Opinion ID: 149135
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Discipline, Reinstatement, and Pretext

Text: The bulk of Mr. Medlock's argument on appeal concerns the treatment of eight younger UPS drivers who he asserts were similarly situated to him by virtue of their misconduct but kept their jobs. Like Medlock, these comparators were initially fired by Division Manager Cortez for Article 52 infractions. All save one, however, were reinstated voluntarily by UPS and by the same managers, Cortez and District Labor Manager Hoffman, who refused to reinstate Medlock. He also discusses another set of younger terminated-but-reinstated drivers that is both narrower and broader than the first: narrower in that these three drivers all committed the same Article 52 infraction as Medlock, and broader in that two fall outside the scope of Cortez's tenure at the Tulsa division. One driver, Travis Thompson, fits into both groups and is the subject of Medlock's sharpest comparison for pretext purposes, so we will consider him first. But before we get to any of the identified comparators, we address a threshold objection advanced by UPS to the use of any grievance resolutions involving other employees to establish discriminatory animus toward the plaintiff. [3] UPS relies primarily on a district court decision holding that a plaintiff cannot base a Title VII claim on the [more favorable] settlement of other employees' grievances. Magruder v. Runyon, 844 F.Supp. 696, 704 (D.Kan.1994), aff'd, No. 94-3069, 1995 WL 311740 (10th Cir. May 22, 1995). UPS also notes that the district court in Magruder relied, in turn, on Carey v. United States Postal Service, 812 F.2d 621 (10th Cir.1987), which, the district court stated, rejected a similar claim. Magruder, 844 F.Supp. at 704. But UPS fails to note that the Tenth Circuit panel that affirmed Magruder disavowed the district court's categorical exclusion of grievance settlements from the pretext analysis as a misreading of Carey: As for the alleged disparity in the [employer's] settlement of grievances, we do not believe that our opinion in Carey should be read to preclude all claims of discriminatory settlement of grievances. [4] Magruder, 1995 WL 311740, at . Instead, the panel affirmed the grant of summary judgment for the employer by looking to the circumstances of the contrasted grievance settlementslike any other instance of differential treatment asserted as evidence of pretextand concluding that [t]he disparate treatment of the five males' grievances does not raise an inference of pretext because the men were not similarly situated [to the plaintiff]. Id. We follow the same course here. [5]
Cortez terminated Travis Thompson under Article 52 after an avoidable runaway accident, but later agreed to reinstatement in settlement of Thompson's resultant grievance. At his deposition, Cortez explained that the basis for reinstating Thompsonand, as we will see, several other comparatorswas that Thompson admitted and expressed remorse for the infraction. See Aplt.App. at 319-21. Cortez specifically noted that remorseful acknowledgment of error is what distinguished Thompson from Mr. Medlock. [6] Id. at 322-23. Medlock does not challenge the soundness of treating employees who admit error and indicate a motivation to avoid it in future differently than those who do notnor would we be in a position to second-guess such business judgment in any event, see, e.g., Salguero v. City of Clovis, 366 F.3d 1168, 1177 (10th Cir.2004); Kendrick v. Penske Transp. Servs., Inc., 220 F.3d 1220, 1233 (10th Cir.2000). Rather, Medlock points to several aspects of Cortez's deposition testimony that, he claims, undercut in different ways this stated justification for the disparate treatment. First, Medlock notes that Cortez could not remember the incident involving Thompson when initially questioned about it, yet an hour later was able to come up with the specific reasons why he reinstated Thompson but not Medlock. But a straightforward explanation for this came from Cortez himself: he had been looking through the paperwork over the last hour and had refreshed his memory. Aplt.App. at 320. Medlock cites no authority, nor are we aware of any, indicating that a memory refreshed in this way is per se insufficient to support summary judgment. On the contrary, see Crockett v. Abraham, 284 F.3d 131, 133-34 (D.C.Cir.2002) (granting summary judgment for employer based on justification for denial of promotion provided by decision-maker only after she refreshed her memory through review of pertinent records). Second, Medlock points to one response in Cortez's deposition where he referred to Thompson as [t]his young man. Aplt.App. at 320. We cannot agree with Medlock that this one passing use of a common colloquial reference to a younger adult male, used well after the operative events giving rise to this suit, materially undercuts the facial neutrality of the reason given by Cortez for reinstating Thompson but not Medlock. Third, Medlock makes much of Cortez's acknowledgment that his practice of reinstating Article 52 violators who admitted misconduct and pledged to correct it was not mandated by a formally documented UPS policy. Evidently, the tacit premise here is that an otherwise reasonable justification for a business decision somehow loses its legitimacy simply because it reflects an exercise of managerial judgment rather than a ministerial execution of written policyas if a manager could not legitimately fire an employee for vandalizing property, stealing from co-workers, or assaulting a customer absent a formal company policy specifically addressing such misconduct. Medlock offers no authority for this facially untenable idea, which is belied by countless employment discrimination cases decided on the basis of legitimate business justifications without any reference to formal policies necessarily legitimizing those justifications. Indeed, such a constricted view of legitimacy would render suspect innumerable decisions required in the practical operation of the workplace, leaving the management of businesses open to just the sort of second-guessing the case law consistently admonishes against. The decision at issue here is a case in point: we are asked to second-guess a classic (and facially plausible) business judgment by a manager, regarding the disciplinary relevance of an employee's remorseful acceptance of responsibility, simply because that judgment had not been preordained by a written policy. The law does not permit, much less require, us to do so. Finally, and more materially, Medlock cites this qualification by Cortez in his response regarding the reinstatement of a hypothetically remorseful Medlock: If Mr. Medlock had come in and said I left the vehicle in neutral or I didn't set the park brake; it was my fault, I'm remorseful[,] then the outcome could have turned out differently. I can't sit here and say yes, for sure he would have been able to come back. . . . . Chances are I would have [let him come back]. Aplt.App. at 323 (emphasis added). There is no further elaboration or follow-up explanation of this qualification, at least on the incomplete record of the deposition provided us. Thus, we are left with a bald concession by the decision-maker that, even if the asserted justification for treating Medlock differently had been absent, he might still have been treated differently. There may well be other reasonable interpretations of or explanations for the qualification expressed by Cortez, but one is relevant to the critical issue of motivation: it is an acknowledgment that the reason given as the sole basis for reinstating Thompson but not Medlock was not necessarily the only basis for treating these two employees differently. Thus, the asserted justification for the disparate treatment does not fully negate the possibility that age discrimination could have played a role in a potentially mixed-motive decision. This does not avail Medlock on his ADEA claim, for which it is not the employer's burden to negate any possible contributory role played by age in the challenged adverse action but, conversely, the employee's burden to show that age was the but for cause of the action. Gross v. FBL Fin. Servs., Inc., ___ U.S. ___, ___, 129 S.Ct. 2343, 2351, 174 L.Ed.2d 119 (2009). Cortez's testimony does not establish a triable issue of age as the but-for cause here. His main point, that failure to admit fault was the only operative basis for his decision not to reinstate Medlock, obviously weighs against age even being a factor. His hypothetical qualificationthat had Medlock admitted fault, something else might have led Cortez not to grant reinstatementdoes not deny the causal operation of the stated justification on the actual facts, much less substitute age as the but-for cause to satisfy Gross. Cortez merely acknowledged that some other, unspecified consideration(s) could count against reinstating Medlock, so that Medlock's failure to admit fault, though the operative basis for denying reinstatement here, may not constitute a but-for cause for doing so. But that is immaterial under Gross: it is not UPS's burden to show that its justification was the but-for cause for its challenged action, i.e., that it would have reinstated Medlock but for his failure to admit fault; rather, Medlock must show that age was the but-for cause, i.e., that UPS would have reinstated him, despite his failure to admit fault, but for his age. Nothing Cortez said supports the latter inference. [7] Indeed, nothing he said affirmatively supports an inference that age played any role in his decision. In sum, the comparison with Thompson does not create a triable issue of pretext or, alternatively, in prima facie case terms, the comparison does not give rise to a reasonable inference of age discrimination, see supra note 5. We turn next to the other Article 52 violators who were reinstated.
One other driver, Tim Randolph, was reinstated by Matt Hoffman after an avoidable runaway accident. Cortez was not involved in the termination or the reinstatement, but Hoffman's participation in the reinstatement arguably suffices for a comparison to Medlock. But this comparison does not support Medlock's case, for the same reason the comparison to Thompson does not: the reason given for reinstating Randolph was his admission of error, which clearly distinguishes his situation from Medlock's. See Aplt.App. at 146. [8] The record shows one other avoidable runaway accident resulting in the termination-and-reinstatement of a driver, Terrence Galloway, in 2003. See id. at 434-35. While Medlock refers in passing to this incident, he does not include it in his set of comparables, and for good reason: the incident occurred before Cortez became Division Manager in 2006 and Hoffman became District Labor Manager in July 2005, so neither of the decision-makers in Medlock's case were involved. The rest of the comparables involve reckless accidents or failures to report accidents. Reinstatement was granted in the former cases based on the presence of external factors that negated or attenuated fault on the part of the driver, such as road and weather conditions, another motorist's excessive speed, and, in one instance, the union successfully argued that the driver had not been given proper training. See Aplt.App. 146-49. Such factors, not present in Medlock's case, present a legitimate basis for the reduction in discipline ultimately imposed on these drivers. In the failure-to-report category, drivers who had been terminated for non-traffic accidents were reinstated based on a lack of proof and, in one instance, the driver's claim that he had not been aware of the accident, see id. at 146-48. Such factors also were not present in Medlock's case. As alluded to earlier, UPS denied reinstatement to one driver, Dustin Prock, terminated for failure to report an accident, though a regional grievance committee later ordered his reinstatement. See id. at 149. We agree with UPS that this involuntary reinstatement does not support Medlock's case for pretext. See Hiatt v. Rockwell Int'l Corp., 26 F.3d 761, 771 (7th Cir.1994). On the contrary, the refusal to voluntarily reinstate the twenty-four year old Prock cuts against Medlock's claim that the decision to reinstate turned on an employee's age. There is one unexplained reinstatement decision, made before Cortez had arrived but after Hoffman had been made District Labor Manager. Brad Popejoy was terminated for failing to report an accident in September 2005, but reinstated by a grievance settlement for which UPS had insufficient data to identify the basis for settlement and who made the decision. See Aplt.App. at 147. This one factual gap in the record hardly creates a triable issue of pretext as to the reasons given for the decisions in all other Article 52 cases, including Medlocks'. To state the obvious, missing evidence, by definition, cannot establish facts that the evidence, if present, would have shown. The data insufficiency here demonstrates nothing more than we cannot say what the reasons were for reinstating Popejoy. To conclude somehow from this that Popejoy was reinstated for reasons that cast doubt on the justification for not reinstating Medlock would be sheer conjecture, which we have long recognized is an inadequate basis on which to oppose summary judgment, see, e.g., Hinds, 523 F.3d at 1198 n. 6 (quoting Branson v. Price River Coal Co., 853 F.2d 768, 771-72 (10th Cir.1988)). And while a tell-tale pattern of tactically missing data could perhaps warrant skepticism as to a limited set of data offered by an employer in support of its position, we have no such pattern here.
Medlock contends that three other facts bolster his case for a triable issue on pretext. Not one of these is material. First, he notes that he had been repeatedly admonished about not working fast enough, and had found it necessary to file numerous grievances over working excessive hours in order to complete his route. There is no evidence that work speed played a role in Medlock's termination and non-reinstatement; Cortez specifically testified to the contrary. But, even if it had played a role, that would not support Medlock's discrimination claim. Work speed or productivity is a facially neutral and obviously relevant performance criterion for a delivery driver. Had Medlock presented persuasive evidence demonstrating that the reasons given for terminating and not reinstating him were pretexts for getting rid of an unacceptably slow worker, that would not forestall summary judgment for UPS on his claims of age discrimination: an employer would be entitled to judgment as a matter of law if the record [on pretext] conclusively revealed some other, nondiscriminatory reason for the employer's decision. Zamora v. Elite Logistics, Inc., 478 F.3d 1160, 1172 (10th Cir.2007) (quoting Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Prods., Inc., 530 U.S. 133, 148, 120 S.Ct. 2097, 147 L.Ed.2d 105 (2000)). Medlock's suggestion that employer concern over sub-par work pace or productivity is a mask for age discrimination is untenable as a general inference and unsupported as a particular inference on our record. Second, Medlock notes that the parking brake and clutch on his truck were adjusted shortly after it was put back in action following his accident, and its tires were replaced as well. While the extensive testing done immediately after the accident, which found the truck in working order, would seem more compelling, we agree that this additional evidence, particularly the brake and clutch work, would have lent some support to Medlock's position in the grievance proceedings that some mechanical failure must have been responsible for his runaway accident. Regrettably, as the undisputed evidence in our record shows, these subsequent repairs were not brought to the attention of the decision-makers in Medlock's case. For that same reason, of course, the fact of the repairs does not undercut the validity of the decisions to terminate Medlock and deny his grievance seeking reinstatement. Finally, Medlock points out that UPS opposed his application for unemployment benefits and that the agent engaged by UPS to represent it in the proceedings falsely stated that Medlock had left the scene of the accident, failed to report the accident, and had only been put on suspension or disciplinary leave. Needless to say, the agent's actions are disreputable and distressing. But there is no evidence tying those actions to the decision-makers involved in Medlock's termination and non-reinstatement. And UPS's opposition to Medlock's application for benefits on the ground of misconduct does not imply any hidden agenda, much less a specifically age-discriminatory agenda, behind the decisions made by Cortez and Hoffman. In their view, Medlock had committed a serious infraction by failing to follow prescribed procedures and then attempted to deny responsibility for his actions. In sum, Medlock has not demonstrated a triable issue of pretext through comparison with other UPS employees or presentation of other circumstances sufficient to support a reasonable inference of age discrimination. As noted at the outset, however, he also insists that he offered direct evidence sufficient to make out a triable case of discrimination. We turn to that point next.