Stewart v. Booker T. Washington Insurance

• Decision Date: 09 November 2000
• Docket Number: No. 99-14741,99-14741
• Citation: 232 F.3d 844
• Parties: (11th Cir. 2000) Valda STEWART, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. BOOKER T. WASHINGTON INSURANCE, Booker T. Washington Broadcasting Company, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 844

232 F.3d 844 (11th Cir. 2000)

Valda STEWART, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. BOOKER T. WASHINGTON INSURANCE, Booker T. Washington Broadcasting Company, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 99-14741.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

November 9, 2000.

November 21, 2000

[Copyrighted Material Omitted] Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.(No. 99-01383-CV-J-S), Inge P. Johnson, Judge.

Before CARNES, MARCUS and FARRIS^*, Circuit Judges.

MARCUS, Circuit Judge:

This appeal is from an order of summary judgment for the Defendants, Booker T. Washington Insurance Company ("Insurance") and Booker T. Washington Broadcasting Company ("Broadcasting"), in a suit brought by Valda Stewart for alleged violations of Title VII. In essence, Stewart claimed that the Defendants, her former employers, discriminated against her by transferring, terminating, and failing to rehire her on account of her sex and in retaliation for having filed a previous charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (the "EEOC").

The district court grounded summary judgment on the conclusion that Stewart did not file a charge with the EEOC within 180 days of the alleged unlawful practices, as required by 42 U.S.C. 2000e-5(e)(1). After thorough review, we reverse as to Stewart's termination and failure to rehire claims because the charge filing period for a retaliatory discharge claim does not begin to run until a plaintiff receives notice of termination, and on this record there is a genuine issue of material fact as to whether Stewart received such notice more than 180 days before she filed. However, we affirm summary judgment as to Stewart's transfer claim because she failed to file an EEOC charge within the statutorily prescribed period following the alleged retaliatory transfer.

I.

The facts and procedural history of this case are relatively straightforward. Valda Stewart was hired by Insurance as an accountant in 1990. Approximately nine months later, she was informed by Kirkwood Balton, the president of Insurance, Broadcasting, and the A.G. Gaston Construction Company ("Construction") that she would be doing the accounting work for Broadcasting and Construction, subsidiaries of Insurance. Stewart became Broadcasting's Vice President of Accounting and also an officer at Construction.¹

On April 24, 1996, Stewart filed her first charge of discrimination with the EEOC, naming Broadcasting as her employer and alleging that she was being sexually harassed by her supervisor, Barry Williams, and discriminated against on the basis of her sex. Stewart alleges that she was then told in May 1996 that, due to her pending EEOC charge and the related investigation, she was being transferred to exclusively Broadcasting duties but that she would be reassigned to both Broadcasting and Construction when the investigation was completed. On July 2, 1997, Stewart received a dismissal and a right to sue letter from the EEOC. She did not file suit within 90 days of that right to sue letter.

Stewart remained at Broadcasting until she was terminated on November 21, 1997. The parties disagree about when Stewart received notice of her termination. The Defendants argue, and the district court agreed, that Stewart received notice of her termination in May 1997 when she learned Broadcasting's primary assets (two radio stations) were going to be sold, at which time all employees of that division would be terminated. Kirkwood Balton, the president of both defendant corporations, testified that after the asset purchase agreement was executed on May 12, 1997, he held a meeting with all the employees of Broadcasting, at which meeting:

we told them that we had entered into an agreement to sell the radio station and that we were concerned about the employment of all of our people, and we were concerned about the continued operation of our broadcast service until-until it was-the sale brought to closure, and we told all of our employees that we would help them with employment, try to hire them, or if they stayed on with us until the end, until the end of the sale, that we would pay them four months' severance pay.

He also testified that all of Broadcasting's employees were terminated following the sale of the radio stations, except for one employee who was retained to oversee the operations of Broadcasting's remaining asset.

According to Stewart, she first learned that she was going to be terminated in November 1997. Stewart stated in an affidavit that during the summer and fall of 1997, after Broadcasting announced that its radio stations would be sold, many Broadcasting employees were offered interviews with the company that had agreed to purchase the radio stations. She believed she was not offered an interview because "Mr. Balton had in mind for me to continue working for the A.G. Gaston affiliated companies, including the Construction, Cemetery, Public Relations, and Insurance companies, following the sale of the stations." She also stated that,

Prior to November 1997, neither Mr. Balton nor any other officer or employee under Balton's direction told me or indicated in any way that I was to be terminated as a result of the sale of [the radio stations]. Since the Broadcasting Service remained in existence after the sale as did the numerous other affiliated companies of A.G. Gaston, I had no reason to believe that I would not be retained to perform services for the other affiliated companies as Mr. Balton had told me in May 1996 and as I had done throughout my employment since October 1990. It was not until early November 1997 that I had any indication that I may be terminated.

Stewart said that she had an exit interview on November 3, 1997 and she was told that her termination date, if any, was uncertain. According to Stewart, she was told on November 20, 1997 that she was being terminated and her last day of work was November 21, 1997.

On January 8, 1998, Stewart sent a letter and a resume to Insurance. She stated that she was interested in working for that company. She was not hired.

On February 13, 1998, Stewart filed a second charge of discrimination with the EEOC, naming Insurance as her employer and claiming that since the filing of the April 1996 charge she had been subject to retaliation and discriminated against as shown through a transfer and then her termination. She also alleged that she had been transferred from her duties in the Defendants' "construction, broadcasting, cemetery, and public relations division to solely the broadcasting division, and was told at the time of her transfer that such action was for the time during which the investigation of her EEOC was pending, and that she would be reinstated to her full duties after such investigation was completed." On June 8, 1998, she filed a third charge with the EEOC against Broadcasting alleging the identical grounds stated in her February 1998 charge.

On May 27, 1999, Stewart filed suit against Insurance and Broadcasting alleging sex discrimination and retaliation in violation of Title VII. Her complaint charged that the two Defendants were one enterprise and her joint employer. Both Defendants filed motions to dismiss, arguing that Stewart did not file an EEOC charge within 180 days of when she received notice of her termination. The district court converted the motions to dismiss into motions for summary judgment. After discovery was conducted, the district court granted summary judgment in favor of the Defendants, finding that Stewart had received notice of her termination in May 1997 but failed to file a charge with the EEOC within the statutory period following that notice.

II.

We review a district court's order granting summary judgment de novo, applying the same standards as the district court. See Hairston v. Gainesville Sun Pub. Co., 9 F.3d 913, 918 (11th Cir.1993). Summary judgment is authorized when all "pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law." Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c). In assessing whether there is any "genuine issue" for trial, the court "must view all the evidence and all factual inferences reasonably drawn from the evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party," Stewart v. Happy Herman's Cheshire Bridge, Inc., 117 F.3d 1278, 1285 (11th Cir.1997), and "resolve all reasonable doubts about the facts in favor of the non-movant." United of Omaha Life Ins. v. Sun Life Ins. Co., 894 F.2d 1555, 1558 (11th Cir.1990). Moreover, the court must avoid weighing conflicting evidence or making credibility determinations. Damon v. Fleming Supermarkets of Florida, Inc., 196 F.3d 1354, 1361 (11th Cir.1999), cert. denied 120 S.Ct. 1962, 146 L.Ed.2d 793 (2000). Instead, " '[t]he evidence of the non-movant is to be believed, and all justifiable inferences are to be drawn in his favor.' " Hairston, 9 F.3d at 918 (quoting Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986)).

III.

We conclude that the district court erred in determining that Stewart's EEOC charge of discriminatory and retaliatory termination was untimely filed and therefore also erred in granting summary judgment to the Defendants. The Defendants did not present any clear evidence that the decision to terminate Stewart was made or communicated to her before November 20, 1997. Moreover, the district court improperly discredited Stewart's testimony that she was never told before November 20, 1997 that she was or would be terminated. Since the charge filing period on a termination claim does not begin to run until an employee is told that she is actually being terminated (not that she might be terminated if future contingencies occur) and Stewart filed a charge with the EEOC within 180 days of November 20, 1997, the district...