Opinion ID: 4104203
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Events Leading to Termination

Text: The Monday following his doctor’s appointment, Cady traveled to the Remington facility in St. Cloud, Minnesota. Franz tasked Cady with increasing the facility’s production capacity. Among other jobs, Franz wanted Cady to assemble Creform work stations—benches made out of -3- Case No. 16-5035 Robert Cady v. Remington Arms Co. interlocking pipes and joints that can be customized to fit a particular manufacturing task. According to Cady, his job was to train others how to build the stations, not to construct them himself. Cady arrived at the facility on the morning of Tuesday, July 16, 2013, and met with Todd Mittelstaedt, the plant manager. Mittelstaedt told him that the facility had recently lost eleven employees and was understaffed. Furthermore, Remington’s chief operating officer had imposed a deadline to complete the Creform stations. Mittelstaedt therefore instructed Cady to spend the next few days building work benches. Cady responded that he did not have a problem constructing the stations, though he expected other employees to help. Mittelstaedt responded that the facility’s production manager, Lee Vogel, would help Cady build the stations. Vogel and Cady walked to a paved lot behind the facility, where the unassembled Creform components were stacked in the back of a semi-truck. Vogel climbed into the truck and pulled the parts to the mouth of the trailer bed, where Cady unloaded them. Shortly after starting the work, Cady told Vogel that his medication made him sensitive to sunlight. Vogel gave him sunscreen, and they moved to the shade. As the morning progressed, Cady worried about aggravating his back injury. Vogel had stepped away from the project, leaving Cady to build the stations alone. According to Cady, climbing in and out of the truck to off-load the parts irritated his back. And to build the stations, he had to fasten and screw bolts, bend over, and saw pipe, which he thought might also strain his back. In addition, he fretted about standing for long periods on the pavement. Shortly before lunch, Cady spoke with Greg Parker, one of his supervisors in Kentucky, “about the unsafe conditions” at the facility. Parker testified that Cady told him that “[h]e was concerned about his back, doing this up and down” and that “he didn’t want to stand on concrete -4- Case No. 16-5035 Robert Cady v. Remington Arms Co. for long periods of time because . . . he felt he was hurting his back.” Cady also told Parker that “it was not conducive for him to be in the sun at that time because of his medication.” And Cady recommended that they “hire a lower paid person to . . . help him do this work, that he was above this pay grade to be doing this work out in the sun.” Parker instructed Cady to ask Vogel for better accommodations at the facility. After speaking with Parker, Cady went to the conference room and worked on his computer. Vogel found Cady in the conference room. Cady expressed reservations about continuing to build the stations, and Vogel recommended they talk to Mittelstaedt. In Mittelstaedt’s office, Cady told Mittelstaedt for the first time that he had concerns about his back. Cady also told Mittelstaedt that he could continue to work on the benches, but that he needed to “mix it up” and not work exclusively on the stations. According to Mittelstaedt and Vogel, Cady also complained that Remington had not hired someone else to build the stations, that his medication made him sensitive to sunlight, that he had been locked out of the building, and that there was too much forklift traffic behind the facility. Mittelstaedt called Parker after the meeting. According to Parker, “Todd indicated that [Cady] had met with him and that [Cady] had explained that he had a back surgery and a concern of standing on concrete. . . . Todd indicated [] that he didn’t need [Cady] there if [Cady] was going to not be able to perform the physical labor of building the Creform stations.” In the mid-afternoon, Parker called Cady and told him to return to his hotel. That evening Cady’s supervisors and Norwood called Cady at his hotel, and told him to return to Kentucky the following day. When he arrived at work on Thursday morning, Remington fired him for “performance issues.” -5- Case No. 16-5035 Robert Cady v. Remington Arms Co.