Miller v. Automobile Club of New Mexico, Inc.
| Decision Date | 19 August 2005 |
| Docket Number | No. 03-2276.,03-2276. |
| Citation | 420 F.3d 1098 |
| Parties | Gina L. MILLER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. AUTOMOBILE CLUB OF NEW MEXICO, INC., doing business as AAA New Mexico, Defendant-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit |
Whitney Warner (Repps D. Stanford, with her on the briefs), of Moody & Warner, P.C., Albuquerque, NM, for the Plaintiff-Appellant.
Charlotte A. Lamont (Sarah K. Downey, with her on the brief), of Bannerman & Williams, P.C., Albuquerque, NM, for the Defendant-Appellee.
Before SEYMOUR, Circuit Judge, McKAY, Senior Circuit Judge, and MURPHY, Circuit Judge.
Gina L. Miller filed suit against AAA New Mexico, alleging disparate treatment on the basis of gender and age, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq. (Title VII), and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, 29 U.S.C. § 621 et seq. (ADEA), and retaliation under Title VII, the ADEA, and New Mexico state law. She also asserted a claim under the Equal Pay Act, 29 U.S.C. § 206(d)(EPA), along with state law claims for breach of an implied employment contract and breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing. The district court dismissed Ms. Miller's discrimination, retaliation, and EPA claims on summary judgment.1 Her implied contract and breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing claims proceeded to trial, but the jury was unable to reach a verdict. The court declared a mistrial, and subsequently entered judgment as a matter of law on behalf of AAA New Mexico. Ms. Miller appeals the district court's rulings. We affirm.
Ms. Miller's two basic contentions on appeal are that the district court erred in granting summary judgment and judgment as a matter of law to AAA New Mexico on her various claims. Our standards of review of these two judgments are highly similar and require that we view the facts in the light most favorable to the non-moving party. See Coldesina v. Estate of Simper, 407 F.3d 1126, 1130-31 (10th Cir.2005) (); Tyler v. Re/Max Mountain States, Inc., 232 F.3d 808, 812 (10th Cir.2000) (). Under these required standards, the record reflects the following.
Ms. Miller began working for AAA New Mexico2 in August 1996 as a part-time traffic reporter. Her position was officially classified as "senior clerk" and she was paid on an hourly basis.3 Ms. Miller reported directly to Brenda Yager, manager of the Public and Government Affairs (PGA) department. At the start of her employment, Ms. Miller received a copy of the AAA New Mexico Handbook which detailed that her employment was at-will. The handbook also contained a disclaimer stating in part: App., vol. VII at 1369-70.
About three months after Ms. Miller began working for AAA New Mexico, Ms. Yager asked if she would be interested in working extra hours performing public relations duties at her current rate of pay. Ms. Miller agreed. Acknowledging the extra duties Ms. Miller had assumed, Ms. Yager gave her permission to call herself a "Public and Government Relations Specialist." Ms. Yager also had Ms. Miller distribute a memorandum to the rest of the AAA New Mexico staff indicating she had taken on additional duties, in conjunction with her traffic reporting duties, in the department.4
Sometime during the early part of 1997, Ms. Miller asked Ms. Yager whether she was working outside the scope of her official job description as a part-time traffic reporter/senior clerk, and whether she was being paid appropriately. As Ms. Miller eventually testified at trial, Ms. Yager agreed that she was "working outside [her] job description at the time, and ... agreed that the position should be graded higher, classified at a higher rate of pay." Id., vol. III at 640. In response to Ms. Miller's query as to how or whether this could be rectified, Ms. Miller testified Ms. Yager told her
not to worry, because the company was going through some changes and they were actually getting ready to evaluate positions throughout the company and that there was a good chance that the position was going to be reclassified, in fact, would be reclassified at that time and graded at a higher ... rate.
In April 1997, Ms. Yager had Ms. Miller fill out two different job questionnaires for a job study. One questionnaire was for her position as part-time traffic reporter, and the other was to detail her public affairs duties. Ms. Yager stated that the questionnaires were to be used by human resources in the California main office to evaluate and reclassify positions.5 She expected the review and reclassification process would take "a few weeks ... maybe two to three months at the most." Id. at 643. Ms. Miller anticipated that when the job study reclassification process was complete, she would receive increased compensation for her work.
The job study was completed in September 1997, but to both Ms. Miller's and Ms. Yager's dissatisfaction, the study did not "actually take the information that Ms. Miller provided and determine whether or not her title was correct or she was being paid correctly." Id., vol. IV at 868. Rather, the study used the job questionnaires to perform a comparison between the different state AAA offices under the auspices of the Automobile Club of Southern California to ensure the current positions in the state offices were similarly ranked.6 It was not the type of "true job study" Ms. Yager had expected or what she "was originally told ... was going to happen." Id. at 867. Ms. Yager was unhappy with the results of the study, and continued to affirm to Ms. Miller that she thought Ms. Miller was performing duties outside of her job classification, and should be better compensated. Ms. Yager promised Ms. Miller she was going to follow up with human resources and look into the problem.
On January 9, 1998, Ms. Yager sent a letter to her then direct supervisor, Steve Lenzi, urging the review of the staffing needs in her department, especially Ms. Miller's position. Referring to the work Ms. Miller was performing as both a public relations assistant and a traffic reporter, she wrote that "[t]wo positions exist in the public and government affairs department ... that need to [be] evaluated for correct title and salary grade." Id. at 874; id., vol. VI at 1279. She informed Mr. Lenzi she believed the current titles and grades were inappropriate and asked that the positions be upgraded. She also noted that an upgrade of the two positions would impact Ms. Miller, who was then working about thirty-five hours a week. Mr. Lenzi gave Ms. Yager permission to contact human resources to request they perform an evaluation of her department's needs as well as the positions for possible upgrading.
Ms. Miller further testified that during the winter of 1998, Ms. Yager assured her she was continuing her conversations with human resources and that Ms. Miller "would receive an upgrade and be reclassified based on the information that [Ms Yager] had received from her management." Id., vol. III at 657-58. Ms. Miller testified she believed an "upgrade" meant "a new job title, the correct job description," id. at 658, and a "regular" position with full benefits, in which she worked thirty-five hours a week. Id. at 657-58. She further testified that Ms. Yager stated the upgrade would happen "soon, within a few weeks or a few months." Id. at 659. However, Ms. Miller was unable to testify as to the exact date of the upgrade, or the exact salary she would receive upon that date. Id.
In the meantime, Ms. Yager's supervisors indicated to her that it would be easier to provide wage increases to her employees than to go through the process of creating regular posts. Ms. Yager testified she was informed that in order to create regular posts in her department "a job study would have to be done, and that it was a very lengthy process, and if I was looking at providing increased compensation immediately, [a pay raise] was the way to do it." Id., vol. II at 282. Ms. Yager would rather have gone through the process of obtaining regular positions, but she nonetheless increased Ms. Miller's wage to $10.00 an hour. Upon determining that one of the employees who also received a raise had just joined the company and had been trained by Ms. Miller, Ms. Yager increased Ms. Miller's hourly rate to $10.50, retroactive to the date of the $10.00 wage increase.7
All of Ms. Miller's male colleagues in the PGA department were also classified as "clerk, intermediate" and worked in hourly part-time positions. There only appears to be one instance, during a three month period in 1997, when a male co-worker earned eight cents an hour more than Ms. Miller.8 Between 1998 and the spring of 2000, however, no male in Ms. Miller's department received an hourly wage that surpassed hers.
In November or December 1998, Leigh Matthewson, Ms. Miller's mother, began working in the PGA department as a contract employee doing public affairs work. Ms. Yager eventually hired her in May 1999 in a hourly position with the official classification of "clerk, intermediate." At the time she was hired, Ms. Matthewson said she was interested in a position with benefits but Ms. Yager informed her she did not have a regular benefitted position to offer her. At trial, Ms. Matthewson testified she agreed to work for AAA New Mexico because of her...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Welzel v. Bernstein
...2000 meeting and the March 2003 termination, there is no causal link between these two events. See, e.g., Miller v. Auto. Club of N.M., Inc., 420 F.3d 1098, 1121 (10th Cir.2005) (six-month period between protected activity and adverse action insufficient to show causal relationship); Shankl......
-
Coleman v. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kan.
...Kan. 546, 35 P.3d 892 (Kan.2001). 129. Morgan v. Hilti, Inc., 108 F.3d 1319, 1323 (10th Cir.1997). 130. Miller v. Auto. Club of New Mexico, Inc., 420 F.3d 1098, 1124 (10th Cir.2005) (quotation omitted). 131. Foster v. Alliedsignal Inc., 293 F.3d 1187, 1194-95 (10th Cir.2002). Kansas courts ......
-
Mondaine v. American Drug Stores, Inc.
...poral proximity to establish causation. Meiners v. Univ. of Kan., 359 F.3d 1222, 1231 (10th Cir.2004); see Miller v. Auto. Club Of N.M., Inc., 420 F.3d 1098, 1121 (10th Cir.2005); Anderson v. Coors Brewing Co., 181 F.3d 1171, 1179 (10th Cir. 1999). In Meiners, the Tenth Circuit held that a ......
-
Ryan v. Shawnee Mission Unified Sch. Dist. No. 512
...an inference of retaliatory motive, such as protected conduct closely followed by adverse action. Miller v. Automobile Club of New Mexico, Inc., 420 F.3d 1098, 1121 (10th Cir.2005). The school district argues that no such causal connection exists because plaintiff has not established that t......