Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-10-07013/USCOURTS-caDC-10-07013-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers
Appellee
David K. McCurdy
Appellee
Karen Vatel
Appellant

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued October 14, 2010 Decided January 14, 2011 

No. 10-7013 

KAREN VATEL, 

APPELLANT

v. 

ALLIANCE OF AUTOMOBILE MANUFACTURERS AND DAVID K.

MCCURDY, 

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 1:08-cv-00467) 

Lynn I. Miller argued the cause for appellant. With her 

on the briefs was James R. Klimaski. 

Ari Karen argued the cause for appellees. 

Before: BROWN, GRIFFITH, and KAVANAUGH, Circuit 

Judges. 

 Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge

KAVANAUGH. 

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 KAVANAUGH, Circuit Judge: David McCurdy is 

President and CEO of the Alliance of Automobile 

Manufacturers. In November 2007, McCurdy fired his 

assistant, Karen Vatel. McCurdy asserted that he dismissed 

Vatel because they had incompatible styles of work and her 

performance therefore did not meet his expectations. Vatel 

sued, claiming that McCurdy fired her because of her race and 

gender. Finding that Vatel had produced insufficient 

evidence to undermine McCurdy’s stated reason for firing 

her, the District Court granted summary judgment to 

McCurdy and his employer. We agree with the District Court 

and therefore affirm. 

I 

 In June 2006, the interim president of the Alliance of 

Automobile Manufacturers (known as the AAM) hired Karen 

Vatel as his assistant. In December 2006, the AAM hired 

David McCurdy as the new President and CEO. Although 

McCurdy could have hired someone new as his assistant, he 

chose to retain Vatel after a positive lunch interview with her. 

But problems quickly developed in the working relationship 

between McCurdy and Vatel. Beginning in May 2007, Lori 

Johnson, the AAM’s human resources manager, met regularly 

with Vatel to explain that McCurdy was frustrated with 

Vatel’s performance. 

 McCurdy ultimately fired Vatel on November 1, 2007, 

telling her that their styles were incompatible. McCurdy later 

explained that he expected his assistant to be “strategic” and 

“proactive,” but found Vatel rigid and unable to address 

problems before they affected him. 

 Vatel filed suit against the AAM and McCurdy in the 

District of Columbia Superior Court. Vatel alleged that 

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McCurdy terminated her because of her race and gender, in 

violation of the District of Columbia Human Rights Act, D.C. 

Code §§ 2-1402.01 and 2-1402.11(a). The defendants 

removed the action to the U.S. District Court for the District 

of Columbia based on diversity of citizenship among the 

parties. After discovery, the District Court granted the 

defendants’ motion for summary judgment. Vatel appealed to 

this Court. We review the District Court’s summary 

judgment de novo. 

II 

 We analyze discrimination claims under the D.C. Human 

Rights Act in the same way that we analyze discrimination 

claims under the federal anti-discrimination laws. See

Gaujacq v. EDF, Inc., 601 F.3d 565, 576 (D.C. Cir. 2010). 

Once an employer has offered a legitimate reason for an 

employee’s dismissal, the question at the summary judgment 

stage is whether the employee has “produced sufficient 

evidence for a reasonable jury to find that the employer’s 

asserted non-discriminatory reason was not the actual reason 

and that the employer intentionally discriminated against the 

employee on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national 

origin.” Brady v. Office of the Sergeant at Arms, 520 F.3d 

490, 494 (D.C. Cir. 2008). 

 McCurdy asserted that he dismissed Vatel because they 

had incompatible working styles and Vatel therefore did not 

meet his expectations for an assistant. This is a highly 

subjective explanation, which makes it difficult for Vatel to 

produce evidence casting doubt on it. We thus treat 

McCurdy’s explanation “with caution.” Aka v. Washington 

Hosp. Ctr., 156 F.3d 1284, 1298 (D.C. Cir. 1998) (en banc). 

That said, Vatel does not dispute that incompatible working 

styles is a legitimate basis for a manager to fire an assistant. 

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 With that background in mind, we turn to the question 

whether Vatel has produced sufficient evidence that 

McCurdy’s assertion – that he fired Vatel because of 

incompatible working styles – is pretextual and that McCurdy 

intentionally discriminated against her. The record contains 

no direct evidence of discrimination – for example, a 

statement that itself shows racial or gender bias in the 

decision – that would generally entitle a plaintiff to a jury 

trial. The nature of Vatel’s position means, moreover, that 

many of the methods that employment discrimination 

plaintiffs ordinarily use to demonstrate pretext are not 

available to Vatel. For example, Vatel cannot show that 

McCurdy treated other similarly situated employees 

differently based on race or gender, because, as the lone 

assistant, she had no similarly situated peers. Cf. Brady, 520 

F.3d at 495. Vatel nonetheless claims that a jury could infer 

from the record evidence that McCurdy fabricated his 

explanation to mask his true motive: animus based on Vatel’s 

race, gender, or both. 

 Vatel’s argument faces a significant initial hurdle in that 

McCurdy himself selected Vatel to be his assistant less than a 

year before her dismissal. If McCurdy did not want to work 

with Vatel because of her race or gender, it would be odd to 

select her and then immediately start ginning up reasons to 

dismiss her. See Waterhouse v. District of Columbia, 298 

F.3d 989, 996 (D.C. Cir. 2002). In affirming summary 

judgment in Waterhouse, we noted: “‘when the person who 

made the decision to fire was the same person who made the 

decision to hire, it is difficult to impute to [that person] an 

invidious motivation that would be inconsistent with the 

decision to hire,’ especially ‘when the firing has occurred 

only a short time after the hiring.’” Id. (quoting Grady v. 

Affiliated Cent., Inc., 130 F.3d 553, 560 (2d Cir. 1997)). The 

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same is true here. Although the fact that McCurdy initially 

selected Vatel does not alone suffice for summary judgment, 

it is probative evidence that McCurdy did not discriminate 

against Vatel on account of her race or gender when he 

dismissed her later that year. See Czekalski v. Peters, 475 

F.3d 360, 368-69 (D.C. Cir. 2007). 

 Vatel has tried to undermine McCurdy’s explanation by 

contending that they in fact had a positive working 

relationship and that McCurdy was (or should have been) 

satisfied with her performance. That argument is simply not 

tenable. By Vatel’s own admission, Lori Johnson, the AAM’s 

human resources manager, consistently said that McCurdy 

was frustrated with Vatel’s performance, and Vatel herself 

stated that “McCurdy tried to avoid [her] at all costs.” Vatel 

Dep. 128-29, 133, Sept. 15, 2008. The undisputed facts in 

this case overwhelmingly demonstrate problems in the 

working relationship; indeed, that was the reason for the 

regular meetings between Vatel and Johnson. 

 In light of the record evidence, Vatel’s mere personal 

opinion that she and McCurdy had a positive working 

relationship is insufficient to surmount summary judgment. It 

is settled that “it is the perception of the decision maker which 

is relevant, not the self-assessment of the plaintiff.” Hawkins 

v. PepsiCo, Inc., 203 F.3d 274, 280 (4th Cir. 2000) (quotation 

marks and alterations omitted). Under the precedents, it is 

McCurdy’s perception that is relevant. Here, the evidence 

overwhelmingly shows that McCurdy honestly and 

reasonably believed that their working styles were 

incompatible. That evidence requires summary judgment for 

the defendants. See Brady, 520 F.3d at 496 (“The question is 

not whether the underlying . . . incident occurred; rather, the 

issue is whether the employer honestly and reasonably 

believed that the underlying . . . incident occurred.”); George 

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v. Leavitt, 407 F.3d 405, 415 (D.C. Cir. 2005) (“[A]n 

employer’s action may be justified by a reasonable belief in 

the validity of the reason given even though that reason may 

turn out to be false.”). 

 

 Vatel offers some subsidiary arguments, but none 

suffices to defeat summary judgment. For example, Vatel 

contests what was said in her meetings with Johnson, the 

human resources director. But the outcome of that dispute is 

immaterial. Even if Johnson failed to tell Vatel how to 

improve her performance, and even if Vatel did not expressly 

refuse to change, those facts would not undermine McCurdy’s 

assertion that he did not find their working styles to be 

compatible. 

 Vatel also takes issue with some of McCurdy’s 

statements in his deposition – in particular, his discussion of 

travel difficulties on a trip to Germany. Vatel denies that she 

was to blame for those problems. But Vatel’s focus on the 

Germany trip does not advance her argument. To begin with, 

Vatel was not fired because of the Germany trip; she was 

fired because of an overall breakdown in the working 

relationship that caused her boss to lose confidence in her. In 

addition, the question whether Vatel was actually at fault for 

McCurdy’s problems on the Germany trip is irrelevant if 

McCurdy believed she was. He clearly did (and still does), 

and Vatel has provided no evidence that McCurdy did not 

think she was responsible. See Fischbach v. District of 

Columbia Dep’t of Corr., 86 F.3d 1180, 1183 (D.C. Cir. 

1996) (“Once the employer has articulated a nondiscriminatory explanation for its action . . . the issue is not 

the correctness or desirability of the reasons offered but 

whether the employer honestly believes in the reasons it 

offers.”) (quotation marks and alterations omitted); see also 

Brady, 520 F.3d at 495-96; George, 407 F.3d at 415. 

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On a different tack, Vatel also has suggested that the 

alleged problems in the working relationship and the regular 

sessions with Johnson reflected a plot by McCurdy to paper 

the record for the ultimate firing and thereby hide an improper 

racist or sexist motivation. But there is simply no probative 

evidence to support such a supposition. Moreover, any such 

theory would be inconsistent with the fact that McCurdy, 

knowing Vatel’s race and gender, initially selected her to be 

his assistant. Under this Court’s precedents, we cannot greenlight a trial based on Vatel’s mere speculation that McCurdy 

was feigning dissatisfaction with Vatel’s work in order to hide 

his own allegedly improper motivation. See Brady, 520 F.3d 

at 495 (“If the employer’s stated belief about the underlying 

facts is reasonable in light of the evidence . . . there ordinarily 

is no basis for permitting a jury to conclude that the employer 

is lying about the underlying facts.”); Carney v. American 

University, 151 F.3d 1090, 1094 (D.C. Cir. 1998) (plaintiff’s 

“factual proffer requires too much speculation to create a 

genuine issue of fact about [defendant’s] motivations”) (citing 

Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 249-50 

(1986)); see also Vickers v. Powell, 493 F.3d 186, 195-96 

(D.C. Cir. 2007). 

 In sum, having acknowledged that a dysfunctional 

working relationship is a legitimate ground for dismissal of an 

assistant, Vatel was required to produce sufficient evidence 

that, if believed, would undermine McCurdy’s claim that he 

reasonably thought their working relationship was poor. 

Vatel failed to do so. On this record, any effort to portray 

their working relationship as anything other than 

dysfunctional is simply not plausible. 

 Vatel’s submission thus boils down to the proposition 

that discrimination plaintiffs should receive jury trials as a 

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matter of course, on the theory that the question whether the 

defendant was motivated by racial or gender bias is always a 

question of fact for a jury. But that is not the way the law has 

developed. It is established that summary judgment and 

judgment as a matter of law can be appropriate in 

employment discrimination cases as elsewhere, and we have 

no basis for departing from that framework here. 

* * * 

 In light of the facts of this case, we find summary 

judgment for the defendants appropriate. Because of the 

distinctive relationship between a manager and his or her 

assistant, the principle that (as Vatel herself acknowledges) a 

breakdown in the manager-assistant relationship can be a 

legitimate basis for dismissal, the fact that McCurdy himself 

selected Vatel for the position the same year that he dismissed 

her, the overwhelming evidence that McCurdy and Vatel 

quickly developed a dysfunctional working relationship, the 

lack of record evidence to undermine that conclusion, and the 

absence of any direct evidence of race or sex discrimination in 

the record, we affirm the judgment of the District Court. 

So ordered. 

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