Taylor v. Teletype Corp.
| Decision Date | 20 September 1982 |
| Docket Number | No. LR-C-77-65.,LR-C-77-65. |
| Citation | 550 F. Supp. 781 |
| Parties | Tommie W. TAYLOR and Larry C. Peyton, Plaintiffs, v. TELETYPE CORPORATION, Defendant, James Bibbs, et al., Intervenors. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Arkansas |
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John T. Lavey, Lavey & Harmon, Perlesta A. Hollingsworth, Little Rock, Ark., for plaintiffs.
G. Ross Smith, Bill S. Clark, Friday, Eldredge & Clark, Little Rock, Ark., for defendant.
Pending before the Court in this Title VII race discrimination suit are the individual claims of a number of class members. A pre-trial conference was held on April 7, 1982, to discuss the procedure for litigating those claims. At that conference it was agreed by all parties that the remaining claims would be referred to a magistrate for resolution, after the Court made rulings on two pending questions of law. First, the Court must determine whether the remaining class claimants must independently establish a prima facie case. Second, the Court must rule on the defendant's motions to dismiss a number of individual claims. Pursuant to the Court's order of April 8, 1982, the parties have briefed the two issues, and they are now ripe for adjudication.
The issues must be analyzed in the context of the history of this litigation. The case was initially tried by the Honorable Richard S. Arnold in the latter part of July and the first of August, 1979. It followed Hoard v. Teletype Corp., 450 F.Supp. 1059 (E.D.Ark.1978), the Honorable Gerald W. Heaney, sitting by designation. Hoard considered the allegations that the defendant discriminated against two separate classes of black employees. Class I consisted of all black employees who alleged racial discrimination in discharges from December 3, 1971, to September 6, 1977. A number of discharged employees subsequently opted into Class I. Class II consisted of all black employees who alleged discrimination in promotions since December 3, 1971. The court held that the plaintiffs did not establish a prima facie case of discrimination with respect to Class I, but that they did establish a prima facie case with respect to the allegations of discriminatory promotions, Class II. Judge Arnold ruled that the findings in Hoard were res judicata in this case.
The suit before Judge Arnold involved sixteen individual claims. In addition, a class was certified and defined as follows:
Those black employees of the defendant who were demoted on or after February 28, 1972, including both bargaining-unit and non-bargaining-unit employees, and including those persons still employed by defendant and those employees no longer employed by defendant.
The court ruled, with respect to the class as a whole, 475 F.Supp. at 964. In addition, Judge Arnold found for the plaintiffs on four individual claims.
In his opinion on remedies, 478 F.Supp. 1227, Judge Arnold permanently enjoined the defendant "from discriminating against any individual with respect to his or her compensation, terms, conditions, privileges of employment, or in any other manner, because of such individual's race." Id. at 1228. With respect to the remaining class claims, the Court rejected the plaintiffs' request for the computation of back pay on a classwide basis. Id. at 1230. Subsequently, a notice was sent out to all black demotees of the defendant during the relevant time period. It is the claims of the individuals who filed claims in response to that notice that are currently pending before the court.
On appeal the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the finding of classwide discrimination, concluding that "the evidence cited by the district court, together with the layoff statistics and other miscellaneous evidence, supports the prima facie finding of discrimination." 648 F.2d 1129 at 1135 (8th Cir.1981). The injunction was vacated by the Court of Appeals:
The issuance of the injunction rested on relatively weak, although sufficient, evidence of classwide discrimination, and on the finding of discrimination in four individual cases. Weighing these findings against the finding of no discrimination for the three years immediately preceding the injunction, we have serious doubt as to the appropriateness of this kind of relief. We need not finally determine the propriety of the permanent injunction in this appeal, however, for the district court has yet to decide many of the individual claims for relief. Until those cases are decided, the question of whether Teletype engaged in widespread discrimination, or merely a few isolated illegal acts, remains open.
Id. at 1136 (footnotes omitted).
Teletype filed a petition for a writ of certiorari with the Supreme Court which was denied on November 2, 1981. 454 U.S. 969, 102 S.Ct. 515, 70 L.Ed.2d 386. The Eighth Circuit issued its mandate on November 11, 1981. Judge Arnold recused upon remand, and the case was assigned to this Court.
The issue before the Court is whether the individual class claimants have the initial burden of presenting evidence to establish the existence of a prima facie case of racial discrimination. Under the standards articulated in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 93 S.Ct. 1817, 36 L.Ed.2d 668 (1973), the plaintiff in a Title VII case ordinarily has the initial burden of establishing the prima facie case. The burden then shifts to the employer to prove the existence of non-discriminatory reasons for the treatment of the employee. At that point, the plaintiff may then attempt to prove that the advanced non-discriminatory reasons are merely pretextual. The defendant maintains that the class claimants must adhere to those standards in litigating their claims before the magistrate.
The plaintiffs argue that the initial burden of establishing a prima facie case has already been met. It is their position that Judge Arnold's findings of classwide discrimination, and the affirmance of that finding by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, satisfies the initial requirement of McDonnell Douglas. In support of this view, the plaintiffs direct the Court's attention to International Brotherhood of Teamsters v. United States, 431 U.S. 324, 97 S.Ct. 1843, 52 L.Ed.2d 396 (1976). In Teamsters, the United States brought a Title VII action against an employer and a union. The District Court held that the employer engaged in a pattern and practice of discrimination in violation of Title VII with regard to hiring, promotions and transfers. The Court also found that the union had violated Title VII by a discriminatory seniority system in the collective bargaining agreement. Both the company and the union were permanently enjoined from committing further violations of Title VII.
With respect to individual relief, the District Court divided the discriminatees into three separate classes. One class consisted of thirty persons "who had produced `the most convincing evidence of discrimination and harm.'" 431 U.S. at 331, 97 S.Ct. at 1852. The Court ordered that those persons were to be offered the opportunity to fill jobs with competitive seniority dating back to July 2, 1965, the effective date of Title VII. A second subclass consisted of persons who were "very possibly the object of discrimination." Id. at 332, 97 S.Ct. at 1853. The court decreed that these persons were entitled to fill vacancies with competitive seniority as of January 14, 1971, the date on which the Government had filed its lawsuit. The third subclass consisted of individuals as to whom there was "no evidence to show that these individuals were either harmed or not harmed." Id. The court ordered that they be considered for any vacancies ahead of general applicants but behind the other two subclasses.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the basic liability findings of the District Court. 517 F.2d 299. With respect to remedies, however, the court held that the individual relief ordered by the District Court was inadequate. The District Court's attempt to trisect the class was rejected, and the court held that all discriminatees were entitled to bid for future jobs on the basis of their company seniority. This award of retroactive seniority was to be limited only by a qualification date formula. The Court of Appeals then remanded to the District Court for an evidentiary hearing for application of these remedial principles. The Supreme Court granted the company's and the union's petitions for certiorari.
The Supreme Court affirmed the finding of company discrimination, but reversed as to the union. With respect to the question of remedies, the company argued before the Supreme Court that:
No employee should be entitled to relief until the Government demonstrates that he was an actual victim of the company's discriminatory practices .... The petitioner's first contention is in substance that the Government's burden of proof in a pattern-or-practice case must be equivalent to that outlined in McDonnell Douglas v. Green. Since the Government introduced specific evidence of company discrimination against only some forty employees, they argue that the District Court properly refused to award retroactive seniority to the remainder of the class of minority incumbent employees.
The Court rejected the company's argument, and discussed the burden of proof in the following language:
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