Opinion ID: 468573
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Liquidated Damages: Willfulness

Text: 21 Rockwell urges that the district court erred in awarding liquidated damages under 29 U.S.C. Sec. 626(b). Under that section, a finding of willfulness is a prerequisite to an award of liquidated damages. In the present case, the district judge instructed the jury that: a violation of a law is willful if defendant knew, or reasonably should have known, that its conduct was reasonably likely to be a violation of the legal rights of the plaintiff (emphasis added). The jury found that Rockwell had acted willfully in terminating Powell's employment, but awarded zero liquidated damages. In Powell's motion to alter or amend the judgment, he argued that the district court was required to award liquidated damages since there was a willful violation of the ADEA. The district court agreed, and doubled the back pay award as liquidated damages. Rockwell urges that: (1) the district court incorrectly defined willful; and (2) the district court erred in awarding mandatory liquidated damages. Willfulness 22 Rockwell asserts that willfulness was incorrectly defined by the trial court under the law as established by Transworld Airlines v. Thurston, 469 U.S. 111, 105 S.Ct. 613, 83 L.Ed.2d 523 (1985). Thurston said, a violation is 'willful' if the employer either knew or showed reckless disregard for the matter of whether its conduct was prohibited by the ADEA. Id. at ----, 105 S.Ct. at 625, 83 L.Ed.2d at 537. Thurston removes the characterization of willful from violations when defendant merely should have known his actions would violate the law. 23 The district court denied Rockwell's motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, or, in the alternative, for new trial, on the grounds that: (1) Rockwell did not object to the charge on this ground and therefore did not preserve its objection; and (2) in any event, any error in the definition was harmless in the context of the instant facts because a specific jury finding of retaliation necessarily meant that the jury found willfulness under the Thurston definition. We find that there was error in the instruction under Thurston and that Rockwell did make objection. But we further find that the error in the definition of willfulness given by the district court was harmless. 24 We first consider the procedural right of Rockwell to raise this argument. Rockwell urged at the charge conference that the definition of willfulness was incorrect, and asked the judge to include a good faith modification to the charge. Because the record discloses that Rockwell made known its position to the judge that it was dissatisfied with the willfulness instruction, we find that it did not waive its right to pursue this claim at a later time. See Lang v. Texas & Pacific Railway Co., 624 F.2d 1275, 1279 (5th Cir.1980). Counsel for Rockwell was not obligated to anticipate the Thurston holding which was decided after the trial of this case. 5 We conclude that Rockwell has not waived its right to object to the willfulness instruction. 25 Nevertheless, we find that while the willfulness instruction was error because of the intervention of the Thurston decision, the error was harmless. The definition of willfulness given by the judge in the present case was incorrect under Thurston because it characterized violations as willful when defendant merely should have known the actions taken would violate the ADEA. In the context of the present facts, however, the correct instruction would have made no difference in the outcome of the case. The jury specifically found that Rockwell terminated Powell in retaliation for filing his ADEA claim. McCann, a Rockwell official, testified that he knew that retaliatory discharge was a violation of law. In any event, if Rockwell officials did not know that firing an employee in retaliation for filing an ADEA claim was illegal, then that action was certainly reckless. In the context of the present facts, therefore, the jury finding of retaliatory discharge necessarily found willfulness as defined by Thurston. 6 26 Rockwell also contends that there was no evidence to support a finding of willfulness by the jury. As noted above, 7 there was firm evidence supporting the jury's finding that Rockwell's stated reason for Powell's discharge was pretextual. Once Rockwell's reason for discharging Powell was rejected as pretextual, then it becomes obvious that the only rationale left for the discharge was Powell's explanation of retaliation. 8 Thus, there was ample evidence to support the finding that Rockwell was willful in its discharge of Powell. Liquidated Damages 27 Although the jury found that Rockwell had acted willfully in discharging Powell, it specifically denied liquidated damages. In partially granting Powell's motion to alter or amend the judgment, the district judge doubled the back pay verdict so as to award liquidated damages because he found that liquidated damages are mandatory where a defendant acts willfully in violating the ADEA. 28 Rockwell argues that liquidated damages are not required as a matter of law to be awarded upon the finding of a willful violation because the trial court should review evidence of the employer's good faith. Hays v. Republic Steel Corp., 531 F.2d 1307 (5th Cir.1976). For example, in Hedrick v. Hercules, Inc., 658 F.2d 1088 (5th Cir.1981), we noted: 29 [T]his Court in Hays ... held that liquidated damages were not automatically payable upon a finding of a willful violation of the ADEA but rather that a trial judge could consider evidence of the employer's good faith in determining whether to award liquidated damages. 30 Id. at 1095. 31 We first note that both Hays and Hendrick were cases involving age discrimination claims rather than retaliatory discharge claims. We have discovered no cases which examine good faith in the context of a finding of retaliation. Indeed, a finding of retaliation strongly implies that there was no good faith. Thus, we are not convinced that the Hays rule was ever applicable to a retaliatory discharge case. 32 But even if we assume that the Hays rule could have been properly applied in the context of retaliatory discharge, this rule has no vitality after the Thurston decision. Prior to Thurston, it was possible to find a willful violation, and also find that the employer had acted in good faith. Id. at 1096. Because Congress did not intend to impose liquidated damage liability upon employers for good faith violations, the Hays rule permitted the court discretion in awarding liquidated damages. Under the Thurston rule, however, good faith can no longer coexist with willfulness. The result is that only knowing or reckless violations of the ADEA are subject to liquidated damages. Thus, a further examination of good faith becomes irrelevant because it has already been factored into the Thurston willfulness definition. 33 Because we hold in the present case that the jury finding that Powell was fired by Rockwell in retaliation for exercising ADEA rights necessarily found willfulness under Thurston, we also conclude that the jury necessarily rejected any good faith action on the part of Rockwell in discharging Powell. Thus, the award of liquidated damages was proper.