Young v. Illinois Dept. of Revenue

• Decision Date: 12 March 2009
• Docket Number: No. 06-3106.,06-3106.
• Citation: 601 F.Supp.2d 1055
• Parties: Angela YOUNG, Plaintiff, v. ILLINOIS DEPARTMENT OF REVENUE, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Central District of Illinois

601 F.Supp.2d 1055 Angela YOUNG, Plaintiff,
v.
ILLINOIS DEPARTMENT OF REVENUE, Defendant. No. 06-3106. United States District Court, C.D. Illinois, Springfield Division. March 12, 2009.

Page 1056

James P. Baker, Baker, Baker & Krajewski LLC, Springfield, IL, for Plaintiff.

Amy D. Gerloff, Illinois Attorney General, Springfield, IL, for Defendant.

OPINION

RICHARD MILLS, District Judge:

Angela Young ("Young") sued her employer, the Illinois Department of Revenue ("Department"), for sex discrimination.

A jury found in Young's favor and awarded her $ 325,000.

Concluding that the evidence was insufficient to impute liability to the Department, this Court now enters judgment as a matter of law in favor of the Department.

I. BACKGROUND

In October 2003, the Department ordered a number of lay-offs. Supervisors were instructed to identify "redundant or stacked" levels of management and eliminate those positions. Young was among those laidoff.¹

Young sued the Department, arguing that Jay Neposchlan ("Neposchlan") eliminated her position because of her sex. In response, the Department claimed that Young's position was eliminated solely because it was a stacked level of management, i.e., there were two supervisors between the head of the department and the front-line staff. After the denial of the Department's motion for summary judgment, the case went to a jury. Young prevailed and the jury awarded her $325,000.

Following trial, four sets of briefs were filed, two addressing liability and two addressing damages. The first of the liability briefs relate to the Department's renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law [d/e 47, 48, & 66]. The second set of briefs was filed pursuant to the Court's request. These filings address whether the Court's prior summary judgment order was correct in light of subsequent case law [d/e 67, 70, 71, 73].

Both parties have also briefed damages issues. The Department filed a motion for judgment as a matter of law or, alternatively, a new trial regarding the $325,000 award [d/e 55, 56, & 62]. Young has also filed a "Brief of Plaintiff Regarding Equitable Remedies" [d/e 57, 65].

II. APPLICABLE STANDARDS

Judgment as a matter of law is proper where the trial evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to the non-moving party, is insufficient to support the verdict. Massey v. Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Ill., 226 F.3d 922, 924 (7th Cir.2000). The court does not re-weigh evidence or make credibility determinations but merely "assure[s] that the jury had a legally sufficient evidentiary basis for its verdict." Filipovich v. K & R Express Sys., Inc., 391 F.3d 859 (7th Cir.2004). "[T]his is fundamentally the same standard that [courts] use in reviewing a decision on summary judgment, with the important difference that we now know exactly what evidence was put before the jury." Id.

Alternatively, the Department also seeks a new trial under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59. "[N]ew trials granted because the verdict is against the weight of the evidence are proper only when the record shows that the jury's verdict resulted in a miscarriage of justice or where the

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verdict, on the record, cries out to be overturned or shocks our conscience." Latino v. Kaizer, 58 F.3d 310, 315 (7th Cir.1995) (citing Williamson v. Consol. Rail Corp., 926 F.2d 1344, 1353 (3d Cir. 1991)).

III. ANALYSIS

A. Denial of Summary Judgment

Before addressing the motions, a preliminary issue must be settled. Prior to trial, this Court denied Defendant's motion for summary judgment, finding, in part, that Young had made out a prima facie case under the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting framework. In reaching this conclusion, the Court found that Young "[t]hough failing to qualify under the miniRIF" analysis, could nevertheless "establish a prima facie case by showing that a similarly situated male received more favorable treatment." Young v. Ill. Dep't of Rev., 2008 WL 162120, *4 (C.D.Ill. Jan. 16, 2008).

Following trial and the briefing of the current motions, Petts v. Rockledge Furniture LLC, 534 F.3d 715 (7th Cir.2008) was decided. In that case, the Seventh Circuit, with little elaboration, found that where the miniRIF analysis applied, it applied exclusively:

[Plaintiff] next argues that a court need not apply the mini-RIF variation if doing so makes it more difficult for a plaintiff to prove her prima facie case. However, we have said that where the plaintiff's duties were reabsorbed by another employee after the plaintiff's termination . . . we must apply the indirect burden shifting method for a mini-reduction-in-force situation. [Plaintiff's] duties were absorbed by other employees after her position was eliminated; so the mini-RIF variation of the prima facie case was properly utilized.

Id. at 725 (internal quotations and citations omitted).

Concerned about this development, the Court requested that the parties file supplemental briefs explaining what effect, if any, Petts had on the case. In their briefs, the parties dispute whether Petts actually controls. A more fundamental question, however, was also raised: whether reconsideration of the denial of a summary judgment motion is proper after a trial.

Young argues that this Court cannot reconsider its summary judgment motion. For support, she points to a line of cases that forbids appellate courts from reviewing the correctness of summary judgment rulings following a trial on the merits. See, e.g., Chemetall GMBH v. ZR Energy, Inc., 320 F.3d 714 (7th Cir.2003); Watson v. Amedco Steel, Inc., 29 F.3d 274 (7th Cir.1994). These cases find that, post-trial, the focus of a court should be on the evidence admitted at trial, not the summary judgment record.

The Department acknowledges this line of cases, but argues that the rule is one of appellate review only. While the context of these cases is that of appellate review, the logic underlying the rule also reaches to a district court's post-trial review. Indeed, the Seventh Circuit intimated as much in Watson, explaining that "the proper redress for the erroneous denial of summary judgment `would not be through appeal of that denial but through subsequent motions for judgment as a matter of law and appellate review of those motions if they were denied.'" Watson, 29 F.3d at 279 (quoting Whalen v. Unit Rig, Inc., 974 F.2d 1248, 1251 (10th Cir.1992)).

Of course, this restriction on review only applies to sufficiency of evidence claims; courts are free to review questions of law addressed in pretrial motions. Technically, the disputed merits issue at the summary judgment stage was a narrow question of law: whether a plaintiff is limited solely to a mini-RIF analysis where her

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position was absorbed by others rather than eliminated. Nevertheless, this legal question is merely one facet of the larger sufficiency of evidence inquiry: Did Young make a prima facie case under McDonnell Douglas? Where this is the ultimate question, "review . . . would be particularly inappropriate" because "the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting framework falls away once there has been a jury trial and verdict." Watson, 29 F.3d at 279. Put another way, the propriety of denying a summary judgment motion based on the sufficiency of the evidence is mooted by a trial. This is as true for district courts as it is for appellate ones. As such, review of the summary judgment motion at this juncture is improper.

Thus, regardless of whether Petts invalidates the prior denial of summary judgment, the Court finds that it cannot now revisit that opinion. Rather, the inquiry turns to the sufficiency of the evidence presented at trial.

B. Sufficiency of the Evidence

The Department raises two arguments in...