Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-06-01435/USCOURTS-ca8-06-01435-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Ace Telephone Association
Appellee
David F. Freeman
Appellant

Document Text:

1

The Honorable Michael J. Davis, United States District Judge for the District

of Minnesota.

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

___________

No. 06-1435

___________

David F. Freeman, *

*

Appellant, *

* Appeal from the United States

v. * District Court for the 

* District of Minnesota.

Ace Telephone Association, *

doing business as Ace *

Communications Group, *

*

Appellee. *

___________

Submitted: September 28, 2006

Filed: November 1, 2006

___________

Before ARNOLD, BYE, and MELLOY, Circuit Judges.

___________

ARNOLD, Circuit Judge.

David Freeman appeals the entry of summary judgment against him by the

district court1

 on the retaliation claim that he brought against his former employer,

Ace Telephone Association, under the Minnesota Whistleblower Statute, see Minn.

Stat. § 181.932. We affirm.

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I.

After Mr. Freeman was fired from his position as co-CEO of Ace, he sued his

former employer for gender and marital-status discrimination in violation of the

Minnesota Human Rights Act (MHRA), see Minn. Stat. § 363A.08.2, as well as

retaliatory discharge in violation of the Minnesota Whistleblower Statute, see Minn.

Stat. § 181.932.1. The district court granted Ace's motion for summary judgment on

all claims. Mr. Freeman appealed from the grant of summary judgment only as to his

whistleblower claim.

Mr. Freeman claims that Ace fired him in retaliation for his report to its board

of directors that the company's mileage reimbursement policy might result in

violations of federal income tax laws. The company was "reimbursing" board

members who carpooled to board meetings as if they had each driven separately, and

it reported the payments as nontaxable reimbursements. Unless those board members

who had not actually driven reported the payments as taxable income, they had

violated federal tax laws.

According to Ace, Mr. Freeman was fired because he had a sexual relationship

with a female subordinate employee and lied about it. The board began investigating

Mr. Freeman's relationship with the female employee in August, 2003. At the end of

that month, Mr. Freeman submitted a letter to the board in which he admitted to

having a friendly, "not sexual" relationship with the employee and promised to sever

that relationship. Based on some reason to believe that the relationship continued,

however, the board began a formal investigation and informed Mr. Freeman of the

investigation at its meeting on 30 September 2003. Mr. Freeman first raised the

mileage reimbursement issue with the board that same day. Two weeks later, on

14 October, Mr. Freeman submitted a sworn statement to the board in which he

admitted to having a sexual relationship with the employee and lying about it to the

board. A week after that, the board decided to terminate Mr. Freeman and notified

him of its decision shortly thereafter.

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The district court held that Mr. Freeman had not established a prima facie case

of retaliation because he was not engaged in "protected activities" under the

Whistleblower Statute and he had not shown a causal link between the claimed

whistleblowing and his termination. The court further held that Ace had legitimate,

nondiscriminatory reasons for terminating Mr. Freeman because of his relationship

with the female employee and that there was no evidence that those reasons were

pretextual.

II.

We review de novo the district court's order granting summary judgment to

Ace. Aviation Charter, Inc. v. Aviation Research Group/US, 416 F.3d 864, 868 (8th

Cir. 2005). Summary judgment is proper if "there is no genuine issue as to any

material fact and ... the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Fed.

R. Civ. P. 56(c). The court views the evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party, in this case Mr. Freeman. Aviation Charter, Inc., 416 F.3d at 868.

The Minnesota Whistleblower Statute prohibits an employer from

discriminating against an employee because the employee, in good faith, reported a

violation or suspected violation of state or federal law to an employer, a governmental

agency, or a law enforcement official. Minn. Stat. § 181.932.1(a). To establish a

prima facie case of retaliation under the statute, Mr. Freeman had to show that he

engaged in statutorily-protected conduct, that he was subjected to an adverse

employment action, and that a causal connection existed between the two. SeeCokley

v. City of Otsego, 623 N.W.2d 625, 630 (Minn. Ct. App. 2001) (citing Hubbard v.

United Press Intern., Inc., 330 N.W.2d 428, 444 (Minn. 1983)); Pope v. ESA Servs.,

Inc., 406 F.3d 1001, 1010 (8th Cir. 2005). We agree with the district court that

Mr. Freeman did not make out a prima facie case.

Mr. Freeman's case fails because he did not present sufficient evidence to

support an inference that his report to the board about the possible illegality of its

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mileage payment policy caused his termination. He relies solely on evidence of

temporal proximity, maintaining that because he made the report less than a month

before he was discharged, a reasonable jury could infer that making the report

contributed to his dismissal.

The timing of Mr. Freeman's dismissal is insufficient to establish a prima facie

retaliation claim. Although a short interval between a plaintiff's protected activity and

an adverse employment action may occasionally raise an inference of causation, see,

e.g., Peterson v. Scott County, 406 F.3d 515, 524 (8th Cir. 2005), in general, more

than a temporal connection is required, Kiel v. Select Artificials, Inc., 169 F.3d 1131,

1136 (8th Cir. 1999) (en banc), cert. denied, 528 U.S. 818 (1999). And here, as in

Kiel, 160 F.3d at 1136, the presence of intervening events undermines any causal

inference that a reasonable person might otherwise have drawn from temporal

proximity: As we have said, two weeks after Mr. Freeman made his report to the

board about the mileage issue, he admitted, in a sworn statement, to having a sexual

relationship with the female employee and continuing that relationship after he

promised the board that he would end it. He also admitted, moreover, that he lied to

the board president, his co-CEO, and the company's human resources director about

the relationship, that he used a company credit card to buy Viagra to continue the

sexual relationship, and that he purchased private cell phones for himself and the

female employee so that they could communicate secretly. We believe that no

reasonable person could conclude on this record that Mr. Freeman's report to the board

about its mileage policy was causally related to the decision to fire him.

Because we find that Mr. Freeman did not produce evidence of a causal

connection between his report to the board and his termination, we have no occasion

to address the question of whether he engaged in protected activity under the statute,

or whether Ace's reasons for firing him were pretextual.

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III.

For the reasons stated, we affirm the district court's order granting summary

judgment.

______________________________

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