Opinion ID: 742998
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Mungin's Claims of Discrimination

Text: 24 We will examine each of Mungin's claims roughly in chronological order: first his 1992 salary; then his 1994 salary; the quality of his work assignments; partnership consideration; and finally, his discharge.
25 In support of his argument that his $92,000 starting salary was discriminatorily low, Mungin demonstrated that every sixth-year associate enjoyed a salary ranging from $95,000 to $102,000, that they were white and that he is black. The evidence showed, however, that Katten offered to associates who are lateral hires from firms paying less, salaries midway between the associate's former salary and the salary Katten pays its current associates. 26 Mungin never carried his burden of explaining how the firm's actual decision in his case was based on race. Not all of the relevant aspects of his employment situation were 'nearly identical' to those of the associates to whom he compared himself. Neuren v. Adduci, Mastriani, Meeks & Schill, 43 F.3d 1507, 1514 (D.C.Cir.1995) (quoting Pierce v. Commonwealth Life Ins. Co., 40 F.3d 796, 802 (6th Cir.1994)); see also Byrd v. Ronayne, 61 F.3d 1026, 1032 (1st Cir.1995). Mungin's mistake was comparing himself to homegrown associates, rather than to lateral entries like himself. Mungin offered nothing to show that the firm's reason for hiring him at $92,000 was pretextual. On appeal, he argues that Katten never demonstrated that such a policy was ever consistently and systematically enforced. Supplemental Final Brief of the Appellee at 17. If this were so, we would have expected Mungin to point our attention to other associates to whom this policy was not enforced. He has not. Since it is Mungin's burden of persuasion, his argument without evidence fails to prove that the firm's reason was pretextual. 27 Mungin offers another reason for finding the firm's policy pretextual: his base salary never caught up with the salary levels of Caucasian attorneys in his class. Supplemental Final Brief of the Appellee at 17. We fail to see what this has to do with his starting salary. While it is potentially evidence of the firm's later discrimination--discrimination with respect to Mungin's 1994 salary, for instance--it brings nothing to bear on whether the firm engaged in racial discrimination by starting him at $92,000. 2 See Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U.S. 228, 241, 109 S.Ct. 1775, 1785-86, 104 L.Ed.2d 268 (1989) (noting that the critical inquiry is whether discrimination was a factor in the employment decision at the moment it was made).
28 As to Mungin's 1994 salary, he not only asserts that $108,000 was discriminatorily low, but he also complains that he had to ask for a raise. The firm, he says, did not provide him with the compensation review which would have led to his salary being raised sua sponte. The problem for Mungin is that he introduced no evidence that he was underpaid relative to his peers. He claims to have shown that the average base salary in 1994 for the 1986 class was $116,000, while he ultimately received $108,000. Mungin does not explain where the $116,000 figure comes from and we understand why. When the average base salaries of all associates are calculated--those in Washington, Chicago, and Los Angeles--we arrive at $116,000. But this calculation includes the mean salary in Los Angeles of $121,250, and in Chicago of $115,370. See Plaintiff's Exhibit 3, reprinted in Joint Appendix 142-45; Defendant's Exhibit K2, reprinted in Joint Appendix 228-31. The mean salary in Washington, excluding Mungin's, was $108,800. See id., reprinted in Joint Appendix 230. Mungin's unstated assumption must be that the firm's D.C. associates should receive the same salaries as those in the other cities. But he offered no proof of this and he did not give the jury any basis to conclude that these D.C. attorneys were similarly situated to their Chicago or Los Angeles counterparts. 29 Mungin also states that three of his colleagues in D.C., Dane Jacques, Jonathan Stern, and John Henderson, received base salaries of $120,000. Supplemental Final Brief of the Appellee at 11. Two of these individuals, Jacques and Stern, became partners during 1994, and their salaries were increased accordingly. Both made $120,000 in 1994. See Trial Transcript at 891. Mungin's situation is not comparable; he takes issue with his 1994 base salary as an associate, not a partner. Jacques's base salary as an associate was $115,000; Stern's was $117,000. See Plaintiff's Exhibit 3, reprinted in Joint Appendix 144; Defendant's Exhibit K2, reprinted in Joint Appendix 230. As to Henderson, Mungin cites no evidence to back up his claim that Henderson made $120,000; the record indicates that Henderson received $104,000. Id. When we use these salaries--Jacques's $115,000, Stern's $117,000, and Henderson's $104,000--along with those of the two other associates in D.C., Judith Rayner and John Enerson (each earning $104,000), we arrive at the figure we mentioned earlier--$108,800, nearly identical to the salary Mungin received. 30 Thus, Mungin's 1994 salary was not discriminatorily low, and the district court recognized as much, stating in its Memorandum Opinion that with respect to his salary for 1994, plaintiff has not shown and does not argue that his 1994 salary level was below that of similarly situated white lawyers. Mungin, 941 F.Supp. at 155. The only possible basis for inferring discrimination, then, deals with Mungin's seeking (and getting) a raise for 1994. The firm's putting him in the position of having to ask for a salary increase, Mungin asserts, discriminated against him on account of race. 31 At oral argument (and somewhat less clearly in its briefs), the Katten firm argued that in light of Milton v. Weinberger, 696 F.2d 94, 99 (D.C.Cir.1982), the fact that Mungin ultimately received his raise eliminated any potential liability for discrimination. As Milton makes clear, however, the noharm no-foul rule discussed in the opinion, a rule derived from Day v. Mathews, 530 F.2d 1083 (D.C.Cir.1976) (per curiam), has nothing to do with whether a defendant is guilty of discrimination, but instead focuses on the question of remedy. Milton, 696 F.2d at 98. Furthermore, shortly after we decided Milton, we expressly rejected the application of Day v. Mathews to cases, such as this, alleging disparate treatment of an individual employee rather than of a group of employees pursuing litigation through a class action. See Toney v. Block, 705 F.2d 1364, 1368 (D.C.Cir.1983) (Scalia, J.); see also Johnson v. Brock, 810 F.2d 219, 224 (D.C.Cir.1987). 32 Katten is on more solid ground in observing that other circuits have reached the conclusion it seeks: that interlocutory or mediate decisions having no immediate effect upon employment ... were not intended to fall within the direct proscriptions of ... Title VII. Page v. Bolger, 645 F.2d 227, 233 (4th Cir.1981) (en banc); accord Dollis v. Rubin, 77 F.3d 777, 781-82 (5th Cir.1995). But see Hayes v. Shalala, 902 F.Supp. 259, 266-67 (D.D.C.1995); cf. Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc., 510 U.S. 17, 22, 114 S.Ct. 367, 370-71, 126 L.Ed.2d 295 (1993). We have never decided the issue, however, and we do not need to do so here. 33 Mungin never proved that in failing to receive a performance review or a raise the firm treated him differently than other associates. One year earlier, Stuart Soberman, the white bankruptcy associate in the D.C. office, failed to receive a raise, and had to pursue the same sort of recourse Mungin did. Mungin also never showed that the firm's failure to give him a substantive evaluation was unusual. Although it was the firm's formal policy to provide substantive reviews semiannually, see Katten Muchin & Zavis Firm Reference Manual § 2.5 (Aug.1991), an employer's failure 'to follow its own regulations and procedures, alone, may not be sufficient to support' the conclusion that its explanation for the challenged employment action is pretextual. Fischbach v. D.C. Dep't of Corrections, 86 F.3d 1180, 1183 (D.C.Cir.1996) (quotingJohnson v. Lehman, 679 F.2d 918, 922 (D.C.Cir.1982)). When an employer's departure from the prescribed procedure has become the norm, that departure lends no support at all to the plaintiff's inference that the employer's departure is a pretext. Fischbach, 86 F.3d at 1183. Mungin presented no evidence that the firm ever consistently abided by its policy. The uncontroverted evidence in the record is that the firm at best sporadically provided substantive evaluations. The witnesses--whether put on the stand by Mungin or Katten--uniformly testified that they never received regular or formal reviews; the reviews they did receive amounted to no more than a pat on the back. See Trial Transcript at 597 (testimony of defense witness Mark Thomas); id. at 735 (testimony of defense witness Stuart Soberman); id. at 799 (testimony of plaintiff's witness Charles Thomson). As against this, Mungin presented nothing. We suppose he could have offered testimony of finance and reorganization attorneys who received the sort of meaningful review Mungin claims he was denied. But Mungin directs our attention to no such testimony, and scouring the record, we find none. The only witness even arguably in Mungin's favor was Elaine Williams. She was a young partner who switched from Katten's corporate department to the finance and reorganization department in 1990. As an associate, she was never reviewed by anyone in the finance and reorganization department, and as a partner she could not recall Chicago lawyers ever reviewing D.C. attorneys. Having presented no evidence to cast doubt on the firm's legitimate nondiscriminatory reasons, we conclude that no reasonable juror could find that the firm denied Mungin a review on the basis of his race.
34 Mungin's next complaint is that the firm discriminated against him by providing him with unchallenging work on the basis of his race. Katten conceded that Mungin received routine bankruptcy work, and not the more sophisticated work for which he was hired. Brief for the Appellant, Final Version, at 26. But the firm showed that after the D.C. office's bankruptcy work dried up, causing Sherman and Soberman to depart in February 1993, it was left with no other bankruptcy lawyers in the D.C. office except Mungin, and with little bankruptcy work. 35 Mungin tells us that to show pretext, he presented evidence of numerous occasions where complex bankruptcy work originated from Katten's D.C. office only to be assigned to other Katten offices around the country. Supplemental Final Brief of the Appellee at 22. No such evidence exists. Mungin only introduced proof of one assignment rerouted from D.C. to Chicago--a matter in Chicago bankruptcy court handled by a partner and associate in Chicago who already had successfully handled a major, similar matter for the same client. Trial Transcript at 600-01, 808-09. This single instance is grossly insufficient to constitute a plausible discrimination claim. In an analogous context, we recently noted that the factfinder may not 'second-guess an employer's personnel decision absent demonstrably discriminatory motive.'  Fischbach, 86 F.3d at 1183 (quoting Milton v. Weinberger, 696 F.2d at 100). Thus, when an employer makes a hiring decision, [s]hort of finding that the employer's stated reason was indeed a pretext ... the court must respect the employer's unfettered discretion to choose among qualified candidates. Fischbach, 86 F.3d at 1183. The same standard holds true when an employer decides which of several qualified employees will work on a particular assignment. Perhaps in recognition of the judicial micromanagement of business practices that would result if we ruled otherwise, other circuits have held that changes in assignments or work-related duties do not ordinarily constitute adverse employment decisions if unaccompanied by a decrease in salary or work hour changes. See, e.g., Kocsis v. Multi-Care Mgmt., 97 F.3d 876, 886-87 (6th Cir.1996); Crady v. Liberty Nat'l Bank & Trust Co., 993 F.2d 132, 136 (7th Cir.1993); see also Williams v. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., 85 F.3d 270, 274 (7th Cir.1996). An employer has discretion to assign work to equally qualified employees so long as the decision is not based upon unlawful criteria. Burdine, 450 U.S. at 259, 101 S.Ct. at 1097. The jury had no basis for thinking the Chicago attorneys who staffed the one matter Mungin identified were any less qualified than he, or that race played a factor in the firm's decision to staff the Chicago bankruptcy matter with attorneys in Chicago.
36 Next comes Mungin's claim that the firm unlawfully failed to consider him for partnership in the summer of 1993 and thus deprived him of the remunerative and other rewards partnership brings. Mungin does not argue that the firm must make every eligible associate a member of the firm's partnership. Instead, he claims that he was unquestionably qualified to at least be considered for partnership pursuant to Katten's procedures, and that he was the only eligible associate who was not formally evaluated. Supplemental Final Brief of the Appellee at 24. 37 Mungin introduced evidence that department heads would confer with the other partners in their departments to recommend particular associates for partnership. The recommendations then passed through several more committees--the committee comprised of all the department heads, the partnership review committee, the executive committee, and finally the board of directors--with names being screened out along the way. 38 The firm presented evidence to establish that Mungin's lack of sophisticated bankruptcy experience and that the disappearance of bankruptcy work for which he was hired precluded him from qualification for partnership. 3 As in the case of Mungin's 1994 pay, we need not decide whether an interlocutory or mediate decision[ ] having no immediate effect on employment--here the partnership nomination that would not have resulted in Mungin's becoming a partner--fall[s] within the direct proscriptions of ... Title VII or, for that matter, § 1981 or the D.C. statute. Page, 645 F.2d at 233. 39 Mungin never contested the fact that associates are screened out from consideration at the first round, when the department head and/or the partners in that department decide not to nominate certain associates to the committee of department heads. It was well within Sergi's authority to decline to recommend finance and reorganization department associates for partnership. Sergi testified that no one in his department could recommend Mungin for partnership, so no one did. Trial Transcript at 971. Mungin found himself in a bind. The insurance group headed by Dombroff tried to build a bankruptcy practice of its own, but failed. Mungin was left trying to secure partnership from a department in which no one had worked extensively with him. Mungin offered absolutely nothing that would have permitted a reasonable jury to conclude that the firm discriminated against him when it failed to consider him for partnership. He tried to establish that the insurance group headed by Dombroff had certain procedures for recommending partners. But the partnership decisions were made by departments, and in Mungin's case, by the finance and reorganization department, not the insurance department. Without any evidence that this department--the one that chose not to nominate him--acted discriminatorily, Mungin failed to prove a claim.E. Constructive Discharge 40 Mungin's last ground to support the verdict is his alleged constructive discharge. He claims the firm's offers to transfer him to New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles, were not bona fide, and that he deserved a more genuine offer to transfer to those offices, and more information so that he could make an informed decision whether to move. With respect to the computation of back pay, however, the district court concluded that Mungin had no reasonable expectation of continued employment in Katten Muchin's Washington office after October 1994. Mungin, 941 F.Supp. at 156. The court based this decision on the following reasons: 41 In July 1994, Katten, Muchin decided to close down the insurance practice that had provided work for plaintiff and a number of other lawyers in its Washington office. Between July and November 1994, defections and terminations reduced the number of lawyers in Katten, Muchin's Washington office from 42 to 14. The firm terminated all five of the Washington office associates whose work had been supported by Mark Dombroff's insurance clients but who were left behind by Dombroff's departure. 42 Id. We agree with the district court that Mungin had no reasonable expectation of continued employment, but unlike the district court, we find that this prevents Mungin from having any basis for a constructive discharge claim. 43 Even without the district court's finding, we would conclude that there was no constructive discharge. Circuit law is clear that a finding of constructive discharge depends on whether the employer deliberately made working conditions intolerable and drove the employee out. Clark v. Marsh, 665 F.2d 1168, 1173 (D.C.Cir.1981) (internal citations and modifications omitted). Constructive discharge thus requires a finding of discrimination and the existence of certain aggravating factors. Id. at 1174; see also Dashnaw v. Pena, 12 F.3d 1112, 1115 (D.C.Cir.1994). (These aggravating factors are those things that would force an employee to leave. Clark, 665 F.2d at 1174.) Having rejected all of Mungin's disparate treatment claims, we are left without any discriminatory acts upon which Mungin could rest his constructive discharge claim. And, as the district court said, Mungin ultimately was treated better than his peers, for unlike the four white associates who, after Dombroff's departure, were terminated without the opportunity to relocate, Mungin had a chance to stay with the firm. We therefore conclude that the jury had no basis for a finding of constructive discharge.