Opinion ID: 2328929
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The jury instruction on constructive discharge

Text: One of Young's principal arguments is that the trial court erred when it instructed the jury on the law of constructive discharge. In the challenged instruction, the court said: By constructive discharge the law means that the employer tolerates discriminatory working conditions that would cause a reasonable person to resign. In deciding whether working conditions would cause a reasonable person to resign, you determine whether Ms. Sutherland reasonably expected opportunity for advancement and whether her employer locked her in a position where she could expect no advancement. That is, you determine whether a reasonable person in Ms. Sutherland's position would view it as a career-ending situation. Constructive discharge does not require an employer to have specific intent to force the employee to quit. It is sufficient if the employer tolerates discriminatory working conditions that would drive a reasonable person to resign. Constructive discharge in the context of a promotion occurs where an employee has reasonable expectations of opportunity to advance and the employer's action essentially locked the employee into the situation from which there is apparently no relief. ... [T]he mere fact of discrimination in promotion is not enough to prove constructive discharge. There must be proof not only of the discriminatory failure to promote, but other indications of a discriminatory animus, that is, an intention of ill will that would cause a reasonable person to see that lack of promotion as a career-ending action. Young maintains that this instruction, much of which is taken almost verbatim from Hopkins, is flawed in several respects. First, Young argues that it misstates the law by failing to require a finding of intolerable conditions in the workplace. We disagree. As the Court of Appeals observed in Hopkins, a plaintiff may establish intolerable working conditions by proving that the employer simply tolerates discriminatory working conditions that would drive a reasonable person to resign. 263 U.S.App.D.C. at 335, 825 F.2d at 472. The instruction given here says precisely that. More importantly, in a constructive discharge case based on failure to promote, intolerable conditions are principally shown by proof that the employee had a reasonable expectation of advancement and that the employer engaged in some discriminatory conduct which established the lack of promotion as career-ending. See Clark, supra, 214 U.S.App.D.C. at 356, 665 F.2d at 1174; see also Parrett, supra, 737 F.2d at 694. This instruction, viewed as a whole, sufficiently conveys that aspect of the law as well. Second, Young asserts that the instruction is confusing because it fails to explain what intolerable conditions are and because it confuses the law of discrimination and constructive discharge. We are mystified by this first objection because the instruction does not even use the phrase intolerable conditions; thus a definition of that phrase was unnecessary. As to the latter objectionthat the instruction confuses the concepts of discrimination and constructive dischargewe again find no infirmity. The instruction clearly states that Sutherland could not establish that she was constructively discharged solely by proving that the denial of her promotion was the result of discrimination. This is an accurate statement of the law. It makes sufficiently clear that proof of discrimination cannot, by itself, be a plaintiff's sole basis for contending that she was constructively discharged. See Hopkins, supra, 263 U.S.App.D.C. at 336, 825 F.2d at 474. Finally, Young contends that the instruction improperly asked the jury to determine whether Sutherland was constructively discharged from Sutherland's subjective standpoint, rather than the standpoint of a reasonable person in her position. See, e.g., Bristow v. Daily Press, Inc., 770 F.2d 1251, 1255 (4th Cir.1985), cert. denied, 475 U.S. 1082, 106 S.Ct. 1461, 89 L.Ed.2d 718 (1986); Halbrook, supra, 735 F.Supp. at 125-126; Nobler, supra, 702 F.Supp. at 1030. This contention is meritless. The first quoted paragraph of the instruction makes clear that the operative viewpoint is that of a reasonable person, and each paragraph thereafter reiterates that requirement through the use of the word reasonable. We fail to see what more the trial judge could have said.