The First Circuit recently decided a Massachusetts state law age discrimination case that provides employers with several important reminders. In Woodward v. Emulex, the court affirmed a district court decision granting summary judgment for the defendant on a plaintiff's age discrimination claim and also affirmed the district court's rulings on two discovery motions.
The plaintiff, Frank Woodward, was a sales account manager for
defendant Emulex Corporation, a California-based technology
company. Though plaintiff and his team outperformed sales goals and
received praise for their work for several years, the team's
revenues eventually began to decline and, in 2009, Emulex
terminated plaintiff's employment. Plaintiff, 55 years old at
the time of his termination, brought suit, alleging that the
company's explanation for his termination—i.e., his
team's declining revenues—was merely a pretext for age
discrimination.
Plaintiff argued that his supervisor's directive to
"re-energize" his sales team was a critique of the age of
the team members and constituted direct evidence of discrimination.
The court rejected this argument based on the context in which the
comment was made. The comment was made after the defendant had
decided to cut the team from five employees to two, and there was
no plan to reformulate the team with younger employees. The court
explained that even if the comment referred to the age of the team,
such an isolated remark cannot establish that the employer's
articulated rationale is a pretext for discrimination. While the
court's decision regarding isolated remarks reinforces the fact
that such comments, without more, typically will not be sufficient
to establish discriminatory animus, the decision nevertheless
should serve as a reminder to employers that providing quality
training to managers remains essential to avoiding litigation in
the first place.
The court also rejected plaintiff's other arguments. It
concluded that plaintiff could not identify any similarly situated
younger employees whom Emulex retained, in part because plaintiff
was the only employee working from a remote office in
Massachusetts—an arrangement that entailed administrative
costs not attributable to other employees. Plaintiff also contended
that defendant's business strategy had hastened the revenue
decline that led to the termination of plaintiff's employment.
The court rejected this argument because unwise business decisions
do not establish a pretext for discrimination.
Also worth noting is the court's decision on two discovery
motions. First, the district court required Emulex to respond to an
interrogatory seeking information about 21 named employees, but it
denied plaintiff's motion to compel a response to the same
interrogatory with respect to broader categories of unnamed
employees, and it denied plaintiff's motion to compel defendant
to produce documents concerning the same topic. Noting the
deferential standard of review, the First Circuit affirmed because
the document request was duplicative of the interrogatory and
because the unnamed employees likely were not good comparators to
plaintiff. The court also affirmed the district court's
quashing of several deposition notices that plaintiff served at the
last available moment and made difficult to schedule. These
decisions highlight the importance of carefully drafting discovery
requests and paying close attention to deadlines and scheduling
issues.
Originally published on the Employer's Law Blog
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