good morning honors may please the court i'm gates today and i represent the plaintiff appellant in this case kelly donnelly were here today on the question of how much evidence is enough evidence to support the requisite causal link in retaliation claim until my client present her case ortiz versus one of this court recently clarified that in answering that question you have to put all of the evidence in the single pile and evaluated as a whole but the district court ignored that instruction in this case and considering striker's motion for summary judgment improperly through inferences in favor of strikers in favor of strikers motion and ignored material issues fact today we asked the court to reverse the lower court's decision and deny summary judgment because when the following three pieces of evidence are placed in that single pile and considered as a whole family is presented enough evidence for a jury to infer the requisite causal link first the suspicious timing between donnelly's protected activity and strykers adverse action supports the requisite causal link second striker forward themselves out of fear of retaliation so on june twenty fourth two thousand and fourteen donnelly made an internal complaint of harassment just sick and we lead the investigation began the day after her complaint was resolved care let me just cut to the chase here if i could i'm trying to see your best case under summary judgment and under that best case as i see it mr thompson her supervisor point of supervisor sees the photos and video that were taken of this this person in may he's not happy about it but he says simply point it should delete them yes or no and takes no further action gauges in the protected conduct in june and then the day after her complaint is resolved the defendant starts investigating her and a few couple weeks later she's fired in a joint decision made by thomps about it and so why is it reasonable or not speculative to infer the thompson learned of the protected conduct before joining in this decision to fire misconduct that she had taken the the legit photographs and videos prior to engaging in her protected activity by reporting sexual harassment yet first while it chose not to do anything about it until after she engaged in productive activity photographs from a subordinate in chicago excuse me at the office after they returned from vail and that he immediately reported that knowledge that information to ms first fire and ask that she investigate now mr thompson admittedly does not remember specifically when he asked mr flannelly to investigate what he does remember though is that that call was separate and distinct from the investigatory interview that he had with mr filer after that august first you so there is enough evidence in the record perjury to at least infer that mr feiler had knowledge of the of the the photographs that issue prior to gauging in protective activity which brings me to my second they failed to investigate or take any disciplinary action with regard to thompson the records clear down the testified she showed them photographs and striker admitted as much in its position statement and with regard to her final or the record as attentively less clear but there's enough there that a jury could understand or could infer that she had that knowledge now the lower court discounted that inconsistency is immaterial they ruled that because donnelly had not presented every any evidence that first why harbor any retaliatory these alleged misconduct is arguably the most important question of fact in the case and we're striker's testimony on this point inconsistent or reach a reasonable jury could hold that stryker knew about the pictures before that only engage in protected activity but failed to do anything about it until after now tom we can also point to the specific suspicious time that we were talking about earlier which is that she made her complaints of sexual harassment four weeks later she was investigated and six months later she was terminated present that evidence in a vacuum she presented that evidence along with the evidence a pretext in addition to the evidence that the company had treated similarly situated individuals more favorably and as this court has ruled in coleman versus donahue in two thousand nine where timing where timing evidence is presented in addition to other circumstantial evidence for talent or intent the problem counsel is that the pretext and the children lying on is not borne out by the record and  are both did get fired however at the time of the allegedly disciplinary terminations of the actual sexual harasser who my client reported he was offered and given thirty thousand dollars and seven compensation now the company would have us believe that he was given the severance compensation to strengthen a non compete that he had signed in two thousand and six however there was nothing in the severance agreement that actually strengthen the language of the nine compete and the record is clear that the company doesn't dispute that both my client and the sexual harasser had access to confidential large amounts of confidential proprietary information so there's enough evidence in the record from which a jury could infer that john lee posed the same competitive risk of the regional sales director  which would make the fact that he was issued this thirty thousand dollars severance payment so we've got different positions different ranks in the company different decision makers your honor i would argue misconduct that just isn't  sales director she was also involved in both decisions to terminate the record is clear on that and with regard to titles and responsibilities and those sorts of factors this court stated humphreys versus  need to point to is a nothing meaningful comparison or another similar factors to present a meaningful comparison here we have two individuals who both allegedly violated the same code of conduct who both were investigated by the same h r person and who were both terminated as a result of their investigations those factors involved virtually always i mean that's going to you're going to have those factors all the time right yes your honor h r and if you're for any violation of the whole code of conduct is treated has come comparable or close enough for a jury question you're always going to have compared well i would argue that you don't always have the same h r person in this company for instance there are at least more than one h r officer involved in the investigations and it's a large company i would argue that there are likely far more than two and in this case the policies for the company are broken down such that the code of conduct as corporate policy number one there are something like fifteen or twenty corporate policies so you're not good morning your honors i have had to have stricter corporation the district court properly evaluated the totality of the evidence under this court's standard in or and properly concluded that no reasonable jury could find a causal link between ms donnelly's internal complaint and her terminations of employment i guess first and fourteen if voluntarily departing employee had an exit interview with stacy first trial or the director of human resources to do dr indication in the record what the factual basis was because both mr townson who did not review the position statement and his donnelly testified that they did not have that conversation and so your honor if it should not be deemed a had no knowledge of any protected activity retaliatory and in this cannot be imputed to him mr thompson clearly testified he did not know that ms donnelly had complained of any alleged sexual harassment  picture of a highly valued partner stryker in her pajamas in her hotel room after ms donnelly a score to that woman to her room because she was concerned about her that c e o vendor partner says no more pictures please and she then we've got thompson aware of the misconduct and taking no further action other than just knocking off the lethal photos and three months later after the protect part of the record point of his entitle to rely on your honor when ashley scheck snyder resigned on august first that is what set into motion the investigation of the alleged photos taken by ms donnelly she voluntarily resigned it's standard operating procedure for human resources to me sure what it would do would change thompson's mind what did he learn from that determined to be the most important is one where ms donnelly can see that perhaps the c e o valued vendor or had blinked and closed her eyes that looked like she was passed out and her bag with the trash can next to her mr donnelly does not has never testified that he saw that that evening and certainly that's not referenced in the position yet acknowledges that there were the position statement references photos but there were also testimony from him that ms dalia been taking photos all evening and  with herself admits that she passed the phone around for coworkers to see the photos on her phone whatever it was it was offensive enough for him to say to believe i understand that that's what the position state saying understand you want to walk away from it but i don't see how you get to do that sir richard and your honor respectfully even if i don't get to walk away from that the fact that stacy first wyler first learns of these offensive photos on find it to be highly inappropriate and that's what causes her to conduct the investigation ultimately your honor that breaks any causal link whatsoever between the timing of her protective conduct and ultimately her of the events the separate intervening event of an employee resigning and bringing forth this conduct a human resources warranting the investigation and ultimately then with respect to taking the appropriate action viewed as being e somewhat confusing testimony about whether thompson spoke with for sure or separately thompson admits that as part of the investigation and or surrounding the investigation they had conversations because mr thompson  photos or did not versus him having conversations with a chart i understand that one of his employees is being investigated and i think the record is clear that there were multiple conversations but only one investigatory interview that he participated i just want to reiterate the point that first whiling first wyler learning of the photographs that issue does not break the causal link this is not an intervening event case as this as stryker would have the court believe the record is replete with and consistencies an hour new about plans for august first the clearest signal is jeff thompson's testimony that he learned of the photographs allegedly from a subordinate after they got back to their office from jail and that he notified miss first wyler of the photographs and asked her to investigate it would make no sense for mr thompson to have asked miss virtually to investigate those photographs if he had already been interviewed as part of an