Opinion ID: 5949
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Late Submission of Odom's Application

Text: 41 As noted, Odom's application did not reach the panel until after the panel's initial screening had been completed. Inexplicably, that application was not transmitted with the original batch of five from Fort Worth. Like one other among the seven applications from Fort Worth, Odom's apparently was omitted from the package. Importantly, however, nothing in the record--and nothing urged by Odom--reflects any evidence of conscious or intentional delay, much less racial or age animus. 42 When Odom's application was received, the panelists conferred by telephone about its merits. Moreover, when Odom was not granted an interview, the panel reversed itself at Strader's behest and interviewed Odom. Yet from the palpable innuendo in the district court's opinion, we cannot help but infer that during the trial the court came to believe that some nexus existed between age and racial discrimination and the delayed submission of Odom's application. The unfairness of such an implication is demonstrated, however, in the court's statement early in its opinion: 43 Inspector Odom's application was one of the two that, for some unknown reason, either had not been received by the review panel with the rest of the Fort Worth Division applications or was not properly completed by Mr. Strader, despite the fact that Inspector Odom had submitted his application well in advance of the deadline. 19 44 As the district court stated, there is no evidence concerning why Odom's application was not timely submitted. Neither is there any evidence that it was not properly completed by Mr. Strader. The implication, by the court's repeated references to that late submission in context with other practices questioned by the court, that discriminatory animus against Odom produced the delivery glitch--is wholly baseless. Even Odom's counsel, at oral argument, would not claim that the late delivery was an intentional or deliberate act by Strader or anyone else. We cannot help but wonder at the court's failure to mention Strader's successful mitigating efforts on Odom's behalf to get the review panel to reconsider his application when it finally arrived in Memphis after the panel initially failed to grant him an interview--reconsideration that resulted in the panel's decision to reverse itself and grant Odom an interview. We find the district court's implied finding of discrimination in the isolated fact of late delivery of Odom's application to the review panel to be clearly erroneous. 45