Estes v. Dick Smith Ford, Inc.

• Decision Date: 09 September 1988
• Docket Number: No. 86-2189,86-2189
• Citation: 856 F.2d 1097
• Parties: 47 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. 1472, 47 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 38,323, 57 USLW 2195, 26 Fed. R. Evid. Serv. 943 Ruben ESTES, Appellant, v. DICK SMITH FORD, INC., Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

Page 1097

856 F.2d 1097

47 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. 1472,

47 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 38,323, 57 USLW 2195,

26 Fed. R. Evid. Serv. 943

Ruben ESTES, Appellant, v. DICK SMITH FORD, INC., Appellee.

No. 86-2189.

United States Court of Appeals,

Eighth Circuit.

Submitted Jan. 11, 1988.

Decided Sept. 9, 1988.

Brian J. Finucane, Kansas City, Mo., for appellant.

Mark G. Zellmer, St. Louis, Mo., for appellee.

Before McMILLIAN and ARNOLD, Circuit Judges, and HARPER, ^* Senior District Judge.

ARNOLD, Circuit Judge.

Ruben Estes brought this lawsuit against his former employer, Dick Smith Ford, claiming relief for race discrimination under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1981 and Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. Sec. 2000e et seq., for age discrimination under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, 29 U.S.C. Secs. 621 et seq., and for fraud under Missouri common law. At trial, the District Court directed a verdict for Ford on Estes's fraud claim. The jury reached a verdict for Ford on Estes's Sec. 1981 and ADEA claims, and the District Court subsequently entered judgment for Ford on Estes's claim under Title VII. On appeal, Estes argues that the District Court committed reversible error (1) by erroneously instructing the jury, (2) by excluding several categories of evidence tending to show racial discrimination at Dick Smith Ford, (3) by admitting an adverse EEOC determination on Estes's complaint, (4) by allowing Ford's lawyer to make improper characterizations of its pretrial responses to interrogatories, and (5) by erroneously directing a verdict for Ford on Estes's fraud claim. We find no error or abuse of discretion in the District Court's jury instructions, its management of Ford's closing argument, or its refusal to submit Estes's fraud claim to the jury. On the other hand, the District Court's exclusion of Estes's evidence showing a background of race and age bias was improper, as was its admission of the EEOC determination. Because these evidentiary rulings deprived Estes of a full opportunity to persuade the jury, we reverse and remand for a new trial on Estes's race and age claims.

I.

In February 1982, Ruben Estes was discharged from his job as a car washer/car porter for Dick Smith Ford, a Kansas City car dealership. Estes, a 52-year-old black man, had been working as a porter at Ford for over eleven years. Estes worked with three other car porters, two white and one black; Estes had more seniority and was considerably older than the other three porters.

In his service letter to Estes, Ford president Dick Smith wrote that Estes had been discharged due to a reduction in force, and that Ford "found his work to be most satisfactory." (Plaintiff's Ex. 15, Addendum 5.) After Estes filed a complaint with the EEOC, Ford presented the same explanation for the discharge to the EEOC investigator, who found no reasonable cause to believe that Ford had violated Title VII. At trial, Ford contended that Estes had been discharged for poor work performance, and that its earlier explanation had been falsified in order to help Estes find a new job and to preclude the possibility of a lawsuit by Estes.

Most of the remaining details of Estes's discharge are hotly disputed by the parties. The record reflects sharply conflicting accounts of, for example, whether Estes was as capable as his co-workers, and whether Estes's position was later filled by a white or black employee. A crucial dispute of fact involves the identity of the Ford manager who made the decision to discharge Estes. Ford alleges that this decision was reached exclusively by Ozell Kimble, a black manager who was Estes's brother-in-law and immediate supervisor. Estes claims that the decision was actually made by white managers higher up in Ford's organization, who were listed in Ford's response to one of Estes's interrogatories as persons who "either participated in, contributed to, approved, or were consulted in the decision" to fire Estes.

II.

As a threshold matter, Ford argues that Estes's ADEA and Sec. 1981 claims should never have even gone to a jury, on the ground that Estes failed to make out a prima facie case of age or race discrimination. We take this argument to mean, simply, that the District Court should have granted Ford's motion for a directed verdict on Estes's discrimination claims. We review the legal sufficiency of Estes's case under the familiar standard governing directed verdicts: specifically, we have to determine whether the record contains evidence from which a jury could reasonably infer that Estes was discharged because of his age or race. See Dace v. ACF Industries, 722 F.2d 374, 375-76 (8th Cir.1983), modified per curiam, 728 F.2d 976 (8th Cir.1984).

This inquiry is both more encompassing and less complicated than Ford implies. Ford's submissibility argument dwells on the sufficiency of Estes's prima facie case, as if this were a prior and distinct question from the sufficiency of Estes's case as a whole. In effect, Ford's position treats the prima facie showing in discrimination suits as a case-within-a-case, which a plaintiff must win conclusively before the factual dispute over the employer's motive can be considered. This is not the law. The three-step sequence of proof outlined in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 93 S.Ct. 1817, 36 L.Ed.2d 668 (1973), does not create special rules of civil procedure for discrimination cases; "... it is merely a sensible, orderly way to evaluate the evidence in light of common experience as it bears on the critical question of discrimination." Furnco Construction Corp. v. Waters, 438 U.S. 567, 577, 98 S.Ct. 2943, 2949, 57 L.Ed.2d 957 (1978). Once the parties have developed the record on all stages of the McDonnell Douglas analysis, "whether the plaintiff really [made out a prima facie case] is no longer relevant." U.S. Postal Service v. Aikens, 460 U.S. 711, 715, 103 S.Ct. 1478, 1482, 75 L.Ed.2d 403 (1983). What is relevant, at this point, is simply whether the plaintiff's evidence permits a reasonable inference of discrimination.

Ford's attack on the sufficiency of Estes's Sec. 1981 claim exhibits this confusion between the prima facie validity of a discrimination case and its submissibility. Ford argues that the two white car porters it retained were far more qualified for the job than Estes, and that Estes's relative lack of qualification prevents him from asserting discrimination as a prima facie matter. Estes counters with testimony that he could perform any job that the two white employees could perform. The fact that this dispute relates to an element of a prima facie case under McDonnell Douglas (namely, whether the plaintiff was qualified for his job) does not make it any less a matter for resolution by the jury. On this record, a jury could have concluded that Estes was fired because he was the least qualified porter. But it could also have concluded that he was qualified enough, and that Ford's decision to fire him was really based on his race. Accordingly, Estes's Sec. 1981 claim was properly submitted to the jury.

In attacking the sufficiency of Estes's ADEA case, Ford relies heavily on our holding in Holley v. Sanyo Manufacturing Inc., 771 F.2d 1161 (8th Cir.1985), that the termination of an older employee during a reduction in force, where a younger person assumes the older's duties, does not alone establish age discrimination. At the outset, we note that Ford's explanation at trial that Estes was discharged for poor work performance, rather than through a reduction in force, eliminates any relevance Holley has for Estes's burden of proof. If Estes can establish that this proffered explanation was unworthy of credence, then he will have made an indirect showing of discrimination which may persuade the finder of fact. ¹ See Texas Dept. of Community Affairs v. Burdine, 450 U.S. 248, 256, 101 S.Ct. 1089, 1095, 67 L.Ed.2d 207 (1981).

Even if Estes was laid off through a reduction in force, as Ford originally told the EEOC, Estes's case clearly met the requirements for submissibility we outlined in Holley. In Holley, the plaintiff presented absolutely no evidence from which the jury could reasonably infer discriminatory animus. See Holley, 771 F.2d at 1166-68. Here, Estes provided evidence (some of which was improperly excluded, as we discuss below) that Ford had fired two other employees because of their age, and that not one of the 35 other porters who worked at Ford since 1970 was over the age of 42. The very fact that Ford had changed its original explanation for terminating Estes might persuade a reasonable jury to infer that Ford was not telling the truth. Therefore, the District Court correctly submitted Estes's ADEA claim to the jury.

III.

As his first ground of appeal, Estes argues that the District Court's instructions to the jury misstated the legal threshold of proof we defined in Bibbs v. Block, 778 F.2d 1318 (8th Cir.1985) (en banc). In Bibbs, we held that an employer violates Title VII whenever an unlawful motive has played some part in an adverse employment decision, even when the employer was also motivated by lawful considerations which would have dictated the same decision. The Court instructed the jury that Estes's age must have been "a determining factor" in Ford's discharge decision, and that his race must have been "a motivating factor," for Estes to recover on his respective ADEA and Sec. 1981 claims. Estes reasons that the force of the adjectives "determining" and "motivating" left the jury with the incorrect impression that race and/or age had to be the only factors in Ford's decision in order for Estes to prove liability.

We need not rule directly on the question whether the jury instructions misstated the law under Bibbs. ² This case must be tried again anyway because of errors in the admission and exclusion of evidence. At the new trial, the District Court should simply put the Bibbs issues directly to the jury. If race (or age) was a...