Mathes v. Furniture Brands Int'l Inc., 00-3811

• Decision Date: 14 June 2001
• Docket Number: No. 00-3811,00-3811
• Citation: 266 F.3d 884
• Parties: (8th Cir. 2001) BETTY MATHES, APPELLANT, v. FURNITURE BRANDS INTERNATIONAL, INC. APPELLEE. Submitted:
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

Page 884

266 F.3d 884 (8th Cir. 2001)

BETTY MATHES, APPELLANT, v. FURNITURE BRANDS INTERNATIONAL, INC. APPELLEE.

No. 00-3811

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

Submitted: June 14, 2001

Filed: September 21, 2001

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri.

Before Morris Sheppard Arnold and Richard S. Arnold, Circuit Judges, and Bataillon, District Judge.¹

Morris Sheppard Arnold, Circuit Judge.

Betty Mathes appeals the order of the district court² granting summary judgment to her former employer, Furniture Brands International, Inc. (FB), in this age discrimination action. We affirm.

Ms. Mathes brought her discriminatory discharge action under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), see 29 U.S.C. §§ 621-634, which prohibits employers from discriminating against persons who are at least forty years old based on their age, see 29 U.S.C. §§ 631(a), 623(a)(1). She also alleged that FB violated the Missouri Human Rights Act (MHRA), see Mo. Rev. Stat. §§ 213.010-213.137, under which age-discrimination claims are analyzed in the same manner as they are under the ADEA, see Denesha v. Farmers Ins. Exch., 161 F.3d 491, 497 (8th Cir.1998), cert. denied, 526 U.S. 1115 (1999); West v. Conopco Corp., 974 S.W.2d 554, 556 (Mo. Ct. App. 1998).

We review de novo the district court's grant of summary judgment. See Hindman v. Transkrit Corp., 145 F.3d 986, 990 (8th Cir. 1998). In so doing, we view the evidence in the light most favorable to the non-moving party, see id.; see also Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c), and give the non-moving party the benefit of all reasonable inferences, that is, those inferences that may be drawn without resorting to speculation see Sprenger v. Fed. Home Loan Bank, 253 F.3d 1106, 1110 (8th Cir. 2001).

I.

Ms. Mathes worked for FB for many years and advanced to the position of administrative secretary to Duane Patterson, the corporate secretary. When Mr. Patterson retired, Lynn Chipperfield became corporate secretary and also retained his position as FB's general counsel. At about the same time, one of the secretaries in the law department left the company, and the president of the board of directors indicated to Ms. Mathes that he wanted her to remain an employee. Mr. Chipperfield told Ms. Mathes that she would come to work for him after Mr. Patterson's retirement.

After Mr. Chipperfield was named corporate secretary, he called a meeting and announced that Ms. Mathes would be moving to the law department (over which he maintained control as general counsel) and that thirty-year-old Becky Lindblom, who had been Mr. Chipperfield's secretary for five years, would continue in that capacity. When Ms. Mathes complained that Mr. Chipperfield had promised her that she would be his secretary, he asked her to wait until later to discuss the matter with him. She refused and stated that although she might be fired she must know immediately whether she would continue to be "administrative." Mr. Chipperfield adjourned the meeting and met privately with Ms. Mathes. She explained to him that being classified as "administrative" indicated that she was one of the few secretaries who worked for a top FB executive, and she told him that she would not move into the law department unless Ms. Lindblom moved out of the desk next to Mr. Chipperfield's office.

After speaking to Ms. Lindblom, Mr. Chipperfield gave Ms. Mathes the desk by his office and divided his work between her and Ms. Lindblom. Mr. Chipperfield did not find this situation workable, however, and despite Ms. Lindblom's desire to work for him, he eventually assigned all of his work to Ms. Mathes. He also assigned to Ms. Mathes some of the work of attorney Bob Kaintz. Although Ms. Lindblom worked for other attorneys in the legal department, Mr. Chipperfield continued to talk and joke with her, to forward his calls to her when he was gone, and to keep her rather than Ms. Mathes informed of his whereabouts.

Mr. Chipperfield testified that during the first two or three months after Ms. Mathes started working for him he began noticing that she made quite a few clerical mistakes. As part of her job, Ms. Mathes entered stock-option information into a computer program. About a year and a half after Ms. Mathes began working for Mr. Chipperfield, one of the managers told Mr. Chipperfield that employees in the computer department did not want her to enter the stock-option information into the computer once a new stock-option program was installed. The manager attested that he passed on to Mr. Chipperfield what the employees told him: that Ms. Mathes made frequent errors when entering information into the current stock-options program and that erroneous entries into the new system could be more harmful because under that system changes could be made in the historical data without being detected.

After Mr. Chipperfield received this report, he began keeping notes about problems with Ms. Mathes's performance. Five months later, Mr. Chipperfield met with Ms. Mathes and confronted her with the complaints that he had noted. Ms. Mathes admitted that she had made some of the clerical mistakes and denied others. She also told him that the old stock-option program, which was still in use, did not permit her to make erroneous entries because it required that the numbers balance; she asked him to explain to her the errors she had made, but he did not do so. At the close of the meeting Mr. Chipperfield inquired whether something was bothering her, and she said "no" but that she had dreamt about him the night before and he was wearing a wig and looked just like "Becky [Lindblom]." At her deposition, Ms. Mathes explained that she thought that Mr. Chipperfield would understand from her dream that she was "under a lot of stress."

According to Mr. Chipperfield, Ms. Mathes's performance did not improve after the meeting. Mr. Chipperfield stated that several months later he was determining salary increases and realized that Ms. Mathes would either have to be given a raise or terminated. He decided to discharge her for poor performance. After terminating Ms. Mathes, Mr. Chipperfield asked Ms. Lindblom to work for him. Before giving Ms. Lindblom the position Mr. Chipperfield asked her to assure him that she would return from maternity leave, stop talking to a co-worker at her desk, "reign in" her sense of humor, and take the initiative to learn some of the things that he was doing.

II.

Because Ms. Mathes did not offer direct evidence of intentional discrimination, we review this case using the "McDonnell Douglas three-stage order of proof and presumptions," see Hindman, 145 F.3d at 990 (8th Cir.1998) (relying on McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792 (1973)). First, Ms. Mathes must establish a prima facie case of age discrimination. See Hindman, 145 F.3d at 990. For the purpose of what follows, we assume without deciding that Ms. Mathes met this requirement.

Once the plaintiff offers evidence supporting a prima facie case of discrimination, the employer must come forward with a legitimate nondiscriminatory reason for its...