Opinion ID: 77051
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Background and the Proceedings in the District Court

Text: 3 During the relevant time period, Goodyear's Gadsden plant was divided into several discrete units, called business centers, each of which was responsible for one of the several stages of the tire production process. The plant included at least four business centers, each managed by a Business Center Manager (BCM): (1) Rubber Mixing (a.k.a. Banbury or the Mixing Area), where the rubber was prepared; (2) Component Preparation (a.k.a. Stock Prep), where the components for the tires were made; (3) Tire Assembly (a.k.a. the Tire Room), where machines were used to press the components into green, or unfinished, tires; and (4) Curing/Final Finish, where the green tires were cured, painted, trimmed, and inspected before shipment. 4 These business centers were in some cases further divided into discrete sections or rooms. Tire Assembly, for example, at one point included at least four sections, including the Radial Light Truck section (RLT), which assembled larger tires for sport-utility vehicles and light trucks, and the ARF Room, which assembled smaller radial tires for passenger cars. Within any one section or room, there were normally three or four rotating shifts of floor-level workers and their supervisors. 5 The machines used in the tire-production process were operated directly by tire builders — unionized, hourly workers. The tire builders were then supervised by salaried, nonunion, floor-level managers called Area Managers. Each Area Manager supervised one shift of tire builders, such that if a section were running four shifts, it would have four Area Managers, one for each shift. These production teams — the tire builders and their Area Managers — were supported by unionized maintenance and electrical workers, as well as by various salaried managerial officers and specialists, including Production Specialists and Production Auditors. Directly above the Area Managers in the corporate hierarchy were the BCMs, who were responsible for everyone in their business center, including the tire builders, the maintenance and electrical workers, the Area Managers, and the salaried managerial support staff. Supervision of the entire plant, including at least the four production-oriented business centers described above and a Human Resources Department, fell to a single Plant Manager.
6 Beginning in the early 1980s, managerial employees' salaries at the Gadsden plant were determined primarily based on a system of annual merit-based raises. The exact details of the system do not warrant extended discussion. Suffice it to say that in the early months of each year, each BCM was charged with recommending 2 salary increases for the salaried employees under his or her supervision, including the Area Managers. These recommendations were based primarily on each employee's performance in relation to that of other salaried employees in the business center during the previous year (the performance year). Business-center-wide performance rankings were calculated based on individual performance appraisals that had been completed for, and reviewed with, each employee at the end of the performance year or early in the year following. Using the performance rankings and certain Goodyear guidelines on the size and frequency of merit-based raises, the BCM would complete a merit increase plan, a worksheet detailing the merit increases the BCM recommended for that year. These plans included, for each salaried employee, his or her performance ranking, present salary, and salary range; the date of his or her last increase; the recommended increase for the coming year (in dollars and as a percentage increase over present salary); and the date that the increase would become effective. These plans were then submitted to higher level management for approval. See supra note 1. Thus, each salaried employee at the Gadsden plant had his or her salary reviewed at least once annually by plant management, when the time came for the awarding of merit-based raises.
7 Lilly Ledbetter hired in to the Gadsden plaint as a Supervisor, the precursor to the Area Manager position, on February 5, 1979, at forty years of age. The record discloses very little about the first dozen years of Ledbetter's career. She worked as an Area Manager in several different business centers under several different BCMs. Twice, in 1986 and again in 1989, she was included in general layoffs, one lasting fifteen months. The record does not disclose who, prior to 1992, the other Area Managers in Ledbetter's immediate areas of the plant were, how Ledbetter fared against them in end-of-year performance rankings, or how her salary or the merit-based raises she received compared to theirs. 8 In early 1992, Ledbetter was selected to be part of the start-up team for the new RLT section of the Tire Assembly business center, which would produce large radial tires for sport utility vehicles and light trucks. From the summer of 1992 until the beginning of 1996, Ledbetter was supervised in RLT by Mike Tucker, who was at first Team Leader for the RLT section and, after 1995, BCM for the entire Tire Assembly area. Four Area Managers worked together under Tucker in RLT from 1992 until 1996: Ledbetter, Bill Miller, Jimmy Todd, and Jerry Thompson. 9 With the sole exception of performance year 1994, Tucker consistently ranked Ledbetter at or near the bottom of her co-workers in terms of performance. In 1993, he ranked her third out of the four Area Managers, and fifth out of six salaried employees, based on her 1992 performance. Tucker suggested, and she received, a 5.28% increase over her existing salary, the largest percentage increase given to any Area Manager, though the smallest in absolute dollars. Jimmy Todd, who was ranked last, received no merit increase. 10 In planning for the merit increases for 1994, Tucker ranked Ledbetter last among the four RLT Area Managers, and last among the six salaried employees. He proposed that she receive a 5% merit increase, the smallest he proposed. 11 In 1995, Tucker awarded Ledbetter a substantial increase of 7.85%, to become effective December 1, 1995, based on her performance in 1994. The record does not reflect her exact performance ranking, but the raise she received included a 4% increase styled as an individual performance award and a 3.85% increase styled as a top performance award. According to the compensation guidelines in effect at the time, top performance awards were to be given [f]or only the highest level of individual performance and contribution in an organization, and to  not more than 30% of the number of salaried associates in an organization. Dual individual performance/top performance awards of the type Ledbetter received were intended to be used to reward and recognize the uppermost level of top performer. 3 12 Ledbetter was ineligible for a merit increase in 1996 because her 1995 raise became effective December 1, 1995, and the minimum time interval between raises was then thirteen months, meaning that she would not be eligible for another merit increase until January 1, 1997. She was nevertheless ranked against the twenty-three other salaried employees in Tire Assembly, which had been unified under a single BCM, Tucker, in 1995. Tucker ranked Ledbetter twenty-third out of twenty-four salaried employees, and fifteenth out of sixteen Area Managers. Jimmy Todd was ranked twenty-fourth, and both he and the person ranked twenty-second were denied raises. 13 In March 1996, around the time that Tucker recommended raises for 1995's performance, Ledbetter was transferred to the ARF room, a section of Tire Assembly that made smaller radial tires for passenger vehicles. Jerry Jones, who replaced Tucker as Tire Assembly's BCM in the summer of 1996, told her that she had been transferred because of her sub-standard performance in RLT. 14 At the end of 1996, as Jones was completing the performance appraisals for that year, Pete Buchanan, the Human Resources Manager, instructed him not to evaluate Ledbetter's or Todd's performance because, based on their 1995 performance rankings, both were slated to be included in the plant's upcoming layoffs. Jones, in turn, informed Ledbetter that she would be laid off along with Jimmy Todd and a long list of people in departments all over the plant. 15 The next day, however, Jones told Ledbetter that she was to continue working, as a substitute for other Area Managers who were or would be out on extended medical leave. Ledbetter worked in that capacity through 1997, and received the same monthly salary she had been paid since her last merit increase, in December 1995. Thus, at the end of 1997, she was still earning $3727 per month, less than all fifteen of the other Area Managers in Tire Assembly. The lowest paid male Area Manager was making $4286, roughly 15% more than Ledbetter; the highest paid was making $5236, roughly 40% more than Ledbetter. 4 16 Throughout 1997, Ledbetter and Jones had several conversations in which he expressed concerns about her performance. At one such meeting, in August, Jones strongly recommended that she apply for a non-supervisory Technology Engineer position that was open in the Final Finish area. He reminded her that she was still slated for layoff, and he implied that she would be laid off unless she transferred to an area not affected by the reduction in force. 5 He thought the Technology Engineer position would be good for her. Ledbetter interviewed for the position the same day and was accepted, although she continued working as an Area Manager in the ARF room for the remainder 1997. 17 In October, Jones transferred to another Goodyear facility and was replaced by Kelly Owen as BCM of Tire Assembly. On January 5, 1998, Ledbetter began working as a Technology Engineer — at the same salary she received in 1997. She was replaced in the ARF room by Jerry Thompson, who in turn was replaced in RLT by Brent Payne, a former tire builder Ledbetter had once supervised. 6 18 Though Ledbetter was no longer working in Tire Assembly, Kelly Owen reviewed her performance, and that of the other salaried employees in the unit, for 1997. Owen ranked her twenty-third out of twenty-four salaried employees and fifteenth out of sixteen Area Managers. He ranked one male Area Manager, Dean Nance, below her. Nance, Ledbetter, and the two other lowest ranking Area Managers were all denied raises. Because Ledbetter was denied a raise for 1998, as she had been for 1997 and 1996, she remained at the same monthly salary ($3727) she had been paid since her December 1, 1995 raise. 19 On March 25, 1998, Ledbetter filed a questionnaire with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), alleging that she had been forced into the Technology Engineer position and was being subjected to disparate treatment in her new department on account of her sex. In July, she filed a formal charge of discrimination with the EEOC. This time she alleged, in addition to her earlier complaints, that she had received a discriminatorily low salary as an Area Manager because of her sex. 20 In August, Goodyear announced that it was going to downsize the Gadsden plant and that those who were likely be laid off would have the option of choosing early retirement. Ledbetter applied, was accepted, and retired effective November 1, 1998. 21 In February 1999, Goodyear announced that the Gadsden plant would close. The plant never completely shut down, however, but large-scale layoffs were made, and several Area Managers were either laid off or given the opportunity to transfer to other plants. At the height of the layoffs and transfers, the number of Area Managers in Tire Assembly — where Ledbetter had worked from 1992 to 1998 — fell to from a high of sixteen to a low of four.
22 Ledbetter filed this lawsuit on November 24, 1999. 7 After a wide-ranging jury trial that included evidence spanning the entirety of Ledbetter's nineteen-year career, four claims were submitted to the jury: a claim that Ledbetter had been the victim of gender-disparate pay as an Area Manager, in violation of Title VII, and three claims, brought under Title VII and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), relating to her transfer to the Final Finish area as a Technology Engineer. These claims were that the transfer had been involuntarily forced upon her because of her sex or her age, or in retaliation for her having made complaints of sex discrimination. 23 After the district court denied Goodyear's motion for judgment as a matter of law, 8 the jury found for Goodyear on the transfer-related claims but returned a verdict in favor of Ledbetter on the Title VII pay claim, finding, in a special verdict, 9 that it was more likely than not that Defendant paid Plaintiff an unequal salary because of her sex. The jury recommended $223,776 in backpay, awarded $4,662 for mental anguish, and awarded $3,285,979 in punitive damages. 24 Goodyear thereafter renewed its motion for judgment as a matter of law on Ledbetter's disparate pay claim and, alternatively, moved the court to grant it either a new trial or a remittitur. 10 Goodyear contended, as it had throughout the litigation, that Ledbetter's pay claim — or, more accurately, the way she had been permitted to prove her pay claim — was barred by Title VII's requirement that the conduct complained of in a Title VII action must have been the focus of an EEOC charge filed within 180 days of the occurrence of the conduct. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(e)(1). Addressing its motion for judgment as a matter of law, Goodyear argued that no reasonable fact finder could conclude that [Ledbetter's] sex was a motivating factor in a salary decision made during the period covered by [the] EEOC charge. Assuming for sake of argument that Ledbetter had made out a case for the jury, Goodyear contended that it was entitled to a new trial because the court had erred in permitting Ledbetter to challenge every annual review of her salary, from 1979 on, all but one of which fell outside the 180-day period created by her EEOC charge. 25 The district court denied Goodyear's motion for judgment as a matter of law but remitted the entire award to $360,000, including the statutory maximum of $300,000 in compensatory and punitive damages and $60,000 in backpay. Of Goodyear's arguments on the 180-day issue and the sufficiency of the evidence, the court said simply that 26 [t]he jury's finding that Plaintiff was subjected to a gender disparate salary is abundantly supported by the evidence.... 27 The jury could reasonably have found that Terry Amberson is an appropriate comparator. 11 Apparently, both he and the Plaintiff were paid the same salary on April 1, 1979, and again on April 16, 1979. Plaintiff's Exhibit (PX) 201. The jury could reasonably have concluded that but for the gender discrimination, their salaries would have been the same up to November 1, 1998. It could have found that in the 1996-1998 period, Plaintiff's base annual salary was $44,724; and that Amberson's base salary was $59,028. (footnote omitted). 28 The court remitted the punitive damages to $295,338, the amount which, when combined with the $4,662 mental anguish award, reached the $300,000 cap on compensatory and punitive damages in Title VII actions against employers with more than 500 employees. See 42 U.S.C. § 1981a(b)(3)(D) (limiting damages awarded under Title VII to $300,000 in the case of a respondent who has more than 500 employees in each of 20 or more calendar weeks in the current or preceding calendar year). Ledbetter accepted the remittitur. Judgment was therefore entered for $360,000, plus attorneys' fees and costs. Goodyear timely appealed. 12