Kline v. City of Kansas City, Fire Dept.

• Decision Date: 05 May 1999
• Docket Number: 98-1846,Nos. 98-1593,s. 98-1593
• Citation: 175 F.3d 660
• Parties: Kathleen KLINE, Anne Wedow, and Erma Morgan, Appellants, and Betty Taylor, Appellant/Cross-Appellee, v. CITY OF KANSAS CITY, Missouri, FIRE DEPARTMENT, Appellee/Cross-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

Page 660

175 F.3d 660

Kathleen KLINE, Anne Wedow, and Erma Morgan, Appellants, and Betty Taylor, Appellant/Cross-Appellee, v. CITY OF KANSAS CITY, Missouri, FIRE DEPARTMENT,

Appellee/Cross-Appellant.

Nos. 98-1593, 98-1846.

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

Submitted Jan. 14, 1999.

iled May 5, 1999.

Gwen G. Caranchini, Kansas City, MO, argued (Karen K. Howard, Kansas City, MO, on the brief), for Appellant.

Douglas M. McMillian, Kansas City, MO, argued (Walter J. O'Toole and M. Margaret Sheahan Moran, Kansas City, MO, on the brief), for Appellee.

Before: LOKEN, HANSEN, and MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD, Circuit Judges.

MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD, Circuit Judge.

Kathleen Kline, Anne Wedow, Erma Morgan, and Betty Taylor, each of whom was an employee of the Kansas City, Missouri, Fire Department, sued the department under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, see 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e through 2000e-17, and the Missouri Human Rights Act (MHRA), see Mo.Rev.Stat. §§ 213.010-213.139. (Although the named defendant is the Fire Department, we refer to the city as the defendant in this opinion for purposes of simplicity.) All four women claimed that they were disparately treated based on their sex, that they were subjected to a hostile work environment based either on their sex or their race, and that they were retaliated against for filing charges against the city and for opposing Fire Department practices.

The trial court excluded much of the plaintiffs' evidence in limine: No evidence was admitted of acts that occurred prior to 1989, of the experiences of other women employees of the Fire Department, or of alleged discrimination with respect to clothes and facilities. The trial court also granted partial summary judgment against Ms. Wedow and Ms. Morgan, dismissing their disparate treatment and hostile work environment claims.

At trial, Ms. Kline prevailed on part of her disparate treatment claim and on her hostile work environment claim and her retaliation claim. The jury awarded her approximately $47,000 in compensatory damages and $150,000 in punitive damages on her disparate treatment claim, $1 in nominal damages and $100,000 in punitive damages on her hostile work environment claim, and $1 in nominal damages and $50,000 in punitive damages on her retaliation claim. Ms. Taylor prevailed on part of her disparate treatment claim, and the jury awarded her approximately $96,000 in compensatory damages and $100,000 in punitive damages. The jury found for the city on the remaining claims of Ms. Kline and Ms. Taylor, and on the retaliation claims of Ms. Wedow and Ms. Morgan. The trial court subsequently granted the city's motion to vacate the punitive damages awarded to Ms. Kline and Ms. Taylor.

The plaintiffs appeal the evidentiary exclusions noted above, the jury instructions given in light of those exclusions, the summary judgment rulings against Ms. Wedow and Ms. Morgan, and the order vacating the award of punitive damages. The city cross-appeals, claiming that there was insufficient evidence to support the judgment in favor of Ms. Taylor. We affirm the trial court with respect to the plaintiffs' appeal but reverse the judgment in favor of Ms. Taylor's disparate treatment claim. We remand the case for the entry of appropriate orders.

I.

Employment discrimination claims of the kind involved here are barred if a plaintiff fails to file a timely charge with the appropriate federal or state administrative agency. Evidence of discrimination is ordinarily admissible only with respect to acts within the statutory limitations period preceding the filing of the charges. The plaintiffs in this case, however, sought to admit evidence of events predating the limitations period, maintaining that they could do so because they were complaining of continuing violations.

We have long recognized that a claim may be timely if it is based on an ongoing violation that began before the limitations period began but continued into it, see Ashley v. Boyle's Famous Corned Beef Co., 66 F.3d 164, 167-68 (8th Cir.1995) (en banc ), and that evidence of events "occurring outside the limitations period may ... be admissible ... when the incidents are part of a continuing violation," Kimzey v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 107 F.3d 568, 572 (8th Cir.1997). A violation is continuing if it consists of " 'an ongoing pattern or practice of discrimination,' " rather than an amalgamation of discrete, isolated instances. Rorie v. United Parcel Service, Inc. 151 F.3d 757, 761 (8th Cir.1998), quoting Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite Co., 130 F.3d 1287, 1303 (8th Cir.1997), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 118 S.Ct. 2370, 141 L.Ed.2d 738 (1998) (emphasis omitted).

We have held, moreover, that "[e]ven if a plaintiff is unable to show a continuing violation, ... instances of harassment occurring outside the [limitations] period may be admissible to provide relevant background to later discriminatory acts." Rorie, 151 F.3d at 761. Damages, however, may be recovered only with respect to events that occurred within the limitations period. Ashley, 66 F.3d at 168 ("[r]elief back to the beginning of the limitations period strikes a reasonable balance between permitting redress of an ongoing wrong and imposing liability for conduct long past"); see also Kimzey, 107 F.3d at 572-73.

Various of the plaintiffs contend that the trial court misapplied the principles applicable to continuing-violation cases in several ways. We turn first to the trial court's exclusion of evidence about any events that occurred before January 1, 1989 (more than four years before the limitations period began), in relation to Ms. Kline's disparate treatment and hostile work environment claims. (The trial court's order excluding that evidence explicitly declined to do so with respect to Ms. Wedow, Ms. Morgan, and Ms. Taylor, and thus on appeal we consider this issue only with respect to Ms. Kline. See Fed.R.App.P. 10(2), Fed.R.App.P. 28(e)). Ms. Kline asserts that the trial court's cutoff date of January 1, 1989, for evidence on her disparate treatment and hostile work environment claims was arbitrary and that for those claims the trial court should have admitted all evidence concerning her work since she was first hired at the Fire Department.

The city contends that Ms. Kline's offer of proof was insufficient. "An offer of proof serves dual purposes: (1) to inform the [trial] court and opposing counsel of the substance of the excluded evidence, enabling them to take appropriate action; and (2) to provide an appellate court with a record allowing it to determine whether the exclusion was erroneous and whether [the] appellant was prejudiced by the exclusion." Thomas v. Wyrick, 687 F.2d 235, 239 (8th Cir.1982), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 1175, 103 S.Ct. 824, 74 L.Ed.2d 1020 (1983). Having reviewed the offer of proof that Ms. Kline submitted to the trial court on this issue, we believe that it was adequate to serve both of these purposes. We have not considered the depositions that were cited in the offer of proof at trial but not provided to this court on appeal.

We believe, furthermore, that the trial court properly concluded that no pre-1989 events could be considered part of a continuing violation relevant to Ms. Kline's disparate treatment claim. Two of those events involved discipline that Ms. Kline received in 1977, but because of the time lapse between 1977 and 1989, the trial court quite correctly found that the 1977 events involved isolated acts that were not part of a continuing violation. The remaining incident occurred in 1986 and concerned an injury that Ms. Kline was told to ignore. We agree with the trial court that that incident was also merely an isolated act. Even if the trial court erroneously excluded the 1986 event, moreover, the error is harmless. Because Ms. Kline could recover only for incidents that occurred within the limitations period, the 1986 event could have been used only as background evidence and, in our view, is highly unlikely to have affected the verdict of the jury on Ms. Kline's disparate treatment claim.

As for Ms. Kline's hostile work environment claim, however, we believe that the trial court should have allowed evidence of pre-1989 events. In her offer of proof on this issue, Ms. Kline provided evidence of a consistent chain of discriminatory acts and working conditions that were sufficient to constitute a continuing violation that began prior to 1989. The trial court should therefore have admitted that evidence as "relevant background," Kimzey, 107 F.3d at 573, at the very least. Ms. Kline prevailed on the issue of liability on this claim, however, so the only harm she could have suffered from the exclusion of this evidence would be with respect to damages. In this circuit, though, damages may not be predicated on events that occur prior to the limitations period. See id. at 572-73; Gipson v. KAS Snacktime Co., 83 F.3d 225, 230 (8th Cir.1996); and Ashley, 66 F.3d at 168. The error was therefore harmless.

Ms. Wedow and Ms. Morgan assert that the trial court improperly failed to consider events occurring outside the statutory limitations period when it granted summary judgment to the city on their hostile work environment claims. It is clear from the face of the trial court's orders granting summary judgment, however, that it did in fact consider such evidence, along with events that occurred within the statutory period. The trial court determined that the events in question involved isolated acts rather than parts of a continuing violation. We believe that the trial court was correct in its conclusion.

Ms. Wedow's hostile work environment claim was based on a series of events that ended in 1986 and on individual incidents that occurred in 1989 and 1993. The trial court determined that these were isolated incidents that did not amount to a continuing violation. Given the length of time that transpired between these three acts, we affirm this...