Opinion ID: 2708456
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Final Warning and Discipline of Craig King

Text: When Hutt returned from leave, further trouble ensued: Solvay claims that Hutt cancelled numerous “field contacts,” during which she was to be evaluated for her sales perfor‐ mance. Hutt claims that her cancellations were for medical reasons, and that Lozen also cancelled on her. Ultimately, Hutt was placed on Final Warning Status in October, sched‐ uled to last until December 19, 2008, for failing to comply with the requirements of the April PIP. The Final Warning required Hutt to complete a series of field contacts with Lozen, Westfall, and another district manager. Craig King, a fifty‐eight year old Solvay employee, was also placed on formal warning in June, about a month after Hutt had been placed on formal warning. He was the only other representative, out of the ten representatives in Indi‐ anapolis, to be placed on warning status. On the day Hutt was placed on final warning, King was also placed on final warning. The written final warnings were substantially simi‐ lar, with portions of King’s warning cut and pasted into Hutt’s final warning. And both King and Hutt received overall ratings of “Does Not Meet Expectations” in every category for their 2008 performance evaluations. In February 2009, Hutt filed a complaint with the EEOC alleging age discrimination and retaliation. In March, both King’s and Hutt’s ratings were revised to “Partially Meets Expectations” as the result of an instruction from HR to cor‐ rect an administrative error in the ratings calculation. At a 6 No. 13‐1481 May 2009 sales meeting, Westfall angrily confronted Hutt about her February EEOC charges and demanded that she and her attorney fly to Atlanta to discuss the charges with him. In June 2009, King was terminated from Solvay, but Hutt’s employment continued. In April 2010, Hutt was informed that she was retroac‐ tively being removed from final warning, effective as of De‐ cember 11, 2009. By that time, she had been under a warning status for seven consecutive quarters, and had thus been in‐ eligible for incentive pay and bonuses for those months.