Pitasi v. Gartner Group Inc.

• Decision Date: 23 July 1999
• Docket Number: No. 98-1496,98-1496
• Citation: 184 F.3d 709
• Parties: (7th Cir. 1999) CARL R. PITASI, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. GARTNER GROUP, INCORPORATED, Defendant-Appellee
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 709

184 F.3d 709 (7th Cir. 1999)

CARL R. PITASI, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. GARTNER GROUP, INCORPORATED, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 98-1496

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit

Argued December 10, 1998

Decided July 23, 1999

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 96 C 5462--David H. Coar, Judge. [Copyrighted Material Omitted] Before POSNER, Chief Judge, and RIPPLE and EVANS, Circuit Judges.

RIPPLE, Circuit Judge.

Carl R. Pitasi was employed by Gartner Group, Inc. ("Gartner") from August 1988 until January 3, 1996. His employment was terminated when he was 52 years old. Mr. Pitasi brought suit in federal court against Gartner under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, 29 U.S.C. sec.sec. 621-633a ("ADEA"), alleging that he had been dismissed because of his age. He now appeals the district court's grant of Gartner's motion for summary judgment. For the reasons set forth in the following opinion, we affirm the judgment of the district court.

I BACKGROUND

A. Facts

Gartner is a company that provides research and consulting services for business clients involved in information technology. Research analysts like Mr. Pitasi write and edit research notes on specific topics and provide subject-specific advisory services to Gartner clients.¹ Mr. Pitasi worked in the Networking and Electronic Workplace Group ("NEW Group") under Michael Schumer, Senior Vice President and Research Group Director. Mr. Pitasi's principal responsibility was to serve as Core Topic Leader in the area of Telecommunications in Newly Industrialized Countries, writing research notes and responding to client inquiries about the subject. He also had a general knowledge in other core topic areas.

In September 1995, Schumer gave Mr. Pitasi the added new assignment of Research Integrator for the NEW Group. In this position, Mr. Pitasi was to work with other Research Integrators to ensure that Gartner was taking consistent positions with respect to information technology. This was a "pet project" of Adam Rin, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Technology Services,² who was Schumer's boss. Schumer therefore considered the assignment to be quite important, and Mr. Pitasi regarded it as a high-level, high-profile assignment given to him in recognition of his excellent performance as an analyst. Over the next several months, Mr. Pitasi spent considerable time preparing a position description of his new job. He claims that, at the time of his termination, Gartner had not adopted the position description and Mr. Pitasi had not yet assumed any of his new duties as an Integrator.

Nevertheless, during those months, Mr. Pitasi also expressed dissatisfaction with his new role. He told Schumer and other colleagues that he thought the job was merely administrative and that he was concerned that the Integrators could get stuck doing everyone's odd project. According to Gartner, Mr. Pitasi squandered this opportunity to increase his value at Gartner. Schumer also heard that Mr. Pitasi was actively pursuing other employment and had refused Gartner's request to sign a non-competition agreement. However, Schumer's performance assessment of Mr. Pitasi, made on November 9, 1995, was positive and without criticism; it commended Mr. Pitasi particularly on his covering communications in newly industrialized countries and his speaking to CIOs and CEOs about networking.

During this same time frame, in the fall of 1995, Schumer was interviewing applicants for another high-level position within the NEW Group, that of Core Topic Leader for Wireless Communications. The job had been vacant since August 1995. In October 1995, Schumer hired Robert Egan, an expert in wireless communications for nearly 20 years, to fill the position starting in January 1996. Also in October 1995, Gartner entered into serious negotiations to acquire a competitor, Dataquest Corporation. According to Gartner, its acquisition of Dataquest required, if it was to be successful, a decrease in costs by $8 million per year. Gartner determined that the decreased costs would come from eliminating redundancies in staffing and through consolidation of the infrastructure of the two companies. The company decided to reduce its workforce by eliminating positions where there were overlapping responsibilities, starting with Dataquest employees but including Gartner employees whose positions had become redundant due to the merger of Gartner and Dataquest. The company also reviewed other employee positions that could be eliminated to cut costs.³ In carrying out the reduction-in- force ("RIF"), Schumer identified Mr. Pitasi (age 52) and Rory Staunton (age 40) as two analysts whose job duties could be absorbed by other employees. The company decided to abolish Mr. Pitasi's position because his knowledge of the contributor areas was not deep enough to be useful to clients and because he seemed dissatisfied with the role of Research Integrator. Mr. Pitasi disagrees with his supervisor Schumer's assessment. He asserts that he was considered the foremost authority at Gartner on the topic of wireless communication and that most client inquiries were referred to him in this area. He also claimed to have hands- on experience on the topic of channel extenders.

Those whose positions were identified to be eliminated were offered severance pay based on the employee's number of years of service and on the employee's age. On December 3 or 4, 1995, Schumer offered a separation package to Mr. Pitasi. According to Pitasi, Schumer asked him, "What would you think if we gave you early retirement, with some extra compensation because of your age?" R.56, Ex.l at para. 44. Mr. Pitasi, surprised, said, "Make me an offer."⁴ The next day, via e-mail, Schumer sent him a Mutual Separation Agreement, the terms of which included extra compensation for being over 40 years of age and a release of his claims against Gartner under the ADEA. The agreement stated that his position was being eliminated due to a reorganization in the marketing department. When Mr. Pitasi called Schumer about this mistaken statement (reminding Schumer that he was in the Research Advisory Group, not marketing, and that there were no overlapping research functions between Gartner and Dataquest), Schumer explained that Gartner's recent acquisition of Dataquest had led to the elimination of positions in their marketing organizations; however, the reference in Mr. Pitasi's letter was erroneous and would be changed in the final draft of the Agreement, Schumer stated.

Mr. Pitasi then told Schumer that he did not want to retire and that the terms of Gartner's proposed agreement were not acceptable, but that he would make a counter-proposal. Gartner rejected the counter-proposal. Following Mr. Pitasi's rejection of the severance package, Gartner terminated his employment effective January 3, 1996. According to Gartner, Mr. Pitasi was allowed to continue working until that date, at his request, so that he might take advantage of stock benefits that would vest at the beginning of the year.

Jerome Cooperman, who is 4 months older than Mr. Pitasi, took over Pitasi's primary duties as Core Topic Leader for newly industrialized countries, and Ken McGee, 8 years younger than Mr. Pitasi, was assigned the job of Research Integrator. The day Mr. Pitasi was terminated, Robert Egan, age 41, was hired as a research analyst in wireless communications, one of the areas in which Mr. Pitasi was a core topic contributor.⁵

B. Decision of the District Court

The district court concluded that Mr. Pitasi failed to prove age discrimination and granted summary judgment to his employer Gartner. It found first that the supervisor's statement, "What would you think if we gave you an early retirement," made on only one occasion, was insufficient direct evidence of discriminatory intent.

Under the burden-shifting analysis articulated in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792 (1973), the court determined that Mr. Pitasi did not meet the fourth element of the prima facie case--establishing that younger employees were treated more favorably. Although Mr. Pitasi claimed that Robert Egan, 11 years younger than he, was his replacement, there is no evidence of that other than Mr. Pitasi's own affidavit. Egan was hired as a research analyst in wireless communications one of Mr. Pitasi's contributing areas but not his primary responsibility. However, Mr. Pitasi admitted that Cooperman (4 months older) was given his position of Core Topic Leader for newly industrialized countries and McGee (8 years younger) was assigned the position of Research Integrator. Because the difference in the ages of Mr. Pitasi and those two men was less than 10 years, the court held, that difference is not significant enough to infer discriminatory intent, for he was not replaced by a significantly younger person.

The district court also determined that Mr. Pitasi did not establish the fourth element of a prima facie case as it is defined in RIF cases: that younger employees situated similarly to him were treated more favorably. Although Mr. Pitasi refers to Gartner's hiring of analysts "fresh out" of college, he does not identify any younger, equally situated individuals who were retained by Gartner. The district court concluded that Mr. Pitasi failed to establish his prima facie case of discrimination and granted the defendant's motion for summary judgment.

II DISCUSSION

We conduct a plenary review of the district court's summary judgment determination, reviewing the record and all reasonable inferences drawn from it in the light most favorable to Mr. Pitasi, the nonmovant. In employment discrimination cases, intent and credibility are central factors in the determination; for that reason, we apply the summary judgment standard with "added rigor" in those cases. Miller v. Borden, Inc., 168 F.3d 308, 312 (7th Cir. 1999) (quoting Huff v....