Opinion ID: 2653538
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Gasperut’s Warning

Text: Next, plaintiff contends that we may infer Gasperut’s knowledge from the fact that she cautioned Rollins and the others the next morning to “watch what you say.” Gasperut explained that an off-hand comment is not necessarily harassment and plaintiff did not ask her “to make a No. 13-1376 13 big deal out of it.” She added that she did not have a “right to keep a secret like that,” but had “an obligation to deal with it” without making a “bigger deal out of something that wasn’t a big deal.” Gasperut testified that she spoke briefly to Rollins, VanZoest, and Lithosit as they gathered in the morning. She cautioned them to be careful about what they say at the dinner table after a couple of beers, explaining: You have to be careful what you say and you have to recognize that there are people that are around you from time to time that are, you know, not part of your regular circle, and you’ve got to be aware of what you say, when you say it, how you say it, and how it might affect others, and so please be careful. In other terms, Gasperut explained that she said, You can’t always know your audience well enough to know what will bother people and what won’t bother people, so just be careful what you say and keep your comments – I mean, don’t make any comments that suggest any, I don’t know, bias, or something like that. I didn’t specifically say national origin or protected class or anything like that. I just said, Try not to be offensive to the people that are around you. Neither the statement that Gasperut felt an obligation to say something about the discussion that had made plaintiff uncomfortable, nor the fact that she cautioned members of the executive team not to be offensive, undermines the evidence that Gasperut did not understand plaintiff to be complaining about bias based on race or national origin. Finally, plaintiff argues that knowledge may be established for purposes of the “cat’s paw” theory because there is circumstantial evidence that Gasperut’s warning nonetheless signaled to Rollins and the others that plaintiff had engaged in protected activity. That is, plaintiff argues, when Gasperut referred to people outside their “regular circle” who could be offended, and since the “brothers” comment occurred in their presence, the executive team could have thought the warning was because Trujillo had complained to her. Gasperut denied that she indicated as much, either implicitly or explicitly, and said she “made it sound like [she] was the No. 13-1376 14 one who picked up that they were maybe a little insensitive the night before and that they needed to watch that in the future.” Indeed, Gasperut was also not part of their “regular circle.” Rollins testified that he thought Gasperut had taken offense at his use of profanity during dinner the night before, and both he and Lihoset testified that they took the admonition as a reminder about maintaining professionalism during dinner meetings. The evidence is not sufficient to permit an inference that members of the executive team intuited from the warning that plaintiff had engaged in protected opposition activity.