and he had a coaching meeting with mr ron ray and the rest of his managers and he was coached on his interactions with a fellow employee or a fellow coworker and on that at the end of one meeting before he requested f m o eight leave mr ray committed to mr tatum that the next event too would be his last basically giving him a final warning so that occurred and then later in the evening  the end of the day on the rd there's nothing there was no final of the and to no run in with another coworker mr tatum did his job he reported a safety issue and there was no fact finding meeting to family leave request so that camilla and lee followed up on that leave so we can eliminate in this case just like and i and those those other reasons for looking for leave he was given a final warning  what would have occurred in your view what should have occurred had a fact finding meeting had there been one so what would have been said of what would have been the issue what would have been the inquiry what were your motives in this thing attributed better your motives what for what in taking the picture that was sent in the report of the city why did you report it this time why did you wait it would have come out those reasons they attributed his motives he said apparently he has a rock to throw that could get a man's job mr lay connected the two things of this is the right he was talking about and that's admit that's an assumption you're i'm in a court an employer can take it can terminate somebody for dominance tell you to or any not to tell a story reasons it wants but it has to have a process for finding that and it has to be truthful where here there is evidence that it wasn't truthful they didn't follow their own mean are you saying that in the sphere of private employment that there's a legal requirement of having a hearing or a meeting no i just think it would been better if they had no i'm not saying that at all the was part of their normal process and they didn't follow it that's the part you haven't linked up is that what you're saying that's correct we have the disciplinary policy is part of the record it's at our away five hundred and ninety five it describes it as a structure point coaching in his deposition he says and make sure you ask everybody st their perception of the situation and when i asked not about coaching the question is about whether or not there's a policy that they have to have a meeting to go over this their own protection you can later go back on that if the employee changed position and suffered a detriment and really the whole case turns on whether he suffered a detriment was he terminated wrongfully and if he work at that time had he not been out on half a one million leave he would have heard about all this and he would have had the opportunity to click he was terminated the reasons why he was terminated don't have their fact  clarify what his true motives were and his true motives were it's consistent throughout his career he's you beat the drum for safety the whole time he was there and his performance reviews so managers praise him for his questioning attitude for reporting safety they will only have a concern with how he reported it and they gave him coaching on that they told him verify that there isn't time to see if you concerned before you hurt ported it  and also defer to experts mr tatum to follow his coaching there there are fact issues that can considering those facts a reasonable juror can find the reasons why it's terminated him or not legit basically so you know if you didn't get the same opportunities as other employees the were on a family leave the plant derived from their usual course of action after they termed i'm terminating mr tate and without doing an investigation asked him giving him the opportunity to clarify its misconceptions and again i'll say that they can terminate him for the reasons they gave it's us where those truthful so they follow their own process words where they write that he had some bad intentions those are all fact questions that the record shows  enough that he actually did his job while on leave here he did verify that there was a safety issue to report days later he didn't report it he deferred to an expert the man that actually committed the safety issue  yes so in my argument i blew the whole thing to work was he terminated correctly because it goes to both if he wasn't terminated if he was terminated correctly he doesn't have that strong of an question it would have made a difference that he was away from work he would have kept his a job had he not been on f him up or at least there's evidence that a reasonable juror could show could make that decision and for that reason needs every element of a quibble stoppel he said you know in his his affidavit i would have returned back to work had i known it was uncovered him being at work would have saved his job he would have been part of this conversation with maxine and when good men where they were discussing the safety issue i mean the whole reason she was termed it is because max and a coworker said he told me i took that picture as far as insurance as a job security that's something another coworker set and in the eye of case the court rejected that considering that the ad employer that looked at that employer didn't confront the person  was separated from his previous course of action and it's i describe in the breeze as an about face what that's very unusual hope for him to say in coaching especially even that in that previous meeting on the th he talked to everybody he talked to mr tatum and the reason for that was he wanted to find out what was his what was going through his mind is there some opportunity here that i can work with and then all of a sudden he decides this employees and worth saving basically he's what was the process with that was that done in good faith so a couple of cases a richardson vs monitronics the employer's failure to follow its own progressive disciplinary policy may be probative of discriminatory intent that's what this court found  and really the reason doesn't matter it's just what was the process so for example high sown vs carob in shock the case where a paralegal was accused of not following a policy of getting their bosses approval before sending out letters to an administrative agency she was accuse of missing deadlines the employer didn't do any sort of investigation into that and this court found that there were pretexts issues here there even in the case of device hearses southwest airlines where there was an honest belief and that honest belief was the reason for terminations that's that's the key did it was or did did they make that decision did mr ray make that decision in good faith and we would argue no that she had no reason to think other than taking a co worker's word of the issue when he did oh but he he's well when it's undisputed then that he said i've got some kind of insurance policy that's disputed it's disputed to be denying it in the record yes ok i just asked you that and he said he said something else but he denied his about it but ok take that one away then but if a coworker says he told me to do this for insurance why isn't that a good faith belief by the employer it  it's factually wrong but they haven't but there's no reason to believe that it's not the real reason it's the question here is not who's right or wrong it's the process did they do the process in good faith issues that are primary one of which is the evidence or issue which the appellate actually didn't even get into and the issue there simply put is whether no reasonable person could agree that that with the district court's show i'm responding to your coaching and i'm on my list leg and i don't want to be fired absolutely that it's not contradictory on their face under the sham affidavit one of the reasons he said he wanted to return was to talk to his bosses and explain his lunch with mr ray at all i would have canceled that meeting in other words i would have chosen to not talk to my boss i would not have even gone to the february nd meeting i would have chosen not to talk to my boss i would have  not going to be going around making a bunch of complaints and things because he's concerned that he's on his last leg that i don't assuming ok so that your argument is that it's on its face contradictory that's that's what you may or may not agree with you that's one issue exactly for if there's any wiggle room and said no absolutely and understood but beyond that it's a harmless error stander which means that where as in this case the district court in fact  at face value the affidavit said even if that's admissible then the issue goes to whether or not there's any detrimental reliance which is the issue that the appellant talked about but here the district certainly the court excuse me certainly the company never said that it fired mr tatum for missing days or for being absent or for missing assignments did anything and do it that in effect the district court found that there was no evidence that he was fired sor taking leave which is essentially what the appellate is are going to place here he says that had he been there on the rd or at some other time in a family package and as we cited in the case law that we've presented in our brief the mere fact that somebody has set an f in my packet is not enough to show detrimental reliance number one because f in no way is variable you don't know that cannot be a definite representation that the person is eligible or able to take their family this year and the reason is because things changed the employer might well have been  st how did he rely on an email to say i would have gone back to work on january th how do you rely on something that had happened into law it's that's not the reliance that's relevant for the january th the relevance reliance that's relevant to their argument i'm not saying it's a winner but that's not the date of the relevant conversation it's on january th when the boss said they were sending him the packet right that's the reliance it issued i you've already argued that that's an insufficient statement to have been relied upon exactly but that's different than the february one right exactly in the february one that the reason why the  appellant's counsel just get up here and told you well the reliances i wasn't able to get back on january rd to explain my position when mr ray had already decided by the end of the day that he was going to fire me well if the e mail then come until february st he could have relied on it to go back by january rd he could have relied upon if it was sufficient the statement that we're going to send you the packet on the twenty sure that's the issue was that statement a legitimate nondiscriminatory reason and that there was no will wreak evidence that that reason was a pretext for us in the retaliate and no reason that that was a pretext for firing them for taking of them away which as me then in order to establish definitely interference or retaliation you've got to show retaliation you've got to show that the company is lying about its reason and to deride us the key question is it ok for the employer to rely on a co worker's accusation and the answer according to the court's jurisprudence has always been yes going back to the waggoner case from twenty five years ago  has repeatedly said and said in that case where a an allegation is made by a coworker and the company relies on that allegation and chooses to discharge an employee base on it the issue really isn't whether or not the company is lying at all the issue of whether the employee in line and have nothing to do with was whether the company is lying and the company has been is able to rely in good faith on accusations from a coworker in making his decision the appellant's entire argument has to do with this idea that there was some sort of about face between the january th and the jerry and jerry rd and the fact the matter is that the company in gathering evidence you know the company and she also says well there was no factual investigation there was a factual investigation the company interviewed mr cent and it talked to mr cent about it and he said well you know he with regard to same accusation if the employer was similarly situated and had minute been why aren't they similarly situated they're not similarly situated for a number of reasons which we explain our brief number one mr stan was a brand new employee he was a trainee he didn't have years of experience or like mr tatum did number two mr tatum is the only person who perceive there to be a safety violation this offended even perceive there to be any safety issue with what he witnessed so those are two now there is nothing there is nothing in the record that guarantees an employee some sort of hearing this is not a good process and where this is an at will employer it yes doesn't have disciplinary policies sure policies in the record yes i've not seen where any of those policies guarantee or say that employees supposed to get some sort of hearing not maybe not the word hearing but a chance to be heard i have not i'm not aware of that meeting of any kind i'm not aware that what i am aware of well i mean we rely on you to end it right it sounds like you're trying to avoid the question it's like you just just a minute you know you're you're you're bad about jumping on judge's questions before they be finished so  be very careful about what we're asking we're asking number one are there want to more written policies that are in anywhere in this record if that's question number one number two if there are any your counsel you're supposed to help us with what's in the record so tell us whether there's anything in those policies if they're in the record that say anything about a meeting or an opportunity to me to explain or hearing or anything like that not that i'm not sure what is the answer no the answer is the answer no not that i'm aware you're supposed to be right there right and i've studied the policies i have not seen that and i mean my answer is yes nothing in the policy is your answer right yes  and one final point on this entire issue to the extent that the appellant is arguing that while they have treated him they've treated this as a smelly in the past and actually given him leave two points on that the st point is this record of treating an employee as a giving employee f m l a leave it really undercuts the idea that on a particular occasion the company has retaliated or chosen to not  entire argument here that on this particular occasion that the company was and was was doing this and firing him because he took i on what he believes to be a life threatening safety violation for five weeks and only brought it out when he thought he was actually in trouble when he thought that he was going to be fired and the proof of that is in the record where he said  that he said that when he went to his doctor on january th which with a preexisting preexisting appointment he said he thought he was going to be fired and that was based on the counseling  on that point yes there's been a lot of discussion about any kind of a written policy and i went back and looked at your opening brief pages twenty seven through thirty one where you talk  about the company as you say a departure from its usual course of investigating incidents leading to discipline including speaking with the employee themselves and i've read it through twice but i may have missed something but i don't  you you refer to cases such as divorce in jackson in which those procedures were used i don't find anything in here where he has shown us anything in this record to indicate that this company had any kind of a written policy in this regard so can you can you help us out southern company services has a disciplinary policy and a policy of global policies their or hearing he was going there or there st structured interaction between the supervisor and subordinate that's the point of a disciplinary policy and what what is what exactly does it say  quoting it structure interaction between a supervisor in support that's doesn't require a meeting interaction is a two way conversation and in it are alway and seventy eight dollars he says looking at everything that happened over all those years and part of the whole process would be talking to each are talking to everyone involved bring it to him is part of everyone involved he didn't he want against his own practice when you and he details you know talking with brandon at five hundred and eighty three dollars but that's just for the very minimum level of discipline he would talk to brandon get his point of view and he wouldn't do it for do it for the old to been to just because he had just coached him and then he finds out that he's a liar about this other thing allegedly according to the coworker and i'm not saying he is in fact a liar i'm just saying corn coworker so why i mean at that point he's already at the last straw and then he finds out if there's another thing so why didn't i mean you're not saying their policies required that made him so i mean this court has has looked at those issues on the justification it doesn't matter whether it's true or not what's the process with that was a process done in good faith and where you don't talk with the person give him a chance to explain where you've given them a last chance and then you go again stude versus florida parish juvenile justice center richardson but i did give him a last chance and go against it they gave him a last chance and then they found out something else on top of it he never had an interaction with coworkers in fact his job was to report safety that was mack finn's job as well he did his job and he was days after verifying there was a safety issue he followed his code you can see the clearance