Opinion ID: 502246
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: the law applied in this case

Text: 12
13 The district court concluded that the Department has met its burden of persuasion with evidence that it reasonably accommodated plaintiff's handicap. Carter, 651 F.Supp. at 1301. Implicit in this conclusion is the factual finding that the Department did not assign Carter to a position in which it was impossible to reasonably accommodate a visually handicapped person. We review this finding under the clearly erroneous standard. 14 The nature and requirements of Carter's job were not disputed. The parties agreed that answering congressional inquiries in this instance required considerable technical knowledge of three civil rights statutes and of the implementing regulations and the implementing policy directives. Tr. at 160. The government conceded that Mr. Carter did not have a fundamental understanding of [those] basic statutory provisions. Id. It was also undisputed that answering congressional correspondence requires considerable research into regulatory guidelines and letters of noncompliance; it also involves drafting and revising replies and in the process incorporating verbal and written suggestion from others in the office. See id. at 46-47. The district court implicitly found that with the assistance of readers or other accommodations, a visually handicapped person would be capable of performing these functions. 1 15 Carter now challenges this finding, based on both his own testimony at trial and the testimony of his former supervisor. Specifically, Carter testified that he was the only blind person in the OCR charged with answering congressional correspondence and that even if he were provided with a full-time reader and extensive equipment (which in his estimation would case $65,000-$70,000), he still could not be as efficient as a sighted person in performing the duties expected of him. See id. at 100. According to Carter, he could only do satisfactory research if all the materials were written in Braille--and they were not. In his words: There is no way that you can interpret subtle thoughts to a reader who is doing research.... To delve seemingly with no direction into files to get information--I don't know how you could do it unless you can see enough to do it yourself. Id. Norma Mohr, Carter's former supervisor, corroborated Carter's opinion. She explained: 16 [The congressional mail] required research through the files, ... it involves consulting the guidelines, letters of noncompliance.... Some preliminary research is typically required before you can give a sensible answer.... The other thing is ... the letter takes a trip down the corridors from office to office and notes are put in the margins, so the letter writer must come back with his original draft and see these notations and make decisions, and perhaps incorporate them, ... I don't think a visually handicapped person could do this in a timely way. 17 Id. at 46. The record, however, also contains evidence that conflicts with the testimony of Carter and Ms. Mohr. Dale Pullen, Carter's supervisor for most of the period covered by the complaint, testified that although he agreed that Carter was improperly placed on the Special Concerns Staff, in his view Carter was perfectly capable of answering congressional correspondence. Id. at 242. According to Pullen, Carter's letters were primarily issue-oriented and less than routine; no legal analysis was required for 95% of his work. Id. at 223-24. Pullen testified that Carter needed only very basic skills, such as making phone calls within the office to obtain information and inserting boilerplate language into form letters. Id. at 225. 18 The district court apparently credited the government's testimony on Carter's ability to perform the functions of answering congressional correspondence over the testimony offered by Carter's witnesses. The district court's credibility determinations are entitled to the greatest deference from this court on appeal. See, e.g., Wainwright v. Witt, 469 U.S. 412, 105 S.Ct. 844, 83 L.Ed.2d 841 (1985). When a trial judge's finding is based on his decision to credit the testimony of one or more witnesses, each of whom has told a coherent and facially plausible story that is not contradicted by extrinsic evidence, that finding, if not internally inconsistent, can virtually never be clear error. Anderson v. Bessemer City, 470 U.S. 564, 575, 105 S.Ct. 1504, 1512, 84 L.Ed.2d 518 (1985). Because we cannot second-guess the trial court's credibility determinations, and because we are not left with the definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed, we uphold the finding below that Carter was not assigned to a position in which it was impossible for him to be reasonably accommodated. 19
20 Next, we consider whether the district court properly concluded that the Department satisfied its burden of proving that it reasonably accommodated Carter's handicap. We have no quarrel with the district court's factual determinations that the Department provided persons to act as readers for plaintiff, it furnished special equipment and office space, and it decreased plaintiff's workload, Carter, 651 F.Supp. at 1301; these findings are amply supported by the record. Nor do we disagree with the district court's formulation of the applicable legal standard in this case; although [t]he government is not obligated under the statute to provide plaintiff with every accommodation he may request, the government must, at a minimum, provide reasonable accommodation as is necessary to enable him to perform his essential functions. Id. at 1301 (emphasis added). Rather, our concern is whether the district court, in applying the appropriate legal principles to the particular facts of this case, could properly find that the accommodations provided by the Department made it possible for Carter to perform his essential responsibilities. As we discussed above, our review of this application of law to fact is not limited by the clearly erroneous standard. 21 Carter testified that during the period covered by the complaint, he had only two part-time readers, who together spent a total of 18 hours a week (approximately 3.5 hours a day) with him; that neither of those readers was selected by Carter, that Carter repeatedly told his supervisors that his readers could not read and didn't have the skills necessary; and that it was not until April 1982 that he was given a reader of his choice. See Tr. at 77, 83, 84. On the other hand, Carter conceded at trial that he never told his readers that they were not satisfactory or made any suggestions as to how they could improve their services. See id. at 116-17. Furthermore, in a memorandum to the acting director of the Special Concerns Staff dated August 27, 1981, Carter himself stated that in order to perform his duties, he needed a reader to work a minimum of 20 hours per week--only a few more hours of reader time than the amount he actually received. See id. at 211. Moreover, Carter's supervisor Pullen testified that the personnel office, at his request, immediately made efforts to secure for Carter a full-time reader that [Carter] had some say in selecting, and that although Carter did not get a reader of his choice until April 1982, he had access to anybody in the office in the meanwhile, since the entire Special Concerns Staff had been asked to be available to Mr. Carter any time he needed some help reading. Id. at 228-33. In addition, the record indicates that even after Carter was provided with the reader of his choice, his supervisors continued to find his work unsatisfactory and, in June 1982, recommended that he be discharged. See id. at 274. Finally, while other people in the OCR were drafting up to 12 letters per week, Carter's workload was reduced to half that amount, 6 letters per week. 2 See id. at 248. 22 Based on this evidence, the trial court concluded that the government had reasonably accommodated Carter and that Carter had not substantiated his contention that the additional accommodations he requested--including a voice synthesized computer and two floppy disk drives--were necessary for adequate performance of his job. See Tr. at 98. To be sure, a reader of the record may be somewhat perplexed as to why the Department would assign Carter to a job that was so research and reading-intensive in the first place and then delay in providing Carter with full-time readers. Nonetheless, the district court could reasonably conclude that the accommodations actually provided by the Department made it possible for Carter to perform his essential duties. We therefore uphold the district court's ultimate finding that the Department did not fail to reasonably accommodate Carter in violation of Sec. 501 of the Rehabilitation Act. 23 We also uphold the finding that the Department did not retaliate against Carter in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. Sec. 2000e-3(a). The record amply supports the district court's determination that Carter failed to prove that there existed a causal connection between his filing of the EEO complaint and the adverse employment action taken against him. 24 Affirmed.