Summy-Long v. Pa. State Univ., 1:06–cv–01117

• Decision Date: 27 December 2016
• Docket Number: No. 1:06–cv–01117,1:06–cv–01117
• Citation: 226 F.Supp.3d 371
• Parties: Joan Y. SUMMY–LONG, Plaintiff, v. The PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Middle District of Pennsylvania

226 F.Supp.3d 371

Joan Y. SUMMY–LONG, Plaintiff,

v.The PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY, et al., Defendants.

No. 1:06–cv–01117

United States District Court, M.D. Pennsylvania.

Signed December 27, 2016

John M. Kerr, John Kerr Law P.C., Mechanicsburg, PA, for Plaintiff.

Janine C. Gismondi, Chena L. Glenn–Hart, McQuade Blasko Law Offices, State College, PA, for Defendants.

MEMORANDUM

Matthew W. Brann, United States District Judge

Today, litigation over ten years in the making comes to a close. On June 2, 2006, Joan Y. Summy–Long, Ph.D., sued The Pennsylvania State University and various other players for allegedly discriminating against her on the basis of sex and then retaliating against her when she attempted to redress her concerns. Her federal complaint was, by all accounts, the culmination of several years spent by Plaintiff zealously advocating for the equitable treatment of women faculty at the University's College of Medicine in Hershey, Pennsylvania. However, despite this case's chronicled past and the momentous resources expended on sundry procedural motions, the dearth of affirmative evidence in the record suggesting a discriminatory or retaliatory animus on the part of the Defendants requires, as the British poet T.S. Eliot once foreshadowed, that the conflict end "not with a bang but with a whimper."¹

Given the tangled history of this case, it must be recognized that a superficial review of the preliminary allegations and the statistics that accompany them tend to invite hasty assumptions in the minds of newcomers unfamiliar with the action's vast procedural underbelly. Such a cursory examination disserves this case. Instead, when one considers the practical backdrop of this litigation, the stark reality is this: if a viable claim ever truly existed, Plaintiff has likely fumbled it away with her less than artful pleadings, her penchant for firing lawyers, and her persistent engagement in dilatory practices.

Consistent with the analysis below, no genuine dispute of material fact exists as to Plaintiff's claims of discriminatory or retaliatory treatment. As such, Defendants' motion for summary judgment will be granted in full.

BACKGROUND

The facts of this case are well known to the Court and the parties. They have previously been set forth at length numerous times, most notably in a partial summary judgment memorandum opinion by the Honorable Yvette Kane of this Court, to whom the matter was assigned until 2013.² Nevertheless, this litigation now concluding, I will recount the pertinent facts for a final time.

Plaintiff was the first ever graduate student employed by the College of Medicine's Pharmacology Department, a role she began in 1969.³ Just under ten years later, in 1978, she received her Ph.D. in pharmacology from that very same department.⁴ In her prime, Plaintiff found her second home there, having once reminisced that she "grew up and flourished as a scientist and educator in the Department of Pharmacology."⁵ Plaintiff was promoted to Associate Professor in 1983 and granted tenure in 1984.⁶ She later attained the rank of Full Professor in 1992.⁷

The College of Medicine pays its faculty under a merit-based system, a system that rewarded scholarly output and the attainment of prestigious national grants with discretionary salary increases. As the parties acknowledge, starting salaries are a function of a combination of factors, including the faculty member's rank at hire, experience, and specific expertise.⁸ Likewise, faculty salaries are affected by market factors, such as the demand for and prestige of a particular discipline.⁹ In addition to automatic annualized increases applied to one's base salary, a professor could also be awarded a merits-based salary increase depending upon her publication history and grant outcomes during the prior year.¹⁰

These merit-based incentives were determined by the faculty member's department chair.¹¹ The department chair would allot merits increases from a limited pool of funds, and by definition, faculty members received distinct merits increases, if any, depending on their annual achievements.¹² The amount of a faculty member's annual merit increase was therefore generally a function his or her level of performance.¹³ Furthermore, faculty members received an 8% base salary increase on promotion from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor and promotion from Associate Professor to Professor.¹⁴

Plaintiff, along with another female faculty member at the College of Medicine, formed the Women's Faculty Group in 1999 to advocate for issues affecting women faculty.¹⁵ Shortly after its formation, the Women's Faculty Group identified salary equity for women faculty as an important concern.¹⁶ In August 2000, the Women's Faculty Group discussed the disparate salary compensation issue at a meeting with then College of Medicine Dean Darrell Kirch and again with Vice Dean for Faculty and Administrative Affairs Kevin Grigsby in October of that year.¹⁷

Shortly thereafter, the University's Affirmative Action Office conducted an analysis of faculty salaries within the College of Medicine's basic science departments.¹⁸ The study, released on July 21, 2000, concluded that "sex is not a significant factor in explaining salary in this population and there is no indication of systemic bias on the basis of sex."¹⁹ Several members of the Women's Faculty Group did not accept the accuracy of this study and in a January 2001 memorandum addressed to Grigsby, the Women's Faculty Group questioned the integrity of the results.²⁰

Acknowledging an inconsistency in the way in which certain salary data was gathered or reported, the University agreed to conduct a subsequent salary study for the College of Medicine and to retain an outside expert to do so.²¹ The University retained Dr. Lois Haignere, President of Haignere, Inc., to conduct the study.²² Dr. Haignere's study was confined to the 2001–2002 academic year and did not render any individualized conclusions.²³ However, in her 2004 report, Dr. Haignere concluded that there existed a difference, though not a statistically significant one, between the salaries paid to male and female faculty members as a class.²⁴ As a consequence of the findings of the Haignere Report, all tenured and tenure-track white female basic scientists, including Plaintiff, received a 3.8% salary increase effective July 1, 2004.²⁵

For the next few years, Plaintiff underperformed her male counterparts academically. In particular, despite having devoted 80% of her time to research activities, Plaintiff's superiors would grow dissatisfied with her scholarly output. For instance, in her annual evaluation following the 2006–2007 academic year, Dr. Kent Vrana, then the Chair of the Pharmacology Department, indicated that he expected to see "growth" in Plaintiff's "[r]esearch efforts" during the next evaluation period.²⁶ The assessment noted that without Plaintiff obtaining additional grants or an extension of her existing grant, "funds will soon be exhausted to support [her] laboratory's research."²⁷ Dr. Vrana "urged" Plaintiff to "increase publications" and "seek extramural funding to support [her] research efforts and that portion of [her] salary that is requested by the institution."²⁸

In that same review, Dr. Vrana memorialized the following exchange: He decided to offer Plaintiff the opportunity to chair a committee after she complained about the lack of such opportunities during her evaluation discussion, but she rejected him, stating "I don't feel I should have to ask, and I now am not interested in chairing a committee."²⁹ The evaluation concluded that it was "vitally important" for Plaintiff to make application for the renewal of her existing grant or to "explore other opportunities that might be funded in the near-term."³⁰

Of particular emphasis was Plaintiff's failure to timely apply for renewal of her 2003 National Institute of Health (NIH) grant. Grant awards are important to the College of Medicine because they help defray personnel costs.³¹ In fact, NIH grants are the most significant form of funding a biomedical researcher can receive.³² Thus, although NIH funding may wax and wane, sustained grants of that type are considered the hallmark of a successful career for a biomedical researcher.³³ Grant funding is so critical to the efficient operation of medical schools like the College of Medicine that it established a 25% external salary support benchmark, requiring that its faculty members fund a minimum of 25% of their salary with the proceeds of external research grants.³⁴

As the College of Medicine's 2003 Academic Compensation Plan (referred to by the parties as the "ACP") explained, "It is important that faculty strive to obtain additional grant-derived salary dollars, which are necessary for the department to fulfill its obligations for support of faculty salaries and additional expenses to maintain the department."³⁵ It should be noted that the 25% requirement was set below the College of Medicine's ideal goal of 50% salary support through external grant funding for each faculty member.³⁶ Should a faculty member's external support fall below the 25% threshold level, that individual would begin a probationary period one and a half to two years in length, after which time, her salary would be reduced by 8.3% (the value of one month's pay in a twelve-month contract) if her funding was not satisfactorily restored.³⁷

The NIH grant at issue in Plaintiff's case was awarded in 2003 and permitted her to fund 50% of her salary for the 2003–2004, 2004–2005, and 2005–2006 academic years.³⁸ As Dr. Vrana explained during his deposition, grant recipients typically attempt to apply for renewal approximately nine months before the expiration of the funded period.³⁹ By all accounts, however, Plaintiff's dilatoriness in regard to her renewal application cost her the opportunity secure this particular NIH funding for an additional period. Dr. Vrana testified that "in three...