Opinion ID: 168784
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Treatment of Younger Employees

Text: M r. M erritt argues that Tellabs demonstrated a pattern of replacing older employees with younger employees. He also highlights the favorable treatment given younger employees, including his replacement and other ILEC sales-team leaders. W hile a pattern of replacing older employees with younger persons may constitute a “thread of evidence” to support a finding of discrimination, Greene v. Safeway Stores, Inc., 98 F.3d 554, 561 (10th Cir. 1996), here there was insufficient evidence to establish a pattern. As the district court noted, M r. M erritt submitted only his own deposition testimony to support the alleged pattern of replacements, and his testimony generally was based on “secondhand inform ation,” “scuttlebutt,” “w ater-cooler type conversations” and his own perceptions and opinions. Aplt. App., Vol. I at 77-78, ¶¶ 51-58; id., Vol. II at 299-300, ¶¶ 51-58. Such unsupported information is insufficient to establish pretext. See Jaramillo, 427 F.3d at 1314 (“Hearsay testimony that would not be admissible at trial is not sufficient to defeat a motion for sum mary judgment.”). M r. M erritt also contends that his younger replacement and the younger ILEC sales vice presidents w ere treated more favorably than he was, because their employment was not terminated even though they also failed to meet their quotas. But M r. M erritt’s sales performance w as worse than the performance of these -8- employees, which provides a basis other than age for distinguishing Tellabs’s treatment of them. M oreover, in addition to the failure to meet the Qwest quota, Tellabs identified other performance deficiencies underlying the termination of M r. M erritt’s employment, including his failure to sell new products to Qwest. Aplt. App., Vol. I at 253, 265. The record does not establish that the other employees were cited for similar conduct, which again provides a basis for distinguishing Tellabs’s decision to terminate M r. M erritt’s employment while retaining the other employees. Thus, Tellabs’s alleged failure to dismiss younger employees does not create a genuine issue of fact concerning pretext.