Opinion ID: 773251
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Other Disparate Treatment Evidence

Text: 106 Straughn next contends that the discipline Delta administered to her was disproportionately severe in comparison with that meted out to one John Higgins, a white-male sales representative who had worked under Giglio in the Boston Marketing Office and supposedly engaged in comparable conduct. The record reflects that Higgins was disciplined for falsifying weekly sales reports relating to time spent with clients. Yet, it also plainly establishes that Higgins readily acknowledged the misrepresentations upon inquiry by Giglio. Consequently, Delta simply relegated Higgins to a less desirable sales territory and placed a letter of concern in his personnel file. 107 Evidence that an employer administered disparate treatment to similarly situated employees may be competent proof that the explanation given for the challenged employment action was pretextual, see Conward, 171 F.3d at 19, provided the plaintiff-employee can make a preliminary showing that others similarly situated . . . in all relevant respects were treated [more advantageously] by the employer. Id. at 20 (citing Perkins v. Brigham & Women's Hosp., 78 F.3d 747, 751 (1st Cir. 1996)) (emphasis added) (Reasonableness is the touchstone: while the plaintiff's case and the comparison cases that [s]he advances need not be perfect replicas, they must closely resemble one another in respect to relevant facts and circumstances.). 108 The district court correctly concluded that Straughn and Higgins were not similarly situated in certain relevant respects. For one thing, their wrongful conduct differed materially. Although each misled a supervisor, Straughn stood to realize a substantial monetary benefit through her deception - more than $11,000 - whereas Higgins did not. Yet more importantly, unlike Straughn, Higgins forthrightly acknowledged his misconduct when first confronted, whereas Straughn repeatedly attempted to deceive Giglio in an effort to conceal the fact that she had retained workers' compensation benefits to which she was not entitled. These differentiating or mitigating circumstances unquestionably undermined Straughn's attempt to demonstrate that her conduct was similar to Higgins's in all material respects. See id. at 21. Consequently, her disparate treatment claim was fatally flawed. 109 As Straughn failed to generate a genuine issue of material fact regarding either pretext or disparate treatment, summary judgment was entirely proper on her gender and race discrimination claims.