Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-14-02822/USCOURTS-ca7-14-02822-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Bobby Anderson
Appellee
Good Samaritan Ministries
Appellee
Michael Heath
Appellee
Linzie J. Ledbetter
Appellant

Document Text:

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 14-2822

LINZIE J. LEDBETTER

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

GOOD SAMARITAN MINISTRIES, BOBBY ANDERSON, and

MICHAEL HEATH,

Defendants-Appellees.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Southern District of Illinois.

No. 3:13-cv-00308-DRH-SCW — David R. Herndon, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED JANUARY 27, 2015 — DECIDED FEBRUARY 6, 2015

____________________

Before POSNER, SYKES, and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge. Linzie Ledbetter filed suit under 

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 42 U.S.C. § 1981 

against his former employer, Good Samaritan Ministries of 

Carbondale, Illinois, a tax-exempt nonprofit organization 

that provides services to needy people in the Carbondale area by means of “an emergency shelter, a transitional housing 

program, a soup kitchen, a food pantry, and an emergency 

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2 No. 14-2822

assistance program.” “Good Samaritan Carbondale—Needs 

Your Help: What We Do,” http://goodsamcarbon

dale.org/index.html (visited Feb. 2, 2015). He named two of 

the organization’s supervisory employees (Anderson and 

Heath) as additional defendants. The suit charged retaliation 

for Ledbetter’s having filed a charge of racial discrimination 

and of retaliation with the EEOC. The district court granted 

summary judgment in favor of the defendants and dismissed the suit, precipitating this appeal.

The plaintiff, who had begun working for Good Samaritan in 2007, was assigned to the shelter. In June 2010 a resident of the shelter complained to defendant Michael Heath, 

the executive director of Good Samaritan, that she was upset 

and afraid after Ledbetter had reprimanded her for not 

completing her assigned chores—even though, according to 

another member of the shelter staff, she had been excused 

from completing them—and had threatened to evict her 

from the shelter. Defendant Bobby Anderson, Ledbetter’s 

immediate supervisor, conferred with Heath about the incident and the two then met with Ledbetter and warned him

that future misbehavior could result in disciplinary action 

up to and including discharge. 

The same month (June of 2010) Ledbetter filed a charge 

of racial discrimination and of retaliation with the EEOC. On 

September 24, 2010, having received his right to sue letter, he 

filed an employment discrimination suit against Good Samaritan in federal court, charging both retaliation and racial 

discrimination against him (he is black) by Heath (who is 

white) and Anderson (who is black), based on their warning 

to him—for he denied having engaged in any improper behavior toward the resident who had complained about him. 

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No. 14-2822 3

The defendants claim they first learned of this suit on October 21, 2010, when they were served. The suit was eventually

dismissed for failure to state a claim, and there was no appeal.

According to the defendants, four days after Ledbetter

filed that suit one of Good Samaritan’s supervisory employees complained to executive director Heath about having

been frightened and humiliated by Ledbetter over employee 

access to the shelter’s computer games, which Ledbetter 

complained the supervisor had revoked. Anderson and 

Heath warned Ledbetter about the possible consequences of 

his alleged misconduct.

On October 5 Heath and the president of Good Samaritan’s board of directors met with Ledbetter and again 

warned him about intimidating residents and coworkers (for 

remember that the second incident of alleged intimidation 

had occurred just a week earlier). According to Heath and 

Anderson, after that meeting Ledbetter falsely accused 

members of both the staff and the board of directors of the 

institution of lying and of trying to get him fired (Ledbetter 

denies having made these accusations, which have not been 

specified). On October 14—nine days after the warning by 

the executive director and the board president—Heath and 

Anderson met and, the defendants claim, decided to fire 

Ledbetter.

The day before the October 5 meeting with Heath and the 

board president, Ledbetter had filed a charge with the EEOC 

alleging that he was being discriminated against regarding 

scheduling and overtime because of his race, his first EEOC 

charge, and the warning he had received regarding the the 

September 2010 incident with a supervisor.

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Heath and Anderson did not learn of the new charge until October 19, and the next day Anderson told Ledbetter

that he was fired. The present suit alleges that he was fired

in retaliation for filing that charge, which remember was his 

second. The defendants riposte that he was fired for an unrelated reason—necessarily, according to them, because they’d 

decided to fire him on October 14, five days before they had 

learned of the new charge.

Ledbetter was of course not present when Heath and 

Anderson met on October 14, so he cannot testify to what 

they agreed to at that meeting. But, by the same token there 

was nothing to prevent them from lying about what they 

agreed to at that meeting or shading their testimony. There 

is no documentation that the meeting occurred or, if it did, 

of what was said at it. Maybe they agreed that Ledbetter’s 

days with the institution were numbered, that he was a 

problem employee inessential to the healthy operation of 

Good Samaritan, and that sooner or later he would have to 

go—for they did not fire him on the spot; they dawdled. We 

can’t know how long they would have dawdled—but it is a 

possible inference that they fired him on the twentieth rather 

than later (or maybe never) because the filing of his second 

EEOC charge, which they learned about the day before, was 

the last straw. An EEOC charge is often a preliminary to a 

suit. His first EEOC charge had eventuated in a suit; the second was likely to as well; how many more would there be?

It is possible, given that Heath and Anderson seem to 

have been in no hurry to execute the “decision” they allegedly made on October 14 to fire him, that had it not been for 

his filing the second charge he would have remained employed, at least for a time; and if so then his being fired on 

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October 20 was, in part anyway, retaliation for his filing the 

second charge with the EEOC. If this is correct—if Heath 

and Anderson were waiting for the second shoe to drop before executing their decision, which may have been tentative, to fire him, and the second shoe was his second EEOC 

charge—then the present suit (which followed his third 

EEOC charge and was based on his being fired allegedly in 

retaliation for his filing the second charge) should not have 

been dismissed. The timing—Ledbetter was fired the day 

after the second shoe dropped—is suspicious, as in Casna v. 

City of Loves Park, 574 F.3d 420, 426–27 (7th Cir. 2009). And 

the defendants do not contend that Ledbetter was or could 

have been fired on the distinct ground that his EEOC charges or suits were frivolous or filed in bad faith, as in Mattson 

v. Caterpillar, Inc., 359 F.3d 885 (7th Cir. 2004).

There is much more that is odd about the case—none of it 

remarked by the district court. The affidavits of Heath and 

Anderson on which the court based summary judgment in 

the defendants’ favor are each only a page long and each 

states only, so far as Ledbetter’s termination is concerned, 

that “I affirmatively state that each and every fact attributed 

to me in Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment and 

Supporting Memorandum is true and correct to the best of 

my knowledge.” That’s an odd mode of testifying (an affidavit is sworn testimony), and allows an inference that the 

affiants were parroting language inserted by the lawyers in 

what amounted to pleadings. It’s true that we held this type 

of affidavit valid in Dale v. Lappin, 376 F.3d 652, 655 (7th Cir. 

2004), but the affiant in that case was a prison inmate and 

the factual allegations that the affidavit stated were true 

were allegations contained in his own response to the defendants’ motion for summary judgment.

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The present case is closer to Payne v. Pauley, 337 F.3d 767, 

772–73 (7th Cir. 2003), which emphasizes the requirement in 

Fed. R. Civ. P. 56 that the affidavit of a lay witness be based 

on the witness’s personal knowledge. The affidavits of 

Heath and Anderson don’t say they’re based on the affiants’ 

personal knowledge. Nor do the two documents that the affidavits incorporate by reference. The requirement that an 

affidavit be based on the affiant’s personal knowledge is 

crucial in this case. Heath and Anderson have no personal 

knowledge that Ledbetter made any false accusations after 

the October 5 meeting; the allegation that he did was hearsay. Indeed there is no admissible evidence that the events 

they contend were the reason for firing Ledbetter ever happened.

The motion for summary judgment is only two pages 

long, and all it says regarding Ledbetter’s termination is that 

“the undisputed evidence is that the decision to terminate 

[him] was made before October 19, 2010” and “the undisputed evidence is that Defendants learned of [his] EEOC charge 

on October 19” (emphases in original). The Supporting 

Memorandum adds a bit of detail, stating that “Anderson 

made the decision to terminate Plaintiff; a decision endorsed 

by Heath. ... On or about October 14, 2010, the combination 

of Plaintiff’s conduct and his false accusations prompted 

Heath and Anderson to discuss possible immediate termination of Plaintiff. Anderson, as Plaintiff’s immediate supervisor, made the decision to terminate Plaintiff during that 

meeting.” The reference to “false accusations” gives us 

pause. For aught that appears, these could be the accusations 

made in Ledbetter’s first or second EEOC charge, in which 

event the decision to fire him could well have been retaliation for his filing either or both of those charges.

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No. 14-2822 7

The “or about” in the Supplementary Memorandum 

gives us further pause. Apparently the defendants don’t 

know the date of the meeting, though the date is crucial—

their defense hinges on its being before October 19. “On or 

about” is said, moreover, only about the crucial October 14 

meeting—the meeting that one would have expected Anderson and Heath to have precise knowledge of.

In addition to his supervisory job (and indicative that he 

cannot have climbed far up Good Samaritan’s totem pole—

maybe not far enough to fire Ledbetter unilaterally), Anderson worked as a nurse in addition to his job at Good Samaritan. The Supplementary Memorandum states that “between 

October 15, 2010, and October 19, 2010, Anderson worked 12 

hour shifts at his nursing job. Even though the decision [to 

fire Ledbetter] was made a week prior, Anderson was unable to meet with Plaintiff to communicate his decision to 

terminate him until October 20, 2010, because of this work 

schedule.” This is thoroughly self-serving testimony (treating it as incorporated by reference in Anderson’s terse affidavit), and none too plausible. And though most testimony 

by a party to a lawsuit is self-serving and is not to be rejected 

on that account, Widmar v. Sun Chemical Corp., 772 F.3d 457, 

459–60, 460 n.1 (7th Cir. 2014), one would expect Good Samaritan to have backed up Anderson’s affidavit with a record of some sort showing that he’d indeed worked 12-hour 

shifts between the 15th and the 19th and so mayn’t have had 

time to speak to Ledbetter. Yet if his 12-hour shifts were really between those days, as the Supplementary Memorandum 

states, he could have told Ledbetter on the 19th that he was 

fired.

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We can find no document backing up Anderson’s testimony. Nor was his lawyer able to answer our question at 

oral argument why Anderson was so eager to be the one to 

tell Ledbetter of his termination. Ledbetter was answerable 

to other supervisors as well as to Anderson, and one of those 

supervisors could have been told to give Ledbetter the bad 

news. One would think that if Ledbetter was as irascible and 

intimidating a figure as the defendants claim, Good Samaritan would have terminated him immediately upon deciding 

to fire him. 

Notice too that if the critical meeting about Ledbetter’s 

fate occurred not on October 14 but on October 13, Anderson 

could have told Ledbetter the next day that he was fired, 

while if it occurred on October 15 he could have told him 

that day. For Anderson wasn’t working 12 hours as a nurse 

that day unless “between” is taken to mean October 16 

through October 18—in which event, as we pointed out, he 

could have notified Ledbetter of the firing on October 19.

Further muddying the waters, in response to an interrogatory asking the date of this meeting Heath stated that he 

“does not recall specific dates, but there was more than one 

discussion regarding Bobby Anderson’s decision that Plaintiff should be terminated.” Likewise Anderson stated that 

“he does not recall the specific day he came to that conclusion” (to fire Ledbetter). These interrogatory answers are inconsistent with the defendants’ claim that the decision to fire 

him was made on October 14.

Finally Ledbetter claims that when he was summoned to 

meet with Anderson on the 20th, Anderson, who of course 

had learned the previous day that Ledbetter had filed a second charge with the EEOC, before firing him asked him 

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No. 14-2822 9

whether he had indeed filed a second charge and he 

acknowledged that he had. The implication is that if Ledbetter had said “no,” Anderson would have held off firing him 

until he could verify the truth of the denial. If this is correct, 

then the firing of Ledbetter was indeed retaliatory.

There is still more to make us wonder what was really 

going on. In response to Ledbetter’s second charge, Good 

Samaritan’s lawyer wrote the EEOC: “On October 20, 2010, 

Ledbetter was terminated subsequent to his display of defiant 

and insubordinate behavior towards his immediate supervisor, Bobby Anderson” (emphasis added). That’s inconsistent 

with the defendants’ assertion that he was fired not because 

of any misbehavior toward Anderson but because of false 

accusations and mistreatment of coworkers and of residents

that occurred before October 14. In addition, the letter 

doesn’t say that the decision to terminate Ledbetter was 

made on October 14—another indication that the defendants 

may have concocted that date.

There are too many loose ends to have justified the district court in granting summary judgment in favor of the defendants. The judgment is therefore reversed and the case 

remanded. Ledbetter, who has no legal training, has been 

representing himself throughout this litigation. The district 

court should consider requesting a lawyer to represent him

in the further proceeding that we are ordering.

REVERSED AND REMANDED.

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