Parton v. GTE North, Inc., s. 91-3300
| Decision Date | 31 July 1992 |
| Docket Number | Nos. 91-3300,91-3452,s. 91-3300 |
| Citation | 971 F.2d 150 |
| Parties | 59 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. (BNA) 707, 132 A.L.R.Fed. 733, 59 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 41,674 Brenda PARTON, Appellant, v. GTE NORTH, INCORPORATED, a Wisconsin Corporation, Appellee. Brenda PARTON, Appellee, v. GTE NORTH, INCORPORATED, a Wisconsin Corporation, Appellant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit |
Marjorie Bedrick Tarkow, Columbia, Mo., argued, for appellant.
David B. Rogers, Columbia, Mo., argued, for appellee.
Before McMILLIAN, BOWMAN, Circuit Judges, and EISELE, * Senior District Judge.
Brenda Parton appeals the Magistrate Judge's 1 denial of her Title VII discriminatory discharge claim and the amount of his award of attorney fees resulting from her successful sexual harassment claim. GTE North, Inc., cross-appeals the Magistrate Judge's finding that it subjected Parton to sexual harassment in violation of Title VII, and the court's award of any attorney fees in view of Parton's limited success. We affirm. In addition, we have taken with the case GTE's motions for sanctions against Parton's counsel as well as the motion for sanctions made by Parton's counsel, and now deny both motions.
GTE North employed Brenda Parton on April 27, 1973. From September 26, 1976, until her termination early in 1988, she was assigned to the installation and repair department, the first woman so employed by GTE North. Throughout Parton's career, she was disciplined numerous times. Tardiness and absenteeism were particular problems and, although her records demonstrated some improvement from time to time (generally after discipline for the problem), she would soon revert to poor attendance habits. Parton does not dispute any of the many disciplinaries documented in her file.
There was testimony at the three-day bench trial from which the Magistrate Judge concluded that the work environment in the warehouse out of which Parton worked was often hostile to female employees, Parton included. This evidence included sexually suggestive gestures and comments, the posting and distribution of lewd cartoons, and the assignment of undesirable work to Parton and other women when available male employees were not so assigned. Parton's immediate supervisor testified that he offered Parton extra help because he believed that she, as a woman, had less of the knowledge of home construction and mechanics necessary for one employed in an installation and repair position. These incidents took place over the course of years, but Parton never filed a sexual harassment complaint while she was a GTE employee, nor did she make such allegations to union officials or at the union grievance hearing preceding her discharge.
On January 22, 1988, GTE terminated Parton's employment with the company. The events leading up to her termination will be summarized briefly.
On December 17, 1987, Jerry Haddock, Parton's immediate supervisor, wanted to talk with Parton about job tickets from a previous job that she had completed with incorrect repair codes. He missed her at 7:30 a.m. at the warehouse, and thus began his effort to track her down. Haddock found out that Parton's first assignment was a third party report of a busy signal at a residence north of Columbia, Missouri. As Haddock later learned, Parton had left the warehouse on the east side of Columbia at 7:30 a.m., and had traveled seven or eight miles out of her way during rush hour to the GTE office on the west side of Columbia, where she called the customer and learned that the phone had inadvertently been left off the hook. Parton phoned in for her next assignment at 8:30 a.m., and was told to check on a report of static on the line at another residence. Haddock missed Parton at that residence but, after he kept another appointment, he located her at 10:40 a.m. at her third assignment. En route to that job, Parton had stopped for a break at a fast-food restaurant that was not on the way to the job.
Haddock cited Parton for being out-of-route, that is, for deviating without excuse from the most direct route when traveling from job to job. Because this was Parton's third out-of-route offense in less than a year, she was suspended for three days. Parton grieved her suspension through her union's procedure. The grievance was denied at the first level. Present at the second-level grievance hearing, held in January 1988, were Parton, two union officials, Haddock, his supervisor Mike Hoover, and Richard Morgart, the GTE executive in charge of the Missouri office.
At the second-level hearing, the events of December 17 were recounted, and Morgart thought that Haddock's inability to locate Parton at the second assignment warranted further attention. He questioned Parton about the work she performed at that location, and she indicated that she had found a crushed wire in the attic that she had repaired by splicing. Morgart was skeptical, and sent Haddock and a union representative to perform a "quality inspection" of Parton's work at the customer's residence. They found that a wire in the attic that ran to a corroded jack in the basement had recently been cut, which terminated service to that jack but solved the reported problem of static on the line.
When confronted with the results of the inspection, Parton's only response was that she should not have said anything at the second-level hearing. Haddock and Hoover recommended termination, and Morgart agreed. On January 22, 1988, Parton was terminated for a violation of standards of integrity and poor work performance. Parton's grievance of her discharge was denied, and the union declined to take it to arbitration. Parton was replaced by a male, the next person in line for any such opening.
Parton contends that the trial court erred in two ways in concluding that her discharge was not motivated by her gender, first by misplacing the burden of proof and then by taking an erroneous view of the evidence.
The court treated Parton's discriminatory discharge claim as a classic McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting case. See McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 93 S.Ct. 1817, 36 L.Ed.2d 668 (1973). In such a case, the plaintiff is required to demonstrate a prima facie case of discrimination by proving membership in a protected class, performance at or near the employer's legitimate expectations, discharge, and replacement by a person of equal or lesser ability who is not a member of the protected class (or, in the alternative, the position remains open to be filled). Proof of a prima facie case creates a rebuttable presumption of discriminatory discharge, and the burden of going forward with the evidence shifts to the employer, who must articulate a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for discharge to avoid liability. Once the employer has satisfied this burden of going forward with the evidence, the plaintiff, in order to prevail, must show by a preponderance of the evidence that the employer's nondiscriminatory reason for discharge is pretextual, and that some impermissible form of discrimination was the true reason for discharge. Texas Dept. of Community Affairs v. Burdine, 450 U.S. 248, 254-56, 101 S.Ct. 1089, 1094-95, 67 L.Ed.2d 207 (1981). Concluding that the employer's legitimate reasons for Parton's discharge were not proved to be pretextual by a preponderance of the evidence, the court found in favor of GTE on Parton's discriminatory discharge claim.
It is Parton's contention, however, that this was a "mixed motive" case. She argues that the trial court could not find that she was subjected to a sexually hostile work environment, as it did, without also concluding that Parton's gender was a factor in her termination. According to the Supreme Court, if gender is a motivating factor, as Parton asserts it was here, then the employer "may avoid a finding of liability only by proving by a preponderance of the evidence that it would have made the same decision even if it had not taken the plaintiff's gender into account." Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U.S. 228, 258, 109 S.Ct. 1775, 1795, 104 L.Ed.2d 268 (1989).
Parton, however, has not met her initial burden. In order to establish a mixed-motive case in the first instance, she "must show that the employer actually relied on her gender in making its decision." Id. at 251, 109 S.Ct. at 1791. As the trial court noted, there is here no direct evidence that GTE was motivated to terminate Parton for gender-based reasons. Parton v. GTE North, Inc., No. 89-4352-CV-C-66BA, slip op. at 20 n. 8, 1991 WL 355179 (W.D.Mo. Apr. 8, 1991). This therefore was not a mixed-motive case, and the court did not err in applying the Burdine burden-shifting analysis.
Parton also contends that the trial court took an erroneous view of the evidence in failing to find discriminatory intent. We reject this contention. "[A] court of appeals may only reverse a district court's finding on discriminatory intent if it concludes that the finding is clearly erroneous under [Federal Rule of Civil Procedure] 52(a)." Pullman-Standard v. Swint, 456 U.S. 273, 290, 102 S.Ct. 1781, 1791, 72 L.Ed.2d 66 (1982); see also Anderson v. City of Bessemer City, 470 U.S. 564, 573, 105 S.Ct. 1504, 1511, 84 L.Ed.2d 518 (1982). We thus "defer to any plausible recounting of the evidence" by the trial court. Valdez v. Mercy Hosp., 961 F.2d 1401, 1402 (8th Cir.1992). After a careful reading of the record in this case, 2 we conclude that the court's finding that Parton was fired for legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons was not clearly erroneous. "Where there are two permissible views of the evidence, the factfinder's choice between them cannot be clearly erroneous." Anderson, 470 U.S. at 574, 105 S.Ct. at 1511. Such was the case here.
We turn next to the issues raised concerning the trial court's rulings on Parton's sexual harassment claim. Under Title VII sexual harassment is not actionable unless it is so ...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Madison v. Ibp, Inc.
...The analysis of fee awards under 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(k) is analogous to the analysis under 42 U.S.C. § 1988. See Parton v. GTE North, Inc., 971 F.2d 150, 155 (8th Cir.1992). A party who substantially prevails on its complaint is entitled to all reasonable fees and costs. Tuf Racing Prods. I......
-
Gersman v. Group Health Ass'n, Inc.
...relied on Fray's analysis to find that other sections of the Civil Rights Act do not apply retroactively. See Parton v. GTE North, Inc., 971 F.2d 150, 155-56 (8th Cir.1992) (finding that 42 U.S.C. § 1981a(a)(1), which allows compensatory and punitive damages for intentional discrimination c......
-
Stevens v. Gravette Medical Center Hosp.
...evidence showing a specific link between an improper motive and the challenged employment decision." Id. (citing Parton v. GTE N., Inc., 971 F.2d 150, 153 (8th Cir.1992)). As we noted above, the jury found Stevens had been subjected to discrimination when denied a promotion and when he was ......
-
Hicks v. Brown Group, Inc.
...F.2d 734 (8th Cir.1992) (§ 102(c)); Davis v. Tri-State Mack Distribs., Inc., 981 F.2d 340 (8th Cir.1992) (§ 113); Parton v. GTE North, Inc., 971 F.2d 150, 155-56 (8th Cir.1992) (§ 102); Huey v. Sullivan, 971 F.2d 1362, 1365 (8th Cir.1992) (§ 114).2 While we do not agree with the Ninth Circu......