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Nature of Suit Code: 442
Nature of Suit: Civil Rights Employment
Cause of Action: 

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UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS 

FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT 

.FILED 

United States Court of Appeals Tenth Circuit 

MAR 1 41989 

LUCINDA ANDRADE, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

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ROBERT L. HOECKER 

Clerk 

v. 

PARKVIEW EPISCOPAL MEDICAL CENTER, 

a Colorado corporati on, 

No. 87-1727 

(D.C. No. 86-M-710) 

(D. Colo.) 

Defendant-Appellee. 

ORDER AND JUDGMENT* 

Before MCKAY and BARRETT, Circuit Judges, and JENKINS, Chief 

Judge.** 

**Honorable Bruce S. Jenkins, Chief Judge, United States District 

Court for the District of Utah, sitting by designation. 

Lucinda Andrade appeals the district court's denial of her 

motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict or, in the 

alternative, motion for new trial. The district court determined 

that the jury verdict in favor of the defendant was well within 

the evidence. Appellant also contends the district court erred in 

excluding the testimony of appellant's expert witness, 

Dr. Gardner. We affirm. 

*This order and 

be cited, or 

for purposes of 

res judicata, 

judgment has no precedential value and shall not 

used by any court within the Tenth Circuit, except 

establishing the doctrines of the law of the case, 

or collateral estoppel. 10th Cir. R. 36.3. 

Appellate Case: 87-1727 Document: 010110024607 Date Filed: 03/14/1989 Page: 1 
Mrs. Andrade brought this action pursuant to 29 U.S.C. 

§ 621-634 (1982 & Supp. III 1985) against Parkview Episcopal 

Medical Center alleging defendant terminated her because of her 

age. Appellant was fifty-six years old and had been employed with 

Parkview for sixteen 

April 17, 1984. 

years 

Parkview 

at the 

contends 

time of 

that it 

her discharge on 

terminated Mrs. 

Andrade for a legitimate business reason because she did not 

perform her work satisfactorily and failed to meet the 

productivity level established for her as an accounts payable 

clerk. Appellant alleged that Parkview's stated reason for 

discharge was merely a pretext for the true motive behind her 

discharge, her age. 

A motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict should be 

granted "only if the evidence points but one way and is 

susceptible to no reasonable inferences supporting the party for 

whom the jury found; we must construe the evidence and inferences 

most favorably to the nonmoving party." Zimmerman v. First Fed. 

Sav. & Loan Ass'n, 848 F.2d 1047, 1051 (10th Cir. 1988). We may 

not "weigh the evidence, pass on the credibility of witnesses, or 

substitute [our] judgment for that of the jury." Brown v. McGrawEdison Co., 736 F.2d 609, 613 (10th Cir. 1984). Our review of a 

denial of a motion for new trial "focuses on whether the verdict 

is clearly, decidedly, or overwhelmingly against the weight of the 

evidence, with the trial court's decision to stand absent a 

showing of a manifest abuse of discretion." Continental Casualty 

Co. v. Southwestern Bell Tel. Co., 860 F.2d 970, 972 (10th Cir. 

1988). 

2 

Appellate Case: 87-1727 Document: 010110024607 Date Filed: 03/14/1989 Page: 2 
✓ 

In order to succeed in an age discrimination case, a party 

must prove that she is over the age of forty, that she was 

performing satisfactory work, and that she was terminated and 

replaced by a younger employee. McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 

411 U.S. 792, 802 (1973). If a plaintiff makes a prima facie 

showing of the above, the employer must then articulate a 

legitimate nondiscriminatory reason for the decision to discharge 

the employee. Id. at 803. If the employer articulates a 

legitimate business reason, the employee must then prove the 

reason was a pretext for unlawful discrimination and that age was 

a determinative factor in her dismissal. E.E.O.C. v. University 

of Okla., 774 F.2d 999, 1002 (10th Cir. 1985), cert. denied, 475 

U.S. 1120 (1986). 

The parties stipulated to the fact that appellant was over 

the age of forty, had been terminated, and was replaced by a 

younger employee. The only issue contested at trial was whether 

Mrs. Andrade was doing satisfactory work, or more precisely, 

whether Parkview had a legitimate business reason for discharging 

appellant, and whether the stated reason given for her termination 

was a pretext for unlawfully motivated age discrimination. 

Appellant contends that she met her burden of persuasion with 

the following evidence. First, Parkview admitted that it 

partially based its decision to terminate Mrs. Andrade on the 

results of a management engineering study conducted for Parkview 

by Health Services Consultants. Mr. Johnson, who conducted the 

study, testified that his findings regarding the accounts 

receivable department indicated that Mrs. Andrade was working at 

3 

Appellate Case: 87-1727 Document: 010110024607 Date Filed: 03/14/1989 Page: 3 
only half the production level of her co-worker who worked in the 

same position. Mr. Johnson stated that Parkview never instructed 

him in how to conduct the study or that he should target certain 

· people with whom the company was unsatisfied. He also testified 

that Parkview told him that "no one would lose their jobs in 

reference to the management engineering study, that we had not 

been contracted to come in and reduce staffing." Tr. Vol. II at 

34. Appellant contends that this testimony proves that Parkview's 

stated reason for her termination, her low productivity revealed 

in the study results, was mere pretext. 

Second, Mrs. Andrade kept a personal record of her production 

levels on a desk calendar. She began keeping the record after she 

received a written warning in early March to increase her 

productivity but prior to when she was told she had to achieve an 

exact level of production. She claims this record proved she had 

maintained the level of productivity required by Parkview based on 

the study results. 

Third, Diane Porter, assistant comptroller until 1982, 

testified that the comptroller, John Colton, told her in 1980 or 

1981 that he wanted appellant fired because of her poor 

performance, and that he also wanted to get rid of two other women 

who also were older employees. Ms. Porter inferred from this 

request that Mr. Colton wanted to fire appellant because of her 

age. Mrs. Andrade claims this evidence proved Parkview intended 

to discharge her because of her age. Evidence was also presented, 

however, that the other elderly employees were never terminated 

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Appellate Case: 87-1727 Document: 010110024607 Date Filed: 03/14/1989 Page: 4 
✓ 

but retired voluntarily several years later. While on the witness 

stand, Mr. Colton denied ever making such a request. 

On the other hand, appellee presented substantial evidence to 

show that it discharged Mrs. Andrade for legitimate business 

reasons. Parkview presented evidence that appellant had been very 

slow in completing her work responsibilities for the past several 

years. Larene Liptak, her supervisor in the payroll department 

from 1981 through 1983, testified that Mrs. Andrade's work was 

always accurate but slower than the other workers. Susan Peck, 

her supervisor in the accounts receivable department where she 

worked from 1982 until she was terminated, testified that 

appellant's work was accurate but extremely slow, that her 

performance in March, 1984, was not acceptable, and that she 

refused to speed up her production level. In reference to the 

actual number of invoices Mrs. Andrade processed per week, 

testimony was introduced that the calculation of an employee's 

production level during a certain period of time could vary 

depending on how the invoices were counted. Appellant attempted 

to rebut the evidence of her low productivity with allegations 

that Parkview did not account for her other job duties that 

prevented her from meeting the productivity levels demanded. She 

also presented favorable evaluation reports she had received in 

the past. 

Viewing the evidence in a light most favorable to the 

appellee, the inferences that could be drawn from this evidence do 

not conclusively favor one party or the other. They depend on 

determinations of the credibility of the witnesses and evaluation 

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Appellate Case: 87-1727 Document: 010110024607 Date Filed: 03/14/1989 Page: 5 
of the timing of the events which led to appellant's dismissal. 

In reviewing the district court's decision on motion for judgment 

notwi thstanding the verdict, we will not evaluate the credibility 

of witnesses or otherwise consider the weight of the evidence. 

Goldman v. Fadell, 844 F.2d 1297, 1300 (7th Cir. 1988). ------------

Consequently, there was no abuse of discretion in the denial of 

the motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict. In addition, 

we are convinced that the jury verdict is not contrary to the 

manifest weight of t he evidence, and there is no indication that 

the district court abused its discretion in denying the motion for 

new trial. 

Appellant also contends that the district court erred in 

excluding the testimony of Dr. Gardner offered to elaborate on two 

issues. First, the witness was to comment on the management study 

upon which Parkview relied to determine productivity levels for 

Mrs. Andrade, and second, the witness would have testified on the 

issue of whether Parkview should have considered the alternative 

of a "variance," a transfer within the company, for Mrs. Andrade's 

situation as opposed to termination. 1 

A trial judge has "broad discretion in the matter of the 

admission or exclusion of expert evidence, and his action is to be 

1 During trial, appellant offered Dr. Gardner's testimony for the 

purpose of providing expert opinion as to whether the defendant 

discriminated against the plaintiff on the basis of age and to 

illustrate problems with the management study. As an offer of 

proof, appellant submitted Dr. Gardner's thirty-three page 

deposition. The district court held the testimony was not the 

proper subject for expert testimony. On appeal, Mrs. Andrade 

withdrew from her position that the issue of discrimination and 

the validity of the study were proper subject matter for expert 

testimony. 

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Appellate Case: 87-1727 Document: 010110024607 Date Filed: 03/14/1989 Page: 6 
.. 

sustained unless manifestly erroneous." Salem v. United States 

Lines Co., 370 U.S. 31, 35 (1962); see also Morgan v. District of 

Columbia, 824 F.2d 1049, 1061 (D.C. Cir. 1987). 2 An evidentiary 

ruling will be reversed only if the error is determined to have 

been prejudicial based on a review of the record as a whole. 

Wheeler v. John Deere Co., 862 F.2d 1404, 1407 (10th Cir. 1988). 

"The onus of establishing reversible error rests with the 

complaining party." Id. Appellant fails to illustrate that 

refusal to allow testimony on the two contested issues was 

prejudicial error. We conclude that the district court was well 

within its discretion in excluding the testimony of appellant's 

expert. 

The judgment of the United States District Court for the 

District of Colorado is AFFIRMED. 

The mandate shall issue forthwith. 

ENTERED FOR THE COURT 

PER CURIAM 

2 Fed. R. Evid. 702 instructs a district court to determine first 

whether the witness is qualified to testify in a particular field, 

and second, whether the witness' testimony would assist the trier 

of fact to understand the evidence. Coleman v. Parkline Corp., 

844 F.2d 863, 865 (D.C. Cir. 1988). 

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