Valle v. Johnson Controls World Services, Inc.

• Decision Date: 18 July 1996
• Docket Number: Civil Action No. 1:95cv367GR.
• Citation: 957 F.Supp. 1404
• Parties: J.R. VALLE, Plaintiff v. JOHNSON CONTROLS WORLD SERVICES, INC. and T. Lamar Nowland, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Mississippi

957 F.Supp. 1404

J.R. VALLE, Plaintiff v. JOHNSON CONTROLS WORLD SERVICES, INC. and T. Lamar Nowland, Defendants.

Civil Action No. 1:95cv367GR.

United States District Court, S.D. Mississippi, Southern Division.

July 18, 1996.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Joseph G. Albe, New Orleans, LA and Dale Edward Williams, Metairie, LA, for Plaintiff.

Armin J. Moeller, Jr., David M. Thomas, II, Aubry Matt Pesnell, Phelps Dunbar, Jackson, MS, and Kevin E. Hyde, Amy W. Littrell and Charles C. Lemley, Foley & Lardner, Jacksonville, FL, for Defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

GEX, District Judge.

This cause is before the Court on motion for summary judgment filed by the defendants pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56 [24-1]. Also before the Court is the plaintiff's opposition to the ruling by Magistrate Judge John M. Roper, denying his motion for leave to file a third amended complaint as untimely [49-1], and the defendant's motion to dismiss the plaintiff's second amended complaint [40-1]. After due consideration of the parties' briefs, the applicable law, and being otherwise fully advised in the premises, the Court finds, as set forth below, that the defendants' motions for summary judgment and to dismiss should be granted, and the plaintiff's motion to set aside the magistrate judge's order denied.

Statement of Facts

The plaintiff, J.R. Valle, began his professional relationship with the defendant, Johnson Controls World Services, Inc. [Johnson Controls], in March or April 1990, when he was hired as a contract civil services engineer. Defs.' Mot. for Summ.J., Exh. A, p. 46. Johnson Controls has a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration [NASA] to provide logistics, support, and engineering services at the Stennis Space Center in Hancock County, Mississippi. Johnson Controls entered into a contract relevant to this action in 1989. The contract calls for successive one-year renewal periods until 1997. Id., Exh. B, p. 46; Exh. F, ¶ 3. The scope and amount of services Johnson Controls provides varies each year according to the work requested by NASA and the appropriations NASA receives from Congress. Id., Exh. F, ¶ 3.

During the time Valle was employed, the engineering services division of Johnson Controls was arranged into three departments: design, drafting, and test engineering. Valle was employed in the design department, which has three components: civil, mechanical, and electrical. Within the civil division there is a lead engineer, a senior engineer, and numerous engineers. Id. at ¶ 4. Valle was hired as a regular employee on November 21, 1991. Id., Exh. A, p. 53. Although Valle had the lowest seniority date at Johnson Controls, he was not eligible to serve as a senior engineer or lead engineer because he was not a licensed professional engineer, or "P.E." Id. at 128, Exh. F, ¶ 5. Valle was not a P.E. because he had not successfully passed the Engineer-in-Training, or E.I.T. exam. Id., Exh. A, pp. 44, 128.

Bill Kennedy supervised Valle for approximately twelve months during the time he worked as a contract civil engineer. Id. at 52. Kennedy did not perform any formal performance rating of Valle but testified that Valle's engineering work was "generally unreliable" and "inaccurate." Id., Exh. D, pp. 23-24. In March 1991, Kennedy was replaced by another engineer, Alex Christie, who supervised Valle temporarily until the arrival of Margaret "Meg" Adams on July 21, 1991, who was hired by Johnson Controls as a lead engineer and supervisor. Id., Exh. D, p. 36.

Valle testified that Christie made the following derogatory remarks about his national origin on five or more occasions: "These ... Puerto Ricans are all alike. They are not good for nothing." Id., Exh. A, pp. 71-72. Valle further testified — presumably at a time when he was not Valle's supervisor — that Christie had told a small group of employees that "as soon as he become the new supervisor of the civil group he was going to get rid of that bastard hispanic engineer." Id. at 166. Christie testified admitting that he had said in jest that all Puerto Ricans looked alike and that Valle reported it. Christie further testified that he did not make the comment more than once, that he did not use profanity, and that he apologized to Valle when the matter was brought to his attention. Id., Exh. E, p. 81. Valle and Christie dispute whether the "look alike" comment was made at a time when Christie was his supervisor. Christie testified that he was not his supervisor when the comment was made, id. at 82, but Valle testified that Christie made the comments on two occasions while he was his supervisor. Id., Exh. A, p. 72.

After Adams supervised Valle for one year, she completed a performance evaluation for Valle in July 1992. Id., Exh. A-2. Valle was evaluated in areas of job performance on a scale of one to five, with one being the lowest, and five the highest, score. Id. Valle received on overall score of three, or "meets expectations," receiving a score of two or "marginal" in written communications, with the added comment, "[n]eeds significant improvement in written communication, including report writing." Id. The evaluation further noted, inter alia, that Valle needed to "enhance structural engineering aptitude," "improve[] written communication skills," and "enroll[] in a writing course, or English proficiency course." Id. Valle wrote the following comment: "I do not agree with comments in `enhance structural engineering aptitude.'" Id. Valle testified, however, that he agreed to enroll in a writing course or English proficiency course and filled out an application for funding. Id., Exh. A, p. 81.¹

In October 1992, Lamar Nowland, was transferred to the Stennis Space Center as manager of engineering services. Id., Exh. B, pp. 42, 46. Nowland testified that he was hired with the mandate that he improve the quality of work provided by Johnson Controls. Nowland had received complaints from NASA that the quality of work produced by the company's engineers was inferior and that NASA's engineers had to verify much of the work performed by Johnson Controls' engineers. Id. at 44, 72-73; Exh. F, ¶ 2. To achieve the objective of improving the quality of the engineers' work, Nowland developed a system called "peer review," which required a lead engineer to sit down with an engineer, review the engineer's drawings, discuss any mistakes, and take corrective action to avoid similar mistakes in the future. Id., Exh. B, pp. 73-74. The goal of peer review was to make "continuous progress toward minimizing the errors." Id. at 73. Initially, Nowland implemented the peer review system through Dave Marshall, the design manager (subsequently replaced by Bob Wanslow), and Valle's immediate supervisor. See id., Exh. F, ¶ 6. Nowland testified as follows:

Q. Okay, so your peer review system should have caught these errors, is that right?

A. Well, it should have started us on a road of, shall I say, continuous progress toward minimizing the errors. What I found is I was getting a lot of internal resistance because the engineers didn't want their work checked by anybody, quite literally. They wanted to continue the same old systems. Most of us are somewhat resistant to change.

Q. How would the, for instance, in J.R. Valle's case, he would have reviewed his work under the peer review system the way you —

A. The way I envisioned it, I called the lead engineers. In this case, or in J.R.'s case, Meg Adams, together along with the other leads, and I said, "You three are the P.E.'s that I've got in the sections." I said, "You are the ones I am chartering to minimize your section's mistakes. I expect you to take the lead and be responsible for your section's work."

So I'm not going to say it's just general error. I'm going to Dave Marshall and I'm expecting Dave to go to you three because you are my quality process, if you will. I think that was a new direction for the engineers — for the leads.

Prior to that time, they had been basically doing work load scheduling, handing the project off and then somewhat superficially monitoring it from a scheduling perspective, but not getting really involved in the technical details. I started seeing a little more involvement slowly, but that's something that I felt I needed to do, and I had to push.

Id., Exh. B, pp. 73-74. Nowland further explained that the peer review process was necessary because Kirk Miller at NASA had emphasized that he "was tired of being your checker." Id. at 75.

In March 1993, with the peer review process in place, Valle was reprimanded for plagiarism, insubordination, and poor written communication skills. The reprimand stemmed from a traffic control evaluation technical report for NASA which Valle had been assigned to write. Id., Exh. A, p. 87. Valle completed a draft of the report and presented it to Adams for review. Up to that time, Nowland testified that Valle had performed satisfactorily on projects that had been assigned to him. Id., Exh. B, p. 73. Adams reviewed the report and determined that it contained numerous grammatical and substantive deficiencies. Id., Exh. F, ¶ 7. Additionally, Adams believed that a substantial portion of the report had been plagiarized from other sources because the writing style contained in the report was not similar to other work Valle had done. Id. Adams later reviewed the rough draft Valle had given to the secretaries for typing and saw that photocopies from other work had been "cut and pasted" directly to the manuscript Valle had prepared. Id. Adams instructed Valle to rewrite the report and not to submit it to the NASA engineering department without her approval. Id.; Exh. A, pp. 88-90; Exh. B, pp. 77-79. Despite this order, as obliquely conceded by Valle, id., Exh. A, pp. 90-91, Valle presented the report to Richard Rider, the head of NASA's engineering department. Id., Exh. F, ¶ 7; Exh. G, p. 18. When Adams learned that Valle had submitted...