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

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1 

WILLIAM PERRY, 

v. 

FI LED 

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS United Stat.CS Courc of Appeals 

Tenth Ci::cuit FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

) 

) 

) 

) 

JUL - 9 1991 

:ROBERT L. HOECKER 

Clerk 

) No. 90-1160 

) (D.C. No. 89-A-45) 

TRW ELECTRONICS PRODUCTS, INC., 

Defendant-Appellee. 

) (D. Colo.) 

) 

) 

ORDER AND JUDGMENT* 

Before ANDERSON, Circuit Judge, MCWILLIAMS, Circuit Judge, and 

ALLEY, District Judge**• 

This is an appeal from judgment on a jury verdict in favor of 

defendant TRW Electronic Products, Inc. ("TRW") on plaintiff 

William Perry's claims under the Age Discrimination in Employment 

Act, 29 U.S.C. §§ 621-634. on appeal, Perry asserts that the 

district court erred in granting TRW's motion in limine to exclude 

*This order and judgment has no precedential value and shall not 

be cited, or used by any court within the Tenth Circuit, except for 

purposes of establishing the doctrines of the law of the case, res 

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

**Honorable Wayne E. Alley, United states District Judge for the 

Western District of Oklahoma, sitting by designation. 

Appellate Case: 90-1160 Document: 010110128851 Date Filed: 07/09/1991 Page: 1 
.. the testimony of Perry's expert witness. Perry also contends that 

the district court's exclusion of Perry's own testimony at trial 

about the relative qualifications of TRW employees was reversible 

error. We find that the exclusion of evidence was not an abuse of 

discretion and therefore affirm. 

I. 

BACKGROUND 

Perry worked at TRW from 1971 until he was laid off on March 

2, 1987. Perry was then 56 years old. Perry contested the layoff through internal grievance procedures and on March 26, 1987 

filed a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission 

("EEOC") alleging that his lay-off was the result of age 

discrimination. 

In May 1987, Perry was recalled to work as a program manager 

at TRW. On August 24, 1987, Mac Brinton, Vice President and 

General Manager of TRW, distributed an interoffice memorandum to 

all employees announcing the possibility of lay-offs and specifying 

that lay-off decisions would be made on the basis of "performance, 

ability, and seniority," making use of "prior performance rankings 

and performance appraisals in personnel files." Rec., supp. vol. 

I, at Ex. 1. On September 14, 1987, Brinton sent to G.W. Rawson, 

TRW Human Relations Manager, a memorandum listing ten criteria for 

ranking program managers. Id. at Ex. 2. This memorandum, which 

was not distributed to the general employee population, enumerated 

the following criteria: 

1. Demonstrated experience to manage a 

profitable program (FFP or FPI) 

2 

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t 

2. Ability to interface effectively 

with functional management 

3. Technical background (worked as 

engineer or senior technician 

4. Manufacturing background (worked in 

production, materials or 

manufacturing engineering) 

5. Technical education 

degree) 

(engineering 

6. Business/accounting knowledge 

7. Product knowledge 

8. Customer knowledge 

9. Years of experience as PM at TRW 

10. Years of industry experience as PM 

In October 1987, four TRW management personnel met to rank 

eleven program managers, including Perry. The criteria in 

Brinton's two memoranda were not uniformly or consistently applied 

by the four managers. They did not use a matrix based upon the 

ten criteria in the second memorandum and did not confine the 

sources of information as specified in the first. Instead, each 

manager individually and subjectively ranked the eleven program 

managers; the individual rankings were then compiled into an 

aggregate ranking. As a result of this process, Perry was ranked 

last and was selected to be laid off. Perry filed a second EEOC 

charge on November 23, 1987, alleging that the second lay-off was 

the result of age discrimination and was in retaliation for having 

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filed his first charge. 

instant suit. 

On January 9, 1989, Perry filed the 

II. 

EXCLUSION OF EVIDENCE 

On this appeal, Perry raises two issues with respect to the 

exclusion of evidence. No issue is presented here that the 

criteria or procedure used in the lay-off decision (to include 

ignoring the criteria) themselves entitle him to appellate relief. 

The decision to exclude evidence is within the sound discretion of 

the trial court "and will not be reversed absent a clear abuse of 

discretion." Spulak v. K Mart Corp., 894 F.2d 1150, 1156 (10th 

Cir. 1990) (emphasis in original) (quoting Agristor Leasing v. 

Meuli, 865 F.2d 1150, 1152 .(10th Cir. 1988)). 

The first issue raised by Perry concerns the proposed 

testimony of Dominic Verrastro, a former manager in 

personnel/labor relations for Martin Marietta. In preparation for 

trial, Perry retained Verrastro to review and analyze the 

personnel files of Perry and the other ten program managers. 

Perry intended to use Verrastro at trial as an expert witness. 

Verrastro would have testified that he reviewed the personnel 

files of the eleven program managers, from which he extracted 

information relevant to the ten criteria listed in Brinton' s 

September 14th memorandum. In addition, Verrastro interviewed 

Perry regarding the profitability of the programs he had managed. 

Based on this analysis, Verrastro was prepared to testify that 

application of the ten criteria could not have resulted in Perry's 

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last-place ranking. In fact, when Verrastro ranked the program 

managers using the ten criteria, Perry ranked first. 1 Rec., supp. 

vol. I, at Ex. 3. 

On April 17, 1990, TRW filed a motion in limine to exclude 

Verrastro's testimony. TRW contended that Verrastro's testimony 

was not necessary to assist the jury, that his opinion was 

irrelevant and not probative on the issue of discrimination, and 

that the possibility of prejudice to TRW outweighed the relevance 

of the testimony. After reviewing the briefs and hearing oral 

argument by counsel, the district court granted TRW's motion. The 

trial judge excluded Verrastro' s testimony on the grounds that 

Verrastro was not qualified as an expert, his opinion was based on 

incomplete data, his testimony would be prejudicial to TRW because 

it would invite the jury to substitute Verrastro's judgment for 

the company's judgment and Verrastro's opinion was not probative 

of the key issue in the case. 

The Federal Rules of Evidence provide for testimony by expert 

witnesses if such testimony "will assist the trier of fact." Fed. 

R. Evid. 702. The thrust of the trial court's ruling was that 

Verrastro's testimony was simply not necessary in order for the 

1

Perry argues that Verrastro's testimony was vital to his case because it would have "permitted the 

jury to infer that the ten criteria specified by TRW in Brinton's memo of September 14, 1987, were not 

applied to Perry.• Plaintiff-Appellant's Opening Brief at 17. This is a non-issue. It is conceded that the 

criteria were not used. Perry, however, was not entitled to have the criteria applied to him. The ten 

criteria do not rise to the level of a termination policy contained in an employee handbook. See Churchey 

v. Adolph Coors Co., 759 P.2d 1336, 1348-49 (Colo. 1988). Brinton's memorandum was not disseminated 

to the general employee population. Thus, Perry had no right to enforce use of the criteria with respect 

to his termination under either a contract or a promissory estoppel theory, no matter what his age. Id. 

5 

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jury to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue. 2 

"[E]xpert testimony is not necessary where the matter in issue is 

such that the jury can be expected to draw the correct inferences 

from the facts presented. " United Telecommunications. Inc. v. 

American Television and Communications corp., 536 F.2d 1310, 1317 

(10th Cir. 1976). Perry's argument that the aerospace and defense 

contract industry is highly specialized does not undermine the 

district court's discretionary conclusion that comparing 

qualifications of employees is not a complicated matter requiring 

the assistance of expert testimony. 3 Further, the import of 

Verrastro's opinions was suspect in any event because of 

concessions he made in his deposition that the district court 

considered. He conceded that the personnel files he reviewed were 

not all complete enough for the formulation of a sound evaluation; 

that his own evaluation was in the main subjective; that it would 

be proper for TRW management to give greater weight to some 

factors than to others; and that there was a basis for good-faith 

disagreement about relative performance evaluations. For this 

2

In response to the statement by Perry's counsel that Verrastro had performed a careful analysis 

of the personnel records, the trial court responded that such analysis did not require any particular expertise. 

Rec., vol. III, at 13. This is a reasonable observation based upon common knowledge and common sense. 

3

See Patterson v. McLean Credit Union, 805 F.2d 1143, 1147 (4th Cir. 1986), affd in part and rev'd 

in part, 491 U.S. 164 (1989) (exclusion of expert's testimony comparing relative qualifications of employees 

not an abuse of discretion); Hill v. Seaboard Coast Line R.R. Co., 767 F.2d 771, 776 (11th Cir. 1985) 

(exclusion of expert's testimony that promoted employees were more qualified than plaintiffs was not error). 

The fact that the personnel records in question consisted of more than 1000 pages does not indicate that 

the jury was incapable of reading and understanding the material contained therein. See In re U.S. 

Financial Securities Litigation, 609 F.2d 411, 430-31 (9th Cir. 1979), cert. denied 446 U.S. 929 (1980). In 

addition, Fed. R. Evid. 1006 permits the use of charts or summaries of voluminous material. Nothing in 

the trial court's ruling on TRW's motion in limine precluded Perry from synthesizing the important data 

from the personnel records in this fashion. 

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.. 

reason alone, one could reasonably regard the proposed testimony 

as unhelpful because it is so flaccid. The trial court's 

exclusion of Verrastro's testimony was not an abuse of discretion. 4 

Perry's second issue concerns the trial court's exclusion of 

Perry's testimony regarding the relative qualifications of the 

eleven program managers using Brinton's ten criteria. TRW 

objected to Perry's testimony on the ground that Perry's opinion 

of how he ranked was not relevant. The trial court sustained the 

objection. 

In his brief to this Court, Perry claims that he was 

precluded from testifying about "the brute facts of his employment 

experience with TRW." Plaintiff-Appellant's Opening Brief at 25. 

Yet, Perry had already testified in great detail about his 

employment history. Rec., Vol. VII, at 3-23, 28-33. Therefore, 

any further testimony along these lines would have been 

cumulative. It is apparent from the questions asked that Perry 

would have testified regarding his perception of his 

qualifications versus his perception of the qualifications of the 

other ten program managers. The trial court correctly held that 

this was not relevant evidence. At issue in this case is TRW's 

perception of the relative qualifications of the eleven program 

managers and whether that perception was tainted by discrimination 

based on age. See Branson v. Price River Coal Co., 853 F.2d 768, 

772 (10th Cir. 1988); Smith v. Flax, 618 F.2d 1062, 1067 (4th Cir. 

'-Toe trial court's concern that Verrastro's opinion was based on incomplete records did not support 

the exclusion of his testimony. This failing goes to the weight of his testimony, not its admissibility. 

7 

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.. 

1980). The trial court committed no abuse of discretion in 

precluding Perry's testimony; and in any event this Court is 

without anything specific to review because Perry provided no 

offer of proof so as to preserve the issue on appeal. See Federal 

Rule of Evidence 103(a) (2). 

The gist of Perry's argument here is that: "I was so good 

compared to my competitors that the jury, if they had had the 

benefit of the excluded evidence as to how good I was, would have 

inferred that age had to be the reason for my termination." All 

we are deciding is that the trial court properly exercised 

discretion in controlling the means of proof as to how good Perry 

and his competitors were. 

In sum, we find no merit in Perry's argument for reversal. 

The judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED. 

8 

Entered for the Court 

WAYNE E. ALLEY 

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