Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-azd-2_05-cv-00384/USCOURTS-azd-2_05-cv-00384-1/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 42:1983 Civil Rights Act

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WO

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF ARIZONA

Robert Plutt, 

Plaintiff, 

vs.

Safeway, Inc., a Delaware corporation, 

Defendant. 

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No. CV 05-0384-PHX-DGC

ORDER

Plaintiff’s complaint asserts that he was improperly terminated from his employment

because of his age, in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (“ADEA”),

and on the basis of his gender, in violation of Title VII. Doc. #1. Defendant has filed a

motion for summary judgment on both claims. Doc. #34. Plaintiff concedes that summary

judgement is proper on his Title VII claim, Doc. #38 at 4, and Defendant’s motion will

therefore be granted with respect to this claim. For the reasons stated below, however,

Defendant’s motion will be denied with respect to Plaintiff’s ADEA claim.

I. Facts.

Plaintiff has been a Safeway store manager for approximately thirty years. In April

of 2004, Plaintiff applied for a transfer from Safeway’s Denver division to its Phoenix

division. His application was approved by Bryan Durrett, the Phoenix Division’s Human

Resources Director, and Steve Neibergall, the Phoenix Division’s Vice President of Retail

Operations. Plaintiff transferred to a store manager position in the Phoenix Division on

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May 17, 2004. Plaintiff was terminated by District Manager Phil West for policy code

violations less than four months later.

Safeway’s written policy provides that “all financial transactions and funds must be

properly recorded and accounted for on the Company books, supported by adequate

documentation. Records must be accurate, complete, and auditable. They must conform to

the law, generally accepted accounting principles, and Company policy.” Doc. #35. Plaintiff

agrees that Safeway’s policy forbids “the charging of direct labor hours (regular hours) to

sick leave, vacation, personal day, funeral day, or any other account (such as training) when

those hours were not actually used for that purpose.” Doc. #39, ¶15. 

Every Safeway manager has a weekly labor budget for salaries. Training hours do not

count against the budget. Thus, if a manager was going to exceed his weekly budget, he

could code some employee time to training in order to meet the budget. Both parties

acknowledge that this would be dishonest and a violation of policy. Plaintiff does not dispute

that he recorded some non-training hours as training hours in order to meet his budget.

II. ADEA Claim.

A. Legal Standard.

To show a violation of the ADEA, Plaintiff must first establish a prima facie case of

discrimination. See Vasques v. County of Los Angeles, 349 F.3d 634, 640 (9th Cir. 2003);

Ritter v. Hughes Aircraft Co., 58 F.3d 454 (9th Cir. 1995) (standards of proof in ADEA

discrimination actions parallel those in Title VII actions). Plaintiff must show that he was

(1) a member of a protected class (age 40-70), (2) performing his job in a satisfactory

manner, (3) discharged, and (4) replaced by a substantially younger employee with equal or

inferior qualifications. See Wallis v. J.R. Simplot Co., 26 F.3d 885, 891 (9th Cir. 1994)

(quoting Rose v. Wells Fargo & Co., 902 F.2d 1417, 1421 (9th Cir.1990)). “The requisite

degree of proof necessary to establish a prima facie case for Title VII claims on summary

judgment is minimal and does not even rise to the level of a preponderance of the evidence.”

Id. at 889. “The plaintiff need only offer evidence which gives rise to an inference of

unlawful discrimination.” Id. 

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1

 Defendant argues that the Court should apply the “same actor inference” articulated

in Coghlan, which requires an “extraordinarily strong showing of discrimination” by a

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“If the plaintiff establishes a prima facie case, the burden of production – but not

persuasion – then shifts to the employer to articulate some legitimate, nondiscriminatory

reason for the challenged action.” Villiarimo v. Aloha Island Air, Inc., 281 F.3d 1054, 1062

(9th Cir. 2002) (citing McDonnell Douglas v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 802 (1973)). If the

employer sufficiently articulates a nondiscriminatory reason, the plaintiff must produce

evidence to show that the employer’s reason is pretextual. Goodwin, 150 F.3d at 1220. 

B. Prima Facie Case.

Plaintiff has established a prima facie case. Plaintiff was 59 years old, qualified for

his job, terminated, and replaced by a younger store manager. The key question for purposes

of this motion, then, is whether Plaintiff has produced sufficient evidence to rebut

Defendant’s stated reason for his termination. 

C. Pretext.

A plaintiff may meet the burden of showing pretext by either direct or circumstantial

evidence. Direct evidence is evidence “which, if believed, proves the fact [of discriminatory

animus] without inference or presumption.” Goodwin, 150 F.3d at 1221. Direct evidence

typically consists of clearly sexist, racist, or similarly discriminatory statements by the

employer. Id. “Circumstantial evidence, in contrast, is evidence that requires an additional

inferential step to demonstrate discrimination.” Coghlan v. American Seafoods Co., LLC.,

413 F.3d 1090 (9th Cir. 2005). For example, a plaintiff may show that an employer’s reason

for acting was a pretext – from which a jury may infer that the true reason for acting was

discrimination – by showing that the employer’s proffered reason is “unworthy of credence.”

Texas Dep’t of Community Affairs v. Burdine, 450 U.S. 248, 256 (1981); Reeves v.

Sanderson Plumbing Products, Inc., 530 U.S. 133, 147 (2000) (“it is permissible for the trier

of fact to infer the ultimate fact of discrimination from the falsity of the employer’s

explanation.”); Coghlan, 413 F.3d at 1095.1

 To defeat summary judgment, the amount of

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plaintiff “where the same actor is responsible for both the hiring and the firing of a

discrimination plaintiff.” 104 F.3d at 1998. The Court concludes that this heightened

standard does not apply in this case because the actors involved in Plaintiff’s transfer from

Denver to Phoenix and in Plaintiff’s subsequent termination were not identical. Approval

of Plaintiff’s transfer involved Bryan Durrett and Steve Neibergall. Plaintiff’s termination

involved Bryan Durrett and Phil West. Defendant has presented no evidence to suggest that

Bryan Durrett – the common employee in both actions – was the sole or primary decision

maker. To the contrary, the evidence suggests that West was the final decision maker. Doc.

#35, Ex. Q (Durrett letter referring to “Phil’s final decision”). The Court accordingly cannot

conclude that Durrett’s participation in both actions invokes the same actor inference and

requires heightened proof by Plaintiff.

2

 Plaintiff asserts that Defendant’s Vice President, Al Duran, made a statement

amounting to direct evidence of discrimination – that Plaintiff received a less lucrative

package in his transfer from Denver because of his age. But Duran’s statement concerned

Plaintiff’s transfer, not his termination four months later, and Plaintiff has produced no

evidence to suggest that the statement reflected a general corporate policy of age

discrimination. What is more, Duran was not involved in Plaintiff’s termination. The Court

accordingly does not regard Duran’s statement as direct evidence of discrimination in

Plaintiff’s termination, and will look instead to Plaintiff’s the circumstantial evidence.

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direct evidence needed is “very little”; circumstantial evidence, however, must be “specific

and substantial.” Id. at 1097.2

 

Defendant states that Plaintiff was terminated because he improperly directed

employees at his store to falsify time and attendance records by recording regular work hours

as training hours, and because he deprived an employee, Joe Motley, of 32 minutes of

overtime pay by changing Motley from an 8-hour to a 10-hour employee without Motley’s

consent. Doc. #34. In response, Plaintiff admits to mis-coding employee hours in order to

meet his weekly salary budget, but argues that mis-coding was a common practice among

Safeway’s store managers and condoned by upper management. Doc. #38. Further,

Plaintiff admits that he changed Motley’s hours, but asserts that he “had [Motley’s] explicit

consent” to do so. Doc. #39, ¶53.

To show that mis-coding was condoned by Defendant, Plaintiff offers a declaration

from David Niernberger that states: “[i]n my 18 years as a Store Manager for Safeway, Inc.,

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in the Denver Division, coding an employee’s regular work hours as training hours when

necessary to make salary was a common practice.” Doc. #39, Ex. I. Plaintiff also provides

deposition testimony from Stacy McLean, a Phoenix Safeway store manager, that Al Duran,

Defendant’s Vice President, told her to “do whatever it takes to keep operations running,

[even if] that meant finding people willing to work in Bakery and coding them to training[.]”

Doc. #39, Ex. J at 39-42. Ms. McLean recalls “a dozen or so times at least” when

management authorized her to code employee work hours as training. Id. 

Plaintiff further provides the declaration of Thomas Land, a store manager in Surprise,

Arizona, concerning budget practices contrary to company policy. Land states that District

Manager Sandy Ottosen announced at a weekly district manager meeting “that if any

managers anticipated missing their target salaries for that week, she encouraged them to send

their employees to [Land’s] store” because of its unlimited grand opening salary budget. Id.,

Ex. O. Mr. Land states that “two store managers accepted Ottosen’s invitation [with one]

charg[ing] eight hours to my store and another manager, after appearing in my store for no

more than ten minutes, also charg[ing] eight hours to my store.” Id. Plaintiff has provided

additional evidence of management-accepted mis-coding. Doc. #38 at 10-13.

The Court concludes that Plaintiff has presented specific and substantial evidence that

mis-coding of time entries was an accepted practice within Safeway management. Defendant

vigorously disputes this characterization of the evidence and presents colorable arguments

to support its view of the facts, but arguments about the facts are for the jury to consider.

The Court must view the evidence in the light most favorable to Plaintiff at this summary

judgment stage. Doing so, the Court concludes that a reasonable jury could find that miscoding was not the true reason for Plaintiff’s termination. 

As noted, Defendant also asserts that it terminated Plaintiff because he changed Joe

Motley’s hourly schedule without Motley’s consent. The evidence, however, does not

support this assertion. Bryan Durrett’s declaration states that Plaintiff was terminated

because he “had intentionally misrepresented hours, falsified time records, and violated

Safeway’s Code.” Doc. #35, Ex. D ¶9. The declaration makes no mentioned of Joe Motley.

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In addition, Durrett wrote to Plaintiff on September 17, 2004, concerning Plaintiff’s

termination. Id. Ex. Q. The letter cites to the portions of Defendant’s code regarding

bookkeeping, but again makes no mention of the Joe Motley matter. Id. Phil West, the

individual who made the decision to terminate Plaintiff (see id., Ex. Q), testified that he

considered the following factors: “[w]hether or not there had been misrepresentation of

hours used, whether or not it had been in violation of the code of conduct, and thirdly, how

we handled the situation of a similar nature in the past.” Id., Ex. P at 52. Notably, he did not

mention the changing of Motley’s hourly schedule. Most importantly, West provided this

testimony:

Q. Did the Joe Motley issue alone support a decision of termination?

A. That’s something that I would have to review with Brian as well as our

corporate counsel if that was in fact a stand-alone situation.

Id. at 65. This answer makes clear that, as of the time of his deposition, Mr. West had not

determined whether the Motley matter was an independent basis for termination . If that is

true, then he certainly had not made that determination when Plaintiff was terminated and

Defendant cannot now establish that the Motley matter was a basis for Plaintiff’s termination

independent of mis-coding.

“Where . . . ‘an employer articulates several alternative and independent legitimate

nondiscriminatory reasons, the falsity of one does not necessarily justify the finding that the

remaining articulated reasons were pretextual.’” Odima v. Westin Tucson Hotel Co., 991

F.2d 595, 600 (9th Cir. 1993) (citation omitted). In this case, however, Defendant has not

established that the Joe Motley situation was an independent nondiscriminatory reason for

Plaintiff’s termination. Indeed, a rational trier of fact might conclude that Plaintiff’s afterthe-fact citation of the Motley matter is itself evidence of pretext. The jury could also

conclude that because one of Defendant’s reason for terminating Plaintiff – mis-coding – was

pretextual, Defendant’s similar and non-independent reason is also pretextual. 

The Court concludes that factual issues preclude summary judgment in Defendant’s

favor. A jury must decide the true reasons for Plaintiff’s termination.

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IT IS ORDERED:

1. Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment (Doc. #34) is granted with

respect to Plaintiff’s Title VII claim and denied with respect to his ADEA

claim.

2. The Court will set a final pretrial conference by separate order.

DATED this 25th day of July, 2006.

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