Opinion ID: 811067
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Availability. In what is logically a threshold

Text: argument, HEI challenges the availability of front pay as a matter of law. Because this challenge raises a purely legal question, it engenders de novo review. See Perry v. Blum, 629 F.3d 1, 8 (1st Cir. 2010). The centerpiece of HEI's argument is the proposition that, as a matter of law, front pay is not available when a plaintiff has received the benefit of an award of double or treble damages. This proposition is all bleat and no wool. HEI claims that this proposition is venerated in First Circuit precedent. This claim is specious. The seminal case on -19- which HEI relies is Wildman v. Lerner Stores Corp., 771 F.2d 605 (1st Cir. 1985). There, the plaintiff had received an award of double damages and the district court had denied front pay. Id. at 616. While we affirmed the denial of front pay, our decision in no way hinted, let alone held, that multiplied damages and front pay are mutually exclusive. Rather, we based our ruling on the wide discretion vested in the district court with respect to awards of front pay — a discretion that could be exercised to take account of the inherently speculative nature of front pay. See id.; see also Lussier v. Runyon, 50 F.3d 1103, 1109 (1st Cir. 1995) (discussing Wildman); Powers v. Grinnell Corp., 915 F.2d 34, 42-43 (1st Cir. 1990) (same). This same principle animated our decisions in the other cases highlighted by HEI. See, e.g., Rodriguez-Torres v. Caribbean Forms Mfr., Inc., 399 F.3d 52, 67 (1st Cir. 2005); Carey v. Mt. Desert Island Hosp., 156 F.3d 31, 40-41 (1st Cir. 1998). In any event, the cases upon which HEI relies strike a common chord. In each of them, the district court denied front pay,3 and we upheld that denial. See, e.g., Rodriguez-Torres, 399 F.3d at 67; Carey, 156 F.3d at 40-41. By their own terms, those 3 In many situations, front pay is an equitable remedy rather than an element of damages. See Johnson v. Spencer Press of Me., Inc., 364 F.3d 368, 380 (1st Cir. 2004). Here, however, the parties and the district court treated front pay as an element of damages to be submitted to the jury. Neither party has suggested that the court, rather than the jury, should have been the arbiter of front pay in the first instance. Thus, we do not pursue the point further. -20- decisions are inapposite to the case at hand, in which we are asked to set aside a ruling upholding an award of front pay. If more were needed — and we doubt that it is — the purposes of front pay and multiplied damages are so disparate that a per se rule of mutual exclusivity makes no sense. The purpose of a front pay award is to help to make a plaintiff whole. Lussier, 50 F.3d at 1112 n.10. Conversely, multiplication of damages, at least under Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 151B, § 9, is essentially punitive in nature. Fontaine v. Ebtec Corp., 613 N.E.2d 881, 889 (Mass. 1993) (internal quotation marks omitted). In other words, the multiplication factor is meant to punish the wrongdoer for egregious conduct. It follows that there is no principled basis to bar front pay simply because multiplied damages are in prospect. Since HEI's argument for precluding front pay as a matter of law is premised on an incorrect reading of the cases and is jurisprudentially unsound, we reject it. 2. Evidentiary Sufficiency. In declining to remit the front pay award, the district court concluded that the plaintiff would have worked at HEI until the end of 2013 (or so the jury could have found). See Trainor II, 2012 WL 119597, at . HEI insists that there was insufficient evidence to support a rational conclusion that, absent the plaintiff's unlawful termination, he would have worked at HEI through 2013. Addressing this challenge -21- requires us to take the evidence bearing on front pay in the light most favorable to the plaintiff. See Kelley, 140 F.3d at 355. In the last analysis, a front pay calculation is a prediction of a series of future events. To that extent, crafting a front pay award necessarily entails some degree of speculation. See Lussier, 50 F.3d at 1109. Here, however, the task of vaticination is made simpler by the plaintiff's age: at the time of trial (March of 2011), the plaintiff was 63 years old. This means that his normal retirement year (age 65) was only two years away. Moreover, there was no evidence of any corporate policy mandating early retirement. The plaintiff testified flatly that he intended to work at HEI until the end of 2013. This statement of intent was supported by circumstantial evidence; his professed work expectancy was coterminous with both the year of his eligibility for full Social Security benefits and the year in which he would vest at the 80% level in the last of HEI's investment funds. Based on this testimony, the jury's forecast of the emoluments that this threeyear period would yield was reasonable. In an effort to undermine the plaintiff's testimony on this point, HEI proffered evidence suggesting that the pace of its acquisitions had slowed beginning in 2009. Thus, the company might not have been able to justify the SVP position on a going-forward basis. But this evidence was not compelling; the jury also heard -22- evidence that HEI not only had plans for growth but also had the capital needed to implement those plans. What is more, the SVP position included responsibilities beyond those arising out of acquisitions and transitions. There is no reason to believe that those responsibilities were made irrelevant by the passage of time. Choosing between competing inferences that plausibly can be drawn from a body of evidence is principally a task for the factfinder. See Noonan, 556 F.3d at 30. Drawing all reasonable inferences in favor of the verdict, see Casillas-Díaz, 463 F.3d at 79, we conclude, without serious question, that the evidence was sufficient to support the jury's award of front pay through 2013.