Zimmerman v. Direct Federal Credit Union

• Decision Date: 31 July 2001
• Docket Number: No. 01-1007,01-1007
• Parties: (1st Cir. 2001) CELIA G. ZIMMERMAN, Plaintiff, Appellee, v. DIRECT FEDERAL CREDIT UNION AND DAVID BRESLIN, Defendants, Appellants. Heard
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

Page 70

262 F.3d 70 (1st Cir. 2001)

CELIA G. ZIMMERMAN, Plaintiff, Appellee, v. DIRECT FEDERAL CREDIT UNION AND DAVID BRESLIN, Defendants, Appellants.

No. 01-1007

United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit

Heard July 31, 2001

Decided September 4, 2001

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS

[Hon. Robert B. Collings, U.S. Magistrate Judge]

[Copyrighted Material Omitted] Harvey Weiner, with whom John J. O'Connor, Peabody & Arnold LLP, A. Van C. Lanckton, Daniel C. Reiser, and Craig and Macauley Professional Corporation were on brief, for appellants.

Juliane Balliro, with whom Robert D. Friedman, Susan E. Stenger, and Perkins, Smith & Cohen, LLP were on brief, for appellee.

Before Selya, Circuit Judge, Gibson,^* Senior Circuit Judge, and Lipez, Circuit Judge.

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

This appeal is the aftermath of a jury verdict that awarded plaintiff-appellee Celia Zimmerman $200,000 in compensatory damages and $400,000 in punitive damages on her claim for retaliation and an additional $130,000 in compensatory damages on her claim for tortious interference with advantageous relations.¹ Resolving the appeal requires us to realign the standard of review applicable to appeals from punitive damage awards in light of recent Supreme Court precedent. Before reaching this issue, however, we first must ponder two antecedent questions: (1) Does the evidence suffice to sustain the jury's finding of tortious interference with advantageous relations? (2) Were the trial court's jury instructions on compensatory damages adequate despite the court's failure to address a plausible concern raised by the appellants? We answer these two questions in the affirmative, uphold the punitive damage award, and affirm the judgment below.

I. BACKGROUND

We recount the facts as the jury supportably could have found them, resolving conflicts where appropriate in favor of the prevailing party.

The plaintiff is a woman of considerable attainment. She graduated from Princeton University, earned a master's degree in business administration from Southern Methodist University, and held a variety of positions in the financial sector. In September 1994, she accepted employment with defendant-appellant Direct Federal Credit Union (Direct) as its manager of financial planning and analysis. Direct's chief executive officer, defendant-appellant David Breslin, hired the plaintiff and led her to believe that her new post offered promising opportunities for advancement.

Her first sixteen months with Direct were a tour de force. Joseph Capalbo, Direct's vice-president and controller, was slated to be her immediate supervisor, but Capalbo was absent for a long stretch of time due to his wife's demise. The plaintiff assumed many of his responsibilities and handled them admirably. She received successive promotions -- eventually becoming director of finance -- with concomitant pay raises and bonuses. At Breslin's request, she attended all but two of the twenty meetings of the board of directors held during that sixteen-month period and made presentations at fourteen of them. She also coordinated the annual senior management strategic planning retreat. By the end of 1995, she had a sizable staff and was functioning successfully as Direct's de facto controller. Her performance reviews sang her praises, describing her as a "team player" and a "role model."

In January of 1996, the plaintiff learned that she was pregnant and communicated that fact to Breslin. The next day, Breslin trimmed her responsibilities and reduced the size of her staff. Approximately two months later, the plaintiff developed toxemia, and her physician prescribed episodic bed rest throughout the day. Breslin initially agreed to accommodate her but then undercut the agreement by assigning her tasks to be performed during the allotted rest periods. The plaintiff was forced to leave the building entirely to obtain needed rest.

The plaintiff gave birth to her son in July of 1996. The baby was born prematurely and the plaintiff took maternity leave. She then took some additional time to address other non-pregnancy-related medical issues. When she returned to work in December, she discovered that her job had changed dramatically: she had been stripped of her management role and Capalbo had assumed most of her responsibilities. She was moved into a smaller office (which she shared with a noisy wire transfer machine), given duties of modest importance, and excluded from high-level discussions (including board meetings). To compound these indignities, Breslin shunned her, communicating only through Capalbo.

On March 3, 1997, the plaintiff filed a complaint with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD). In it, she charged Direct and Breslin with discrimination based on sex and pregnancy. She hand-delivered a copy of her complaint to Breslin two days later, hoping that he would begin addressing her concerns. Breslin reacted badly, storming from office to office to speak to other executives, and closing the door behind him each time. Although the plaintiff thereafter was invited to some management meetings, she was excluded from the 1997 senior management retreat (an event which she previously had organized). Moreover, Breslin routinely ignored her attempts to participate during the meetings she attended and spoke about her in the third person as if she were not there. To make matters worse, she repeatedly was assigned to projects unrelated to the finance function (e.g., facility redesign) and to monotonous tasks, beneath her pay grade, with which she had no prior experience (e.g., underwriting twenty to thirty home equity loans per day).

In April of 1997, the plaintiff received an uncharacteristically poor performance review of her teamwork. The next month, Direct and Breslin responded to the MCAD complaint, denying the plaintiff's allegations and attacking her credibility. In due course, the plaintiff preempted the administrative proceedings by filing suit in a Massachusetts state court charging, inter alia, gender and pregnancy discrimination, retaliation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, tortious interference with advantageous relations, and various statutory violations (e.g., violations of the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Equal Pay Act, the Massachusetts Civil Rights Act, and the Massachusetts Equal Rights Act).² Direct and Breslin removed the case to the federal district court. See 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331, 1441.

The institution of suit did nothing to calm troubled waters. Breslin held a company-wide meeting in which he humiliated the plaintiff, pointedly stating that a certain person was not "woman enough to come face to face with me" and suggesting that bonuses would be larger if certain employees would leave as expected. At about the same time, Capalbo instructed the plaintiff to prepare presentations for a board meeting, giving her only four days' notice for a project that involved unfamiliar areas. Breslin reported to the board on the status of the plaintiff's lawsuit, then asked her to join the meeting and deliver her report. The plaintiff was not invited to attend any further board meetings.

Breslin and Capalbo continued to tinker with the plaintiff's job description, repeatedly assigning her menial chores or duties unrelated to her expertise. Breslin also made repeated attempts to set the plaintiff's coworkers against her, quoting liberally, if not always accurately, from the plaintiff's journal (which he had obtained in the course of pretrial discovery). Steve Hagerstrom, a Direct executive who was known to be sympathetic to the plaintiff, was a particular target of Breslin's wrath; on one occasion after Hagerstrom had defended the plaintiff, Breslin told him that he "didn't understand why a talented guy such as [Hagerstrom] would stay at Direct in such a hot economy if [he] had obvious negative feelings toward [Breslin]." While these events were taking place the plaintiff received declining performance reviews, often with little or no explanation as to why her scores had decreased.

In June of 1998, the plaintiff sought psychiatric help to cope with mounting work-related stress. The psychiatrist diagnosed a severe depressive disorder, advised her not to return to work, and started her on antidepressant medication. After a three-month absence, Direct terminated her employment. The plaintiff's depression had improved only marginally by the time of trial, and she was still unable to function as a normal person (much less work).

Meanwhile, the parties consented to proceed before a magistrate judge. See 28 U.S.C. § 636(c). The judge winnowed the plaintiff's claims, disposing of her claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress and various statutory initiatives by summary judgment. As winnowed, the plaintiff's case came on for jury trial in January of 2000. The trial lasted for fifteen days. During that span, the plaintiff voluntarily discontinued her Title VII claims and one of her state-law discrimination claims. On February 9, 2000, the jury returned a split verdict. The jurors found that the appellants had neither discriminated against the plaintiff nor violated the Family and Medical Leave Act. They simultaneously found in the plaintiff's favor on her state-law retaliation claim against both appellants and on her tortious interference with advantageous relations claim against Breslin. The plaintiff was awarded $200,000 in compensatory damages and $400,000 in punitive damages on the former claim and $130,000 in compensatory damages on the latter.

The appellants promptly moved for judgment as a matter of law or for a new trial. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 50(b), 59(e). Among other things, they questioned the sufficiency of the evidence on the tortious interference claim and argued that the punitive damage award should be set aside or, at least, reduced substantially. The magistrate judge...