Opinion ID: 2708751
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: “‘Moving Target’ Defense”

Text: In turn, plaintiffs argue that NACA’s defense of this case has involved shifting and inconsistent positions that, along with other evidence, point to pretext and retaliatory intent. First, plaintiffs argue that NACA’s reasons for firing them were pretextual because a violation of the paperless policy did not by itself merit termination. The other reasons—alcohol, expired documents, and poor customer service—were additional excuses for the earlier decision to terminate. Every manager who testified thought that a violation of the paperless policy was sufficient grounds to fire an at-will employee. The only evidence that the plaintiffs cite to dispute that proposition is Marks’s testimony. Marks said that the plaintiffs were not fired merely for the paperless violation (though they could 7 Reid offers testimony that Martinez gave him permission to go to the game, and so we assume that is true. But he offers no evidence that the decision-makers—Cannonier, Marks, Meadows, and Pride—knew about that dispute, nor has Reid offered any other evidence that the group that decided to fire him did not genuinely believed those reasons were valid. Gacek, 614 F.3d at 303 (an Illinois retaliatory discharge plaintiff “could not have prevailed merely by proving that the reasons given by the airline for firing him were unworthy of belief”). 16 No. 13-1768 have been) but for that violation and the plaintiffs’ additional problems, because if everyone who had violated the policy had been fired, the Chicago office would have had only one employee left. Plaintiffs argue that this statement is evidence that NACA management did not really believe that violating the paperless policy alone merited termination. Plaintiffs further argue that, because the other reasons for their termination were added later, that tends to indicate the reasons were pretextual. From day one, NACA has asserted that Reid and Sears were fired based on their violations of the paperless policy and Reid’s attendance issues, and all the managerial testimony corroborates this. When Marks was deposed on August 16, 2012, he asserted that he was the final decision-maker, and again corroborated these reasons. However, he also stated that because so many people had violated the policy, he looked for additional reasons to justify terminating any one particular employee. Further, he testified that the alcohol that Pride had found in Reid’s office, Reid’s incomplete and expired client files, and Marks’s perception that Sears’s client service was poor influenced his decision to select Reid and Sears for termination.8 Pride’s testimony corroborated some of these problems, and her photographs confirmed the presence of alcohol in Reid’s office. Reid does not deny that he had bottles of alcohol in his office, but states that they were unopened and were just on display. But an employer’s reason need not be good, just genuinely believed to be true. Everroad v. Scott Truck 8 Plaintiffs offer no evidence against their managers’ assessments of their performance except their assertions that they performed satisfactorily. No. 13-1768 17 Sys., Inc., 604 F.3d 471, 478 n.2 (7th Cir. 2010) (“So long as they genuinely believed in the truth of their stated reason for the decision, that reason is not pretextual.”). Despite these additional reasons, NACA’s interrogatory responses have always listed only the violation of the paperless policy and Reid’s leaving work early as the reasons for plaintiffs’ termination. Plaintiffs contend that this is enough for a jury to reasonably conclude that NACA did not really believe the reasons it gave for firing plaintiffs. In reliance, plaintiffs cite our decision in Hitchcock v. Angel Corps, Inc., 718 F.3d 733 (7th Cir. 2013). In Hitchcock, we held that a jury could reasonably infer that proffered reasons for a termination were pretext because they were shifting and inconsistent. Id. at 738 (citing Rudin v. Lincoln Land Cmty. Coll., 420 F.3d 712, 726 (7th Cir. 2005)). A couple of months after Hitchcock had discovered she was pregnant, she visited a patient at her home. Id. at 734–35. Upon arriving, she found she was unable to access the patient because of the strange behavior of the patient’s son, and it was later determined that the patient had been dead for a couple days. Id. at 736. Nonetheless, her employer fired her and provided multiple reasons including: that she had assessed a dead patient; that she took actions that compromised that patient’s health and safety; that she would have compromised the health and safety of the patient (had she not been dead) by failing to do something because of the son’s intimidating behavior; and, finally, later in litigation, that she had performed a deficient assessment of the dead patient (without any specifics about how the assessment was deficient). Id. at 738. Unsurprisingly, we held that a jury could reasonably find holding someone accountable for compromising the health of an already-dead 18 No. 13-1768 patient was a pretextual reason, and the later inconsistent shifts were also indicative of pretext. But NACA’s reasons suffer from no such infirmities. From the moment of plaintiffs’ termination to this very day, NACA has consistently maintained that the main reason for plaintiffs’ termination was their violation of the paperless policy. Every manager involved in the termination consistently gave the violation of the paperless policy as the main reason. Marks’s additional reasons are not inconsistent, and were not a shift from the main reason. He explained why some employees who violated the paperless policy were terminated and other were not. See Schuster v. Lucent Techs., Inc., 327 F.3d 569, 579 (7th Cir. 2003) (holding that “an additional, not necessarily inconsistent reason for the employment decision, rather than an abrupt change in explanation” does not give rise to an inference that the reasons are pretextual). A jury might reasonably be suspicious if the people with additional problems who were fired were complainers and those who were retained were non-complainers, but that is not the case. Numerous other employees who complained and violated the policy were not fired while Jasinska was fired for violating the policy with no evidence of her having complained save the assertion that “everyone complained.” Plaintiffs’ manager, Norma Martinez, was also terminated afterwards, in part because of the pervasive violations of the paperless policy. Second, plaintiffs argue that NACA’s shift respecting who the decision-makers were gives rise to an inference of mendacity, and therefore, retaliatory intent. We disagree. NACA’s inhouse counsel answered the interrogatories with the information he had at the time about who was involved in the decision No. 13-1768 19 to fire plaintiffs. When every manager later testified that Marks was involved, NACA changed the interrogatory answer and Marks was deposed. He testified that, as CEO, he was the final authority on the firing decision. NACA changed its strategy to assert the same, no doubt pleased that the undisputed evidence showed that Marks had no knowledge of the plaintiffs’ complaints. To account for this shift, we have viewed the evidence in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs and said that a jury could believe that Marks was not the sole decisionmaker. But this shift in litigation strategy does not bear on the decision-makers’ intent; if the decision really was made by Pride, Cannonier, and Meadows, in addition to Marks, the fact that Marks later claimed full responsibility does not mean that it would be reasonable to infer that the decision-makers acted with a retaliatory intent when making the decision. See Schuster, 327 F.3d at 579 (“the changing story as to who actually participated in the decision … is also insufficient to raise a question as to whether the … reasons given are merely pretextual”). In sum, though plaintiffs had made protected complaints shortly before their termination, the same complaints had been going on for some time and, if anything, had declined in gravity. NACA asserts that it fired the plaintiffs for various policy violations, which the undisputed evidence shows that the decision-makers genuinely believed. The reasons NACA offered, though they were later added to in order to explain why others were not terminated, were not shifting or inconsistent, and there was no suspicious pattern in the employees it chose to fire or retain. Viewing the evidence as a whole, we agree with the district court that an inference of retaliatory 20 No. 13-1768 intent is not reasonable. Because there is also no direct evidence, plaintiffs have failed to create a genuine issue about the material fact of causation. Therefore, summary judgment for NACA was appropriate.