Opinion ID: 510248
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Was the 180-Day Period Equitably Tolled?

Text: 21 The ADEA requires every employer to post information upon its premises setting forth its employees' rights under the ADEA. 29 U.S.C. Sec. 627; see also 29 C.F.R. Sec. 1627.10 (formerly id. Sec. 850.10). When it is found that the employer has failed to post the notice required by this section, equitable tolling can be applied. See, e.g., Elliott v. Group Medical & Surgical Serv., 714 F.2d 556, 563-64 (5th Cir.1983); Charlier v. S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc., 556 F.2d 761 (5th Cir.1977). 22 Resistoflex posted the required notice on a bulletin board in the company cafeteria at its New Jersey headquarters. However, no notice was posted at the Baton Rouge branch office, out of which Clark regularly worked. Clark did travel to the home office two or three times a year, took his meals in the company cafeteria, and thus had had between 40 and 120 opportunities to read the bulletin board over the 10-year period prior to his termination. Clark states he never actually saw the notice, which statement must be accepted as true for purposes of this appeal. 23 Both parties rely heavily upon two previous decisions of this court: Edwards v. Kaiser Aluminum & Chem. Sales, Inc., 515 F.2d 1195, 1198 (5th Cir.1975), and Charlier v. S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc. Since the parties cite these cases for diametrically opposed propositions, we now chart our own path through the thicket. 24 In Edwards, we concluded that an employer's failure to post a section 627 notice upon its premises did not extinguish completely an aggrieved employee's duty to file a charge timely with the EEOC. Because Edwards had failed to file his charge within 180 days both of securing counsel and acquiring actual knowledge of his rights, his suit was held time-barred. This holding allowed us to avoid the question of whether the employer's noncompliance with section 627 served to toll running of the 180-day period until such time as Edwards had secured counsel or had acquired actual knowledge of his ADEA rights. 25 This question left open in Edwards we later answered in Charlier. There, the district court granted summary judgment for the defendant employer on the ground that the two plaintiffs, Charlier and Russell, had filed their charge letters more than 180 days after the alleged violation occurred. Although the employer had posted a section 627 notice in its regional Houston, Texas, office, we, on appeal, found such notice insufficient to provide Charlier, who lived and worked in Central Texas and visited the regional office only 3 times in 19 years, with adequate constructive notice of his ADEA rights. 556 F.2d at 762 (emphasis added). 26 Russell, on the other hand, who also lived and worked in Central Texas, had visited the Houston office occasionally. But the record on appeal neither disclosed whether occasionally meant once a month or once a year, nor whether the notice had been posted in a location readily observable to Russell. Id. at 764. Thus, the case was remanded to the district court to determine whether the notice was adequate as to Russell, the clear implication being that if the notice were adequate, Russell should be charged with constructive notice of it. As the court maintained: 27 To fulfill the purposes of section 627 and regulation 850.10, an employer's notice must provide employees with a meaningful opportunity of becoming aware of their ADEA rights so that one may reasonably conclude that the employees either knew or they should have known of their statutory rights. To this end notice adequate for one group of employees does not necessarily suffice for another group working primarily in a different locality. 28 Id. (citation omitted). 29 In Charlier, we also found the record unclear as to whether either plaintiff, Charlier or Russell, or both of them, had acquired actual knowledge or the means of knowledge of their ADEA rights. The case was thus remanded also for a determination as to when plaintiffs secured counsel--the means of knowledge--or acquired actual knowledge so as to trigger the running of the 180-day filing requirement of 29 U.S.C. Sec. 629(d). Id. at 762. 30 In sum, then, Charlier stands for these basic propositions: An employer's duty to post section 627 notices does not require posting at every location where the employer does business, so long as the notice that is posted provides employees with a meaningful opportunity of becoming aware of their ADEA rights. If the employer discharges its duty under section 627 as to a particular employee, that employee is deemed to have constructive knowledge of his ADEA rights and, thus, cannot invoke equitable tolling of the filing period. If, however, the employer fails to discharge its duty under section 627 as to a particular employee, the filing period is tolled unless or until the employee has acquired actual knowledge of his ADEA rights or acquires the means of such knowledge by consulting an attorney about the discriminatory act. 31 In the instant case, the district court refused to toll the filing period because Clark was found to have both constructive and actual knowledge of his rights. The court's constructive knowledge theory is based upon Charlier: Since Clark made what the district court characterized as frequent visits to the home office cafeteria--i.e., a minimum of 40 visits over a 10-year period--Resistoflex's duty under section 627 to provide him a meaningful opportunity to see the posting and learn of his ADEA rights was satisfied; Clark thus should have known of them as a matter of law. Of course, in Charlier, the meaningful opportunity question was precisely one on which a panel of this court reversed summary judgment for the employer and remanded. 32 Our need to reach that question here, however, is obviated by the fact that Clark had actual knowledge of his ADEA rights. In his deposition, when asked when he first became aware that he had been subjected to an unlawful practice, Clark responded, The day I was released from the company. Since the district court assumed that day to be the day of Freed's call (March 11, 1985), the court concluded that Clark had had general knowledge about his rights for at least 183 days before filing his charge. Moreover, because there is no reference in the testimony that anyone told Clark of his general ADEA rights on that particular day, the clear inference from his statement is that he had had general knowledge concerning age discrimination laws for some time beforehand. 33 Such knowledge is all that is required for one to have actual knowledge of his ADEA rights, sufficient to defeat application of equitable tolling. In McClinton v. Alabama By-Products Corp., 743 F.2d 1483 (11th Cir.1984), a case relied upon by the court below, the court affirmed summary judgment for a defendant employer, holding that an employer's failure to post the requisite notice will equitably toll the 180-day notification period, but only until the employee acquires general knowledge of his right not to be discriminated against on account of age, or the means of obtaining such knowledge. Id. at 1486 (emphasis in original). The court further found it unnecessary to toll the notification period up to the time that the employee obtains knowledge of his specific rights under the ADEA and/or the existence of the 180-day filing period. Id. (emphasis in original). Adopting this reasoning, we hold that there were no facts on the basis of which a trier of fact reasonably could find the predicate circumstances necessary for equitable tolling. 34