Telles v. Wal-Mart Assocs.
| Decision Date | 16 November 2020 |
| Docket Number | E072835 |
| Parties | PAULA TELLES, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. WAL-MART ASSOCIATES, INC., et al., Defendants and Respondents. |
| Court | California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS
California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.
OPINIONAPPEAL from the Superior Court of Riverside County. Sunshine S. Sykes, Judge. Affirmed.
Shegerian & Associates, Inc., Carney R. Shegerian and David Harris for Plaintiff and Appellant.
Ford & Harrison, Stefan H. Black, Shanda Y. Lowe and Timothy L. Reed for Defendants and Respondents.
Paula Telles claimed that her former employer Wal-Mart Associates, Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (collectively, WalMart) discriminated against her on the basis of her age and disability. She sued WalMart and several of its employees (individual defendants), alleging claims for employment discrimination, failure to accommodate her disability, defamation, and related causes of action. Telles appeals from the summary judgment entered in favor of defendants. We affirm.
BACKGROUND
Telles started working as a department manager at a WalMart store in Perris, California, in December 1991. Sometime in late 1998 or 1999, Telles injured her back and neck while at work. She thereafter took a medical leave of absence for approximately one year. She returned to work with unspecified restrictions. From 1999 through 2006, Telles worked as a people greeter and in various other positions that accommodated her restrictions. Telles's primary work responsibilities as a people greeter were to greet customers as they entered the store and to check customers' receipts upon exiting the store.
Telles was injured at work again in 2006. After that injury, Telles continued working in various light duty assignments, including as a people greeter, which was her last assignment starting in May 2015. Sometime before May 2016 (possibly in February 2016), Telles returned from another leave of absence taken for an unspecified reason.
In early May 2016, store manager Melvin Enriquez notified Telles and the other people greeters at the store that WalMart was eliminating the people greeter position. The people greeter position was being replaced by a new customer host position, which was going to be a part of the asset protection department. According to a humanresources manager for Telles's store, the customer host position included all of the same duties as the people greeter position but added certain security-related responsibilities. Reggie Brown was the asset protection manager responsible for interviewing and hiring people for the new customer host position. According to Brown, the customer host position differed from the people greeter position in that the customer host position required employees to stand the entire shift. People greeters, by contrast, were allowed to sit.
People greeters were eligible to transfer to other positions in the store, including to the customer host position. Telles testified that during the meeting with the people greeters Enriquez explained that the people greeters would need to look for open positions in the store and that they would "ha[ve] to see if [they] could perform it." Telles also claims that an unspecified person told her that the customer host position would "not be able to accommodate restrictions as easily because it required standing throughout the entire shift." Brown testified that people greeters who could not stand for an entire shift were not precluded from "getting" the customer host position, but he would encourage them to look for other positions within the store. After the meeting with Enriquez, Telles asked Enriquez what would happen if she was unable to find an open position. It is undisputed that he responded, "'Start thinking of retirement.'"
Sometime shortly after that meeting, Telles approached Brown and told him that she was interested in transitioning into the customer host position. Brown told Telles that she would have to interview for the position.1
Telles was terminated on May 11, 2016, when she was 61 years old. Telles was told that she was terminated for gross misconduct and integrity issues.
Telles testified that after she purchased several items from the store during her last break on that day, Brown stopped her after she exited the store and asked her to accompany him to the asset protection office.2 Jesse Martinez, an asset protection associate, and an unidentified female employee of WalMart were also in the asset protection office. Telles's receipt for the purchases she had just made showed that she had bought five items, namely, three pairs of socks (ladies and girls) for 25 cents each, a camisole, and a box of laundry detergent. On the receipt, two items (two pairs of boys' pants) were voided during the transaction. It is undisputed that, contrary to what was reflected on the receipt, Telles exited the store with the following six items: three pairs of underwear, a pack of barrettes, a camisole, and laundry detergent.
Telles testified that while she was in the asset protection office Martinez showed her surveillance video footage of her in the store while she purchased the merchandise and while she had the merchandise in her shopping cart before checking out. A compact disc containing some pertinent portions of the surveillance footage was submitted in the trial court as an exhibit supporting WalMart's motion for summary judgment. That exhibit was not included in the record on appeal.
Telles testified that Brown and Martinez explained to her that the video footage showed her changing labels on some items and not purchasing one item. In a declaration submitted in support of WalMart's motion, Martinez described in detail what he observed in the surveillance footage, including relevant time stamps. He described the footage as showing Telles removing price stickers from undergarments and replacing those stickers with clearance tags that she peeled off of a strip of clearance labels. He also said the footage showed that when Telles was making her purchases at a self-checkout register, she "scan[ned] one item twice while putting a different item in the bag."
Telles denied doing either of these things. She testified that in the meeting with Brown and Martinez she explained that she had taken the price stickers off of the undergarments to verify the size of the garments and that she then placed the original stickers back on the garments after completing that task. When Telles was ringing up the undergarments, she did not notice that they were ringing up as socks. She further explained that the employee who assisted her at the self-checkout register inadvertently voided two items. In a later declaration, she claimed that she had selected the items fromthe clearance rack. Martinez failed to retain the initial portion of the surveillance footage showing Telles selecting merchandise to purchase.
At some point, Brown told Telles that he was leaving the office to check what merchandise was in the clearance aisle. Telles testified that when Brown returned, he told her that there were not any undergarments on clearance. Neither Brown nor Martinez interviewed the cashier who had assisted Telles when she was checking out. Enriquez made the decision to terminate Telles.
In October 2017, Telles filed an amended complaint against WalMart alleging employment discrimination on the basis of age and disability, wrongful termination, failure to reasonably accommodate her disability, and failure to engage in the interactive process. Against WalMart and numerous individual employees, including Brown and Martinez, Telles further alleged claims for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Defendants moved for summary judgment or in the alternative summary adjudication. The trial court granted summary judgment in favor of defendants. As to Telles's discrimination claims, the trial court concluded that defendants had "met their initial burden showing that they had a legitimate nondiscriminatory reason for [Telles's] termination, i.e., that [Telles] switched price tags and under-rung merchandise." The court further concluded that Telles "failed to produce sufficient evidence that [d]efendants['] stated reason for the termination was pretextual orthat [d]efendants acted with discriminatory animus." As to the defamation claim, the trial court concluded that defendants carried their burden of demonstrating that the common interest privilege applied and that Telles failed to produce sufficient evidence that any statements were made with actual malice.
After the trial court entered judgment against her, Telles moved for a new trial, essentially asking the court to reconsider its order granting summary judgment. With respect to the discrimination claims, Telles claimed that she had set forth both disparate treatment and disparate impact theories of liability for her age and disability discrimination claims. She argued that the trial court did not have authority to summarily adjudicate the disparate impact theories of liability because WalMart failed to move on those claims. The trial court denied the motion. As to the purported disparate impact theories of liability, the trial court concluded that Telles had not properly alleged disparate impact theories of liability, so WalMart was not obligated to address them in their motion for summary judgment.
STANDARD OF REVIEW
The trial court may grant summary judgment if there is no triable issue of material fact and the issues raised by the pleadings may be decided as a matter of law. (Code Civ. Proc., § 437c, subds. (...
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