Opinion ID: 627950
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Claim For Retaliation

Text: 13 An employer is prohibited from retaliating against an employee because of the employee's opposition to an unlawful employment practice. Archuleta v. Colorado Dept. of Inst., Div. of Youth Services, 936 F.2d 483, 486 (10th Cir.1991). We apply the general approach for dealing with circumstantial evidence of disparate treatment cases adopted by the Supreme Court in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792 (1973), to retaliation claims under the ADEA. Anderson v. Phillips Petroleum Co., 861 F.2d 631, 634 (10th Cir.1988) (citing Lujan v. Walters, 813 F.2d 1051 (10th Cir.1987)). In order to establish a prima facia case of retaliation, a plaintiff must show that: 1) he engaged in protected opposition to discrimination; 2) adverse action by the employer followed the protected activity; and 3) a causal connection between the employee's activity and the adverse action occurred. Archuleta, 936 F.2d at 486 (citing Allen v. Denver Public School Bd., 928 F.2d 978 (10th Cir.1991)). Once the plaintiff has established a prima facia case, the burden of production shifts to the defendant who must articulate a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for the adverse action. Anderson, 861 F.2d at 634 (citing Burrus v. United Telephone Co. of Kansas, Inc., 683 F.2d 339 (10th Cir.1982), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 1071 (1982)). Once the defendant has dispelled the inference of retaliation by establishing a legitimate reason, the plaintiff may still prevail if [he] demonstrates the articulated reason was a mere pretext for discrimination. Id. 14 UTC challenges the jury's verdict that it retaliated against Mr. Neyman for voicing his age discrimination charges, arguing that there was no causal connection between Mr. Neyman's protected activity and the adverse treatment. UTC contends that there is no evidence of record to rebut the legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for the adverse action, which was his supervisor's assessment that he failed to meet his employment objectives. 15 Evidence of retaliation in this case was strong; reasonable inferences flowing from the evidence were sufficient to support Mr. Neyman's claim. Mr. Neyman's evidence showed that he engaged in protected activity under the ADEA by filing his internal age discrimination claim with UTC's personnel office and his formal EEOC charge and that his supervisors took adverse action subsequent to the charge, demoting him two levels to the position of Business Office Administrator. UTC's dispute with the retaliation verdict centers upon whether the supervisor's lowered performance evaluations and subsequent demotions were causally connected to his participation in protected activity. We find that the evidence viewed as a whole is sufficient to establish that retaliation occurred after and because Mr. Neyman filed his age discrimination charges. 16 The following events support the view that Mr. Neyman's supervisors at UTC were attempting to disguise their discriminatory conduct by altering his performance evaluations. For the first nine months of 1986, Mr. Neyman held the position of acting director of Human Resources and his supervisor was Lon Oberkrom. Mr. Neyman was evaluated at the 2 or commendable level; however, for the last three months of 1986, when he held the position of Manager of Methods and Procedures and his new supervisor was Sue Wade, he was rated as a 3 or proficient. Sue Wade's appraisal was the first evaluation generated after Mr. Neyman filed his in-house age discrimination complaint. 17 Mr. Neyman objected to the rating, and testified that based on his human resources experiences, the proper procedure would have been to average the two supervisor's ratings to get an overall evaluation for the year. Support for the use of an averaging system was corroborated by other human resources personnel at UTC. Ms. Wade refused to do this. If this procedure had been used, Mr. Neyman would have been rated as a 2 or commendable. 18 Ms. Wade continued to act as Mr. Neyman's supervisor for the first eight or nine months of 1987 and Ms. Krepps held the position for the final quarter of the year. Mr. Neyman held the position of Manager of Methods and Procedures for that entire year, so the 1987 appraisal was the first rating made after he filed of his formal EEOC age discrimination charge. Mr. Neyman's rating plummeted to a 4 or marginal; he had never received a marginal rating in his entire twenty-two year tenure with the company. A month later he was demoted. 19 An employer's discriminatory conduct in a retaliation setting may be inferred from circumstantial evidence, including attempts to build a record and disguise discriminatory purpose. The Court finds that the jury could have reasonably interpreted the evidence presented at trial to indicate that Mr. Neyman's 1987 appraisal, a sharp break from his successful past, was an attempt to retaliate against him for filing his EEOC age discrimination charge. Since error can only be found when evidence is susceptible to no reasonable inferences sustaining the position of the party against whom the motion is made, the jury's verdict must stand. See Prudential, 763 F.2d at 1171, cert. denied, 474 U.S. at 946. The district court's judgment must be affirmed.