Opinion ID: 496702
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Jury Instructions on Retaliatory Discharge

Text: 41 In instructing the jury on Rowlett's discharge claim the district court stated: 42 As regards the claims of retaliatory discharge, you will recall that the evidence before you is to the effect that Mr. Rowlett had filed his own discriminatory claim with respect to the training issue before the New Hampshire Human Rights Commission, and his wife, Janet Silvia Rowlett, had filed a claim of sexual harassment against the defendant before the same commission. These claims were filed pursuant to Title Seven of the Federal Statute, set forth in Title 42 United States Code Section 2,000, et. seq., a statute itself which is not before you with respect to any issues you are to decide, but which statute permits people in the positions of Mr. Rowlett and his wife to file claims of discrimination in their employment. Under the Federal-State cooperative venture that administers such laws, the New Hampshire Human Rights Commission is the place where hearings are held with respect to such claims of discrimination, whether grounded on race, sex or other conditions of employment. With regard to the dual claims of discrimination therefore, with respect to any one of such claims, the elements are, first, that Mr. Rowlett's actions in participating in these proceedings before the Human Rights Commission were protected by law; second, that the actions taken against him by the defendant were in retaliation for such participation. If Mr. Rowlett establishes that he participated in a protected proceeding, and the fact that subsequent adverse action was taken against him by his employer, he has established a presumption or prima facie case of retaliatory discharge. It then becomes the obligation of the defendant, Anheuser-Busch, to articulate or explain that its reasons for its discharge of Mr. Rowlett were legitimate and non-discriminatory. If it furnishes such reasonable explanation of its actions, then the burden again shifts to Mr. Rowlett to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the reasons presented by the defendant for his discharge were a mere pretext for the actual motive of discharge, that is, that his race was a decisive reason the company discharged him from its employment. Such racial discrimination need not be the only reason for discharge, so long as a preponderance of the evidence demonstrates it to be a probable reason. Generally speaking, as I have just indicated to you, an employee may not only exercise his or her own rights to advance a discrimination claim pursuant to Title Seven, so-called, but may also assist another. But when, however, the employee seeks to assist other employees, if such assistance goes beyond mere advice, the issue for the jury to determine is whether, on the balance of the evidence, the actions taken with regard to such assistance so disrupts the internal discipline or the stable work environment of the employer that disciplinary action is warranted as against the employee. You are not here to second guess the business judgments of the defendant, but to determine if its actions were motivated by racial discrimination. 43 (Emphasis supplied). The court repeated this instruction in full in response to a question from the jury to explain the legal rights relative to participation in the human rights commission suit.... 44 Anheuser-Busch raises a host of objections to this instruction, some preserved at trial and some not. Most relate to Anheuser-Busch's contention that the instruction confused the jury by mixing up the two Human Rights Commission actions--Rowlett's and his wife's--and thereby shifted the jury's attention from intentional race discrimination. Anheuser-Busch argues that this confusing instruction, combined with the overly technical McDonnell-Douglas explanation of intentional discrimination, could well have encouraged the jury to abandon its collective common sense and, through a counter-intuitive analysis, to arrive at the conclusion that Rowlett's discharge was the result of intentional race discrimination, even though none of the members of the jury thought that Rowlett's being black had anything to do with the discharge. 45 There is some merit to Anheuser-Busch's position. The instruction is somewhat confusing, particularly the part referring to dual claims of discrimination. Anheuser-Busch is perfectly correct in asserting that Sec. 1981 does not provide a cause of action for discharge in retaliation for assisting a sex discrimination suit. See Great American Federal Savings & Loan Ass'n v. Novotny, 442 U.S. 366, 99 S.Ct. 2345, 60 L.Ed.2d 957 (1979). The jury's question regarding rights relative to participation in the human rights commission suit suggest that they may, in fact, have been confused on this point. The section of the instruction giving the Hochstadt balance between an employee's right to promote discrimination claims and the employer's interest in a stable work environment, see Hochstadt v. Worcester Foundation, 545 F.2d 222, 231 (1st Cir.1976), may also have unnecessarily focused the jury's attention on the sex discrimination claim. The better practice would have been to leave discussion of the sex discrimination claim out of the discharge instruction altogether. This was by no means a perfect, or even a good, jury instruction. Nevertheless, the instruction taken as a whole correctly focused on intentional race discrimination. We find it very important that the special verdict form, which the jury carried into its deliberations, asked Do you find that such retaliatory discharge of Mr. Rowlett was the result of purposeful racial discrimination on the part of defendant? The entire focus of the trial was whether Anheuser-Busch did what it did to Rowlett because he was black. We do not think that the instruction, confusing as it may have been, changed that focus, particularly in light of this very clear question on the special verdict form. See Pimental v. Pina, 815 F.2d 173 (1st Cir.1987) (finding that the jury's unequivocal answer in a special verdict form rendered an error in an instruction harmless). Furthermore, the large punitive damages award suggests that members of the jury understood, and were affected by, the case in a way that made sense to them, and not in the counter-intuitive way Anheuser-Busch suggests. The instruction is not grounds for reversal.