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Parties Involved:
Spencer Abraham
Appellee
Don W. Crockett
Appellant

Document Text:

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued February 7, 2002 Decided March 29, 2002

No. 01-5075

Don W. Crockett,

Appellant

v.

Spencer Abraham, Secretary of Energy,

Appellee

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 98cv01918)

David H. Shapiro argued the cause and filed the briefs for

appellant.

Richard A. Olderman, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, argued the cause for appellee. With him on the brief

were Robert D. McCallum, Jr., Assistant Attorney General,

Roscoe C. Howard, Jr., U.S. Attorney, and Marleigh D.

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Dover, Special Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice. Irene

M. Solet, Attorney, entered an appearance.

Before: Tatel and Garland, Circuit Judges, and Williams,

Senior Circuit Judge.

Opinion for the Court filed by Senior Circuit Judge

Williams.

Williams, Senior Circuit Judge: Don W. Crockett sued the

Department of Energy in district court, claiming that the

Department of Energy's failure to promote him to Assistant

General Counsel for Contractor Litigation in 1997, and again

in 1999, violated the Age Discrimination in Employment Act,

29 U.S.C. ss 621-634. The district court rejected his claims

and Crockett appeals. We affirm.

* * *

In August 1996 the Department of Energy announced a

vacancy for the post of Assistant General Counsel for Contractor Litigation, a position in the Senior Executive Service.

Crockett applied. At the time he was 58 years old and an

18-year veteran of the Department, and had served from

1987-1995 as director of the Judicial Litigation Division of the

Economic Regulatory Administration. There he had handled

and supervised the Department's price control litigation.

With the dwindling of that specialty and a reorganization of

the Department, Crockett had held the position of Deputy

Assistant General Counsel for Litigation since 1995 and had

started handling non-price control cases. Crockett v. Richardson, 127 F. Supp. 2d 40, 41-42 (D.D.C. 2001).

On reviewing the records of 19 applicants, a Merit Staffing

Committee in October 1996 rated five candidates as "Superior" (the highest of four possible rankings: Superior, Very

Good, Acceptable, and Not Qualified), the rest lower. Among

the five were Crockett and Gary Stern. Stern, then 36 years

old, had joined the Department in 1995 as Deputy Assistant

General Counsel for Information Law, and had been Special

Assistant to then-General Counsel Robert Nordhaus. Stern

had previously been "involved in several high profile, complicated DOE contractor litigation matters," including "the

Rocky Flats litigation in Colorado, a mass tort action involving radiation injuries from plutonium exposure, and a class

action involving human radiation experiments." Id. at 42.

Nordhaus had appointed Stern as the Acting Assistant General Counsel for Contractor Litigation in September 1996, and

in February 1997 selected him as the new Assistant General

Counsel for Contractor Litigation.

In July 1998 Crockett filed the present suit, alleging that

he had been denied the position due to age discrimination.

At about the same time, Stern left the Department to become

General Counsel of the National Archives and Records Administration. This vacancy prompted another candidate

search, in which Crockett again applied, along with ten others. In February 1999, the Merit Staffing Committee (now

with a somewhat different membership) rated two candidates

as Superior, Crockett only as Very Good along with two

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others, and the rest lower. See Letter from Robert Rabben,

Chair, Merit Staffing Committee, to Mary Anne Sullivan,

General Counsel (Feb. 18, 1999) ("Rabben Letter"). Ultimately, however, the appointing official, General Counsel

Mary Anne Sullivan, selected no one, but rather decided to

"revise[ ] the technical qualifications" and "to re-advertise"

the position. Deposition of Mary Anne Sullivan, at 62 (July 1,

1999) ("Sullivan Deposition"); see also Declaration of Mary

Anne Sullivan, at p 22 (Mar. 29, 2000) ("Sullivan Declaration"). Although the revisions have been made, as of Sullivan's evidence in this case the position had not been readvertised due to budgetary constraints. See Sullivan Declaration at p 25; Sullivan Deposition at 62. Crockett amended

his complaint to add a claim that the Department, in this later

termination of the process and failure to promote him, had

sought to retaliate against him for his earlier complaints of

age discrimination. See Amended Compl. at p 47 (Nov. 15,

1999).

At a motion hearing in July 2000, the district court granted

summary judgment for the Department on the retaliation

charge. Tr. of Motion Hearing at 64-66 (July 10, 2000).

After a bench trial, it rejected Crockett's age discrimination

claim. Crockett, 127 F. Supp. 2d at 48.

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* * *

The appeal from the district court's decision on Crockett's

age discrimination claim need not detain us long. The court

clearly credited the Department's explanation that Stern was

more experienced and qualified than Crockett in the areas

deemed most critical for the position. Id. at 46-47. None of

the issues raised by Crockett suggests that the court's assessment of the facts was clearly erroneous, see Fed. R. Civ. P.

52(a); Fogg v. Ashcroft, 254 F.3d 103, 113 (D.C. Cir. 2001), or

that it made any error of law.

On the retaliation claim, we review the district court's

grant of summary judgment de novo. Forman v. Small, 271

F.3d 285, 291 (D.C. Cir. 2001). The district court reasoned

that Crockett failed to make a prima facie case; because the

Department never filled the position, it believed that Crockett

suffered no adverse action. Tr. of Motion Hearing at 65-66.

We express no opinion on this "adverse action" issue, cf.

Cones v. Shalala, 199 F.3d 512, 521-22 (D.C. Cir. 2000),

because we find that even if there had been a prima facie

case, Crockett failed to raise a genuine issue of material fact

with regard to the Department's defense--that it cancelled

the appointment process for legitimate, nondiscriminatory

reasons. A grant of summary judgment for the government

was therefore appropriate.

According to Sullivan, the position was not filled for a

number of reasons. For example, the Department had not

received "the skill mix that [it] wanted," Sullivan Deposition

at 59-60, particularly regarding Alternative Dispute Resolution, Sullivan Declaration at p 22. The Department thus

wanted to try again after revising the qualifications to describe the position more accurately. Id. at p 22. The Department also felt that it "had not received a sufficiently diverse

pool of applicants," and wanted "to place more emphasis on

outreach when [it] readvertised." Id. at p 24. Finally, Sullivan noted that the Merit Staffing Committee had concluded

that no candidate had outstanding qualifications and that it

could offer no strong recommendation. Id. at p 21.

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To rebut Sullivan's explanations, Crockett first contends

that Sullivan's account of the Merit Staff Committee's tepid

assessment of the candidates is contradicted by a letter from

Robert Rabben, Chair of the Merit Staffing Committee. But

the Rabben letter neither undermines nor contradicts Sullivan's account. It makes no particular recommendation and

merely lists the ratings given by the committee for each

applicant. See Rabben Letter. Just because the committee

rated some candidates Superior or Very Good does not necessarily mean that it strongly recommended any of them. As

we understand the Merit Staffing Committee Procedures, to

receive an overall rating of Superior, a candidate need only

receive a Superior rating in a majority of the required

qualifications. Thus even a Superior candidate may have

serious deficiencies. Indeed, because the procedure weights

each qualification equally, a Superior candidate may actually

be deficient in those areas thought most critical for the

position.

Second, Crockett suggests that Sullivan's explanations at

an earlier deposition were vague and that they contradicted

her declaration. Self-contradiction by the moving party's

witnesses may of course create a genuine issue of material

fact precluding summary judgment. See Peckham v. Ronrico

Corp., 171 F.2d 653, 658 (1st Cir. 1948). And second-hand

gapfilling, if extreme enough, clearly can rise to the level of a

contradiction. This would surely be true, for example, if a

witness in his second statement "remembered" salient, memorable facts that (if true) he surely should have remembered

and mentioned the first time around, or "remembered" facts

which too conveniently explain away troublesome portions of

the previous testimony. And this would be especially true if

some intervening event--e.g., pressure by a party, prodding

of counsel--made the embellishment seem fishy. Cf. Russell

v. Acme-Evans Co., 51 F.3d 64, 67 (7th Cir. 1995) (reflecting

suspicion of later affidavit used "to patch up" established

deficiencies).

Here there is no such contradiction. Sullivan's declaration

does not contradict her deposition but rather augments and

elaborates upon it. The omissions on which Crockett pounces

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are easily attributable to understandable lapses of memory or

lack of preparation. Cf. id. at 68 (statement in affidavit

directly contradicted by earlier deposition will be disregarded

"unless it is demonstrable that the statement in the deposition was mistaken, perhaps ... because a lapse of memory is

in the circumstances a plausible explanation for the discrepancy"). At her deposition Sullivan appeared on some matters

obviously ill-prepared. For example, she was rather general

in her discussion of how the candidates failed to suit the

Department's "skill mix" preferences. Sullivan Deposition at

59-60. She also couldn't recall when Stern had left the

Department, when the vacancy was announced, who was on

the selection panel, or the exact number of applicants for the

job (though she did recall that it was "[f]ewer than we hoped

for"). Id. at 51-52, 56, 58; see also id. at 57 (explaining that

she had dealt with "a whole bunch" of vacancy announcements since becoming General Counsel about a year before).

In her later declaration, presumably after reviewing her

records and refreshing her memory, Sullivan addressed these

gaps and was more specific. She was able to state precisely

when Stern had left the Department, when the vacancy was

announced, who was on the selection panel, and how many

applications were received. Sullivan Declaration at p p 16-17,

19. Explaining again that the "recompete" was motivated by

a desire "to depict the skills required for the job more

accurately," she offered the specific example of "significant

experience in Alternate [sic] Dispute Resolution." Id. at p 22.

And she additionally recounted a conversation with Rabben in

which, as she recalled it, he said there was no candidate for

the post "that the Committee believed had outstanding qualifications, and the Committee could therefore not make a

strong recommendation." Id. at p 21. This contrasted with

Rabben's advice on other open positions. Id. While Sullivan's declaration did for the first time mention the Department's concern over attracting a "diverse pool of applicants"

and the committee's lack of enthusiasm for the candidates, id.

at p p 21, 24, these further recollections do not amount to

contradictions.

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Third, Crockett argues that Sullivan's account of the Merit

Staffing Committee's view of the candidates (as reported to

her by Rabben) was inadmissible hearsay, and that it was

clear error for the district court to accept it. See Tr. of

Motion Hearing at 65. But the assessments of the committee

were not offered for the truth of "the matter asserted." Fed.

R. Evid. 801(c). Sullivan's decisionmaking was under challenge, and she explained it on the basis of the information she

received.

In his reply brief, Crockett additionally attempts to attack

Sullivan's explanations as pretextual. These contentions,

however, were not raised in Crockett's opening brief, see

Crockett Brief at 31-36, and thus would normally be considered waived. Board of Regents of the Univ. of Washington v.

EPA, 86 F.3d 1214, 1221 (D.C. Cir. 1996). That the Department offered a very limited discussion of pretext in its brief

does not excuse or obviate Crockett's omission. See United

States v. Wilson, 240 F.3d 39, 45 (D.C. Cir. 2001) ("[W]e are

doubtful in any event whether gilding the lily in the appellee's

brief should ever excuse an appellant's complete failure to

[raise an issue in his opening brief].").

Because the district court rested its grant of summary

judgment purely on the lack of adverse action (and thereby

the lack of a prima facie case), however, Crockett may not

have had sufficient incentive to raise the pretext issue initially

on appeal. But cf. United States v. McCoy, 280 F.3d 1058,

1063-64 (D.C. Cir. 2002) (addressing waiver and the incentives to raise issues in the sentencing context). But even

assuming arguendo that the issue was preserved, Crockett's

arguments regarding pretext are unconvincing and would

"require too much speculation to create a genuine issue of

fact about [Sullivan's] motivations." Carney v. American

University, 151 F.3d 1090, 1094 (D.C. Cir. 1998). Crockett

first charges that Sullivan's assertion of an effort to "place

additional emphasis on judicial litigation experience," Sullivan

Deposition at 59, must have been pretextual, evidently because Crockett (in his mind) so clearly outshone all other

candidates in this dimension. We are uncertain just why

Crockett regards this acknowledgement of interest in his long

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suit as a pretext, but to the extent that he is arguing that his

judicial litigation experience was such that he would necessarily win an honest competition in which that factor played any

role (and this is the nearest to a coherent theory we can

discern), the argument seems nonsense. Employment decisions rarely (if ever) rest on a single attribute, and Crockett

was only rated in the second tier of candidates in the 1998-99

round.

Crockett also finds pretext in Sullivan's comment that the

initial vacancy announcement had not "sufficiently emphasized the need for a candidate with significant experience in

Alternate [sic] Dispute Resolution." Sullivan Declaration at

p 22. ADR, he observes, was already mentioned in the initial

vacancy announcement. But the word "sufficiently" presumes that the qualification was already there; if it wasn't

"sufficiently" emphasized, it needed more forceful presentation. In fact, the proposed revision did create greater emphasis by shortening the list of requirements from seven to

four. Because attainment of an overall rating of "Superior"

requires a score of Superior in a majority of the named

criteria, this reduction would have made it far more difficult

for a candidate to rank Superior overall without showing

"extensive experience in the successful use of ADR." See

Crediting Plan for Assistant General Counsel for Contractor

Litigation, Joint Appendix at 439. And of course, as with

briefs, a statement of criteria with a few concise and focused

entries gives those items more oomph than does a meandering laundry list.

* * *

The judgment of the district court is

Affirmed.

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