Opinion ID: 2195278
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Applicable Framework

Text: ¶ 17. Plaintiff's first claim of error is that the trial court applied the wrong burden allocation framework. Plaintiff argues that since she presented direct evidence  in particular, alleged comments made to her or her husband [3] by senior officers at Bertek  that gender played a motivating factor in defendants' decision not to promote her, the two-step framework of Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U.S. 228, 241-44, 109 S.Ct. 1775, 104 L.Ed.2d 268 (1989), should apply, rather than the three-step burden shifting analysis of McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 802-04, 93 S.Ct. 1817, 36 L.Ed.2d 668 (1973), that the trial court applied. Defendants counter that the evidence presented is insufficient to trigger the Price Waterhouse analysis, and that the trial court correctly applied the McDonnell Douglas framework. We agree with defendants that the McDonnell Douglas analysis was the correct framework to apply in this case. ¶ 18. This Court has adopted both the Price Waterhouse and the McDonnell Douglas frameworks. Hodgdon, 160 Vt. at 161, 624 A.2d at 1128. The Price Waterhouse framework is invoked when the plaintiff initially establishes that her sex played a motivating part in an employment decision. Id. ; see also Graff v. Eaton, 157 Vt. 321, 324-25, 598 A.2d 1383, 1384-85 (1991). If such direct evidence of discrimination is presented, the burden of persuasion then falls upon, and remains with, the employer to prove `by a preponderance of the evidence that it would have made the same decision even if it had not taken the plaintiff's gender into account.' Graff, 157 Vt. at 324, 598 A.2d at 1384 (quoting Price Waterhouse, 490 U.S. at 258, 109 S.Ct. 1775). If the plaintiff presents only circumstantial evidence of discrimination, however, the three-step burden shifting analysis of McDonnell Douglas is applied. Hodgdon, 160 Vt. at 162, 624 A.2d at 1129. Under McDonnell Douglas, in contrast to the analysis under Price Waterhouse, [t]he ultimate burden of persuading the trier of fact that the defendant intentionally discriminated against the plaintiff remains at all times with the plaintiff. Tex. Dep't of Cmty. Affairs v. Burdine, 450 U.S. 248, 253, 101 S.Ct. 1089, 67 L.Ed.2d 207 (1981). ¶ 19. Plaintiff relies particularly on four statements, three to her and one to her husband, that she or her husband testified to in their respective depositions. Three of these precede Govil's actions in creating and filling the position of Supervisor of Drug Delivery. Apparently, plaintiff was complaining about Govil's treatment of her to her supervisor, Scott Burton, to the interim President of Bertek, Lou Debone, and to the General Manager of Bertek, Matthew Costigan. Plaintiff alleges that when she asked why Govil unfairly treated her, both Debone and Costigan answered it was because of cultural differences. She alleges that when she asked Burton if Govil unfairly treated her because she is a woman, he answered there's some of that. The fourth, by Costigan to plaintiff's husband, is alleged to have come after Dr. Miller was hired. Again, Costigan attributed Govil's treatment to cultural differences and when asked if that meant that it was because plaintiff is a woman, He didn't answer, but he winked and nodded his head to me and pointed like that in an affirmative action. ¶ 20. We do not believe these statements meet the strict requirement of direct evidence set out in Price Waterhouse. Neither stray remarks in the workplace ... [n]or ... statements by nondecisionmakers, [nor] statements by decisionmakers unrelated to the decisional process itself will be considered as direct evidence of an employer's discriminatory intent. Price Waterhouse, 490 U.S. at 277, 109 S.Ct. 1775 (O'Connor, J., concurring); EEOC v. Liberal R-II Sch. Dist., 314 F.3d 920, 923 (8th Cir.2002); Fakete v. Aetna, Inc., 308 F.3d 335, 338 n. 2 (3d Cir.2002); Fernandes v. Costa Bros. Masonry, Inc., 199 F.3d 572, 581 (1st Cir.1999); see also 1 L. Larson, Employment Discrimination § 8.07[3], at 8-86 (2d ed. 2003) (A statement will not be considered direct evidence of an employer's discriminatory intent if it is made by an individual who was not a participant in the decision-making process.). ¶ 21. Plaintiff does not dispute that neither Costigan, Debone nor Burton  despite their high positions within Bertek  was part of the decision not to promote her. The alleged comments to plaintiff did not describe these administrators' own decision-making process, but were instead mere speculation as to Govil's state of mind during his decision making. At least three of the statements were about other actions of Govil, not the decision to hire Ken Miller as Supervisor of Drug Delivery. The statements are insufficient as direct evidence of discrimination. Chiaramonte v. Fashion Bed Group, Inc., 129 F.3d 391, 397 (7th Cir.1997) (statements made by nondecision maker amount to mere speculation as to thoughts of decision maker, and do not provide smoking gun evidence required for direct inference of discriminatory intent); Edwards v. Schlumberger-Well Servs., 984 F.Supp. 264, 275 (D.N.J.1997) (statements by nondecision maker that plaintiff was terminated because she was female were not discriminatory statements made in the decisionmaking process, but rather were statements about discriminatory views that were held by decisionmakers and therefore were insufficient to satisfy burden in a mixed-motive analysis); see also Taylor v. Va. Union Univ., 193 F.3d 219, 232 (4th Cir.1999) (statement that police chief would never send a female to the academy did not bear directly on the contested employment decision so as to trigger a mixed motive standard of liability) (internal quotations omitted); Kneibert v. Thomson Newspapers, Mich. Inc., 129 F.3d 444, 452-53 (8th Cir.1997) (statement by person with no decision making authority that plaintiff was not terminated because of his ability or his quality of work but because of a[sic] litigation that he is involved in did not constitute direct evidence) (internal quotations omitted); Mooney v. Aramco Servs. Co., 54 F.3d 1207, 1218 (5th Cir.1995) (statements by nondecision maker that plaintiff had a good case of age discrimination and that it must have been your age did not provide direct evidence of age-related animus) (internal quotations omitted); Ahrens v. Perot Sys. Corp., 39 F.Supp.2d 773, 781 (N.D.Tex.1999) (statements by supervisor and fellow employees might be sufficient to infer a discriminatory motive, but were insufficient to constitute direct evidence of discrimination under mixed-motive analysis). ¶ 22. Plaintiff urges that we look at the remaining evidence, much of it set forth in the statement of facts above and discussed later in this opinion, as direct evidence that gender discrimination motivated Govil's action. To the extent the evidence involves the hiring decision, it does not show directly that plaintiff's gender was a motivating factor in that decision. To the extent the evidence goes to what plaintiff characterizes as an abusive working environment for women in the company, it is not related sufficiently to the hiring decision to invoke the Price Waterhouse standard.