Raney v. Vinson Guard Service, Inc.

• Decision Date: 29 August 1997
• Docket Number: No. 96-6373,96-6373
• Citation: 120 F.3d 1192
• Parties: 74 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. (BNA) 1883, 71 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 44,976, 11 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. C 473 Deborah RANEY, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. VINSON GUARD SERVICE, INC., Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 1192

120 F.3d 1192

74 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. (BNA) 1883,

71 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 44,976,

11 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. C 473

Deborah RANEY, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. VINSON GUARD SERVICE, INC., Defendant-Appellee.

No. 96-6373.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

Aug. 29, 1997.

Vernon H. Padgett, Cullman, AL, Braxton Schell, Jr., Cooper, Mitch, Crawford, Kuykendall, Whatley, Birmingham, AL, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

Richard S. Jaffe, Stephen A. Strickland, Birmingham, AL, for Defendant-Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.

Before HATCHETT, Chief Judge, BIRCH, Circuit Judge, and CLARK, Senior Circuit Judge.

HATCHETT, Chief Judge:

Deborah Raney appeals a district court order granting summary judgment to her employer, Vinson Guard Service, Inc., on a Title VII claim of retaliation. Because Raney did not set forth evidence sufficient to withstand a motion for summary judgment, we affirm the district court's order.

FACTS

The facts that follow are undisputed unless otherwise indicated. On September 20, 1992, Vinson hired Raney as a full-time secretary in its Decatur, Alabama branch office. Several months later, in December 1992, Vinson terminated the Decatur branch manager. Raney assumed the terminated manager's responsibilities for payroll and guard scheduling. After approximately two months, on January 31, 1993, Raney received a new title--"operations coordinator"--and a salaried position. The position of operations coordinator ordinarily involved scheduling and clerical duties, but Vinson gave Raney greater responsibilities, many of which were ordinarily assigned to branch managers. Raney did not, however, receive the title "branch manager" or the associated level of compensation.

According to Raney, sometime after she became operations coordinator she asked her regional supervisor, Gregory Carter, why she was not named branch manager and compensated at a higher level. Raney also asked Carter why she received less compensation and fewer perks than her male subordinates or counterparts. Carter allegedly replied that Vinson's vice president did not want females in management positions. ¹ Carter also allegedly advised Raney to be patient and prove herself. According to Carter, Vinson did not make Raney a branch manager Despite the promotion, Raney continued to raise concerns with Carter about her pay. During the last pay-related conversation, Raney alleges that Carter told her he could not do anything to resolve her pay concerns, given the views of Vinson's vice-president. ² Raney also alleges that the following discussion occurred:

immediately because she lacked experience in the security industry. Ultimately, Vinson promoted Raney to Decatur branch manager in May or June of 1993. As a result of the promotion, Raney became Vinson's only female branch manager in Carter's region.

[B]asically--basically, what he [Carter] told me [Raney] was that he had--he had thought about resigning from Vinson but financially he couldn't. He had even spoke[n] with his wife about it and that [sic] he couldn't swallow the things that were going on.

I explained to him that I didn't expect him to do that for me. I felt like he had gone--I know how far out of his way, and how hard he had fought for me. And I appreciated that. But I didn't expect him to put hi[m]self in that kind of position. But that I, in turn, would have to do what I had to do. And he wanted to know what that meant. I just explained, you know, that if legal action was what it took.... Again, I said, "You do what you have to do and I will do what I have to do." And that was pretty much the way it was left. ³

According to Raney, Carter's attitude towards her changed markedly after this discussion--"like we [Raney and Carter] were on opposite sides"--and in her next performance review Raney's normally high performance rating fell dramatically from between ninety to a hundred percent down to zero percent. A few weeks after the discussion, Raney also lost her job at Vinson.

According to Raney, the specific event precipitating her termination was a telephone call the Decatur branch office secretary, Renee Mahathy, made to Carter on November 30, 1993. During the call, Mahathy allegedly told Carter about a statement Raney was drafting to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). ⁴ Just a few hours after the alleged call, Carter traveled to Decatur from his office in Birmingham, Alabama. When Carter arrived, he gathered all the Decatur office employees together and conducted a search of every room in the office, ostensibly in search of some missing paperwork. When the search reached Raney's office, Carter discovered the missing paperwork, and after questioning Raney, asked her to turn in her office keys. ⁵ The following day, December 1, 1993, Carter informed Raney that she was terminated. According to Raney, Carter initially gave no reason for her termination. When pressed, Carter indicated that Raney was terminated for "misconduct," specifically, for authorizing fraudulent payments to employees who had not worked. According to Raney, the misconduct charge was a pretextual ruse to mask a retaliatory termination, as all of the alleged fraudulent payment authorizations were, in fact, legitimate and in accordance with standard company procedures.

Carter's view of the events leading up to Raney's termination differs significantly from According to Carter, a week later, on November 29, 1993, Raney called to inform him about more missing paperwork. This paperwork included the following: petty cash receipts, weekly activity reports, marketing reports, payroll register forms, accounts receivable printouts, copies of sales proposals, copies of sales letters, and the master file on a major hospital account. After quizzing Raney about this second paperwork loss, Carter claims he told Raney that he would decide how to investigate the loss and would then get back in touch with her. The following day, November 30, 1993, Carter traveled to the Decatur branch office. En route to the office, Carter claims he called Mahathy and asked her to arrange for the entire office staff to meet him at the office when he arrived. After he arrived, Carter organized an office search to look for the missing paperwork. Carter ultimately discovered the paperwork in a briefcase in Raney's office. When Raney could not, or would not, explain how the missing paperwork got in her office, Carter asked her to turn in her keys and sent her home. Carter also took Mahathy's keys.

                Raney's.  According to Carter, on November 22, 1993, Vinson's accounting office in New Orleans called and told him that no payroll package had been delivered to headquarters from Raney's branch office.  Carter subsequently called Raney to find out what happened to the payroll package.  Raney then made inquiries about the missing package.  When her staff could not account for the missing package, Raney allegedly told Carter that "obviously, someone has broken into the office and stolen the payroll package."   Accepting Raney's claim as true, Carter told Raney to immediately change the branch office locks and to make only three copies of the new key sets:  one for Carter, one for Mahathy and one for Raney
                

Later that evening, Carter spoke with Vinson's vice-president about the missing paperwork. During that conversation, Vinson's vice-president allegedly instructed Carter to research the payroll and scheduling information from the Decatur branch office. On December 1, 1993, Carter allegedly followed orders and began researching the payroll and scheduling information. After a few hours of investigation, he discovered evidence that purportedly showed that Raney intentionally falsified company payroll records in order to pay employees who had not worked. Carter then called Raney into the Decatur branch office and informed her that she was terminated. According to Vinson, the company terminated Raney for a number of reasons, specifically, (1) misconduct regarding the falsification of company payroll documents; (2) losing numerous documents, including payroll documents and documents containing confidential trade secrets that Vinson did not want its competitors to obtain; and (3) not performing job duties.

PROCEDURAL HISTORY

In January 1994, approximately a month and a half after her termination, Raney filed charges with the EEOC against Vinson. On June 13, 1994, the EEOC issued Raney a notice informing her of her right to sue Vinson. On September 12, 1994, Raney filed a lawsuit against Vinson in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama. Raney's lawsuit alleged one count for employment discrimination on the basis of sex and for retaliation in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, § 701 et seq., as amended, 42 U.S.C. § 2000(e) et seq.; two counts for breach of contract; and one count for fraud.

On November 30, 1995, Vinson moved for summary judgment on all of Raney's claims. Vinson supported its motion with Carter's affidavit, a number of proposed trial exhibits and its answer to Raney's complaint. On December 21, 1995, Raney filed a number of evidentiary submissions in opposition to Vinson's motion. These submissions included Raney's deposition and affidavit, an affidavit from Charlotte Vines Taylor (Raney's former co-worker) and various proposed trial exhibits. Raney did not include among her submissions any deposition testimony, interrogatory responses or admissions from Carter or Vinson's vice-president. Nor did Raney submit any documentary evidence regarding the scope of Carter's authority as Vinson's regional supervisor. On March 5, 1996, the district court granted Vinson's motion for The district court divided its memorandum of decision on Raney's Title VII count into two parts. First, the district court granted Vinson summary judgment on Raney's sex discrimination claim because not a "single shred of...