Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-03-02976/USCOURTS-ca8-03-02976-0/pdf.json

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

---

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

___________

No. 03-2976

___________

George Williams, *

*

Appellee, *

*

v. * Appeal from the United States

* District Court for the Western

ConAgra Poultry Company, * District of Arkansas.

*

Appellant. *

*

___________________ *

*

Equal Employment Advisory Council, *

*

Amicus on Behalf of Appellant.*

___________

Submitted: May 10, 2004

Filed: August 6, 2004 (Corrected: 08/11/04)

___________

Before MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD, McMILLIAN, and MELLOY, Circuit

Judges.

___________

MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD, Circuit Judge.

This is an employment discrimination case in which George Williams, who is

black, claimed that his employer, ConAgra Poultry Company, subjected him to a

hostile work environment and terminated his employment based on his race.

Following a jury trial in the district court, judgment was entered for Mr. Williams on

Appellate Case: 03-2976 Page: 1 Date Filed: 08/06/2004 Entry ID: 1796678 
-2-

both claims. ConAgra maintains on appeal that the district court erred in admitting

certain evidence, failing to grant judgment as a matter of law, allowing the jury to

consider the matter of punitive damages, and refusing to remit punitive damages that

are unconstitutionally high. We affirm the judgment except on the matter of punitive

damages. 

I.

For many years, Mr. Williams worked in the El Dorado, Arkansas, poultry

factory of ConAgra, first as an ordinary employee and later as a supervisor. After he

quarreled with one of his supervisors and a co-worker, ConAgra fired him. The

company asserted that Mr. Williams was fired for fighting with the co-worker.

Mr. Williams believed that his firing was racially motivated and that he had been

subjected to a hostile work environment, and he filed a charge with the Equal

Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) . After receiving a right-to-sue letter

from the EEOC, he filed this action claiming violations of Title VII of the Civil

Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e through 2000e-17), 42 U.S.C. § 1981, and

the Arkansas Civil Rights Act (Ark. Code Ann. §§ 16-123-101 through 16-123-108).

Before Mr. Williams's suit, John Johnican had successfully sued ConAgra for

employment discrimination. In Mr. Williams's action, ConAgra made a motion in

limine to exclude all evidence relating to Mr. Johnican's suit. The district court ruled

that Mr. Williams could not introduce any evidence regarding the Johnican verdict,

but it withheld judgment on the admissibility of testimony relating to the events that

formed the basis of Mr. Johnican's suit. At trial, ConAgra's management denied that

Mr. Williams's firing was racially motivated and that he suffered from a hostile work

environment. Mr. Williams's witnesses testified to the incidents leading up to

Mr. Williams's firing, as well as to numerous incidents of racially motivated

harassment and disparate treatment of black employees, including incidents that

formed a part of the earlier Johnican suit. Mr. Williams also testified about his firing

and the harassment that he had personally suffered from.

Appellate Case: 03-2976 Page: 2 Date Filed: 08/06/2004 Entry ID: 1796678 
-3-

At the end of Mr. Williams's case and again at the close of evidence, ConAgra

moved for judgment as a matter of law, which the district court denied. The jury then

found for Mr. Williams on both claims, awarding him $927,788.90 in compensatory

damages and $6,063,750 in punitive damages on the termination claim, and awarding

him $1,001,397.40 in compensatory damages and $6,063,750 in punitive damages on

the hostile work environment claim. ConAgra moved to set the verdicts aside and to

remit the damages. The district court refused to set the verdicts aside, but it did remit

the compensatory damages for the termination claim to $173,156 and the punitive

damages on the same claim to $500,000. On the harassment claim, the court remitted

the compensatory damages to $600,000 but let the exemplary damages award stand.

Although it is not clear from the record, we assume that these awards were made

under § 1981, which does not include the caps on damages contained in Title VII and

the Arkansas Act.

II.

ConAgra maintains that the district court erred in admitting certain evidence

at trial. Employees at the El Dorado plant testified to numerous instances of racist

remarks by fellow employees and managers. In addition, they testified to more

threatening actions, such as nooses left at the work stations of black employees, a

black doll hung by a noose in the factory, and invitations extended to black

employees to attend Ku Klux Klan (KKK) hunting parties where they would be the

hunted. A black female employee testified that when black female employees

responded favorably to sexually suggestive remarks by managers, they were given the

longer breaks typically allowed white employees, but when they failed to respond

favorably, they were required to take the shorter breaks allowed black employees.

Finally, one black female employee testified to being physically manhandled by a

production supervisor with such force that she required medical treatment.

ConAgra points out that nothing in Mr. Williams's testimony indicates that he

was aware of any of these activities, and the Supreme Court has stated that an

Appellate Case: 03-2976 Page: 3 Date Filed: 08/06/2004 Entry ID: 1796678 
-4-

actionable harassment claim requires a showing that the workplace was subjectively

hostile, Harris v. Forklift Sys., Inc., 510 U.S. 17, 21-22 (1993). Because a

subjectively hostile environment is one that by definition the plaintiff is aware of, a

plaintiff cannot recover for harassment of which he or she is unaware. Hence, none

of this testimony would be relevant to the question of whether Mr. Williams suffered

from an actionable hostile work environment. See Fed. R. Evid. 401, 402. As the

Seventh Circuit has observed, "Mean-spirited or derogatory behavior of which a

plaintiff is unaware, and thus never experiences, is not 'harassment' of the plaintiff

(severe, pervasive, or other)." Mason v. Southern Ill. Univ., 233 F.3d 1036, 1046

(7th Cir. 2000); cf. Carter v. Chrysler Corp., 173 F.3d 693, 701 n.7 (8th Cir. 1999).

But it does not follow from the fact that the testimony was irrelevant to whether

Mr. Williams's environment was actionable that the court erred in admitting it. In the

first place, we think that the testimony made more credible Mr. Williams's testimony

about the environment that he was exposed to. In addition, at trial Mr. Williams

maintained (and ConAgra denied) that his firing was racially motivated. Evidence

of widespread toleration of racial harassment and disparate treatment condoned by

management was relevant to its motive in firing Mr. Williams. We believe that

evidence of racial bias in other employment situations could permissibly lead to the

inference that management was similarly biased in the case of Mr. Williams's firing.

Furthermore, Mr. Williams alleged that part of the motivation for firing him was that

he had complained about the racially hostile environment at the plant and that

management wished to silence him in order to avoid addressing the issue. Evidence

of the extent of the hostile environment was thus probative on the matter of

managerial motives. See Estes v. Dick Smith Ford, Inc., 856 F.2d 1097, 1102-03 (8th

Cir. 1988). Furthermore, as we discuss below, the issue of motive was relevant to

Mr. Williams's eligibility for punitive damages on his harassment claim, see Kolstad

v. American Dental Ass'n, 527 U.S. 526, 538 (1999), even if the conduct of which he

was unaware was not relevant to the question of whether he experienced actionable

Appellate Case: 03-2976 Page: 4 Date Filed: 08/06/2004 Entry ID: 1796678 
-5-

harassment. Hence, we conclude that the district court did not err in admitting this

testimony.

III.

ConAgra next argues that Mr. Williams's hostile work environment claim fails

as a matter of law. We hold that it does not. On review, we give great deference to

a jury's findings. We therefore "view the facts in the light most favorable to the

verdict, assuming that the jury resolved all evidentiary conflicts in favor of the

prevailing party," in this case Mr. Williams. Robinson v. Hager, 292 F.3d 560, 563

(8th Cir. 2002). In order to prevail on a harassment claim, a plaintiff must show that

he or she is a member of a protected group, that there was "unwelcome harassment,"

that there was a causal nexus between the harassment and membership in the

protected group, and that the harassment affected a term, condition, or privilege of

employment. See Palesch v. Missouri Comm'n on Human Rights, 233 F.3d 560, 566

(8th Cir. 2000). If the harassment comes from non-supervisory employees, the

plaintiff must also show that the employer knew or should have known about the

harassment but failed to take proper action. See id. at 566 & n.5.

ConAgra contends that Mr. Williams did not present evidence of racial

harassment that was severe or pervasive enough to affect a term, condition, or

privilege of his employment. As we have already noted, actionable harassment must

be subjectively offensive. Harris, 517 U.S. at 21-22. Accordingly, in considering

Mr. Williams's claim we confine ourselves to the harassment that he testified to

personally suffering from. In its order denying ConAgra judgment as a matter of law,

the district court discussed at length incidents that Mr. Williams did not testify to

witnessing or suffering from, arguing that because they occurred in the same factory,

Mr. Williams could have been aware of them. Because we believe that there must be

some evidence, direct or indirect, showing that the plaintiff was subjectively aware

of any harassment upon which his or her claim is based, we examine a narrower slice

Appellate Case: 03-2976 Page: 5 Date Filed: 08/06/2004 Entry ID: 1796678 
-6-

of the record than the district court did in determining whether the harassment that

Mr. Williams suffered from was objectively hostile. 

At trial, Mr. Williams testified that his supervisor regularly swore at him and

berated him in front of other employees. Although there was testimony to the effect

that Mr. Williams's supervisor berated everyone, other witnesses (including

Mr. Williams) testified that he treated Mr. Williams and other black employees with

special scorn. According to Mr. Williams, the supervisor and other ConAgra

employees regularly used racially demeaning language around him, and on one

occasion the supervisor said that he would "fire [Mr. Williams's] black ass."

Mr. Williams also stated that he regularly saw graffiti with racist messages in the

men's room at the plant. In addition, Mr. Williams testified that he was singled out

to remedy problems created by white employees because he was black, and that there

was a pervasive practice of using a double standard for evaluating and disciplining

white and black employees. Finally, Mr. Williams testified that he complained to

management about this treatment on numerous occasions but no meaningful action

was taken.

We have repeatedly emphasized that our civil rights statutes do not create a

civility code and that "merely rude or unpleasant" conduct does not create actionable

harassment. See, e.g., Alagna v. Smithville R-II Sch. Dist., 324 F.3d 975, 980 (8th

Cir. 2003). This case, moreover, does not involve the kind of physically threatening

behavior that we have relied on in other cases, Reedy v. Quebecor Pringint Eagle,

Inc., 333 F.3d 906, 909 (8th Cir. 2003). But we conclude nevertheless that there was

a sufficient record to allow a jury to conclude that Mr. Williams was subjected to an

unlawfully hostile environment based on his race. The testimony of Mr. Williams and

others was sufficient to establish a nexus between his race and the harassment.

Although ConAgra stresses the fact that Mr. Williams testified to only a single racial

slur directed at him by the supervisor, the plaintiff and others testified that the

supervisor's non-racial profanity and abuse was nevertheless more severe when

Appellate Case: 03-2976 Page: 6 Date Filed: 08/06/2004 Entry ID: 1796678 
-7-

directed toward black employees. The degree of the severity of the conduct of the

supervisor and other employees is a closer question, but Mr. Williams testified to

racially-motivated harassment that had a direct effect on the terms and conditions of

his employment, such as work assignments. In addition, he testified that workplace

harassment negatively affected his relationship with his wife and children, leading to

uncharacteristic exhaustion, hostility, and impatience with family members.

Furthermore, Mr. Williams testified that the verbal abuse that he suffered from his

supervisor was continuous and extended over several years. We conclude that a

reasonable jury could find on the basis of this evidence that Mr. Williams was

subjected to actionable harassment. 

We conclude that ConAgra's other arguments on this point are without merit.

IV.

ConAgra argues that the district court erred in allowing the jury to consider

awarding punitive damages on both the wrongful discharge and the harassment claim.

We disagree. The Supreme Court laid out the standard for punitive damages in

employment discrimination cases in Kolstad, 527 U.S. at 534-46. In that case the

court emphasized that it was not necessary that the conduct of the employer be

egregious in itself. Rather, the question is whether or not the defendant intentionally

discriminated with malice or reckless indifference to the protected rights of the

plaintiff. Id. at 529-30; see also 42 U.S.C. § 1981a(b)(1).

As we noted above, there was substantial evidence of egregious racial

harassment at the El Dorado plant, and although Mr. Williams did not testify to being

aware of this activity, it could be probative of the state of mind of ConAgra's

managers in firing him. Furthermore, at trial there were contradictions in the

testimony of ConAgra managers with respect to the basis for Mr. Williams's firing.

Thus, in this case the same evidence that the jury used to support its finding of racial

Appellate Case: 03-2976 Page: 7 Date Filed: 08/06/2004 Entry ID: 1796678 
-8-

motivation in Mr. Williams's discharge also supports an inference of intentional and

malicious conduct by ConAgra. 

We also conclude that there was sufficient evidence of reckless indifference to

Mr. Williams's federally protected rights for a jury to consider punitive damages on

his harassment claim. Mr. Williams testified to repeatedly complaining to upper

management about harassment by his immediate supervisor. In Henderson v.

Simmons Foods, Inc., 217 F.3d 612, 619 (8th Cir. 2000), we held that when the victim

of harassment repeatedly complains to various supervisors of harassment and the

harassment is not stopped, a submissible case on punitive damages has been made.

In that case, the employee complained of harassment to supervisors more than

40 times, but they took action "only once in two years" and then their response was

"at best ... half-hearted." Id. Analogously, Mr. Williams's complaints to ConAgra

about his working environment extended over several years and resulted in no

meaningful action on the part of management. 

V.

ConAgra asserts that the punitive damages award against it on the harassment

claim violated due process. The constitutionality of the award presents a question of

law, which we review de novo. Applying this standard and the appropriate law, we

conclude that the punitive damages award was unconstitutional for three interrelated

reasons. First, in upholding the award the district court improperly relied on evidence

of misconduct by ConAgra unrelated to Mr. Williams's claim. Second, the punitive

damages award is far in excess of what analogous statutes would allow. Finally, the

ratio of punitive damages to compensatory damages far exceeds the levels that the

Supreme Court has suggested are consistent with due process.

The dominant consideration for assessing the constitutionality of a punitive

damages award is the reprehensibility of the defendant's conduct. See BMW of N. Am.

v. Gore, 517 U.S. 559, 575 (1996). In assessing reprehensiblity, however, it is crucial

Appellate Case: 03-2976 Page: 8 Date Filed: 08/06/2004 Entry ID: 1796678 
-9-

that a court focus on the conduct related to the plaintiff's claim rather than the conduct

of the defendant in general. In State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co. v. Cambell, 538 U.S.

408, 422-23 (2003), the Supreme Court emphasized that courts cannot award punitive

damages to plaintiffs for wrongful behavior that they did not themselves suffer.

Tying punitive damages to the harm actually suffered by the plaintiff prevents

punishing defendants repeatedly for the same conduct: If a jury fails to confine its

deliberations with respect to punitive damages to the specific harm suffered by the

plaintiff and instead focuses on the conduct of the defendant in general, it may award

exemplary damages for conduct that could be the subject of an independent lawsuit,

resulting in a duplicative punitive damages award. Where there has been a pattern

of illegal conduct resulting in harm to a large group of people, our system has

mechanisms such as class action suits for punishing defendants. Punishing systematic

abuses by a punitive damages award in a case brought by an individual plaintiff,

however, deprives the defendant of the safeguards against duplicative punishment

that inhere in the class action procedure.

That does not mean that conduct in other cases is always irrelevant when

assessing the defendant's reprehensibility. An incident that is recidivistic can be

punished more harshly than an isolated incident. See State Farm, 538 U.S. at 423.

In determining what constitutes a previous example of the same conduct, however,

we must be careful not to let the exception swallow the rule. By defining his or her

harm at a sufficiently high level of abstraction, a plaintiff can make virtually any prior

bad acts of the defendant into evidence of recidivism. For example, in a slip-and-fall

case, a prior instance of negligent misrepresentation could be evidence that the

defendant has been repeatedly negligent, or, in a slander case, a prior physical assault

by the defendant could become evidence that he or she is a recidivist tortfeasor. 

The Supreme Court has therefore emphasized that the relevant behavior must

be defined at a low level of generality. "[E]vidence of other acts need not be identical

to have relevance in the calculation of punitive damages," id., but the conduct must

Appellate Case: 03-2976 Page: 9 Date Filed: 08/06/2004 Entry ID: 1796678 
-10-

be closely related. In State Farm, the plaintiff sued because his insurance company

refused to settle a lawsuit filed against him by a third party, which resulted in a hefty

and avoidable judgment. According to the plaintiff, the insurance company's conduct

was part of a larger scheme to limit artificially the pay-outs of valid claims and

involved altering records, attempts to bully policy holders into selling personal assets

to pay for claims, and the like. The Court, however, held that conduct unrelated to

third-party lawsuits could not be properly considered. Id. at 423-24. Hence, the

recidivist conduct must be factually as well as legally similar to the plaintiff's claim.

In upholding the punitive damages award on the harassment claim, we find that

the district court improperly relied on evidence of harassment not suffered by

Mr. Williams that was insufficiently similar to his experiences to be evidence of

recidivism under the narrow exception set forth in State Farm. In particular, the

district court relied extensively on the testimony of Mr. Johnican who stated that he

saw black dolls hung from nooses around the plant. He also reported invitations to

KKK barbecues and seeing a long racist joke about keeping black individuals out of

heaven posted in the factory. Another black employee, James Atkins, testified that

he was invited on KKK hunting trips, where he was to serve as the hunted. He also

testified to seeing nooses left about the factory. Tasha Moore testified that female

black employees who responded favorably to sexually suggestive banter were

extended the privileges of white employees, while black women who did not respond

favorably were, along with other black employees, given less favorable treatment.

Mr. Williams never testified to being aware of these events, let alone being the target

of similar behavior. We hold that this misconduct is insufficiently similar to that of

which Mr. Williams was the object to count as evidence of its recidivist character.

The district court did, however, identify evidence that would fall within the

State Farm recidivism exception. Mr. Atkins testified that white managers were

extended privileges, like travel at company expense, unavailable to black employees.

Ms. Moore testified that black employees were given shorter breaks than white

Appellate Case: 03-2976 Page: 10 Date Filed: 08/06/2004 Entry ID: 1796678 
-11-

employees. These instances are factually similar to the disparate work assignments

that Mr. Williams testified about. Mr. Johnican testified to the widespread use of

racist language of the kind that Mr. Williams complained of. Once the evidence has

been subject to the winnowing required by State Farm, ConAgra's conduct in

Mr. Williams's case remains reprehensible, but it is less appalling than the general

picture of ConAgra's misconduct that the district court drew.

A second relevant consideration in determining the constitutionality of the

punitive damages recovered in this case is the disparity between the punitive damages

awarded and the civil penalties assessed in analogous cases. See BMW, 517 U.S. at

575; State Farm, 538 U.S. at 428. Here we find that the closest analogy to

Mr. Williams's harassment claim under § 1981 is a harassment claim under Title VII.

With respect to companies with the number of employees that ConAgra has, Congress

has capped the total of all damages for future pecuniary losses, nonpecuniary losses,

and punitive damages in Title VII cases at $300,000. See 42 U.S.C. § 1981a(b)(3).

Of course, the damages caps in Title VII cases do not apply to § 1981 actions, and a

per se rule that in § 1981 actions awards in excess of $300,000 violate due process

would allow constitutional questions to turn on congressional judgments.

Furthermore, in making the decision to limit damages in Title VII cases, Congress

made the implicit judgment not to limit damages in § 1981 cases. Hence it would be

inappropriate for the courts simply to extend the Title VII limitations to § 1981 cases

under the guise of interpreting the Constitution. But explicit legislative judgments

of reprehensibility in analogous situations put parties on notice as to the order of

magnitude of retributive sanctions that they can expect for reprehensible activity. In

this case, the award of punitive damages alone on the harassment claim was

$6,063,750, more than twenty times the Title VII limit. We do not hold that there is

any constitutionally required ratio between § 1981 damages awards and the Title VII

cap, but so huge a discrepancy when coupled with the other infirmities that we

discern in this award is telling and hard to ignore.

Appellate Case: 03-2976 Page: 11 Date Filed: 08/06/2004 Entry ID: 1796678 
-12-

A final important consideration in assessing the constitutionality of the award

in this case is the ratio of punitive damages to compensatory damages. Both this

court and the Supreme Court have emphasized that due process cannot be expressed

in a simple numerical ratio. See, e.g., BMW, 517 U.S. at 582-83; Denesha v. Farmers

Ins. Exch., 161 F.3d 491, 504 (8th Cir. 1999), cert. denied, 526 U.S. 1115 (1999).

But one should not overstate the extent of the Court's aversion to ratios. The

Supreme Court has observed that a ratio that exceeds single digits pushes the outer

limits of constitutionality. State Farm, 538 U.S. at 425. It is not that such a ratio

violates the Constitution. Rather, the mathematics alerts the courts to the need for

special justification. In the absence of extremely reprehensible conduct against the

plaintiff or some special circumstance such as an extraordinarily small compensatory

award, awards in excess of ten-to-one cannot stand.

Looking at the relevant evidence, we cannot say that ConAgra's conduct toward

Mr. Williams was so egregiously reprehensible that it justifies an unusually large

award. The punitive damages award upheld by the district court was more than ten

times the compensatory award for Mr. Williams's harassment claim after remittitur.

Given the evidence set forth in the record, and the standards laid down by the

Supreme Court in State Farm, we hold that this award violates due process.

Mr. Williams's large compensatory award also militates against departing from the

heartland of permissible exemplary damages. The Supreme Court has stated that

"[w]hen compensatory damages are substantial, then a lesser ratio, perhaps only equal

to compensatory damages, can reach the outermost limit of the due process

guarantee." State Farm, 538 U.S. at 425. Mr. Williams received $600,000 to

compensate him for his harassment. Six hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money.

Accordingly, we find that due process requires that the punitive damages award on

Mr. Williams's harassment claim be remitted to $600,000.

Appellate Case: 03-2976 Page: 12 Date Filed: 08/06/2004 Entry ID: 1796678 
-13-

VI.

For the reasons set forth above, we affirm the district court in part and reverse

in part, and we remand this case to the district court for entry of an amended

judgment consistent with this opinion.

______________________________

Appellate Case: 03-2976 Page: 13 Date Filed: 08/06/2004 Entry ID: 1796678