Opinion ID: 796563
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Determining a Cut-off Point for Front Pay Awards

Text: 54 The defendants seek review of one final matter on the measure of compensatory damages. Upon the district court's instruction, the Special Master considered front pay awards to end on the earlier of the date of a plaintiff's retirement, or after two years of service as a captain. See Special Master Report, R.209 at 2. The defendants submit that the appropriate cut-off point should have been the first unhindered opportunity for promotion. 55 The defendants are correct that our ruling in Biondo sets an end-point for front pay at the time of the first unimpeded promotional opportunity, not a particular plaintiff's actual date of promotion. Biondo, 382 F.3d at 691. This approach reflects Biondo's general application of lost chance principles: The plaintiff who suffered discrimination in promotion did not lose a promotion, but some quantifiable chance at a promotion; when that chance is unimpeded by discrimination, the injury ceases. 56 In this case, the district court erred in concluding that the plaintiffs' promotional opportunities would not be unhindered, as Biondo requires, because they would be placed back in the pool of eligible applicants, not given preferential treatment for the first promotional opportunities. R.291 at 299 ([W]hen I first read [about the unhindered promotional opportunities claimed by the defendants], I understood it to mean there would be no hindrance to them being the next promotion. Now from what I have heard I'm inclined to believe that that does not mean unhindered, it just means that they're back in the pool that is eligible.); id. at 294 (To argue [as defendants have] that there are still other candidates seems to defeat the defendants' earlier argument that nine of the plaintiffs will have unburdened promotional opportunities.). On remand, the district court must determine the time a reasonable person needs to achieve the same or an equivalent position in the absence of discrimination, Biondo, 382 F.3d at 691, which in this context, as in Biondo itself, means an opportunity to compete on equal footing with other candidates of any race. We note that, because the City promotes officers to captains only when a vacancy in the rank of captain arises, the frequency of this availability should be among the relevant considerations in determining when each of the seventeen plaintiffs, and in particular, those who have not yet been promoted or have not yet retired, would have an unimpeded promotional opportunity.