Opinion ID: 4027558
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: IWCA Retaliatory-Discharge Claim

Text: The City’s opening salvo is a challenge to Chief Judge Castillo’s decision to order a new trial. The district court has the discretion to “grant a new trial on all or some of the issues—and to any party,” FED. R. CIV. P. 59(a), and a new trial should be granted if a prejudicial error occurred, Bankcard Am., Inc. v. Universal Bancard Sys., Inc., 203 F.3d 477, 480 (7th Cir. 2000). We usually review an order granting a new trial for abuse of discretion, but normally the same judge presides at trial and also decides the posttrial motion. McClain v. Owens–Corning Fiberglas Corp., 139 F.3d 1124, 1126 (7th Cir. 1998). Here, Chief Judge Castillo ordered a new trial after the original trial judge died. His ruling, moreover, was based on a legal determination concerning the Fifth Amendment privilege. In these circumstances de novo review applies. See Bankcard Am., 203 F.3d at 481. Chief Judge Castillo concluded that a new trial was war- ranted because Judge Hibbler should not have wholly excused Sullivan and Drumgould from testifying based on blanket assertions of their Fifth Amendment privilege Nos. 14-3438 & 14-3494 11 against self-incrimination. That ruling correctly understands how the privilege works in this situation; in a civil case, the jury is permitted to hear evidence of a witness’s invocation of the privilege and may draw an adverse inference from it. See Baxter v. Palmigiano, 425 U.S. 308, 318 (1976) (“[T]he Fifth Amendment does not forbid adverse inferences against parties to civil actions when they refuse to testify … .”); Empress Casino Joliet Corp. v. Balmoral Racing Club, Inc., No. 15-2526, 2016 WL 4097439, at  (Aug. 2, 2016) (“The Fifth Amendment allows adverse inference instructions against parties in civil actions.”); Evans v. City of Chicago, 513 F.3d 735, 745 (7th Cir. 2008); Harris v. City of Chicago, 266 F.3d 750, 755 (7th Cir. 2001); United States v. Awerkamp, 497 F.2d 832, 836 (7th Cir. 1974). The City suggests that the error was harmless and therefore not a good reason to order a new trial. As a remedy, the City asks us to reinstate the verdict of the first jury, which found in the City’s favor on the IWCA retaliatory-discharge claim. We don’t need to decide whether the chief judge correctly construed this legal error as serious enough to justify a new trial. The undisputed evidence shows that this claim should not have gone to a jury at all. A claim for retaliatory-discharge is not authorized by the IWCA itself. Rather, “[t]he Illinois Supreme Court has recognized a common-law cause of action for retaliatory discharge where an employee is terminated because of his actual or anticipated exercise of workers’ compensation rights.” Beatty v. Olin Corp., 693 F.3d 750, 753 (7th Cir. 2012). The cause of action is “a ‘narrow’ and ‘limited’ exception to the at-will employment doctrine,” and the state high court 12 Nos. 14-3438 & 14-3494 has been “disinclined to expand” it. Id. (quoting Zimmerman v. Buchheit of Spart, Inc., 645 N.E.2d 877, 881 (Ill. 1994)). To prevail on his claim that he was fired in retaliation for exercising his rights under the IWCA, Hillmann had to prove three elements: (1) he was employed by the City at the time of his injury; (2) he exercised a right granted by the IWCA; and (3) his discharge was causally related to the exercise of his rights under the IWCA. Grabs v. Safeway, Inc., 917 N.E.2d 122, 126 (Ill. App. Ct. 2009). Hillmann’s case, like many others, turns on the element of causation. The ultimate question in the causation inquiry “is the employer’s motive in discharging the employee.” Clemons v. Mech. Devices Co., 704 N.E.2d 403, 406 (Ill. 1998). It’s not enough for the plaintiff to establish that his workplace injury and initiation of a workers’ compensation claim set in motion a chain of events that ended in his discharge. Phillips v. Cont’l Tire The Americas, LLC, 743 F.3d 475, 478 (7th Cir. 2014); Casanova v. Am. Airlines, Inc., 616 F.3d 695, 698 (7th Cir. 2010). That is, but-for causation is necessary but not sufficient to prove the causation element of a retaliatory-discharge claim. Phillips, 743 F.3d at 478; Casanova, 616 F.3d at 697. Accordingly, under Illinois law a claim for retaliatory discharge requires—at a minimum—that the relevant decision-maker knew that the employee intended to file or had filed a workers’ compensation claim. Beatty, 693 F.3d at 753; Hunt v. Davita, Inc., 680 F.3d 775, 779 (7th Cir. 2012); Hiatt v. Rockwell Int’l Corp., 26 F.3d 761, 769 n.7 (7th Cir. 1994) (“Evidence that those responsible for an employee’s termination knew he intended to file, or, as in this case, had filed, a workers’ compensation claim is essential to a retaliatory Nos. 14-3438 & 14-3494 13 discharge action under Illinois law.” (citing Marin v. Am. Meat Packing Co., 562 N.E.2d 282, 286 (Ill. App. Ct. 1990))). In Hillmann’s case the relevant decision-maker was Sanchez, who as Commissioner of Streets and Sanitation made the final decision about which positions within his department would be eliminated in the RIF. No evidence suggests that Sanchez knew that Hillmann had filed a workers’ compensation claim. Hillmann hammers away on the evidence that Murphy and Hennessey were aware of his injury and gave him less prestigious and more physically rigorous assignments that seemed designed to aggravate his injury rather than to accommodate it. But they were not the RIF decision-makers. Illinois courts haven’t recognized a cat’s paw theory of liability in this context, 1 and that theory is hard to reconcile with the cases holding that the causation element requires evidence that the relevant decision-maker knew about the plaintiff’s workers’ compensation claim. In any event, Hillmann hasn’t litigated his case on a cat’s paw theory, so we have no reason to consider the question here. Because Commissioner Sanchez made the final decision to include the timekeeper positions in the RIF and no evidence suggests that he knew about Hillmann’s workers’ compensation claim, the IWCA retaliatory-discharge claim fails as a matter of law. It should not have been submitted to one jury, let alone two. This conclusion makes it unnecessary for us to consider the City’s more limited argument for a new trial on the issue of damages. 1One recent opinion of the Illinois Appellate Court considered the cat’s paw theory of liability but concluded that the facts did not support it. See Cippola v. Village of Oak Lawn, 26 N.E.3d 432, 444 (Ill. App. Ct. 2015). 14 Nos. 14-3438 & 14-3494