Riley v. Lance, Inc.

• Citation: 518 F.3d 996
• Decision Date: 20 March 2008
• Docket Number: No. 06-3697.,06-3697.
• Parties: Charles RILEY, Appellant, v. LANCE, INC., Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

518 F.3d 996

Charles RILEY, Appellant, v. LANCE, INC., Appellee.

No. 06-3697.

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

Submitted: October 19, 2007.

Filed: March 20, 2008.

Neysa L. Day, argued, Kansas City, MO, for Appellant.

Miranda Zolot, argued, Charlotte, NC, Bruce Steen, on brief, Charlotte, NC, for Appellee.

Before BYE, BOWMAN, and SMITH, Circuit Judges.

BOWMAN, Circuit Judge.

Charles Riley appeals from the order of the District Court¹ granting summary judgment to Lance, Inc., on Riley's claim of age discrimination. We affirm.

We review the decision to grant summary judgment de novo, applying the same standard as the District Court. We view the facts in the light most favorable to Riley, and we will affirm if we conclude there remain no genuine issues of material fact and Lance is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. See Arnold v. Nursing & Rehab. Ctr. at Good Shepherd, LLC, 471 F.3d 843, 845 (8th Cir.2006). The record shows the following undisputed facts.

Lance, headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, produces and distributes snack foods. Lance hired Riley in 1974 as a salesperson, and he worked for the company as an at-will employee until he was terminated in 2004. At the time of his termination, his position was district account manager (DAM) for the Kansas City district. The district sales manager (DSM) was Riley's supervisor. That position was held by Chuck Windham until August 2003, when Windham was terminated.

In November 2003, Lawrence Dumas replaced Windham as Riley's supervisor. A short time later, on December 4, Dumas sent Riley a memorandum that noted a 19.9% decrease in third-quarter sales for the accounts for which Riley was responsible, notwithstanding Riley's projection, made at the end of 2002, of a sales increase of 10.9% for 2003. In his memorandum, Dumas iterated the importance of setting and attaining goals to improve sales numbers and listed eight such goals for Riley, most with January 2004 due dates. Dumas wrote, "The goal here is to keep increasing your activity until we are up to standard performance.... Please be assured that we will have success, and there can be no thought of failure." Memorandum from Lawrence Dumas to Charles Riley 2 (Dec. 4, 2003). On December 8, Dumas e-mailed Riley a "forced ranking" of sales districts that showed Riley's year-to-date sales (through the end of November) as third from last (out of eighteen) with negative 7.4% growth. Riley's performance by year-end was improved, but his annual sales were still not up to his projections for 2003 and were down from 2002.

On January 15, 2004, Dumas met with Riley to discuss a memorandum from Dumas to Riley that set forth a performance development program (PDP). The memorandum noted that Riley's performance was lacking and that he would be required to meet certain targets with 100% compliance within sixty days or face termination. According to the terms of the PDP, the goals were not beyond ordinary day-to-day requirements of the DAM position, but Riley had failed to date to achieve them. On March 11, 2004, Dumas met with Riley and presented him with a termination letter that noted Riley had not made acceptable progress toward meeting the objectives set out in the PDP. Riley's employment was terminated effective immediately. He was fifty-eight years old and had nearly thirty years as a Lance employee.

Riley filed age-discrimination charges with the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the Missouri Commission on Human Rights (MCHR). After Riley received right-to-sue letters from the EEOC and the MCHR, he filed suit against Lance in state court in May 2005 alleging violations of the Missouri Human Rights Act (MHRA), including a claim of age discrimination, and making a claim under the common-law doctrine of promissory estoppel. The case was removed to federal court based on diversity jurisdiction, and on September 21, 2006, the District Court granted summary judgment to Lance on the claim of age discrimination.² Riley appeals.

Riley does not contend, and the record does not show, that he has any direct proof that Lance terminated him because of his age. Where, as in this case, any evidence of age discrimination is circumstantial, we must apply the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting analysis.³ Schierhoff v. GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare, L.P., 444 F.3d 961, 964 (8th Cir.2006). In order to prevail, Riley must first be able to "establish a prima facie case of discrimination." Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Prods., Inc., 530 U.S. 133, 142, 120 S.Ct. 2097, 147 L.Ed.2d 105 (2000). If he is able to do so, the burden would then shift to Lance to produce evidence that Riley was terminated "for a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason." Id. (quoting Tex. Dep't of Cmty. Affairs v. Burdine, 450 U.S. 248, 254, 101 S.Ct. 1089, 67 L.Ed.2d 207 (1981)). If Lance were able to come forward with such evidence, the presumption of discrimination raised by Riley's proof of a prima facie case would drop out of the case and Riley would need to show by a preponderance of the evidence that Lance's reasons for termination were a pretext for discrimination. Id. at 143, 120 S.Ct. 2097. Since this case was decided on Lance's motion for summary judgment, Riley must show a genuine issue of material fact at any step of the analysis to be successful on appeal.

To make out a prima facie case and get past step one of the McDonnell Douglas analysis, Riley must be able to show the following: that he was a member of a protected class when he was terminated, that he was otherwise qualified for the position from which he was terminated when he was terminated, that Lance terminated him, and that his "discharge occurred in circumstances giving rise to an inference of unlawful discrimination." Arnold, 471 F.3d at 846.

In its decision on Lance's motion for summary judgment, the District Court collapsed the prima facie case into the McDonnell Douglas framework (as have many courts in the past—including this one). That is, at step two of the prima facie case analysis, the District Court required Riley to show a genuine issue of fact as to whether "he was performing his job at the level that met the employer's legitimate expectations." Order of Sept. 21, 2006, at 4 (citing Calder v. TCI Cablevision of Mo., Inc., 298 F.3d 723 (8th Cir. 2002)). This was error. See Arnold, 471 F.3d at 846. Riley needed only to show that he was "otherwise qualified" for the position he held. Reeves, 530 U.S. at 142, 120 S.Ct. 2097. Since he had been performing the DAM job successfully for years, he met that requirement of the prima facie case. See McGinnis v. Union Pac. R.R., 496 F.3d 868, 875-76 & n. 3. Riley also met his burden in proving parts one and three of the prima facie case — Lance terminated him and he was over forty years old at the time. As to part four of the prima facie case, Lance does not dispute Riley's contention that he was replaced with a substantially younger person. That fact alone gives rise to the necessary inference of age discrimination. See Ward v. Int'l Paper Co., 509 F.3d 457 461 (8th Cir.2007). Riley therefore demonstrated a prima facie case that Lance terminated him because of his age, and the District Court should have proceeded to the next step of the McDonnell Douglas analysis.

Our de novo review of the record in this case, however, leads us to conclude that the District Court's error is not reversible. See Bass v. SBC Commc'ns, Inc., 418 F.3d 870, 872 (8th Cir.2005) (noting that we may affirm summary judgment "on any grounds supported by the record"). As we intimated above, the District Court's analysis of job qualification in its discussion of the prima facie case was a de facto analysis of the second and third parts of the McDonnell Douglas framework. In other words, the District Court effectively completed the burden-shifting analysis. The court held that Riley's performance had not met Lance's legitimate expectations and that Riley presented no evidence to create a genuine issue that it had. In other words, Riley was unable to come forward with evidence to show that Lance's reason for terminating him — that his performance did not meet Lance's expectations — was a pretext for illegal discrimination.

As we understand Riley's argument on appeal, he believes the need for the PDP was "contrived," and in any event, he met the "legitimate" PDP targets. Br. of Appellant at 36.⁴ He contends that he has shown genuine issues as to whether Lance lied about the need for the PDP and terminated him for failure to meet PDP targets that were not legitimate. Riley argues that the District Court did not fulfill its obligation under the summary judgment standard to view the evidence in the light most favorable to him and to give him the benefit of all reasonable inferences to be drawn from the evidence. Indeed, Riley should receive the benefit of all reasonable inferences that can be drawn from the evidence, but only if those inferences can be drawn "without resort to speculation." Johnson v. Ready Mixed Concrete Co., 424 F.3d 806, 810 (8th Cir.2005). Upon de novo review, applying the same standard as the District Court, we conclude that summary judgment was proper in this case.

Riley argues that Lance's assertions of poor sales performance were false and that the need for a PDP in the first place therefore was fabricated. "In appropriate circumstances, the trier of fact can reasonably infer from the falsity of the explanation that the employer is dissembling to cover up a discriminatory purpose." Reeves, 530 U.S. at 147, 120 S.Ct. 2097. As evidence of Lance's "dissembling," Riley points to the fact...