Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-05-03825/USCOURTS-ca8-05-03825-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
GenCorp
Appellee
Adolfo Ramirez
Appellant

Document Text:

*

The Honorable Susan Webber Wright, United States District Judge for the

Eastern District of Arkansas.

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

___________

No. 05-3825

___________

Adolfo Ramirez, *

*

Appellant, *

* Appeal from the United States

v. * District Court for the

* Eastern District of Arkansas.

Gencorp, Inc., doing business as *

GDX Automotive, * [UNPUBLISHED]

*

Appellee. *

___________

Submitted: May 19, 2006

Filed: September 14, 2006

___________

Before LOKEN, Chief Judge, JOHN R. GIBSON, and COLLOTON, Circuit Judges.

___________

PER CURIAM.

Adolfo Ramirez filed this action against GDX Automotive alleging employment

discrimination pursuant to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e2(a)(1), and breach of contract stemming from GDX’s decision to terminate his

employment. Ramirez appeals the district court’s*

 decision to grant summary

judgment in favor of GDX on his employment discrimination claim, and we affirm.

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Ramirez began his employment with GDX at the company’s facility in

Batesville, Arkansas, in January 1989 as a production floor employee. He was

steadily promoted and became a supervisor in March 1994. Beginning in December

2001, the Area Manager of Ramirez’s division, and Ramirez’s immediate supervisor,

was Don Mills. The small business unit manager, Mills’s immediate supervisor, was

Scott Conger. Following Conger’s promotion to operations manager of the Batesville

facility and Mills’s promotion to small business unit manager, Ramirez was promoted

to Area Manager on January 2, 2003, at Mills’s recommendation.

Soon thereafter, Mills and Conger became displeased with Ramirez’s

performance as Area Manager. Mills reported that Ramirez fought him over changes

made by management due to a downturn in business, and that Ramirez was letting his

friendships interfere with the work performance of those whom he supervised. Mills

and Conger averred that Ramirez was often unavailable when needed and could not

be found in his office or on the production floor. Ramirez asserted that the conflict

with Mills and Conger was due to his “positive discipline” style of management,

which, according to Ramirez, conflicted with the desires of his supervisors to have

Ramirez act as a “hatchet person, terminating employees for fraudulent reasons in

violation of the union contract procedure.” Mills and Conger met with Ramirez on

two occasions to express their dissatisfaction with his performance.

Pursuant to a written agreement between Ramirez and GDX, the first 90 days

in his new job as Area Manager was an “evaluation period to give both [Ramirez] and

the Company the opportunity to determine if [he] want[ed] to remain as [Area]

Manager or return to [his] old position as Supervisor.” By mid-February 2003,

Ramirez had decided that he did not want to continue as an Area Manager. He

approached Mills about returning to his old supervisor position. Mills responded,

“[a]migo, you can do this job,” encouraging Ramirez to remain an Area Manager.

Ramirez testified that he was insulted by the “amigo” reference, and thought that Mills

was being disingenuous by calling him “amigo,” since Ramirez was terminated a few

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weeks later. In addition, Mills occasionally had asked Ramirez jokingly during staff

meetings to produce his “green card.”

In March 2003, prior to the expiration of Ramirez’s 90-day evaluation period,

Conger determined that the Area Manager position occupied by Ramirez should be

eliminated, as part of an ongoing reduction in workforce at the Batesville facility.

Another employee had replaced Ramirez as supervisor when Ramirez was promoted,

and at the time of Conger’s decision to eliminate the Area Manager position, no

supervisor position was available to which Ramirez could return. On March 14, 2003,

GDX terminated Ramirez as part of the workforce reduction, but retained three other

employees working as production supervisors at the time.

Ramirez brought this action against GDX based on his termination, alleging a

claim of discrimination based on his Hispanic national origin, in violation of Title VII,

42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(1), and a claim for breach of Ramirez’s promotion agreement

entitling him to a 90-day evaluation period. The district court granted summary

judgment in favor of GDX on the discrimination claim. The court then declined to

exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the breach of contract claim, and dismissed

it without prejudice. See 28 U.S.C. § 1367(c)(3). We review de novo the district

court’s decision to grant summary judgment for GDX.

Ramirez does not take issue with the district court’s analysis of his

discrimination claim under the burden-shifting framework of McDonnell Douglas

Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 802-04 (1973), but argues that he presented sufficient

evidence to create a genuine issue for trial on the question whether the company’s

stated reason for its decision was a pretext for discrimination. In proffering its reason

for the employment action, GDX explained that it eliminated the Area Manager level

of management as part of its workforce reduction. The company maintained that it

then chose to terminate Ramirez, rather than any other production supervisor, because

of his poor job performance as Area Manager and clashes with management. These

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are legitimate, non-discriminatory reasons to terminate Ramirez. See Groves v. Cost

Planning & Mgmt. Int’l, Inc., 372 F.3d 1008, 1009 (8th Cir. 2004) (per curiam)

(reduction in workforce); Hannoon v. Fawn Eng’g Corp., 324 F.3d 1041, 1047 (8th

Cir. 2003) (poor job performance). 

Ramirez concedes that GDX was undergoing a valid workforce reduction at the

time he was terminated, but he contends that discriminatory motives were a factor in

the decision by Mills and Conger to terminate him. We agree with the district court

that Ramirez has not presented a submissible case that the company’s explanation was

a pretext for unlawful discrimination.

Although evidence of similarly-situated employees of a different national origin

receiving more favorable treatment can demonstrate pretext, Cherry v. Ritenour Sch.

Dist., 361 F.3d 474, 479 (8th Cir. 2004), Ramirez has not introduced evidence

demonstrating that the three production supervisors remaining after his termination

were similarly situated. Ramirez admits that when Conger made his termination

decision, the remaining three supervisors were performing their respective jobs

satisfactorily. The record establishes that Mills and Conger perceived that Ramirez

performed poorly as Area Manager, and although Ramirez asserts that this reason is

pretextual, he has not directed us to evidence suggesting that GDX’s perception was

unfounded or that would create a dispute about whether the company truly believed

that he was performing poorly. Because Ramirez was the only one of the four

available production supervisors who was perceived as performing his job poorly, he

is not similarly situated to the three supervisors GDX retained. Ramirez also has

failed to show that GDX deviated from its own policies when it terminated Ramirez.

The company did not have a policy of promoting or retaining employees based on

seniority, but instead based these decisions on performance. Accordingly, a

reasonable jury could not deduce from this evidence that Ramirez was chosen to be

terminated because of his national origin. See Russell v. TG Mo. Corp., 340 F.3d 735,

746 (8th Cir. 2003). 

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Conger’s decision not to promote Ramirez in December 2001 similarly does not

support an inference that GDX’s stated reasons for terminating him in March 2003 are

pretext. In December 2001, Conger approached Ramirez and interviewed him in

consideration for a promotion to an engineering position. But in January 2002, Conger

promoted another employee to this position. Ramirez contends that this was “the first

act of discrimination by Scott Conger, bypassing [him] for a white male.” Conger

explained that he decided not to promote Ramirez after he learned that Ramirez had

received a disciplinary action notice for falsely recording that he had worked eight

hours when he had only worked seven on a date in December 2001. Ramirez testified

that the disciplinary action could not have factored into Conger’s promotion decision,

and disputes the accuracy of the disciplinary action, contending that a disgruntled

employee, whom Ramirez had previously disciplined, filed a false report in retaliation.

We do not agree with Ramirez’s assessment of the evidence. For purposes of

summary judgment, we must assume that the accusation was fabricated, and that

Ramirez actually worked eight hours on the date in question. Ramirez has not

introduced evidence, however, that Conger knew or should have suspected that the

accusation was unfounded. The evidence is undisputed that Conger received the

report and had no reason to question its veracity. See Scroggins v. Univ. of Minn., 221

F.3d 1042, 1045 (8th Cir. 2000). Conger’s decision not to promote Ramirez in

reliance on the claim made in the report was a legitimate business decision, see Kiel

v. Select Artificials, Inc., 169 F.3d 1131, 1135 (8th Cir. 1999) (en banc), and Ramirez

has introduced no evidence that Conger’s decision not to promote him in January

2002 was motivated by Ramirez’s national origin.

Finally, Ramirez alleges that derogatory comments made by Mills, calling

Ramirez his “amigo,” and making references to Ramirez’s “green card,” establish

pretext. Assuming these comments could reasonably be interpreted as derogatory,

Ramirez has not provided any evidence that the “amigo” and “green card” remarks

were related to Mills’s decisional process in terminating Ramirez. Many of our cases

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involving this sort of “stray remark” involve assertions that the comments constitute

“direct evidence” of discrimination, and we have held that statements by a

decisionmaker unrelated to the decisional process are not such evidence. RiversFrison v. Southeast Mo. Cmty. Treatment Ctr., 133 F.3d 616, 619 (8th Cir. 1998); see

also Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U.S. 228, 277-78 (1989) (O’Connor, J.,

concurring in judgment). We have incorporated this so-called “stray remarks

doctrine” into our analysis of pretext in the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting

framework. E.g., Simmons v. Océ-USA, Inc., 174 F.3d 913, 916 (8th Cir. 1999);

Ghane v. West, 148 F.3d 979, 982 (8th Cir. 1998); Aucutt v. Six Flags Over MidAmerica, Inc., 85 F.3d 1311, 1315-16 (8th Cir. 1996). Given the evidence presented

by GDX regarding Ramirez’s poor job performance, the remarks made by Mills

outside of the decisional process are insufficient without more to generate a genuine

issue of fact on the question of pretext. See Rivers-Frison, 133 F.3d at 619; see also

Woroski v. Nashua Corp., 31 F.3d 105, 109-10 (2d Cir. 1994) (holding that stray

remarks indicating age bias of decisionmaker were insufficient to generate

submissible case of pretext in age discrimination case).

In the end, GDX, which was struggling through a slow economic period and

was reducing its workforce at its Batesville facility, made a rational business decision

to eliminate a level of management throughout the facility. Then, when faced with a

choice to terminate one of four employees qualified for its three production supervisor

positions, the company chose to dismiss the employee who it believed had performed

his job poorly. Ramirez has not offered sufficient proof that he was terminated for

any other reason.

The judgment of the district court is affirmed.

______________________________

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