") purchased Arrow in 1990. Shortly thereafter, at Bidermann's direction, Arrow began to implement a significant reduction in force. As part of this overall downsizing effort, the "Quick Response Project" was eliminated, and Jameson was discharged. Arrow subsequently hired Marian Kelley, a twenty-three-year-old black woman, as human resources trainee, an entry level position for which Jameson was fully qualified. At the time of her termination, Jameson was fifty-one years old.

Proceeding pro se, Jameson filed a timely complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC"). In amended complaints, Jameson alleged that her termination, coupled with Arrow's failure to transfer or rehire her, and its decision to hire Kelley, constituted age and race discrimination in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, 29 U.S.C. § 621 et seq. ("ADEA"), Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq., and 42 U.S.C. § 1981. Jameson later sought to amend her second amended complaint, filed by retained counsel, to add a claim stating that Arrow refused either to consider or to rehire Jameson for positions available after her discharge in retaliation for the filing of a complaint with the EEOC. The district court concluded that Jameson had failed to establish a prima facie case of age discrimination because she had not presented evidence by which a factfinder could infer that Arrow's failure to transfer or rehire her was motivated by discriminatory animus based upon her age. The court further resolved that, although Jameson had met her burden in setting forth a prima facie case of race discrimination, she had not succeeded in showing that Arrow's proffer of a legitimate reason for the failure to rehire her was pretextual. Finally, the court denied Jameson's motion to amend her complaint and found that counsel's ten-month delay in supplementing the complaint with a new cause of action was unreasonable and prejudicial to Arrow.

II. DISCUSSION

We review de novo the district court's order granting summary judgment. See Earley v. Champion Intern. Corp., 907 F.2d 1077, 1080 (11th Cir.1990). Summary judgment is appropriate where there is no genuine issue of material fact. Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c). Where the record taken as a whole could not lead a rational trier of fact to find for the nonmoving 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, 1356, 89 L.Ed.2d 538 (1986) (citation omitted). On a motion for summary judgment, we must review the record, and all its inferences, in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party. United States v. Diebold, Inc., 369 U.S. 654, 655, 82 S.Ct. 993, 994, 8 L.Ed.2d 176 (1962).

In an employment discrimination case, the plaintiff must produce sufficient evidence to support an inference that the defendant employer based its employment decision on an illegal criterion. See Alphin v. Sears Roebuck & Co., 940 F.2d 1497, 1500 (11th Cir.1991) (citing Halsell v. Kimberly-Clark Corp., 683 F.2d 285, 290 (8th Cir.1982), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 1205, 103 S.Ct. 1194, 75 L.Ed.2d 438 (1983)). This court generally has eschewed an overly strict formulation of the elements of a prima facie case, particularly in age discrimination cases. See id. At the summary judgment stage, our inquiry is whether an ordinary person could reasonably infer discrimination if the facts presented remained unrebutted. Id. (quoting Carter v. City of Miami, 870 F.2d 578, 583 (11th Cir.1989)). ¹

A. ADEA Claim

This circuit has adopted a variation of the test articulated by the Supreme Court for Title VII claims in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 93 S.Ct. 1817, 36 L.Ed.2d 668 (1973), for cases arising under the ADEA. See Mitchell v. Worldwide Underwriters Ins. Co., 967 F.2d 565, 566 (11th Cir.1992). In order to make out a prima facie case for an ADEA violation, the plaintiff must show that she (1) was a member of the protected group of persons between the ages of forty and seventy, (2) was subject to adverse employment action, (3) was replaced with a person outside the protected group, and (4) was qualified to do the job. See Verbraeken v. Westinghouse Elec. Corp., 881 F.2d 1041, 1045 (11th Cir.1989), cert. dismissed, 493 U.S. 1064, 110 S.Ct. 884, 107 L.Ed.2d 1012 (1990). These criteria are altered slightly in both a reduction-in-force ("RIF") case and where a position is eliminated in its entirety; in these instances, the plaintiff establishes a prima facie case by demonstrating (1) that she was in a protected age group and was adversely affected by an employment decision, (2) that she was qualified for her current position or to assume another position at the time of discharge, and (3) evidence by which a fact finder could reasonably conclude that the employer intended to discriminate on the basis of age in reaching that decision. See Mitchell, 967 F.2d at 567-68; Earley, 907 F.2d at 1082; Verbraeken, 881 F.2d at 1045-46.

Here, Jameson does not dispute that the initial termination and consequent elimination of her position resulted from a legitimate RIF, but argues that Arrow's failure to transfer her or to rehire her for numerous positions available at the time of her termination constitutes evidence of discriminatory intent. Jameson emphasizes that she specifically expressed to a supervisor her interest in the position of personnel administrator--later filled by a younger woman--but was informed that Arrow did not plan to fill this position. She further suggests that the facts that Arrow transferred one younger employee from the Quick Response Project and hired several younger individuals for other positions for which she was qualified are evidence that the impermissible factor motivating Arrow's decisions was the desire to replace older female workers with younger employees.

In Earley, we established the basic proposition that, when an employer reduces its work force for economic reasons, it incurs no duty to transfer laid-off employees to other positions within the company. 907 F.2d at 1083. Significantly, although the plaintiff in Earley argued that he was neither transferred nor rehired into positions available months before and after his discharge, he was unable to show that he was qualified for any position within the defendant-company available at the time of his discharge. Noting that the adoption of the plaintiff's argument would effectively "prohibit employers from planning and implementing RIFs if the reductions affected employees in the protected age group," Earley, 907 F.2d at 1083, n. 4, we concluded that by failing to show that he was qualified for a job available at the time of his termination, the plaintiff had failed to establish the second prong of his prima facie case. Id.

Mitchell presented a somewhat different circumstance. 967 F.2d 565. In Mitchell, as in Earley, the district court had found that the plaintiff failed to meet the second test enunciated in Verbraeken--that is, that he was qualified for a position available at the time of discharge--and granted summary judgment in favor of the employer. Id. at 568. We reversed and expressly recognized that evidence adduced by the plaintiff indicating that there may have been job openings for which he was qualified at the time of his termination, but for which he was not hired, gave rise to a material, disputed issue of fact, and that summary judgment therefore was inappropriate. Id. at 568. Although the court in Mitchell declined to explicitly elaborate on the third element of the plaintiff's prima facie case--whether the plaintiff had produced evidence that would permit a fact finder to infer intentional discrimination by the employer--the reasoning and ultimate holdings of both Mitchell and Earley suggest that where a job for which the plaintiff is qualified, and for which the plaintiff applies, is available at the time of termination, and the employer offers the job to an individual outside the protected age group, an inference of intentional discrimination is permissible.

It is critical to note that this statement in no way represents a departure from this circuit's decisional law, but rather is a direct...