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Parties Involved:
James Baptist
Appellant
Ford Motor Company
Appellee

Document Text:

In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 15‐2913

JAMES BAPTIST,

Plaintiff‐Appellant,

v.

FORD MOTOR COMPANY,

Defendant‐Appellee.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 13 C 8974 — Virginia M. Kendall, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED APRIL 26, 2016 — DECIDED JUNE 27, 2016

____________________

Before KANNE, SYKES, and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.

SYKES, Circuit Judge. James Baptist, a former forklift oper‐

ator at Ford Motor Company, sued Ford after he was fired—

in his view—in retaliation for exercising his workers’ com‐

pensation rights. The district court granted Ford’s motion for

summary judgment. Baptist contends that summary judg‐

ment should not have been granted because the district court

drew improper inferences. Because there is a genuine issue

of material fact about Ford’s motivation for his discharge,

Case: 15-2913 Document: 28 Filed: 06/27/2016 Pages: 8
2 No. 15‐2913

we vacate the grant of summary judgment and remand for

further proceedings.

I. Background

Unless otherwise noted, the following facts are undisput‐

ed and presented in the light most favorable to Baptist, the

party opposing summary judgment. See Arroyo v. Volvo Grp.

N. Am., LLC, 805 F.3d 278, 281 (7th Cir. 2015); Hooper v.

Proctor Health Care Inc., 804 F.3d 846, 849 (7th Cir. 2015).

Baptist began working at Ford’s assembly plant in Chi‐

cago in February 2012. He operated a forklift that moved

products from trucks to storage. In April, less than three

months into the job, Baptist inadvertently drove a forklift

into a pillar and jammed his left hand on the steering wheel,

injuring his left wrist. He visited Ford’s medical department

and submitted an injury report.

Baptist’s injury report triggered Ford’s workers’ compen‐

sation review, and his claim for treatment coverage was

investigated by benefits administrator Jessica Nawracaj.

Nawracaj was employed by Bartech, a company that pro‐

vides Ford with workers’ compensation benefits administra‐

tion services. Nawracaj and Ford’s physician, Dr. Patricia

Lewis, doubted Baptist’s account of his injury; they emailed

each other that Baptist did not report the incident properly

and that he refused to release medical records from a prior

workers’ compensation case he brought against another

employer involving an injury to his other wrist. Nawracaj

and Dr. Lewis also discussed forwarding the information

from their investigation to the labor relations department, a

subset of Ford’s human resources department.  

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No. 15‐2913 3

Ford’s workers’ compensation fund paid for Baptist’s ini‐

tial visit to a doctor—Dr. William Heller, an orthopedic

surgeon—who ordered an MRI, diagnosed Baptist with a

ligament tear in his left wrist, and issued Baptist a wrist

brace. Ford denied further coverage. Baptist disagreed with

the denial and pushed Ford to cover more treatment. The

parties are now litigating Baptist’s workers’ compensation

claim before the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commis‐

sion.

Baptist worked for the next two months until June 24,

when he left work early to seek additional medical attention

because the pain in his wrist had worsened and he did not

think he could continue working with it. Baptist again saw

Dr. Heller, who diagnosed him with a complete ligament

tear in his left wrist and recommended surgery. Dr. Heller

submitted a form to Ford opining that Baptist was not able

to perform the essential function of his job, though he added

that Baptist was neither totally disabled nor “[t]otally unable

to perform his/her job.” Because Dr. Heller did not specify

when Baptist could return to work, Ford sought additional

information. Dr. Heller submitted another form in which he

recommended that Baptist be off work for four to six weeks

after surgery but cleared him to return to work as of July 2

so long as he did not lift or grip over five pounds with his

left hand.  

Dr. Lewis testified that she reviewed these forms, and

based on her knowledge of the job requirements and the

injury, she determined that the restriction did not affect any

activity necessary to operate a forklift, removed the note of

the restriction from Baptist’s file, and cleared him to work.

Baptist, however, believed that his injury and medical

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4 No. 15‐2913

restriction prevented him from operating the forklift and

refused to resume his work; he asked for another position.

He did not work his forklift job for the next several days,

and on July 23 Ford suspended him for one month.

When Baptist returned from his suspension on Au‐

gust 24, he met with Dr. Lewis and Ford’s labor representa‐

tive, Quandra Speights. Baptist was told that the only avail‐

able work was as a forklift driver, and he was instructed to

return to that position. In his deposition Baptist testified that

he was told by Speights that he would be fired unless he

agreed to state that his injury did not happen at work, in

which case he would be given an approved leave of absence.

Speights denied this assertion. Baptist told Dr. Lewis and

Speights that he could not perform the forklift job and feared

that it would exacerbate his injury. After Baptist did not

return to his position on August 24, 25, or 26, he was dis‐

charged by Speights for having three consecutive absences

without justification, a dischargeable offense under Ford’s

Collective Bargaining Agreement.

In November 2013 Baptist sued Ford in Illinois state

court, asserting that Ford discharged him in retaliation for

exercising his rights under the Illinois Workers’ Compensa‐

tion Act, in violation of 820 Ill. Comp. Stat. 305/4(h). Ford

removed the case to federal district court based on diversity

of citizenship. Ford moved for summary judgment, arguing

that Baptist had been discharged because of his absences

without justification. Baptist responded both that he was

discharged because of Ford’s hostility to his workers’ com‐

pensation claim and that a fact question existed over wheth‐

er he physically could return to work. To support his asser‐

tion that there was a medical dispute over his ability to

Case: 15-2913 Document: 28 Filed: 06/27/2016 Pages: 8
No. 15‐2913 5

work, Baptist submitted an affidavit from Dr. Heller in

which he stated that the restrictions on the lifting and grip‐

ping would prevent Baptist from driving a forklift, and that

“no full duty return to work date could even be entertained

until it was first determined how he was progressing from

the surgery.”

The district court granted Ford’s motion for summary

judgment. The judge found that no reasonable jury could

find that Baptist’s discharge was causally related to, or

primarily in retaliation for, Baptist’s exercise of his rights

under the Workers’ Compensation Act. The judge accepted

Ford’s contention that it had a valid, nonpretextual basis for

discharging Baptist: Ford had discharged him for “a

straightforward application of [its] three‐day quit rule.” The

judge pointed out that Baptist had not responded to the last

six paragraphs of Ford’s statement of undisputed material

facts, so she was treating these facts as admitted, including

the statement that “Speights did not rely on anything other

than Baptist’s attendance records in making the decision to

terminate his employment.”

II. Analysis

On appeal Baptist challenges the district court’s conclu‐

sion that he did not provide a factual foundation to support

a common‐law cause of action for retaliatory discharge

under Illinois law. To prevail on such a claim, Baptist must,

among other things, “affirmatively show that the discharge

was primarily in retaliation for [his] exercise of a protected

right.” Gordon v. FedEx Freight, Inc., 674 F.3d 769, 774

(7th Cir. 2012) (internal quotation marks and citation omit‐

ted); see Dixon Distrib. Co. v. Hanover Ins. Co., 612 N.E.2d 846,

852 (Ill. App. Ct. 1993). Baptist argues a reasonable jury

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could infer from facts in the record that Dr. Lewis’s hostility

to his request for workers’ compensation to cover his treat‐

ment motivated her to clear him for work without regard to

his medical condition. According to Baptist, the district

judge should have recognized that the conflicting opinions

of Dr. Heller (Baptist’s private orthopedist) and Dr. Lewis

(Ford’s doctor) over his ability to operate a forklift preclude

summary judgment because a fact question exists over the

cause of his discharge. Speight’s attempt to coerce Baptist

into abandoning his workers’ compensation claim, Baptist

adds, is further evidence that precludes summary judgment.

Summary judgment was improper here because there is

conflicting evidence about Ford’s primary reason for dis‐

charging Baptist. Although he was fired because of his

attendance record, his absenteeism is factually bound up

with the disagreement about whether he was physically able

to drive a forklift. Speights, the decision‐maker who fired

Baptist for absenteeism, relied on Dr. Lewis’s conclusion that

Baptist could drive a forklift. But it is undisputed that

Dr. Heller advised Ford that Baptist needed surgery fol‐

lowed by four to six weeks off work, though he could return

to work so long as he did not lift or grip more than five

pounds with his left hand. Even if Dr. Lewis believed that

these restrictions did not affect Baptist’s ability to operate a

forklift, her email exchanges with Nawracaj allow an infer‐

ence that she was hostile to Baptist’s exercise of his workers’

compensation rights.  

A triable issue also exists regarding whether Baptist was

put to the impracticable choice between keeping his job or

giving up a key argument for workers’ compensation cover‐

age (regarding the nature and extent of his injury). “The

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No. 15‐2913 7

cause of action for retaliatory discharge deters employers

from presenting their employees with the untenable choice

of retaining their jobs or pursuing compensation for their

injuries through workers’ compensation proceedings.”

Brooks v. Pactiv Corp., 729 F.3d 758, 767 (7th Cir. 2013); see

Siekierka v. United Steel Deck, Inc., 868 N.E.2d 374, 381–82 (Ill.

App. Ct. 2007) (“This is the kind of choice prohibited under

Kelsay and if United Steel’s intent was to create this dilem‐

ma, its motive was retaliatory.”). While Dr. Lewis testified

that she cleared Baptist to work because the restrictions did

not impact his job, viewing the facts in a light most favorable

to Baptist, as we must, the circumstances surrounding his

discharge plausibly suggest that his pursuit of the workers’

compensation claim motivated Dr. Lewis to clear Baptist to

operate a forklift and undercut his position for workers’

compensation coverage. In other words, a reasonable jury

could infer that the motive behind Dr. Lewis’s decision to

clear Baptist to work was to pressure him to compromise or

forgo the exercise of his workers’ compensation rights.  

A dispute also exists over whether Speights told Baptist

that he could save his job if he recharacterized his injury as

personal, only to be fired after he refused. While Ford denies

that Speights made such a statement (and argues that it is

immaterial), Baptist says that she did, thus calling into

question whether Ford’s reason for discharging Baptist was

pretextual. See Brooks, 729 F.3d at 767–68; Siekierka,

868 N.E.2d at 381–82. If a jury believed Baptist’s testimony,

Ford’s post‐hoc assertion that Speights lacked the authority

to remove Baptist’s absences and save his job does not make

her alleged coercion immaterial. This assertion requires

weighing the credibility of Baptist’s and Speights’s testimo‐

ny about whether these statements were made and cannot be

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8 No. 15‐2913

rejected at summary judgment. See Darchak v. City of Chi. Bd.

of Educ., 580 F.3d 622, 631–33 (7th Cir. 2009).

Accordingly, the district court’s grant of summary judg‐

ment is VACATED, and the case is REMANDED for further

proceedings consistent with this opinion.

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