Pollard v. E.I. DuPont de Nemours, Inc.
| Decision Date | 20 August 1998 |
| Docket Number | No. 95-3010 M1/V.,95-3010 M1/V. |
| Parties | Sharon B. POLLARD, Plaintiff, v. E.I. DUPONT de NEMOURS, INC., Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Western District of Tennessee |
Kathleen L. Caldwell, Taylor Halliburton Ledbetter Caldwell, Memphis, TN, Alayne B. Adams, Coiner Adams & Mackenzie, Memphis, TN, for Plaintiff.
Carl I. Jacobson, McKnight Hudson Lewis Ford & Harrison, Memphis, TN, for Defendant.
Plaintiff, Sharon Pollard, brought this suit against her former employer, alleging that she had been subjected to a hostile work environment because of her gender, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq. ("Title VII"). A non-jury trial was held in this matter on October 14, 15, 16, and 24, and November 3 and 4 of 1997. For the reasons set forth below, the Court finds that plaintiff was subjected to a hostile work environment because of her gender, in violation of Title VII, and judgment is ENTERED in favor of plaintiff.
Plaintiff began her employment with defendant in 1977 as a utility worker in the utility pool. She was promoted to the position of assistant operator ("AO") in the oxone flouride area in 1978, and transferred to an AO position in the hydrogen peroxide area in 1979. In 1987, plaintiff was promoted to the position of operator in the hydrogen peroxide area. While plaintiff was working as an operator in peroxide, only one other woman was in an operator position in that area, and only two of the assistant operators were female. All of the other operators and assistant operators in the peroxide area were male.1
Plaintiff initially worked as an operator on "C" shift from 1987 to 1992. Each shift has three operators: the control room operator (or operator # 1), operator # 2, and operator # 3. Each operator has separate duties on the shift, and none of the operators is superior in rank to the others. The control room operator works in the control room, the # 2 operator works the south side of the area, and the # 3 operator works in the laboratory and in the water building. The three AOs that are assigned to each shift take direction from the operators. While plaintiff was working as the control room operator on "C" shift, an incident occurred during which an AO, Rory Bricco, refused to take direction from plaintiff. Mr. Bricco informed plaintiff that he could not take direction from a woman, and placed a Bible on her desk, opened to a passage which read, 2 Plaintiff subsequently transferred to a # 2 operator position on "A" shift in 1992.
In 1994, plaintiff had moved from the # 2 operator position to the # 3 operator position on "A" shift in the peroxide area. The other members of her shift were Steve Carney, Jerry Lee, Joey Moody, David Walker, and Mark Cobb. Carney was the control room operator, Lee was the # 2 operator, and Cobb, Moody, and Walker were the three AOs on the shift. The shift supervisor at that time was David Swartz.
During 1992 and 1993, plaintiff and all of the other members of "A" shift got along well. Many of the witnesses testified that they viewed the shift as their "extended family." Members of the shift would cook and eat their meals together in the break room,3 and would talk to each other regularly about their lives outside of work.
In February of 1994, however, the congenial atmosphere on "A" shift began to change. At that time, DuPont announced that it would be taking part, for the first time, in the nationally recognized "Take Your Daughters to Work Day" ("TYDTWD") in April of that year. Plaintiff, as one of two female operators in the entire peroxide area, was asked to give a talk about her job to some of the girls coming to visit the plant on that day, and she agreed to do so. A number of the men on "A" shift, particularly Steve Carney and Jerry Lee, were against TYDTWD, and made their displeasure with DuPont's decision to take part in this event widely known. A number of other men in peroxide, and throughout the plant, were against DuPont's participation as well. See Testimony of Jerry Lee ("Lee's Test."), Tr. at 495. One of these men, Paul Lucas, sent an email out to everyone in the plant regarding TYDTWD, referring to the event as "horse malarky."
Plaintiff had discussions with both Steve Carney and Jerry Lee regarding her participation in TYDTWD, and both men made clear that they were against it. Testimony of Sharon Pollard ("Pollard's Test."), Tr. at 627-28. Subsequent to those discussions, the atmosphere on the shift began to change. All of the men on the shift, with the exception of Mark Cobb, stopped eating with plaintiff and stopped talking to her. Cobb testified that Carney instructed the other men on the shift not to eat with plaintiff, not to share food with her, not to be in the break room with her, and not to talk to her. Cobb's Test. at 251, 273. Plaintiff testified as follows:
[I]f I came into the lunchroom, nobody would sit down at the table with me. If I sat down at a table that someone was already sitting at, they would get up and leave....I heard a lot of under your breath kind of things...and snickering.
Pollard's Test., Tr. at 37. Cobb further stated that Carney instructed the other men on "A" shift not to follow any of plaintiff's instructions without checking with him first. Cobb's Test. at 251-52. Carney himself conceded that "[i]t's a possibility" that he told AOs on "A" shift to disregard plaintiff's instructions. Id. at 904.
It was common knowledge among the employees in the peroxide area that Steve Carney, Jerry Lee, Rory Bricco, and many of the other men in the area, did not approve of women working in peroxide. Cobb's Test., Tr. at 246-47, 251, 359, 361; Testimony of David Walker ("Walker's Test."), Tr. at 746-47. Mark Cobb testified that Carney would make comments to this effect approximately five times per week to the men on "A" shift, and Cobb and several other witnesses confirmed that Carney routinely referred to women as "bitches" and "cunts." Cobb's Test., Tr. at 264, 266; Lee's Test., Tr. at 491-92; Walker's Test., Tr. at 751-52.
Several witnesses testified that they had heard Carney use the word "heifer" to refer to women, and that use of the term "heifer" to refer to women in general was commonplace in the peroxide area. Testimony of Joey Moody ("Moody's Test."), Tr. at 697; Lee's Test., Tr. at 489-90; Walker's Test., Tr. at 723. Carney admitted that he referred to women as "heifers," and that he referred to plaintiff as a "bitch" and a "split tail." Testimony of Steve Carney ("Carney's Test."), Tr. at 908-09. In addition, DuPont had a company-sponsored support group known as the Women's Network,4 of which Carney routinely expressed his disapproval. Cobb's Test., Tr. at 246-47; see also Testimony of Kay Jenks ("Jenks' Test."), Tr. at 416 ().
In May of 1994, after plaintiff had been experiencing the kind of isolation described above from the members of "A" shift for approximately two months, the shift supervisor, David Swartz, held a training meeting.5 During the meeting, all of the members of "A" shift and Swartz were seated around a small conference table. At some point during a break in the meeting, Carney and Walker were having a discussion about a girls softball team, during which Carney said "that heifer can't coach," in reference to the woman who coached the team. Moody's Test., Tr. at 697. Carney also said something along the lines of "women have no business coaching." Moody's Test., Tr. at 677-78; Walker's Test., Tr. at 753; Lee's Test ., Tr. at 472-73; Pollard's Test., Tr, at 632. Plaintiff, who was sitting across the table from Carney, heard these comments, became very upset, and asked to be excused to go to the nurse's station. Pollard's Test., Tr. at 632-34.
Once she arrived at the nurse's station, plaintiff asked the nurse to call her supervisor, David Swartz, to come and speak with her. When Swartz arrived, plaintiff was very upset and began to cry. Swartz testified that she told him Testimony of David Swartz ("Swartz's Test."), Tr. at 949-50. Swartz further testified that he understood plaintiff's words to mean that "she couldn't take it any more about [the] men [in peroxide] degrading women." Id. at 979-80.
Swartz testified that he spoke with his supervisor, Alan Hubbell, about this incident, and that they decided that Swartz should speak to the men on the shift individually. Swartz's Test., Tr. at 952. With the exception of Walker, however, none of the men on the shift remembered Swartz speaking to them about this incident. Carney testified that Swartz spoke to him "a few times" about not communicating with plaintiff "right after [they] quit talking," but that Swartz soon gave up on trying to talk to him about it Carney's Test., Tr. at 883-84.
Swartz testified that he could tell "there was tension on the shift" beginning in the spring of 1994, and that things did not improve during the rest of the year. Swartz's Test., Tr. at 954-55. He testified that many of the men talked to him about the tension on the shift, and that plaintiff complained to him about the lack of communication and isolation on several occasions. Id. at 954, 956. When asked by counsel for DuPont what he, as the shift supervisor, tried to do to address the situation between spring of 1994 and December of 1994, Swartz responded:
Well, I mean we continually talked to each...
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