Case Name: John D. CHAPMAN, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. AI TRANSPORT, et al., Defendants-Appellees
Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
Jurisdiction: United States
Decision Date: 2000-10-02
Citations: 229 F.3d 1012
Docket Number: Nos. 97-8838, 97-9086 and 97-9269
Parties: John D. CHAPMAN, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. AI TRANSPORT, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
Judges: Before ANDERSON, Chief Judge, and TJOFLAT, EDMONDSON, COX, BIRCH, DUBINA, BLACK, CARNES, BARKETT, MARCUS and WILSON, Circuit Judges.
Reporter: Federal Reporter 3d Series
Volume: 229
Pages: 1012–1069

Head Matter:
John D. CHAPMAN, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. AI TRANSPORT, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
Nos. 97-8838, 97-9086 and 97-9269.
United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.
Oct. 2, 2000.
Teresa A. Ferrante, Lawyers Committee for Civil Right Under Law, Washington, DC, R. Lawrence Ashe, Jr., Nancy E. Rafuse, William B. Hill, Jr., Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker, LLP, Michael Dubus, Atlanta, GA, Richard T. Seymour, Washington, DC, for Plaintiff-Appellant.
David N. Schaeffer, Kidd & Vaughan, Atlanta, GA, James J. Oh, Allison Zousmer Stein, P. Kevin Connelly, Martin Harris, Connelly, Sheehan & Moran, Chicago, IL, for Defendants-Appellees.
Allan H. Weitzman, Proskauer, Rose, Gaetz & Mendelsohn, Boca Raton, FL, Geoffrey L. J. Carter, Washington, DC, for Amicus Curiae, EEOC.
Before ANDERSON, Chief Judge, and TJOFLAT, EDMONDSON, COX, BIRCH, DUBINA, BLACK, CARNES, BARKETT, MARCUS and WILSON, Circuit Judges.
Judge Frank Hull recused herself and did not participate in this decision.

Opinion:
CARNES, Circuit Judge:
John Chapman filed a lawsuit in federal district court against AI Transport, AIG Aviation, American International Group Claims Services ("AIGCS"), and American International Group ("AIG") (collectively, "the defendants"). His complaint included claims of age discrimination in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act ("ADEA"), 29 U.S.C. § 621-34, and disability discrimination in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA"), 42 U.S.C. § 12101-17. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the defendants on Chapman's ADEA claims, but it denied summary judgment on the ADA claims. Chapman's ADA claims were tried before a jury, which returned a verdict in favor of the defendants.
A panel of this Court affirmed the judgment insofar as it embodied the jury's verdict on the ADA claims, but the panel reversed the grant of summary judgment on the ADEA claims and also vacated the district court's award of costs to the defendants. See Chapman v. AI Transport, 180 F.3d 1244 (11th Cir.1999). We granted rehearing en banc primarily to decide some important issues that arise regularly in job discrimination cases. Those issues have to do with an employer's ability to select its own criteria for making employment decisions and with the permissibility of using subjective criteria. We had also planned to address an issue about whether evidence impeaching the credibility of one corporate official could be used to undermine the credibility of a different decision-maker. As we will explain in due course, however, it turns out that general corporate credibility issue is not presented by the record. While we have the case, we will also use it to decide whether a district court may consider a losing party's financial status in awarding costs to the prevailing party.
I. FACTS
A. Chapman's Pre-October 1988 Employment History
From May 1964 until September 1969, John Chapman worked as a claims representative for the Hartford Insurance Company. He voluntarily left Hartford Insurance in September 1969 and began working as a claims supervisor for Home Insurance Company in Atlanta, Georgia. He left Home Insurance in June 1985. In July 1985, Chapman began working for Claimsman, Inc., another insurance company, as a senior liability claims examiner. While at^ Claimsman, Chapman handled the J. Gordon Gaines ("Gaines") account.
In August 1986, Chapman voluntarily left the Claimsman company in order to accept an offer to become manager of the general liability unit of Gaines, which had decided to start its own claims department. In April 1988, Gaines was purchased by Liberty National Fire Insurance Company. Liberty National moved its claims division to Birmingham, Alabama, and offered Chapman, who was apparently living in Atlanta, the opportunity to continue working in the claims division. Chapman decided instead to move to Long Beach, California and work for B.R. Martin Company. At B.R. Martin, Chapman supervised the files of Liberty National Fire Insurance Company. In September 1988, after .only a few months with B.R. Martin, Chapman left that company and moved back to Atlanta, Georgia.
B. Chapman's Tenure at AI Transport and His Application to AIGCS
In October 1988, Chapman began working for AI Transport in Atlanta as a senior claims representative. He interviewed with and was hired by Robert Spann, who was then the Manager of Claims at AI Transport. In 1989, Chapman was promoted to supervisor. His performance reviews usually ranged from the middle-of-the-scale "meets expectations" to the second-highest category, "above expectations."
In late 1989, AI Transport became a division of AIG Aviation, which is itself a subsidiary of AIG. AIG owns in whole or in part approximately 120 companies worldwide, including AIGCS. AIG, AIG Aviation, AI Transport and AIGCS are all insurance-related companies.
In June 1992, AI Transport instituted a reduction-in-force. Three of Chapman's four subordinates were terminated. AI Transport removed Chapman's supervisory duties and assigned him to handle the claims representative duties formerly performed by his dismissed subordinates. Chapman was also transferred to the position of Self-Insured Retention ("SIR") Manager.
During September and October 1992, AIGCS restructured its organization and created new positions in the process. On September -17, 1992, Chapman wrote James Wogsland, a vice president at AIGCS, about open positions. Wogsland and Ward Turnquist, another AIGCS vice president, interviewed Chapman on October 13, 1992 for the position of Casualty Claims Manager. Turnquist testified in deposition that his assignment from Wogs-land was "to screen these people for that position." Turnquist stated that he inter viewed Chapman, was not impressed and thought AIGCS should look further, but recommended that Wogsland talk to Chapman himself. Chapman testified, however, that Wogsland interviewed him before Turnquist did. At the time of the interviews, Chapman was 61 years old.
Later that month, Chapman was informed that AIGCS would not be hiring him. Among the employees eventually hired by AIGCS for some position were four other AI Transport employees. Graham Wiggins was hired as the Casualty Claims Manager; Warren Jones was hired as the Complex Claims Director; Duane Sevillian was hired as the Fast Track Manager; and Ernest John Smith was hired as a Casualty Claims Representative. Two of the four were over forty years old, but all four were younger than Chapman.
On December 18, 1992, Chapman was terminated by AI Transport because of his refusal to travel, which he claimed to be the result of a heart condition. The facts relating to that condition and Chapman's termination by AI Transport are accurately summarized in the panel opinion. See Chapman, 180 F.3d at 1247-48. We will not set out in this opinion all of those facts, because they are not relevant to the ADEA claims which arose from AIGCS's failure to hire Chapman while he was still working at AI Transport.
II. PROCEDURAL HISTORY
A. Complaint
In June 1994, after having exhausted his EEOC administrative remedies, Chapman filed a lawsuit in federal district court against the defendants. His complaint included claims of age discrimination in violation of the ADEA, 29 U.S.C. § 621-34, and disability discrimination in violation of the ADA, 42 U.S.C. § 12101-17. His complaint set out his allegations of age discrimination as follows:
25. During September or October of 1992, a claims supervisor position came open in the Atlanta Service Center of [AIGCS]. Mr. Chapman was qualified to perform this position, which would have required no out-of-town travel on business.
26. Mr, Chapman went through the proper procedures to apply for the open position at [AIGCS]. The [AIGCS] employee who interviewed Mr. Chapman for the position, James Wogsland (Vice President of [AIGCS] in Atlanta), informed Mr. Chapman that he would rely upon Mr. Spann's assessment of Mr. Chapman's work in making his decision.
27. The position at [AIGCS] for which Mr. Chapman applied was awarded to Mr. Graham Wiggins, black. Mr. Wiggins was less qualified than Mr. Chapman for the position, had no physical disability and was much younger than Mr. Chapman.
28. AI Transport also transferred Mr. Warren Jones and Mr. Duane Sevillian to [AIGCS] to perform positions that Mr. Chapman was more qualified to perform. Mr. Jones and Mr. Sevillian are black, are not physically disabled, and are much younger than Mr. Chapman.
B. Motions for Summary Judgment
On April 29, 1996, Chapman moved for partial summary judgment on his disability discrimination claims. Included in the Statement of Undisputed Material Facts submitted by Chapman with his motion for partial summary judgment were the following statements:
25. Mr. Chapman applied for any open positions, including Complex Claims Director, Fast Track Manager, Casualty Claims Manager, and Casualty Claims Representative. According to the AIGCS managers responsible for supervising and filling these positions, Mr. Chapman was qualified for all of them. None of these positions required business travel.
26. Nevertheless, instead of transferring Mr. Chapman to one of these open positions, which would have fully accommodated his disability, Defendants filled the positions with other non-disabled individuals from AI Transport. Graham Wiggins was placed in the Casualty Claims Manager position; Warren Jones was placed in the Complex Claims Director position; Duane Sevillian (a claims representative at AI Transport) was placed in the Fast Track Manager position and Ernest John Smith (a claims representative at AI Transport) was placed in the Casualty Claims Representative position.... Chapman was more qualified than these other candidates.
On April 30, 1996, AI Transport, AIG Aviation and AIG moved for summary judgment on all claims. AIGCS and AIG filed a separate motion for summary judgment on all claims. In the Statement of Material Facts attached to its summary judgment motion, AIGCS stated that Wogsland and Turnquist, the two AIGCS vice presidents who interviewed Chapman, chose Wiggins over Chapman because of Chapman's poor interview and their concern "about [his] stability in light of the number of jobs he had held in a short period of time."
In depositions attached as exhibits to the summary judgment motion, Wogsland and Turnquist explained their reasoning. Turnquist stated that he "had some concerns about [Chapman's] career path" and that "there was (sic) quite a few jobs after the Home [Insurance Company] and before he came to [his current employer]." In his mind, Turnquist questioned "what necessitated making as many and as frequent a job change during what . was a fairly short period of time.... " Turnquist also described what he said to Wogsland after his interview with Chapman as follows:
I didn't get a real feeling of confidence from [Chapman] — from my interview with [Chapman] and that I thought we could do better and that he should continue the interview process with other people. But I think I told [Wogsland]— I believe I did tell [him] that I think you need to talk to [Chapman] yourself.
Turnquist stated that he "thought that Graham Wiggins made a better presentation of himself and his skills. His knowledge skills and abilities and thought that he would have — he seemed to exhibit. I just had . more confidence in Graham in the way he presented his work history."
Wogsland shared Turnquist's concerns, testifying in deposition that he looked for "stability with a company and a progression within a particular company" and that "[w]e did not see that in those three positions between when [Chapman] left Home [Insurance Company] and AI Transport."
Wogsland further recounted that:
Within the interview that I conducted with [Chapman], it was basically that he was not very concise with the answers. He did not take an aggressive approach in asking me questions about the position, where we were going. His answers were not very sharp, to the point, when I asked them, which basically were the same comments that [Turnquist] gave me about his interview [with Chapman],
When asked for an example of a question to which he received an unsatisfactory answer, Wogsland explained that "[Chapman] wasn't very clear about why he had gone from Home [Insurance Company] to several other positions before he got to Transport...."
Chapman responded to the defendants' motions. Chapman disputed AIGCS's allegation that he was not hired because of his recent job instability by arguing that he "had established a record as evidenced by his performance appraisals which were a more immediate indication of his stability," and arguing that "he continued to work on files for J. Gordon Gaines while working for three different employers between the time he left Home Insurance (after 16 years) and joined AI Transport." Chap man also compared his entire employment history to Wiggins' employment history and alleged that "it is undisputed that both Mr. Chapman and Wiggins worked for a total of six other employers ." throughout their entire careers.
Chapman responded to AIGCS's allegation that he was not hired based on a poor interview by contending that "this testimony [was] pretext for intentional discrimination." Chapman did not refute Wogsland and Turnquist's evaluation of his interview. He did not contend that he asked a lot of questions during the interview, gave concise answers, or otherwise interviewed well. Instead, Chapman argued that there was "limited probative value of [Wogsland and Turnquist's] opinions about Mr. Chapman's appearance and demeanor.... " Neither Chapman's affidavit nor the excerpts from his deposition that were attached as exhibits to his summary judgment response set out a different version of the interview.
C. Magistrate Judge's Report and District Court Order
In August 1996, the magistrate judge issued his report and recommendation. With respect to the age discrimination claims, the report recommended that AIGCS's motion for summary judgment be denied. The report stated that Chapman's evidence about his overall employment record and continuity of work on J. Gordon Gaines' files cast doubt on AIGCS's proffered nondiscriminatory reason of job instability. The report also stated that AIGCS's other proffered reason, Chapman's poor interview, was subjective and for that reason was an inappropriate basis upon which to award summary judgment.
On March 5, 1997, the district court issued an order granting summary judgment in favor of the defendants on Chapman's ADEA claims, but denying summary judgment on the ADA claims. With respect to the ADEA claims, the district court held that Chapman did not present sufficient evidence for a reasonable factfin-der to conclude that the second proffered reason, his poor interview, was pretextual. Having so held, the district court found it unnecessary to address AIGCS's first reason, Chapman's recent job instability. With respect to the ADA claims, the court concluded that there were genuine issues of material fact including whether Chapman was disabled and whether travel was an essential function of his job. Accordingly, the court denied summary judgment on the ADA claims, leaving them to be decided at trial.
D. Post-Summary Judgment Events and Trial
Before trial of the ADA claims, the defendants moved in limine to exclude a position statement AIG prepared for submission to the EEOC as part of the conciliation process. That position statement described Chapman's transfer to the position of SIR Manager as a promotion. The defendants later admitted that the transfer was actually a lateral move. Esther Kornblau, AIG's Director of Employee Relations in New York City, wrote the position statement and Valerie Zaleski, the human resources manager for AI Transport, checked it in Atlanta. Bill O'Brien, the vice president in charge of claims operations at AI Transport, either read it or had it read to him and did not point out any mistakes. Spann, Chapman's immediate supervisor, also probably reviewed the statement, and he did not point out any mistakes either.
The district court granted the defendants' motion in limine. At trial, however, the court allowed Chapman to introduce most of the position statement into evidence as an exhibit but not the part of it which characterized Chapman's transfer as a promotion. The court required Chapman to redact that part of the position statement. Chapman's ADA claims were tried before a jury from June 17 to June 30, 1997. The jury returned a verdict in favor of the defendants.
On July 2, 1997, Chapman filed a motion to reconsider and vacate summary judgment on his ADEA claims. He argued that evidence adduced immediately prior to and at the trial of his ADA claims established a genuine issue of material fact about whether AIGCS's proffered nondiscriminatory reasons regarding his ADEA claims were pretextual, thereby requiring a jury trial. Chapman also filed a timely motion for a new trial on the ADA claims. He argued, among other things, that the court had erred by redacting from the position statement the defendants' false characterization of his transfer. The district court denied both motions. Thereafter, the court awarded costs to the defendants. Chapman appealed the grant of summary judgment on the ADEA claims, the jury verdict on the ADA claims, the district court's denial of his post-trial motions, and the award of costs to the defendants.
E. Panel Opinion
A panel of this Court issued a decision affirming in part and reversing in part. See Chapman v. AI Transport, 180 F.3d 1244 (11th Cir.1999). Addressing the award of summary judgment on the ADEA claims, the panel concluded that the district court did not "properly evaluate Chapman's effort to demonstrate the pre-textual nature of AIGCS's reason for its employment decision.... " Id. at 1249. The panel decided that the fact that Chapman worked for six different companies over a thirty-five year period and the fact that he had done work primarily involving one client during the recent three-year period in which he worked for three employers raised a genuine issue of material fact as to whether AIGCS's objective reason, Chapman's recent job instability, was a pretext for age discrimination. See id. at 1250. The panel stated that those facts were also sufficient at the summary judgment stage to cast doubt on AIGCS's subjective reason, Chapman's poor interview, even though that evidence did not directly rebut AIGCS's assessment of his interview. See id. For those reasons, the panel reversed the district court's grant of summary judgment and remanded for further proceedings on that issue. See id. at 1250-51, 1254.
With respect to the ADA claims, the panel concluded that there was sufficient evidence for a reasonable jury to find in favor of the defendants and affirmed the jury's verdict. See id. at 1251. Although believing that the district court had abused its discretion by excluding from evidence the false description of Chapman's transfer as a promotion in the position statement the defendants filed with the EEOC, the panel concluded that the error was harmless. See id. at 1252. Finally, the panel vacated the district court's award of costs to the defendants, because the "district court incorrectly concluded that it lacked the authority to consider Chapman's financial status as a factor in calculating the total costs awarded to the defendants." Id. at 1253.
III. STANDARD OF REVIEW
We review de novo a district court's grant of summary judgment, applying the same legal standards as the district court. See Whatley v. CNA Ins. Cos., 189 F.3d 1310, 1313 (11th Cir.1999). Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56(c):
[sjummary judgment is appropriate if the evidence before the court shows that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law. In making this determination, the court must view all evidence and make all reasonable inferences in favor of the party opposing summary judgment.
The mere existence of some factual dispute will not defeat summary judgment unless that factual dispute is material to an issue affecting the outcome of the case. The relevant rules of substantive law dictate the materiality of a disputed fact. A genuine issue of material fact does not exist unless there is sufficient evidence favoring the nonmoving . party for a reasonable jury to return a verdict in its favor.
Haves v. City of Miami, 52 F.3d 918, 921 (11th Cir.1995) (internal marks and citations omitted). We review the district court's exclusion of evidence, award of costs and denial of a motion to reconsider summary judgment only for abuse of discretion. See Walker v. NationsBank of Florida, N.A., 53 F.3d 1548, 1554 (11th Cir.1995) (exclusion of evidence); Technical Resource Servs. v. Dornier Medical Sys., Inc., 134 F.3d 1458, 1468 (11th Cir.1998) (costs); Cavaliere v. Allstate Ins. Co., 996 F.2d 1111, 1115 (11th Cir.1993) (Rule 60 motion to reconsider).
IV. DISCUSSION
A. Summary Judgment on Chapman's ADEA Claims
1. The Applicable Legal Framework
The ADEA makes it "unlawful for an employer to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual or otherwise discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual's age." 29 U.S.C. § 623(a)(1). As the Supreme Court has stated:
[w]hen a plaintiff alleges disparate treatment, liability depends on whether the protected trait (under the ADEA, age) actually motivated the employer's decision. That is, the plaintiffs age must have actually played a role in the employer's decisionmaking process and had a determinative influence on the outcome.
Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Products, Inc., — U.S.-, 120 S.Ct. 2097, 2105, 147 L.Ed.2d 105 (2000) (internal marks and citations omitted).
This Court, as well as other federal courts of appeals, uses the framework established in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 93 S.Ct. 1817, 36 L.Ed.2d 668 (1973), and Texas Department of Community Affairs v. Burdine, 450 U.S. 248, 101 S.Ct. 1089, 67 L.Ed.2d 207 (1981), to evaluate ADEA claims that are based upon circumstantial evidence of discrimination. See Reeves, 120 S.Ct. at 2105 (noting widespread use of the McDonnell Douglas framework in ADEA cases and assuming its applicability); Combs v. Plantation Patterns, 106 F.3d 1519, 1527-28 (11th Cir.1997). Under that framework, the plaintiff must first establish a prima facie case of discrimination. See Combs, 106 F.3d at 1527-28 (citations omitted). One method a plaintiff can use to establish a prima facie case for an ADEA violation is by showing that he (1) was a member of the protected age group, (2) was subjected to adverse employment action, (3) was qualified to do the job, and (4) was replaced by or otherwise lost a position to a younger individual. See Benson v. Tocco, Inc., 113 F.3d 1203, 1207-08 (11th Cir.1997).
Establishment of the prima facie case in effect creates a presumption that the employer unlawfully discriminated against the employee. If the trier of fact believes the plaintiffs evidence, and if the employer is silent in the face of the presumption, the court must enter judgment for the plaintiff because no issue of fact remains in the case.
Combs, 106 F.3d at 1528 (quoting Burdine, 450 U.S. at 254, 101 S.Ct. at 1094 (footnote omitted)).
If a plaintiff establishes a prima facie case of discrimination, the defendant employer must articulate a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for the challenged employment action. See id. However, the employer's burden is merely one of production; it "need not persuade the court that it was actually motivated by the proffered reasons. It is sufficient if the defendant's evidence raises a genuine issue of fact as to whether it discriminated against the plaintiff." Id. at 1528 (quoting Burdine, 450 U.S. at 254-55, 101 S.Ct. at 1094 (citation and footnote omitted)).
If the defendant articulates one or more such reasons, the presumption of discrimination is eliminated and "the plaintiff has the opportunity to come forward with evidence, including the previously produced evidence establishing the prima facie case, sufficient to permit a reasonable factfinder to conclude that the reasons given by the employer were not the real reasons for the adverse employment decision." Id. (citations omitted). If the plaintiff does not proffer sufficient evidence to create a genuine issue of material fact regarding whether each of the defendant employer's articulated reasons is pre-textual, the employer is entitled to summary judgment on the plaintiffs claim. See id. at 1529 (holding that there must be "sufficient evidence to demonstrate the existence of a genuine issue of fact as to the truth of each of the employer's proffered reasons for its challenged action").
A final note is in order about the law applicable to summary judgment in job discrimination cases. Some of our opinions from past years purport to announce "[a]s a general rule [that] summary judgment is not a proper vehicle for resolving claims of employment discrimination which often turn on an employer's motivation and intent." E.g., Delgado v. Lockheed-Georgia Co., 815 F.2d 641, 644 (11th Cir.1987); accord Batey v. Stone, 24 F.3d 1330, 1336 (11th Cir.1994) ("summary judgment in employment discrimination cases . is especially questionable" (internal quotation and citation omitted)). There is some question about whether that supposed rule was ever followed, see Earley v. Champion Int'l Corp., 907 F.2d 1077, 1081 (11th Cir.1990) ("Summary judgments for defendants are not rare in employment discrimination cases.") (citing cases), but no question that it has not been followed in recent years. As the Seventh Circuit has observed, "Summary judgment is hardly unknown, or for that matter rare, in employment discrimination cases, more than 90 percent of which are resolved before trial, . many of them on the basis of summary judgment for the defendant." Wallace v. SMC Pneumatics, Inc., 103 F.3d 1394, 1396 (7th Cir.1997) (citations omitted); see also Lewis Maltby, Employment Arbitration: Is it Really Second Class Justice?, Disp. Resol. Mag., Fall 1999, at 23-24 (footnote omitted) ("In fact, the majority of employment cases, some 60 percent, are resolved by summary judgment."); see generally Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, Judicial Business of the United States Courts: 1999 Report of the Director, p. 160-62 (indicating, from figures in Table C-4, that 94.09% of employment civil rights cases are resolved before trial).
While acknowledging that questions of fact in job discrimination cases are "both sensitive and difficult" and "[t]here will seldom be 'eyewitness' testimony as to the employer's mental processes," the Supreme Court has told us that "none of this means that trial courts or reviewing courts should treat discrimination differently from other ultimate questions of fact." St. Mary's Honor Ctr. v. Hicks, 509 U.S. 502, 524, 113 S.Ct. 2742, 2756, 125 L.Ed.2d 407 (1993) (quoting Postal Service Bd. of Governors v. Aikens, 460 U.S. 711, 716, 103 S.Ct. 1478, 1482, 75 L.Ed.2d 403 (1983)). And quite recently, the Court rejected a rule which would have made it easier for job discrimination plaintiffs to get their case to a jury, explaining that "[t]o hold otherwise would be effectively to insulate an entire category of employment discrimination cases from review under Rule 50,. and we have reiterated that trial' courts should not treat discrimination differently from other ultimate questions of fact." Reeves, 120 S.Ct. at 2109 (internal quotation and citation omitted). The long and short of it is that the summary judgment rule applies in job discrimination cases just as in other cases. No thumb is to be placed on either side of the scale.
2. The Evidence We Consider in Reviewing a Grant of Summary Judgment
On March 5, 1997, the district court granted summary judgment in favor of the defendants on Chapman's ADEA claims but denied summary judgment on the ADA claims. On July 2, 1997, after the jury had returned its verdict against Chapman at the trial of the ADA claims, he filed a motion requesting the court to reconsider and vacate summary judgment on the ADEA claims. Chapman argued in his motion that evidence adduced immediately prior to and at the trial of his ADA claims created a genuine issue of material fact as to whether AIGCS's proffered nondiscriminatory reasons regarding his ADEA claims were pretextual. The district court denied Chapman's motion to reconsider and vacate, leaving intact the summary judgment previously entered on the ADEA claims. Chapman contends that the trial testimony demonstrates that the district court's grant of summary judgment on the ADEA claims was erroneous, and his en banc brief to this Court relies extensively upon trial testimony in arguing that we should reverse summary judgment. By our count, the briefs "Statement of the Facts" section contains sixty-seven citations to trial testimony and only one citation to the summary judgment record.
There are two closely related issues here. One is whether the district court abused its discretion in not re-opening summary judgment on the ADEA claims after the trial of the ADA claims based upon evidence that came out shortly before and during that trial. The other issue is whether we should consider that later evidence in reviewing the district court's decision to grant summary judgment on the ADEA claims. The two issues are inextricably intertwined and they require a consistent answer. If the district court did not abuse its discretion in failing to reopen summary judgment on the ADEA claims, then we cannot consider the evidence that would have been available if the court had re-opened summary judgment.
The rule is that "a federal appellate court may examine only the evidence which was before the district court when the latter decided the motion for summary judgment." Welch v. Celotex Corp., 951 F.2d 1235, 1237 n. 3 (11th Cir.1992) (citations omitted) (emphasis added); see also 10A Charles Alan Wright et al., Federal Practice and Procedure § 2716 (3rd ed. 1998) ("The appellate court is limited in its review.... [I]t can consider only those papers that were before the trial court. The parties cannot add exhibits, depositions, or affidavits to support their position."). The Tenth Circuit elaborated on the rule in United States v. Hardage, 982 F.2d 1436 (10th Cir.1992), stating that:
[n]either the evidence offered subsequently at the trial nor the verdict is relevant. One who loses on summary judgment cannot give a retroactive effect to a trial verdict, using it in an effort to create a genuine issue of material fact .at the time the court was considering the motion for summary judgment.
Id. at 1444 (internal quotations and citations omitted). This universally followed rule is indispensable to the orderly processing of cases in the district courts.
We have frequently railed about the evils of shotgun pleadings and urged district courts to take a firm hand and whittle cases down to the few triable claims, casting aside the many non-triable ones through dismissals where there is failure to state a claim and through summary judgment where there is no genuine issue of material fact. See, e.g., Morro v. City of Birmingham, 117 F.3d 508, 515 (11th Cir.1997) (explaining that "[t]he use of shotgun pleadings in civil cases is a ubiquitous problem," and "[gjiven the seriousness of that problem, it is particularly important for the district courts to undertake the difficult, but essential, task of attempting to narrow and define the issues before trial." (internal quotation and citation omitted)). It would seriously impair the ability of district courts to pare down the issues in multi-claim civil cases if we required them to revisit and re-evaluate a summary judgment previously granted on one claim because of evidence that comes out later at the trial of other claims.
Moreover, the approach Chapman would have us follow would burden our already heavily burdened district courts with multiple trials in a single case where one should suffice. To vacate summary judgment on one claim after the trial of another claim would necessarily result in two trials instead of one. Indeed, that is precisely what Chapman's motion to reconsider and vacate requested. There is no good reason for inflicting that burden of multiple trials upon our system with its finite resources. Parties opposing summary judgment are appropriately charged with the responsibility of marshaling and presenting their evidence before summary judgment is granted, not afterwards.
The district court did not abuse its discretion in refusing to re-open after the trial of the ADA claims the summary judgment it had previously granted in favor of the defendants on the ADEA claims. And because the district court did not have the testimony from the trial of the ADA claims before it when it granted summary judgment in favor of the defendants on the ADEA claims, any evidence offered at trial is not relevant to our review of the ADEA summary judgment and we will not consider it. See U.S. East Telecomm., Inc. v. U.S. West Communications Servs., Inc., 38 F.3d 1289, 1301 (2nd Cir.1994); Hardage, 982 F.2d at 1444-45; Nissho-Iwai American Corp. v. Kline, 845 F.2d 1300, 1307 (5th Cir.1988); Voutour v. Vitale, 761 F.2d 812, 817 (1st Cir.1985).
3. AIGCS's Proffered Nondiseriminatory Reasons
It is undisputed that Chapman established his prima facie case. He was sixty-one years old at the time that he applied, but was not hired, for a job at AIGCS. He was qualified for at least one of the positions for which he applied, Casualty Claims Manager. Four individuals who accepted jobs for which Chapman had applied, including the position of Casualty Claims Manager, were younger than him. Applying the McDonnell Douglas framework, because Chapman met his burden of establishing a prima facie case, a presumption of discrimination arose and the burden shifted to AIGCS to proffer a legitimate, nondiseriminatory reason for not hiring Chapman. See Combs, 106 F.3d at 1527-28. To meet that burden, which is only a burden of production, AIGCS in its motion for summary judgment proffered two legitimate, nondiseriminatory reasons, one of which was objective and the other subjective. The objective reason as stated by Turnquist and Wogsland, the decision makers for the positions for which Chapman applied, was Chapman's lack of "stability in light of the number of jobs he had held in a short period of time." The subjective reason, stated by those same deci-sionmakers, was Chapman's poor interview.
AIGCS's proffer of those nondiscriminatory reasons eliminated the presumption of discrimination, thereby shifting the burden to Chapman to come forward with sufficient evidence to permit a reasonable fact-finder to find that those reasons were pre-textual. See Combs, 106 F.3d at 1528. We will discuss each of AIGCS's proffered reasons and Chapman's attempted showing of pretext as to that reason separately.
a. Chapman's Record of Recent Job Instability
AIGCS articulated its objective reason for not hiring Chapman as follows: "[Ward Turnquist and James Wogsland, the two vice-presidents who interviewed Chapman,] were concerned about [his] stability in light of the number of jobs he had held in a short period of túne." Turn- quist explained bis position more thoroughly in his deposition, stating that he "had some concerns about [Chapman's] career path" and that "there [were] quite a few jobs after the Home [Insurance Company] and before he came to [his current employer]." That bothered Turnquist, who questioned "what necessitated making as many and as frequent a job change during what . was a fairly short period of time...." Notes from Turnquist's interview with Chapman corroborate his concern. In those notes, Turnquist listed Chapman's employers and the dates Chapman left each employer.
Wogsland expressed similar sentiments in his deposition. He stated:
The question was basically when you look at a resume and look at why somebody left somewhere you look for stability in a position, stability with a company and a progression within a particular company or if they have left a position for growth opportunities. We did not see that in those three positions between •when he left Home [Insurance Company] and AI Transport.
Wogsland asked Chapman during the interview about the various jobs Chapman had between Home Insurance Company and AI Transport, but Chapman "wasn't very clear about why he had gone from Home to several other positions before he got to Transport...."
In response to AIGCS's articulated reason, Chapman asserted that he "had established a record as evidenced by his performance appraisals which were a more immediate indication of his stability," and that "he continued to work on files for J. Gordon Gaines while working for [the] three different employers between the time he left Home Insurance (after 16 years) and joined AI Transport." Chapman also argued that Wiggins, who was selected instead of him as Casualty Claims Manager, had worked for a total of six other employers during his entire career (which spanned twenty-three years).
Chapman and Wiggins each went to work in 1988 for AI Transport, which was their employer when they applied for the Casualty Claims Manager position at AIGCS in 1992. Notably, Chapman did not dispute that he had worked for three different employers in the three years before he joined AI Transport in 1988. Nor did he dispute that Wiggins had worked for only one employer in the ten years before Wiggins joined AI Transport in that same year.
Chapman's assertions about his good performance and continued work on the Gaines account may be true, but the reason AIGCS proffered for not hiring Chapman was the number of times he had changed employers in a specified short period of time (between leaving Home Insurance in 1985 and going to AI Transport in 1998), not his performance appraisals and not the number of clients he had been involved with as he switched from one employer to another. And while it may be true that both Chapman and Wiggins had worked for a total of six other employers during their entire careers, AIGCS's proffered nondiscriminatory reason was not the number of employers for which Chapman had ever worked. It was the number of times Chapman had changed employers in a specified period.
A plaintiff is not allowed to recast an employer's proffered nondiscriminatory reasons or substitute his business judgment for that of the employer. Provided that the proffered reason is one that might motivate a reasonable employer, an employee must meet that reason head on and rebut it, and the employee cannot succeed by simply quarreling with the wisdom of that reason. See Alexander v. Fulton County, Ga., 207 F.3d 1303, 1341 (11th Cir.2000) (Title VII case) ("[I]t is not the court's role to second-guess the wisdom of an employer's decisions as long as the decisions are not racially motivated."); Combs, 106 F.3d at 1541-43. We have recognized previously and we reiterate today that:
[fjederal courts "do not sit as a super-personnel department that reexamines an entity's business decisions. No matter how medieval a firm's practices, no matter how high-handed its decisional process, no matter how mistaken the firm's managers, the ADEA does not interfere. Rather our inquiry is limited to whether the employer gave an honest explanation of its behavior."
Elrod v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 939 F.2d 1466, 1470 (11th Cir.1991) (quoting Mech-nig v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 864 F.2d 1359, 1365 (7th Cir.1988) (citations omitted)); see also Nix v. WLCY Radio/Rahall Communications, 738 F.2d 1181, 1187 (11th Cir.1984) (An "employer may fire an employee for a good reason, a bad reason, a reason based on erroneous facts, or for no reason at all, as long as its action is not for a discriminatory reason."); Abel v. Dubberly, 210 F.3d 1334, 1339 n. 5 (11th Cir.2000). We "do not . second-guess the business judgment of employers." Combs, 106 F.3d at 1543; accord Alexander, 207 F.3d at 1339, 1341; Damon v. Fleming Supermarkets of Florida, Inc., 196 F.3d 1354, 1361 (11th Cir.1999) ("We have repeatedly and emphatically held that a defendant may terminate an employee for a good or bad reason without violating federal law. We are not in the business of adjudging whether employment decisions are prudent or fair." (internal citation omitted)).
Here, the proffered reason clearly meets the test of being one that might motivate a reasonable employer. Indeed, leaving several employers in a recent and short period of time, or job-skipping, is an imminently reasonable basis upon which to choose between job applicants. As the Seventh Circuit has observed: "High turnover of skilled workers can be very harmful to a company. The worker who leaves may take with him trade secrets valuable to a competitor or the benefits of specialized training that the employer had given him, at some expense, in the hope of recouping the expense in the worker's superior productivity now to be enjoyed by another employer." Thorn v. Sundstrand Aerospace Corp., 207 F.3d 383, 389 (7th Cir.2000). Furthermore, it makes sense for an employer to be concerned about how often an applicant has changed employers in recent years, instead of his career total or average. An employer could reasonably conclude that a job applicant who has not stayed with any recent employer for very long is unlikely to stay with it for long, either, and that what the applicant will do in the near- and mid-range future is better predicted from recent behavior than from what happened ten or twenty years ago.
Chapman's purported loyalty to one client of several of his employers does not do him any good in this analysis. An employer reasonably could be more concerned with an applicant's loyalty to employers than with his loyalty to clients. Indeed, we would be surprised if that were not the case. For that reason, it is altogether understandable why an employer might count the number of times a job applicant has changed employers instead of the number of different clients he has worked with at his various employers. In any event, even if we were to disagree with the wisdom of the hiring criterion used by AIGCS, it is not our role to decide how to run AIGCS's business or to dictate employment criteria to it.
AIGCS presented Chapman's job instability in light of the number of jobs he had held in a specified recent and short period of time as a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for not hiring him. The burden shifted to Chapman to produce sufficient evidence for a factfinder to conclude that this reason was a pretext for age discrimination. Chapman did not produce any such evidence. None of the evidence he offered rebutted AIGCS's articulated nondiscriminatory reason. Chapman's good performance appraisals indicate that he performed satisfactorily his job for his present employer. Chapman's continuous work on the Gaines account supposedly shows that he was loyal to that client and the client was pleased with his work. But those facts in no way undermine AIGCS's stated concern about Chapman's changing employers three times in a recent three-year period.
Unable to knock down AIGCS's proffered reason of job instability by comparing himself to Wiggins, who was hired as the Casualty Claims Manager, Chapman has attempted on appeal to extend his comparison beyond Wiggins, contending that one of the other AI Transport employees — Earnest John Smith — who was hired by AIGCS in another position had an employment history similar to his own. However, this contention does not help Chapman. First, he did not make this argument in the district court; there, the only employee Chapman contended had an employment history similar to his own was Wiggins. See Redwing Carriers, Inc. v. Saraland Apartments, 94 F.3d 1489, 1511 n. 30 (11th Cir.1996) ("As a general rule, we will not address claims or arguments not fairly presented to the district court." (citation omitted)).
Second, 'even if we were to consider the job history of Smith, Chapman would still have failed to create a genuine issue of pretext. AIGCS's concern was the number of times Chapman had changed jobs in a recent, short period of time. Smith had not changed employers as many times as Chapman had in as recent and short a period of time. Unlike Chapman, who had worked for three different employers in the three years before he joined AI Transport in 1988, Smith had only worked for two employers during that time period (and the first of those he had been with for six years, unlike Chapman who had been with his first one during that period for only one year).
Our dissenting colleagues point to Sevil-lian and Jones, two other employees who were hired in other positions at AIGCS, and contend that they, too, had job instability records as bad or worse than Chapman. This is an argument Chapman himself did not make in the district court or in his panel or en banc briefs to this Court. We share Chapman's apparent conclusion that this argument lacks merit. For one thing, Jones was hired by AIGCS after Chapman had been fired by AI Transport, and we do not think a reasonable jury could find discrimination in the failure of a company to hire an applicant recently fired by another company for insubordination, or one who had just left (yet again) one employer for another. In any event, Jones did not have a recent history of job instability like Chapman. To the contrary, he had been with one employer during the period Chapman had been with three, and in fact had been with that one company since 1983. As for Sevillian, he had also been with only one employer during the period Chapman had been with three, and he had been with that employer since 1981.
Because Chapman did not produce sufficient evidence for a reasonable factfinder to conclude that AIGCS's proffered nondiscriminatory reason of recent job instability for declining to hire Chapman was a pretext for age discrimination, the defendants were entitled to summary judgment on the ADEA claims.
b. Chapman's Interview
AIGCS articulated another reason for not hiring Chapman, his poor interview. Chapman asserts that Wogsland and Turnquist's assessment of his interview is not a legally sufficient reason to grant summary judgment for the defendants because of its subjective nature.
We begin with an important threshold point: A subjective reason can constitute a legally sufficient, legitimate, nondiserimi-natory reason under the McDonnell Douglas/Burdine analysis. Indeed, subjective evaluations of a job candidate are often critical to the decisionmaking process, and if anything, are becoming more so in our increasingly service-oriented economy. Take, for example, a job requiring continuing interaction with the public, such as a sales clerk or wait staff position. Attitude, articulateness, and enthusiasm, as well as appearance, can be vitally important in such a job, yet there are few if any ways to gauge such qualities objectively or from a written application. Interviews give prospective employers a chance to see if an applicant has the kind of personal qualities a service job requires and can be the best way an employer has to determine how a person interacts with others. Body language, tone of voice, eye contact, facial expressions and other non-verbal cues significantly affect the impression an applicant makes on the interviewer and will make on those whose business the company wants to attract or retain, but such things are hard to quantify and articulate with any precision and can only be evaluated subjectively.
Personal qualities also factor heavily into employment decisions concerning supervisory or professional positions. See Sengupta v. Morrison-Knudsen Co., 804 F.2d 1072, 1075 (9th Cir.1986) (racial discrimination alleged in layoff from position as engineer) ("Indeed, in many situations [subjective criteria] are indispensable to the process...."); Risher v. Aldridge, 889 F.2d 592, 597 (5th Cir.1989) (sex discrimination alleged in failure to promote) ("Subjective criteria necessarily and legitimately enter into personnel decisions involving supervisory positions." (citation omitted)). Traits such as "common sense, good judgment, originality, ambition, loyalty, and tact" often must be assessed primarily in a subjective fashion, Watson v. Fort Worth Bank & Trust, 487 U.S. 977, 991, 108 S.Ct. 2777, 2787, 101 L.Ed.2d 827 (1988), yet they are essential to an individual's success in a supervisory or professional position. See id. at 999, 108 S.Ct. at 2791 ("It would be a most radical interpretation of Title VII for a court to enjoin use of an historically settled process and plainly relevant criteria largely because they lead to decisions which are difficult for a court to review.") (quoting Zahorik v. Cornell Univ., 729 F.2d 85, 96 (2nd Cir.1984)).
It is inconceivable that Congress intended anti-discrimination statutes to deprive an employer of the ability to rely on important criteria in its employment decisions merely because those criteria are only capable of subjective evaluation. See Watson v. Ft. Worth Bank & Trust, 487 U.S. at 999, 108 S.Ct. at 2791. To phrase it differently, subjective reasons are not the red-headed stepchildren of proffered nondiscriminatory explanations for employment decisions. Subjective reasons can be just as valid as objective reasons.
Nonetheless, we are mindful of the requirement articulated by the Supreme Court in Burdine that "the defendant's explanation of its legitimate reasons must be clear and reasonably specific" so that "the plaintiff be afforded a full and fair opportunity to demonstrate pretext." Burdine, 450 U.S. at 258, 101 S.Ct. at 1096 (quotation omitted). A subjective reason is a legally sufficient, legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason if the defendant articulates a clear and reasonably specific factual basis upon which it based its subjective opinion. Continuing our example of a sales clerk or wait staff position, it might not be sufficient for a defendant employer to say it did not hire the plaintiff applicant simply because "I did not like his appearance" with no further explanation. However, if the defendant employer said, "I did not like his appearance because his hair was uncombed and he had dandruff all over his shoulders," or "because he had his nose pierced," or "because his fingernails were dirty," or "because he came to the interview wearing short pants and a T-shirt," the defendant would have articulated a "clear and reasonably specific" basis for its subjective opinion' — the applicant's bad (in the employer's view) appearance. That subjective reason would therefore be a legally sufficient, legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for not hiring the plaintiff applicant. The burden would then shift back to the plaintiff to offer sufficient evidence for a reasonable factfinder to find that the defendant's reason was pretext for discrimination.
Although we, sitting as an en banc court, have the ability to overrule our prior circuit precedent, see Combs, 106 F.3d at 1534, we do not believe our holding today is inconsistent with our past decisions. See Allison v. Western Union Telegraph Co., 680 F.2d 1318, 1322 (11th Cir.1982) ("An employer's decision may properly be based on subjective factors." (citation omitted)); Fowler v. Blue Bell, Inc., 737 F.2d 1007, 1011-14 (11th Cir.1984); Conner v. Fort Gordon Bus Co., 761 F.2d 1495, 1500 (11th Cir.1985) (A subjective reason "is legally sufficient to satisfy the employer's burden of producing] [a legitimate, non-diseriminatory reason] so long as it is capable of objective evaluation."); Woody v. St. Clair County Comm'n, 885 F.2d 1557, 1562-63 (11th Cir.1989) (affirming district court's judgment that employer's subjective evaluation of how long employee would stay on the job was not pretextual because it was based on objective indicators); EEOC v. Joe's Stone Crab, Inc., 220 F.3d 1263, 1280 n. 17 (11th Cir.2000) ("[Ejmployment decisions may legitimately be based on subjective criteria as long as the criteria are capable of objective evaluation and are stated with a sufficient degree of particularity."). But to the extent of any inconsistency between our past decisions and our decision today, of course, the rule we announce today controls.
We now apply this rule to the present case. Although the proffered reason, Chapman's poor interview, was subjective, AIGCS offered a clear and reasonably specific explanation of why Wogsland and Turnquist, the decisionmakers, arrived at that subjective conclusion. Wogsland stated:
Within the interview that I conducted with [Chapman], it was basically that he was not very concise with the answers. He did not take an aggressive approach in asking me questions about the position, where we were going. His answers were not very sharp, to the point, when I asked them, which basically were the same comments that [Turnquist] gave me about his interview [with Chapman],
Wogsland observed that Chapman's imprecise answers were not "the answers [he] would expect [Chapman] needed to [be able to] give to technicians under his control, within his unit." As an example of an unclear answer given by Chapman, Wogs-land stated that Chapman "wasn't very clear about why he had gone from Home [Insurance Company] to several other positions before he got to Transport...."
Turnquist explained that he too was concerned about how Chapman presented his work history. In comparing Wiggins and Chapman's interviews, Turnquist stated:
I thought that Graham Wiggins made a better presentation of himself and his skills. His knowledge skills and abilities and thought that he would have' — he seemed to exhibit. I just had — I don't have an answer to that — I seem — I felt I had more confidence in Graham in the way he presented his work history.
Even though Wogsland and Turnquist subjectively evaluated Chapman's interview, they also explained the grounds for their evaluation with reasonable clarity and specificity given the passage of time. AIGCS thus met its burden of producing a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason.
After AIGCS articulated this second reason, Chapman's poor interview, the burden shifted back to Chapman to present sufficient evidence that AIGCS's reason was pretextual. In response, Chapman said only that there was "limited probative value of [Wogsland and Turn-quist's] opinions about Mr. Chapman's appearance and demeanor" and that "this testimony is pretext for intentional discrimination."
Our dissenting colleagues focus on Wogsland's statement that one reason he was unimpressed with Chapman was that he was not aggressive in answering questions during the interview. Because there is a stereotype that older people are not as aggressive as younger people, they would have us treat use of aggressiveness as a hiring criteria as equivalent to age bias, or at the least as highly suspicious. We decline to do so. In the rough and tumble, highly competitive business world, aggressiveness can be a valuable and much sought after trait. Just because a sought after trait is linked by stereotype to an impermissible consideration does not mean an employer cannot search for and consider the trait itself independently from the stereotype. For example, according to stereotype women are not as physically strong as men. If an employer is hiring people for positions that require a great deal of physical strength, it would be permissible for the decisionmakers to hire a man instead of a woman if that particular man has more physical strength than that particular woman, even though the decision could not be based on the stereotype about the comparative physical strength of men and women in general. In this case, the decisionmakers considered Chapman's lack of aggressiveness because he was not aggressive in the interview, not because of his age. Along these lines, it is noteworthy that Turnquist also thought another interviewee, who was only 39 years old, also was not aggressive enough for the position of Casualty Claims Manager.
Chapman had a fair chance to respond to the objective bases for the subjective reason proffered for not hiring him, but Chapman never refuted those objective bases. He never said he asked a single question during the interview, never said he explained clearly during the interview why he had so many employers between Home Insurance Company and AI Transport, and never said he had given concise answers to the questions he was asked. Moreover, Chapman's affidavit submitted in response to AIGCS's summary judgment motion does not even mention the interview. Because the poor interview subjective reason backed up by clear and reasonably specific bases is a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason, and Chapman failed to present sufficient evidence to show that the reason was pretextual, the defendants were entitled to summary judgment on the ADEA claims. See Combs, 106 F.3d at 1543.
4. Conclusion
In order to avoid summary judgment, a plaintiff must produce sufficient evidence for a reasonable factfinder to conclude that each of the employer's proffered nondiscriminatory reasons is pretextual. See id. (requiring a plaintiff to rebut "all of the defendant's proffered nondiscriminatory reasons for its actions" to avoid judgment as a matter of law). The defendants in this case proffered two nondiscriminatory reasons for failing to hire Chapman. He did not produce sufficient evidence to create a genuine issue of pretext as to either. Therefore, we affirm the district court's grant of summary judgment to the defendants on two independently adequate bases: Chapman's failure to create a genuine issue of pretext as to the objective reason, and also his failure to create a genuine issue of pretext as to the subjective reason.
B. The Trial of Chapman's ADA Claims
1. Chapman's Motion for a New Trial
Part B of the panel opinion addresses Chapman's contentions that the jury verdict against him on his ADA claims should be overturned based upon the trial evidence. See Chapman v. AI Transport, 180 F.3d 1244, 1251 (11th Cir.1999). The panel concluded "that the district court did not abuse its discretion in refusing to grant Chapman's motion for a new trial on his ADA claims against all defendants." Id. Agreeing with that conclusion and the analysis supporting it, we reinstate Part B of the panel opinion.
2. The Redaction of Part of the Position Statement
The panel opinion also deals with Chapman's contention that the district court abused its discretion by excluding from evidence at trial part of the position statement the defendants had submitted to the EEOC in response to Chapman's charges. That statement was prepared by Esther Kornblau, an AIG employee, as part of the EEOC conciliation process. The part of the position statement that the district court refused to admit into evidence described Chapman's transfer by AI Transport to the position of SIR Manager as a promotion, when it was actually a lateral move. The panel concluded that part of the statement should have been admitted into evidence because it "would have been, from Chapman's perspective, evidence of the defendants' lack of credibility." Chapman, 180 F.3d at 1252. The panel posited that the "evidence might have been useful to impeach the defendants' general integrity." Id. at 1252 n. 2. However, the panel concluded that the district court's failure to admit that part of the position statement was harmless. See id. at 1252.
When we granted rehearing en bane we had intended to decide the issue of whether evidence of one corporate official's false statement concerning the plaintiffs employment is admissible to undermine the credibility of another corporate official, who was the actual decisionmaker, or to undermine the credibility of the corporation as a whole. Upon closer review of the record, however, we find that issue is not presented in this case. Although a corporate official who was uninvolved in Chapman's termination from AI Transport prepared the position statement, the AI Transport officials who were involved in his termination reviewed the statement and did not point out any mistakes. Thus, the false statement was directly relevant to those decision makers' credibility. We need not decide whether the district court abused its discretion in failing to admit the evidence, however, because we agree with the panel opinion that any error was harmless.
We leave vacated that part of the panel opinion indicating that a false or misleading statement by one corporate official may be used to undermine the credibility of another corporate official who was not involved in the making or submission of the statement. See id. at 1252. We also leave vacated any implication about general corporate credibility. See id. at 1252 n. 2. Those issues are not presented by this record, and we express no view on them.
3. The Award of Costs Pursuant to Rule 54(d)
The defendants, as the prevailing party, submitted a bill of costs pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(d)(1), and the district court initially awarded costs to the defendants in the full amount requested, which was $34,504.90. However, after Chapman filed objections, the defendants submitted an amended bill of costs for $28,943.95. After deducting $7,088.70 from the amount requested in the amended bill of costs in order to remove items it found were not necessary to the litigation of the case, the district court awarded costs in the amount of $21,855.25. Chapman contends that in calculating the amount of costs he was required to pay, the district court erred by failing to take his financial status into account, as he requested in his opposition to the amended bill of costs.
We asked the parties to brief the issue of whether the district court has the authority to consider the non-prevailing party's financial resources, or the lack thereof, as a factor in calculating the amount of costs to be awarded. Rule 54(d)(1) provides that "costs other than attorney's fees shall be allowed as of course to the prevailing party unless the court otherwise directs." That provision establishes a presumption that costs are to be awarded to a prevailing party, but vests the district court with discretion to decide otherwise. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 54(d)(1); Delta Air Lines, Inc. v. August, 450 U.S. 346, 351, 101 S.Ct. 1146, 1149, 67 L.Ed.2d 287 (1981).
However, the district courts discretion not to award the full amount of costs incurred by the prevailing party is not unfettered, see Head v. Medford, 62 F.3d 351, 354-55 (11th Cir.1995), "since denial of costs is in the nature of a penalty for some defection on [the prevailing party's] part in the. course of the litigation." Walters v. Roadway Express, Inc., 557 F.2d 521, 526 (5th Cir.1977) (internal marks and citation omitted). To defeat the presumption and deny full costs, a district court must have and state a sound basis for doing so. See Medford, 62 F.3d at 354 (citing Gilchrist v. Bolger, 733 F.2d 1551, 1557 (11th Cir.1984)); Cherry v. Champion Int'l Corp., 186 F.3d 442, 446 (4th Cir.1999). We review a district court's decision about costs only for abuse of discretion. See Technical Resource Servs., 134 F.3d at 1468.
We hold that a non-prevailing party's financial status is a factor that a district court may, but need not, consider in its award of costs pursuant to Rule 54(d). See Smith v. Southeastern Penn. Transp. Auth., 47 F.3d 97, 100 (3rd Cir.1995); McGill v. Faulkner, 18 F.3d 456, 459 (7th Cir.1994). If a district court in determining the amount of costs to award chooses to consider the non-prevailing party's financial status, it should require substantial documentation of a true inability to pay. See McGill, 18 F.3d at 459 (non-prevailing party offered no documentary support, relying instead on "unsupported, self-serving statements"); Cherry, 186 F.3d at 447 (no reduction in cost award despite proof that plaintiff had "no independent income and owned no property in her own name" because she had "sufficient access to marital property" and a 401(k) plan).
Moreover, when awarding-costs a district court should not consider the relative wealth of the parties. Comparing the financial resources of the parties would unduly prejudice parties with assets and undermine "the presumption that Rule 54(d)(1) creates in prevailing parties' favor, and . the foundation of the legal system that justice is administered to all equally, regardless of wealth or status." Cherry, 186 F.3d at 448; see also Smith, 47 F.3d at 100. Even in those rare circumstances where the non-prevailing party's financial circumstances are considered in determining the amount of costs to be awarded, a court may not decline to award any costs at all. Cf. Durrett v. Jenkins Brickyard, Inc., 678 F.2d 911, 917 (11th Cir.1982) ("we hold that in no case may the district court refuse altogether to award attorney's fees to a prevailing Title VII defendant because of the plaintiffs financial condition," because "[a] fee must be assessed which will serve the deterrent purpose of the statute, and no fee will provide no deterrence."). Subject to that restriction and to the requirement that there be clear proof of the non-prevailing party's dire financial circumstances before that factor can be considered, we leave it to the district court's discretion whether to do so in a particular case.
Chapman did submit financial disclosures to the district court, although the defendants contend those disclosures are not detailed enough and fail to establish that full costs should not be awarded. The district court noted that "the Eleventh Circuit has not yet directly addressed ability to pay as a factor in assessing costs." It then awarded the full amount of costs it found to have been necessary to the litigation.
We cannot tell from the district court order whether the court recognized that it had limited discretion to consider a non-prevailing party's financial condition in calculating the amount of costs to award, or thought it had no discretion regardless of the financial showing made. According ly, we will vacate the order awarding costs and remand this case to the district court for the limited purpose of allowing the court to reconsider its decision in light of the rules we set out in this opinion. We do not mean to imply that the district court must consider Chapman's financial situation in calculating the amount of costs to be awarded, even if he proves his financial situation is extreme, but only that the court must realize that it has the discretion to do so. Now that we have stated the law of the circuit on this matter, we will assume in cases arising hereafter that district courts are aware of their discretion and its parameters, unless there is some affirmative indication to the contrary.
V. CONCLUSION
We AFFIRM the district court's grant of summary judgment to the defendants on the ADEA claims, and AFFIRM the judgment entered on the jury verdict in favor of the defendants on the ADA claims. We VACATE the order awarding costs to the defendants and REMAND the case to the district court for the limited purpose of allowing it to reconsider that order in light of our discussion about the matter in this opinion.
. Professional and managerial employees were rated using a five-level scheme in ascending order as follows: "unsatisfactory," "meets some expectations," "meets expectations," "above expectations," and "outstanding."
file defendants state that Chapman received less than a "meets expectations" in several categories in his August 1989 review.
. AIGCS was formerly known as American International Adjustment Company. For simplicity, we will use the name AIGCS throughout our opinion.
. Smith was 50 years old, Wiggins was 47 years old, Sevillian was 39 years old, and Jones was 37.
. Chapman also brought claims of race discrimination in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5 et seq., and salary discrimination in violation of the ADA, ADEA, Title VII, and 42 U.S.C. § 1981. The district court awarded summary judgment to AIGCS, AIG and AI Transport on the race discrimination claims and to AIG and AI Transport on the salary discrimination claims based on the ADA, ADEA and Title VII. The court denied summary judgment as to the claims of salary discrimination in violation of § 1981. The district court entered a Rule 50(a) dismissal of the salary discrimination claim at the close of the evidence in the trial. The race and salary discrimination claims are not at issue on appeal and we will not discuss them further.
. AIGCS's Memorandum in Support of [its] Motion for Summary Judgment reads as follows:
The evidence belies Plaintiff's allegations that he was not hired by AIGCS because of his age. Turnquist and Wogsland both testified that they selected Wiggins over Plaintiff because Plaintiff interviewed poorly and because they were concerned about Plaintiff's stability in light of the number of jobs he had held in a short period of time (Turn-quist at 64, 78-79; Wogsland at 102-08, 111). Plaintiff offered no evidence to rebut these reasons. Instead, he argues that Turnquist's notes were evidence of discrimination and that he was better qualified than Wiggins.
AIGCS's Statement of Material Facts as to Which There is no Genuine Issue to be Tried, filed in support of its motion for summary judgment, reads as follows:
9. Plaintiff interviewed with [James] Wogsland, [the Vice President in charge of AIGCS's Atlanta office] and Ward Turn-quist, Vice President of AIGCS's Complex Claims Unit, who were responsible for filling the position....
13. In his interview, Turnquist, as he did with other candidates he interviewed, questioned Plaintiff regarding when he received degrees and switched jobs to ascertain continuity of and stability in employment....
14. Plaintiff was not hired....
15. Graham Wiggins, a black Claims Supervisor at Transport, was hired for this position....
17. Turnquist and Wogsland both testified that they selected Wiggins over Plaintiff because they "didn't get a real feeling of confidence from" Plaintiff, because Wiggins made a "better presentation" than Plaintiff, and because Plaintiff did not give "sharp and concise" answers to their questions....
18. They were also concerned about Plaintiff's stability in light of the number of jobs he had held in a short period of time....
. Turnquist's deposition as attached to Chapman's response to AIGCS's motion for summary judgment contained pages not attached as an exhibit to AIGCS's motion. In those pages, Turnquist related the following:
I didn't feel that John [Chapman] came into the interview to sell himself and his knowledge, skills and abilities for the position that I was interviewing for. Everybody does it a little differently I realize, but I didn't get a real strong feeling that this was somebody that was going to be able to be the leader of this unit. I didn't feel that he was the — he had all the things that we were looking] for in terms of being able to build confidence in a group of people, so that he could be the leader of that group of people. . Two and a half years later — you know — the only thing that I can recall quite frankly is that general overall impressions that I had of the interview with John and I do specifically recall the comments that I made to Jim [Wogsland] after I interviewed him. But I cannot recall in detail the specific comments that he made to questions that I might has (sic) asked or the specific detail he might have offered regarding his job history, but I reached the conclusion on the basis of my interview with John that we could do better I felt than John.
. The pertinent portions of AIGCS's Statement of Material Facts as to Which There is no Genuine Issue to be Tried are quoted supra note 5. Chapman's Response to those parts of that statement reads as follows:
9. Plaintiff does not dispute.
13. Plaintiff disputes the factual allegation in ¶ 13. Defendants mischaracterize Plaintiff's testimony. Plaintiff's interview with Turnquist did not require asking questions to which Turnquist either already had answers or did not need those answers. Turnquist had Plaintiff's file which included a resume. Continuity and stability of employment was a pretext for intentional discrimination. (Chapman Dep., pp. 259, 260) Moreover, Wiggins and Chapman both worked for a total of six other employers before applying for transfers to AIAC and Turnquist did not inquire or question Wiggins' "stability." (Wiggins Dep., pp. 15-25; Wogsland Dep., p. 138)
14. Plaintiff disputes the factual allegation in ¶ 14 to the extent that Plaintiff was already an employee. Rather, Plaintiff was not transferred. (Plaintiff's Exhibit 132)
15. Plaintiff disputes the factual allegation in ¶ 15 to the extent that Graham Wiggins was already an employee. Rather, Wiggins was transferred. (Plaintiff's Exhibit 81)
17. Plaintiff does not dispute but Plaintiff contends that this testimony is pretext for intentional discrimination.
18. Plaintiff disputes the factual allegation in ¶ 18 to the extent that Plaintiff already had been working at AIG for more than three years and was actually an employee asking for a transfer. Plaintiff had established a record as evidenced by his performance appraisals which were a more immediate indication of his stability. (Chapman Dep. I, pp. 254,; Defendants' Exhibits 74, 77, 78, 80, 81; Wogsland Dep., p. Ill) Moreover, Mr. Chapman explained to Mr. Wogsland that he continued to work on files for J. Gordon Gaines while working for three different employers between the time he left Home Insurance (after 16 years) and joined AI Transport. (Chapman Aff. ¶ 4-6; Wogsland Dep., pp. 142-45.)
.Chapman's Response to AIGCS's Motion for Summary Judgment reads as follows:
The only alleged legitimate reason offered by Defendants for selecting Wiggins instead of Mr. Chapman was the claimed subjective opinion of Turnquist and Wogsland (after interviewing Mr. Chapman and Wiggins) that they "didn't get a real feeling of confidence from" Mr. Chapman; Wiggins made a "better presentation," and Mr. Chapman did not give "sharp and concise" answers. Turnquist and Wogsland also claim they were concerned about Plaintiff's stability in light of the number of jobs he had held.
Aside from the limited probative value of their opinions about Mr. Chapman's appearance and demeanor, the record suggests that Turnquist's and Wogsland's reliance on the "stability" factor was a pretext for intentional discrimination. It is undisputed that, although Mr. Chapman worked for three employers between the time he left Home Insurance (after 16 years) and joined AI Transport, he continued to work on files for J. Gordon Gaines for all three of those employers. Thus, rather than indicating a lack of stability, Mr. Chapman's interim employment demonstrated the customer's preference for his continued handling of its claims as it changed insurers — a factor which reflects favorably on his performance in the industry. Mr. Chapman explained this continued relationship with J. Gordon Gaines during his interview with Wogsland and in fact, Wogsland wrote "Gaines" in his notes of the interview. Moreover, in further contradiction of the alleged focus on lack of stability in Mr. Chapman's emploj'ment background, it is undisputed that both Mr. Chapman and Wiggins worked for a total of six other employers before interviewing at [AIGCS].
Chapman's Response to AIGCS's Statement of Material Facts as to Which There is no Genuine Issue to be Tried contains similar statements in paragraphs 13 and 18. See supra note 7.
. AIGCS's Statement of Material Facts as to Which There is no Genuine Issue to be Tried, filed in support of its motion for summary judgment, asserted that: "Turnquist and Wogsland both testified that they selected Wiggins over Plaintiff because they 'didn't get a real feeling of confidence from' Plaintiff, because Wiggins made a 'better presentation' than Plaintiff, and because Plaintiff did not give 'sharp and concise' answers to their questions. ."
Chapman's response reads as follows:
"Plaintiff does not dispute but Plaintiff contends that this testimony is pretext for intentional discrimination."
. The dissenting opinion says that the summary judgment record contains "evidence tending to show" that Chapman gave reasons for every job move that he had made. But the reasons that opinion cites are drawn from the explanations for those moves that Chap man gave after the lawsuit was filed, not during the interviews. Nowhere in Chapman's depositions does he contradict Wogs-land's testimony that "[h]is answers were not very sharp, to the point, when I asked them, which basically were the same comments that [Turnquist] gave me about his interview." Nor did Chapman ever put forward any testimony or other evidence to contradict Wogs-land's testimony that during the interview '"[Chapman] wasn't very clear about why he had gone from Home [Insurance Company] to several other positions before he got to Transport. ."
. Although the defendant is entitled to summary judgment in its favor if the plaintiff does not proffer sufficient evidence of pretext, the converse is not necessarily true. If the plaintiff does proffer sufficient evidence that the defendant's stated reasons are pretextual, the plaintiff still may not be entitled to take his case to a jury. In Reeves, which dealt with Rule 50, judgment as a matter of law, the Supreme Court stated:
[A] plaintiff's prima facie case, combined with sufficient evidence to find that the employer's asserted justification is false, may permit the trier of fact to conclude that the employer unlawfully discriminated.
This is not to say that such a showing by the plaintiff will always be adequate to sustain a jury's finding of liability. Certainly there will be instances where, although the plaintiff has established a prima facie case and set forth sufficient evidence to reject the defendant's explanation, no rational factfinder could conclude that the action was discriminatory. For instance, an employer would be entitled to judgment as a matter of law if the record conclusively revealed some other, nondiscriminatory reason for the employer's decision, or if the plaintiff created only a weak issue of fact as to whether the employer's reason was untrue and there was abundant and uncontro-verted independent evidence that no discrimination had occurred....
Whether judgment as a matter of law is appropriate in any particular case will depend on a number of factors. Those in-elude the strength of the plaintiff's prima facie case, the probative value of the proof that the employer's explanation is false, and any other evidence that supports the employer's case and that properly may be considered on a motion for judgment as a matter of law....
Reeves, 120 S.Ct. at 2109.
The Reeves case involved a judgment as a matter of law under Rule 50, and not summary judgment under Rule 56. But the Supreme Court said that, although the evidence considered when a district court rules upon a motion for judgment as a matter of law is different from the evidence considered when the court rules upon a summary judgment motion, the "standard for granting summary judgment mirrors the standard for judgment as a matter of law, such that the inquiry under each is the same." Id. at 2110 (quotations and citations omitted).
The Supreme Court's decision in Reeves modifies part of our Combs .decision. We had stated in Combs that judgment as a matter of law was unavailable to an employer once a plaintiff offered sufficient evidence of pretext as to each of the proffered reasons. Combs, 106 F.3d at 1538. As we have just explained, Reeves tells us judgment as a matter of law will sometimes be available to an employer in such a case. Reeves, 120 S.Ct. at 2109. And, because the "standard for granting summary judgment mirrors the standard for granting judgment as a matter of law, such that the inquiry under each is the same," id. at 2110, the same is true of summary judgment.
. We recognize that Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b), upon which Chapman based his motion, allows a district court to relieve a party from a final judgment under circumstances that include "mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect," "newly discovered evidence which by due diligence could not have been discovered in time to move for a new trial," "fraud, . misrepre-senlation, or other misconduct of an adverse party," or "any other reason justifying relief...." Fed.R.Civ.P. 60(b). Despite Chapman's assertions to the contrary, his proffered evidence fits none of the grounds for relief explicitly described in Rule 60(b), and as we have discussed above, trial evidence on one issue is not a "reason justifying relief" from an earlier summary judgment on another issue.
. Chapman presented little or no statistical evidence in the district court that AIGCS discriminated against older applicants, that is, the members of the protected class. According to AIGCS's calculations, of the 110 people hired in 1992 (the year in which Chapman was turned down), almost forty percent were over forty years old. Unable to make his case with statistics, Chapman instead relied upon circumstantial evidence. Therefore, we use the McDonnell Douglas framework to analyze his claims. See Combs, 106 F.3d at 1527-28.
. There is some ambiguity in the record about exactly what role Turnquist had in the decisionmaking. Chapman's complaint and early submissions to the district court only mention his interview with Wogsland and do not mention Turnquist, but Chapman did not allege that Wogsland was the only decision-maker or that Turnquist was uninvolved. The position statement the defendants filed with the EEOC refers only to Turnquist interviewing Chapman and not to Wogsland. Wogs-land testified in deposition that he hired Wiggins, Sevillian and Smith, and that Turnquist hired Jones. Turnquist testified in his deposition that he screened candidates for Wogsland and that he interviewed Chapman. Chapman and the defendants did refer to both Wogs-land and Turnquist as decisionmakers numerous times in the district court and in their briefs to this Court. Also, it is undisputed that both of them interviewed Chapman and each had input into the hiring decisions. Notwithstanding all of this, Chapman's en banc brief to this Court also states, "Wogs-land was the selecting official."
Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Chapman, we accept what we understand to be his current position: that Wogsland and Turnquist were both decision-makers in regard to his employment application in the sense that each had input, although Wogsland made the final call.
.AIGCS's Memorandum in Support of [its] Motion for Summary Judgment reads as follows:
The evidence belies Plaintiff's allegations that he was not hired by AIGCS because of his age. Turnquist and Wogsland both testified that they selected Wiggins over Plaintiff because Plaintiff interviewed poorly and because they were concerned about Plaintiffs stability in light of the number of jobs he had held in a short period of time....
. Chapman's reliance on his continued work on the Gaines account as an explanation for his job skipping may be unfounded. It appears from Wogsland's interview notes and Chapman's affidavit that although Chapman continued working on files for Gaines, the files upon which he worked were different at each employer. However, it is unnecessary for us to decide whether Chapman's explanation is persuasive because, as discussed above, that explanation does not meet the reason proffered by AIGCS.
. Turnquist did say in his deposition that he also looked at an applicant's entire work history, and recognized that there were commendable parts of Chapman's history. He also indicated that his concerns went beyond the job switching during the period between Home Insurance and AI Transport, saying that he was concerned "[n]ot necessarily just [with] that time frame." That is not inconsistent with the salient concern about job instability being, as Wogsland testified, the proffered one of the three job switches during the specified three-year period.
. In Combs, the employer maintained that the superior supervisory experience of the pérson selected for the job was the reason that person was hired instead of the plaintiff. See id. at 1541-43. The plaintiff, in response, presented evidence that the person selected had been forced to resign from a prior position because of financial improprieties. See id. at 1543. We stated that "[fjinancial impropriety is a serious matter," but recognized that the employer's proffered nondiscriminatory reason was not financial probity, but supervisory experience, and that the employer was entitled to select the criteria upon which it based hiring decisions. Id.
As a result, we held in Combs that the undisputed evidence of the comparator's financial impropriety was not sufficient to create a genuine issue of pretext when the employer's proffered reason was the difference in supervisory experience. We explained that "a plaintiff may not establish that an employer's proffered reason is pretextual merely by questioning the wisdom of the employer's reason, at least not where, as here, the reason is one that might motivate a reasonable employer." Id. Accordingly, we held that the plaintiff had not presented sufficient evidence for a factfinder to conclude the employer's reason was pretextual, and we reversed the district court's denial of the employer's motion for judgment as a matter of law. See id.
. Just as plaintiffs are not allowed to recast an employer's proffered reason, so also should courts refrain from doing so. Accordingly, we take the reason proffered by the employer at the time of summary judgment, the reason presented to the district court, and examine it. AIGCS's proffer, as particularized in the Wogsland and Turnquist depositions, focused on the 1985 to 1988 period, the three years between Chapman's departure from Home Insurance and his arrival at AI Transport. The dissenting opinion focuses instead on the thirteen-year period before Chapman arrived at AI Transport, but that is not the period proffered at the summary judgment stage as specified in the deposition of the two decision makers.
. It appears that Chapman may have shared AIGCS's opinion about what his job history showed. The resume that he submitted to AIGCS listed all of his employers, but gave not one date as to when he started or finished with any of them.
. At oral argument, Chapman also contended that AIGCS's reliance on Chapman's having changed employers three times in three years as a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason was implausible because any such concern must have been resolved when Chapman was hired by AI Transport in 1988. That contention is meritless. Different decision-makers are entitled to be concerned about different things. Just as we will not dictate employment criteria to any company, we will not require separate decisionmakers for different, albeit related, companies to use the same criteria. Spann hired Chapman into AI Transport in 1988. Wogsland and Turnquisl interviewed Chapman in 1992 and chose not to hire him into AIGCS. Whether Spann considered Chapman's job-skipping and, if so, how he factored that shortcoming into his decision has no bearing on whether Wogsland and Turnquist reasonably could consider it. Besides, there is nothing in the record to show the job skipping history of anyone else who applied for the job Chapman got at AI Transport. For all we know, any other applicant for that position at AI Transport in 1988 had an even worse record of disloyalty to employers, or had some additional shortcoming.
. AIGCS has not been inconsistent about what it means by Chapman's "recent" history of job skipping. In its Memorandum in Support of Motion for Summary Judgment, AIGCS proffered Turnquist and Wogsland's concern "about Plaintiff's stability in light of the number of jobs he had held in a short period of time," not characterizing it as "recent." In his deposition, Turnquist further specified that concern about Chapman's job instability as "there was quite a few jobs after the Home [Insurance Company] and before he came to [his current employer]." Wogs-land specified that same three-year period as the source of his concern, testifying in deposition that he had been looking for someone with job stability and progression within a company, and "We did not see that in those three positions between when he left Home [Insurance Company] and AI Transport."
The dissenting opinion suggests that Wogs-land and Turnquist's concern with Chapman's job skipping during the three-year period between the time he left Home Insurance and went to AI Transport, which was from 1985 to 1988, is somehow inconsistent with Wogs-land's statement in deposition that Chapman "had not hqd any recent general liability experience" (which was never proffered as a reason for not hiring him). The perceived inconsistency is apparently between the period Wogsland referred to as not "recent" for purposes of Chapman's general liability experience, and Wogsland's use of the word "recent" at one point during his deposition to refer to Chapman's job skipping during what was approximately the same period of time in which Chapman did not have general liability experience.
We see no inconsistency, because there is no reason why what is recent for purposes of job skipping also must be defined as recent for purposes of a particular type of claims handling experience. The more fundamental point, however, is that the proffered reason was not "recent" job skipping — although that is how the panel opinion, this opinion, and the dissenting opinion have characterized it. The actual proffered reason, as specified in Wogsland and Turnquist's depositions, was job skipping during a particular short period of time, defined as the period from Chapman's departure from Home Insurance Company (in 1985) to his arrival at AI Transport (in 1988). Wogsland did at one point in his deposition apply the adjective "recent" to that period of time, but his doing so in no way detracts from the specificity of the period. And there is nothing vague or undefined about that specified period between the time Chapman left Home Insurance and the time he started work at AI Transport — regardless of whether one would call it "recent," "nearly recent," "pretty darn recent," or "mighty recent."
. While there is no evidence that Turnquist knew at the time he hired Jones for the position of Complex Claims Director that Chapman had been fired by AI Transport for insubordination, Turnquist's undisputed deposition testimony was that he did not consider Chapman for the Complex Claims Director position because he heard that Chapman had left AI Transport and gone with another company.
. It might appear to the casual reader that the historical facts concerning the job histories of Wiggins, Jones, Smith, and Sevillian that are set out in this opinion differ from those set out in the dissenting opinion. Not so. A careful review will reveal that the difference is in the period of time involved. We feel that the proper period of measurement is the time after Chapman left Home Insurance in 1985 until the time he joined AI Transport in 1988. That three-year period is the proper measurement because it is the one the deci-sionmakers used, the one proffered by AIGCS. As we have explained, neither plaintiffs nor courts are allowed to recast proffered reasons.
. The warnings in Mendoza v. Borden, Inc., 195 F.3d 1238, 1255-56 (11th Cir.1999) (en banc) (Carnes, J., concurring), about the dangers of "perception prevarication" are not inconsistent with our holding in this case. Those warnings were directed at purely subjective, conclusory impressions of a litigant that are devoid of any objective facts which, if false, can be contradicted by testimony or other evidence. As we explain in the text, where a decisionmaker's subjective reason is supported by a "clear and reasonably specific" explanation, as required by Burdine, there will be objective factors that can be tested against other testimony and evidence.
. Chapman argues, among other things, that Wogsland and Turnquist's explanations are insufficient because they were neither contemporaneously documented nor detailed. First, we believe that their explanations, especially Wogsland's, were sufficiently detailed given the circumstances. Wogsland even provided an example of a question to which Chapman's answer was unclear. Second, the interview notes did not purport to be complete. Wogsland testified that he did not write down every word or even every topic of conversation. This Court has never held that an interviewer must take substantially verbatim notes of an interview, or even any notes at all, to be entitled to proffer legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons gleaned from an interview, and we refuse to hold that today. Such close judicial oversight of a business and its hiring practices would be unprecedented and unwarranted.
Similarly, we have never held that an employer cannot rely upon reasons that are not written down in advance of the selection process, and we decline to do so now.
. In deposition testimony, Chapman stated only that Wogsland and Turnquist were courteous, businesslike, professional and respectful during his interviews, something no one disputes. However, deposition testimony about that fact was not responsive to Wogs-land and Turnquist's assessment of Chapman's performance in his interviews, and Chapman did not argue to the district court that it was responsive.
. That other interviewee was Sevillian. Although not hired to be Casualty Claims Manager, Sevillian was hired for another position. That does not mean Wogsland or Turnquist disregarded Sevillian's lack of aggressiveness. It was only one factor in their assessment of the interviewees, and Sevillian definitely did not have the recent history of job instability that weighed against Chapman. Nor is there any basis in the record for assuming that aggressiveness was thought to be equally important in all positions across the board.
. One of the issues we asked the parties to brief and argue was whether a plaintiff could establish pretext as to a proffered subjective reason by showing that a proffered objective reason was pretextual. Because we conclude that Chapman failed to create a genuine issue of material fact as to the objective reason, see Part IV.A.3.a supra, we have no occasion to address the objective-to-subjective pretext spillover issue. That part of the panel opinion, see Chapman, 180 F.3d at 1250, remains vacated. Of course, the fact that we do not address that issue does not in any way imply our agreement with the dissenting opinion about it.
. In Combs, the defendant employer proffered three legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons why it had promoted another employee instead of the plaintiff. We "consider[ed] the evidence related to each of the three proffered nondiscriminatory reasons." Id. at 1539 (emphasis added). After analyzing each reason separately, we concluded that the plaintiff had presented sufficient evidence to show that two of the reasons were pretextual, but he had failed to present sufficient evidence to show the third reason was pretextual. See id. at 1539-43. Because the plaintiff failed to rebut one of the three reasons, we held that the defendant was entitled to judgment as a matter of law. See id. at 1543.
The dissenting opinion would carve out a number of exceptions to the well-established rule that a plaintiff must show pretext as to each proffered reason. To the extent this case presents a factual basis for any such exception, we reject that exception. To the extent this case does not present a factual basis for such an exception, we express no view on whether that exception might exist in some case with different facts.
. While Chapman's main focus is on the failure to hire him for the Casualty Claims Manager position which went to Wiggins, he also contends that he has a viable ADEA claim as to the three other positions that went to Jones, Smith, and Sevillian. His written application note did express interest "concerning the openings or new positions to be available" at AIGCS, and said he "would welcome the opportunity to discuss this with you or to be considered for one of the open positions." Wogsland and Turnquist did consider Chapman for one of the open positions, the position of Casualty Claims Manager. After interviewing Chapman for that position, Wogsland and Turnquist were less than impressed with his interview and were concerned about his history of job instability. Given those facts, we do not think that a jury could reasonably infer age discrimination as to the other positions that went to Jones, Smith, and Sevillian. Moreover, as we have already mentioned, the position for which Jones was hired was not filled until Chapman had been terminated at AI Transport.
Implicit in Chapman's contentions about the other positions is the premise that an applicant can, by the simple expedient of expressing an interest in all open positions, put on an employer filling a large number of positions the burden of proffering reasons for not hiring the applicant for each position. That would be quite a burden. Here, for example, Wogsland alone hired people to fill 110 positions during the Fall of 1992 (Chapman was interviewed in October of 1992). At least where the employer considers an applicant for a particular position and has a reason for not hiring him that is generally applicable (as job instability is), the employer need not specifically consider that applicant for every other position that is open at the time or comes open in the future.
. The final explanatory sentence of the district court's order awarding costs does say that "at least under the circumstances here, Chapman's financial situation is not a factor in whether the Court awards costs," but that statement was preceded in the same sen tence with these words: "given the Eleventh Circuit's willingness to award statutorily permitted costs and fees limited only by the precaution that the party seeking reasonable reimbursement be the prevailing party."
. Chapman makes other contentions relating to the district court's award of costs against him, but we find none of them merit discussion.