Ruddy v. Bluestream Prof'l Serv., LLC

• Decision Date: 12 March 2020
• Docket Number: Civil No. 1:18-cv-1480
• Citation: 444 F.Supp.3d 697
• Parties: Laura RUDDY, Plaintiff, v. BLUESTREAM PROFESSIONAL SERV., LLC, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Virginia

444 F.Supp.3d 697

Laura RUDDY, Plaintiff,

v.BLUESTREAM PROFESSIONAL SERV., LLC, et al., Defendants.

Civil No. 1:18-cv-1480

United States District Court, E.D. Virginia, Alexandria Division.

Signed March 12, 2020

Philip Corliss Krone, John C. Cook, Cook Craig & Francuzenko PLLC, Fairfax, VA, for Plaintiff.

Kevin D. Holden, Douglas Paul Holdsworth, Lindsey Ann Strachan, Isler Dare PC, Richmond, VA, for Defendant.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

T. S. Ellis, III, United States District Judge

Plaintiff Laura Ruddy has sued her former employer Defendant Bluestream Professional Services, LLC ("Bluestream") and Defendant KGP Telecommunications, Inc.¹ (collectively, "defendants") for sex and pregnancy discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ("Title VII") and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act ("PDA"),² as well as retaliation under Title VII, the PDA, and the Family Medical Leave Act of 1993 ("FMLA"). Defendants filed a motion for summary judgment on each count of plaintiff's complaint. Defendants' motion has been fully briefed and argued orally, and thus is ripe for disposition.

I.

The entry of summary judgment is appropriate only where there are no genuine disputes of material fact. See Celotex Corp. v. Catrett , 477 U.S. 317, 322, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986). Thus, it is important to identify the record facts as to which no genuine dispute exists. In this regard, Local Rule 56(B) directs a movant for summary judgment to include in its submission a separately captioned section listing in numbered-paragraph form all material facts as to which the movant contends no genuine dispute exists; the nonmovant must then respond to each paragraph citing admissible record evidence to establish a genuine dispute of material fact. In this case, both parties have substantially complied with the Local Rule. Accordingly, the facts recited herein are derived from defendants' list of material facts and plaintiff's response to those facts, noting where plaintiff disputes facts and whether that dispute is genuine and material.

1. Bluestream provides planning, implementation, and maintenance services for wireless, wire line, broadband cable, and data center networks in the United States.

2. Bluestream maintains a company policy that allows employees to raise complaints when an employee believes that he or she has been subjected to unlawful harassment. According to the policy, when a complaint of illegal harassment is made, the Director of Human Resources will undertake a confidential investigation.

3. On August 6, 2015, Scott Della Valle, Vice President of Operations of Mobility Services for Bluestream, hired plaintiff as a recruiting manager.

4. Della Valle had worked with plaintiff previously at another company and recruited plaintiff for the recruiting manager position after she left her former company.

5. Della Valle hired plaintiff at a salary of $90,000 per year.

6. Plaintiff was hired to perform "full cycle recruiting," a process which involved recruiting, interviewing, and hiring candidates for internal positions with Bluestream.³

7. At all times relevant to this matter, the expense associated with plaintiff's employment at Bluestream was allocated to the Mobility Services unit, which was Della Valle's responsibility.⁴ Plaintiff understood that she was initially on the Mobility Services unit budget, but that she was at some later point transferred to the corporate budget.

8. Initially, plaintiff performed only the recruiting manager duties for which she was hired.

9. In October 2015, Director of Human Resources Tara Taylor was assigned to be plaintiff's direct report from a technical standpoint and her position was reflected on the corporate budget. Otherwise, however, no aspect of plaintiff's job changed, including her compensation, the assignment of her employment expense to the Mobility unit, or her job duties.

10. In 2016, plaintiff requested and received FMLA from December 5, 2016 to March 6, 2017 for the birth of her first child.

11. Since plaintiff was hired in August 2015, her full cycle recruiting work for the Mobility Services unit had steadily declined and Taylor assumed those duties while plaintiff was on FMLA leave. Despite the decline in plaintiff's full cycle recruiting work, plaintiff still obtained enough other work to keep her working more than forty hours a week.⁵

12. When plaintiff returned to work in March 2017, she was asked to fill in on staffing the Nokia Airscale project – a client project. She complied with this request. The recruiting work on this project was generally outsourced to outside staffing companies, but plaintiff worked to provide assistance with administration, management, scheduling, training, and hiring of new technicians as required by Nokia.⁶

13. After March 2017, plaintiff's work for Nokia took up ninety percent of her time. The remaining ten percent of her time involved the recruiting work that plaintiff was originally hired to perform.

14. In May 2017, Bluestream joined with KGP Logistics under the brand name KGPCo, but both Bluestream and KGP Logistics remained separate corporate entities. Bluestream and KGP Telecommunications LLC share the same corporate headquarters and address.⁷

15. In June or July 2017, plaintiff informed Taylor that plaintiff was pregnant and expecting her second child in January 2018. Although plaintiff informed Taylor that she would be going out on leave for this second pregnancy, plaintiff had not submitted any FMLA request and plaintiff did not otherwise disclose this pregnancy to anyone at Bluestream.⁸

16. On August 25, 2017, Vincent Briggs, a Training Project Manager for Bluestream assigned to the Airscale project, resigned. At that point, plaintiff began interacting with Ben Thompson, the point person at Nokia managing the training of Nokia technicians assigned to the project. Plaintiff continued to devote ninety percent of her time to the Airscale project and ten percent to internal requisitions.

17. Following Briggs' resignation, Bluestream appointed Phil Dudek to work in the newly created "PMO"⁹ position for the Airscale project. Bluestream then began looking for an administrative level employee to provide Dudek with assistance, as Nokia was becoming frustrated with the lack of administrative resources in that regard.¹⁰

18. Edin Kucanovic, a man, was eventually hired to provide administrative assistance to the Airscale project. Kucanovic interviewed for the position in September 2017 and was hired on October 23, 2017 at the rate of $16.00 per hour. Unlike plaintiff, Kucanovic was not hired to work exclusively for the Mobility Services unit or allocated to the Mobility Services budget. By hiring Kucanovic into an administrative role, some of the administrative duties that plaintiff had performed on the Airscale project were assumed by Kucanovic.¹¹

19. Thompson interacted with plaintiff for two months. Thompson was a Nokia employee, not plaintiff's supervisor, and did not have hiring or firing authority over plaintiff. Although Thompson was not a person with authority to hire or fire at Nokia, he was a gatekeeper for access to Nokia.¹²

20. On September 17, 2017, shortly after plaintiff began working with Thompson, plaintiff mentioned in an email to Thompson that she was unable to make a scheduled training because of her "20 week ultrasound to see baby for the first time." Dkt. 25-6 ("September 12, 2017 Ruddy Email").

21. Thompson did not say anything positive or negative in response to plaintiff's disclosure of the upcoming ultrasound.

22. At all times, plaintiff worked remotely and never interacted with anyone, including Thompson, face-to-face.

23. In September 2017 as the close of the fiscal year approached, Della Valle began to consider reducing his unit's expenditures, including elimination of plaintiff's recruiting manager position because the Mobility Services unit no longer needed a full cycle recruiter and plaintiff was no longer performing the recruiting functions that she was hired to do.¹³

24. The administrative work that plaintiff and one other Bluestream employee, Alvina Colvin, did on the Airscale project could be performed by a project coordinator or program manager at the much lower cost of $16.00 per hour as compared to the $115,200 annual salary and benefits paid to plaintiff as a recruiting manager.¹⁴

25. For these reasons, Della Valle – the same person who recruited and hired plaintiff two years prior as recruiting manager – decided to eliminate plaintiff's recruiting manager position and terminate plaintiff's employment. Following plaintiff's termination, aspects of plaintiff's job duties were going to be distributed to other employees.¹⁵

26. On October 11, 2017, Della Valle confirmed his decision to eliminate the recruiting manager position in an email to Taylor and Carson Feleay, the Director of Finance. Della Valle stated that he "wanted to include Carson in the discussion as we are collectively working on reducing OPEX [operating expenses] costs for 2018." Dkt. 25-7 ("October 26, 2017 Della Valle Email Chain").

27. As of October 11, 2017, Della Valle was not aware that plaintiff was pregnant.¹⁶

28. Pursuant to Della Valle's instructions, Taylor informed plaintiff that her position would be eliminated on October 25, 2017 and that plaintiff's last day would be Friday, October 27, 2017. Taylor explained to plaintiff that the decision was for budgetary reasons.

29. Although plaintiff had previously mentioned to Taylor the need to take FMLA leave, plaintiff had not submitted any FMLA paperwork for her pregnancy or requested a leave of absence related to her pregnancy as of October 25, 2017. Additionally, plaintiff was not eligible for FMLA leave under Bluestream's FMLA policy, because she had taken 12 weeks of FMLA leave less than a year before.

30. In response to being told that her position was being eliminated, plaintiff – who was due to give birth in January 2018 – proposed an alternative solution, namely that she be placed on

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