Opinion ID: 773251
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Disparate Workplace Treatment

Text: 63 Straughn claims that Giglio singled her out for inferior work assignments, unfairly criticized her performance, and withheld various perquisites and inducements accorded similarly situated sales representatives. The district court determined that the evidence Straughn tendered to demonstrate pretext was insufficient in light of the countervailing evidence that Delta management reasonably believed that Straughn repeatedly lied to her superiors regarding her receipt and wrongful retention of workers' compensation benefits while absent on accident leave and receiving full salary. See District Court Opinion, at 24. 8 After evaluating Straughn's differential treatment claim against the totality of the evidence . . . 'as part of an aggregate package of proof[,]' Fernandes, 199 F.3d at 581 (citation omitted), we conclude that the district court ruling is founded on adequate record support. 64 Although pretext may be established with evidence of differential treatment in the workplace[,] id. (quoting Mesnick v. General Elec. Co., 950 F.2d 816, 824 (1st Cir. 1991), cert. denied, 504 U.S. 985 (1992)) (internal quotation marks omitted), Straughn failed to sustain her evidentiary burden in relation to the claim that she was singled out for inferior work assignments. The record discloses that the Vermont and Western New Hampshire sales territory, to which Straughn initially was assigned, historically has generated lower revenues than all but one other sales territory within the Boston Marketing Office area and accordingly has been selected in the past as a training territory for relatively inexperienced sales representatives. 65 Nor did Straughn tender evidence that there was any normal time frame within which sales representatives in training customarily were transferred to more lucrative sales territories. Similarly, she proffered no evidence regarding any criteria utilized by Delta in determining when newer sales representatives were considered eligible for transfer to more desirable sales territories. 66 On the other hand, the record plainly discloses that a white male sales representative drew the Maine sales territory, which is comparable to the Vermont-Western New Hampshire sales territory in terms of the driving distances and relatively low sales revenues. Yet Straughn proffered no evidence regarding the tenure of her counterpart in the Maine sales territory. Finally, there is no record evidence that Straughn's experience or tenure differed in any material respect from that of her predecessors in the Vermont-Western New Hampshire sales territory. 67 Since Straughn tendered no competent evidence that her initial assignment as a sales representative differed materially from that of other relatively new sales representatives in the Boston Marketing Office, summary judgment was appropriate. Se id.; Conward, 171 F.3d at 20 (Where . . . the plaintiff in a disparate treatment race [or gender] discrimination case offers comparative evidence . . . to raise an inference of racial [or gender-based] discrimination, [she] must provide a suitable provenance for the evidence by showing that others similarly situated . . . in all relevant respects were treated differently by the employer.) (emphasis added). 68