Opinion ID: 760887
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Consideration by Senior Management

Text: 33 This is the factor upon which the district court purported to make its decision (At most, the events at IBM in October 1990 encompass only the first two elements of the 'serious consideration' test.). Because it found that senior management was not sufficiently involved in the process to find serious consideration until the Management Committee was presented with a finalized proposal, it did not reach the other factors in any great detail. The district court erred, however, in its analysis of this factor in light of the facts of this case. Fischer II distinguishes periodic review discussions and recommendations to upper-level management which are in the ordinary course of an employee's duties from consideration by senior management with authority to implement changes. Although the district court found the Management Committee to be possessed with enough authority to suffice for this factor (it found serious consideration as of the date the Management Committee reviewed a finalized proposal), it felt that the three factors were not fulfilled until the senior management had seen a finalized proposal. This application of the factors is contrary to the language used in Fischer II where it states that a plan need not be in its final form in order for the three factors to coalesce to form an overall picture of serious consideration. 34 In this case, on October 4, 1990, the proposal was considered to be sufficiently concrete to present to senior management for discussion on issues of implementation. A meeting with the Management Committee, a group with the authority to approve a plan for implementation, was indeed held on that date and the outline of that meeting indicates that implementation strategies were discussed. 35 For the above reasons, serious consideration occurred on October 4, 1990. The district court therefore erred in granting summary judgment to IBM as to the claims of those members of the plaintiff class who retired after October 4, 1990. Issues of material fact remain as to whether the alleged representations were in fact materially misleading and whether plaintiffs in fact relied upon those representations.