Opinion ID: 762262
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Adverse Employment Actions

Text: 30
31 The FCUA prohibits a federal credit union from engaging in two distinct types of retaliatory employment action: (1) an actual or constructive discharge; or (2) other discriminat[ion] ... with respect to compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment short of discharge, or what we have sometimes labeled adverse employment actions. See 12 U.S.C. § 1790b(a)(1). The complaint alleged that Citizens constructively discharged Simas, 5 which necessitated that he show that Citizens imposed working conditions so intolerable [ ] that a reasonable person would feel compelled to forsake his job rather than to submit to looming indignities. Vega v. Kodak Caribbean, Ltd., 3 F.3d 476, 480 (1st Cir.1993); see also Sanchez v. Puerto Rico Oil Co., 37 F.3d 712, 719 (1st Cir.1994). 32 The district court concluded, however, that the various indignities to which Simas had been subjected were nothing more than minor slights, Simas, 996 F.Supp. at 83, which did not rise to the level of constructive discharge. It suggested further that the Simas complaint alleged only a constructive discharge, and no other adverse employment actions. See id. at 84 (citing Serrano-Cruz v. DFI Puerto Rico, Inc., 109 F.3d 23, 28 (1st Cir.1997)). It stated that, like the plaintiff in Serrano-Cruz, Simas had merely alleged damages for loss of income and employment benefits, loss of personal reputation, and other financial losses ... and little, if anything, else, id. (citing Complaint p 32) (emphasis added), and, further, that these economic damages flowed exclusively from Simas' decision to leave his job, rather than from defendants' imposition of adverse working conditions in the months preceding his resignation. 33 Even assuming arguendo the premise that the constructive discharge standard under the FCUA would require proof of more intolerable employment actions than its discrimination standard, we need not determine whether the Rule 56 proffer established a prime facie case of constructive discharge since Simas unquestionably alleged adverse employment actions as well. See infra Section II.C.2(b). Thus, Serrano-Cruz is inapposite, both legally and factually. 34 Unlike Simas, Serrano resigned rather than accept transfer to a different position--at the same salary--which she considered demeaning. We affirmed summary judgment for the former employer because, by not accepting the newly created and ambiguous position, Serrano foreclosed the possibility of presenting concrete evidence, rather than mere assertions, to a jury regarding the [intolerable] nature of her new working conditions. Serrano-Cruz, 109 F.3d at 27. In determining that Serrano had failed to frame her complaint alternatively to allege actionable adverse employment actions short of discharge, we noted that all the damages she alleged were purely economic-- e.g., lost income--flowing entirely from her decision to reject the transfer and resign, and not from other indignities (i.e., gradual reduction in her job responsibilities) allegedly suffered in the months preceding the transfer. Id. at 28. 35 By contrast, the Simas resignation did not foreclose judicial assessment of the adverse working conditions allegedly imposed by Citizens, most of which preceded his resignation. Nor can we agree with Citizens that Simas alleged little more than economic damages. Paragraph 32 in the complaint, cited by the district court, alleged loss of income and employment benefits, loss of personal reputation, other financial losses, and mental and emotional distress. (Emphasis added.) Moreover, although paragraph 32 is part of the defamation count, and not the FCUA count proper, paragraph 36 of the FCUA count expressly realleges and incorporates paragraph 32 by reference. See also Complaint Prefatory p 21 (alleging that Simas was the object of anger and scorn from his superiors, and he was suffering emotionally and physically as a result ) (emphasis added). 36 Thus, the Simas complaint alleged ongoing emotional damages of a type that arose at the time the defendants imposed the adverse employment actions and long before he resigned, culminating in his humiliating exit from the employment premises under the personal escort ordered by Silva. See Viqueira v. First Bank, 140 F.3d 12, 16 (1st Cir.1998) (noting that complaints are to be liberally construed). These noneconomic damages are fully and independently recoverable under the FCUA. See 12 U.S.C. § 1790b(c)(2) (broadly allowing plaintiff to recover compensatory damages); cf. Hogan v. Bangor and Aroostook R.R. Co., 61 F.3d 1034, 1037 (1st Cir.1995) (emotional harm compensable under ADA). Thus, we may bypass the constructive discharge claim. 37
38 We now turn to the sufficiency of the Rule 56 proffer, wherein Simas attested to an extended series of abrupt and substantial change[s] in the way he was treated as an employee after he first expressed concerns regarding the Xifiras loan. See supra Section I. 39 At summary judgment the trial court must consider a defendant's alleged conduct both in context and in totality, not merely assess the respective allegations in isolation. See Calhoun v. Acme Cleveland Corp., 798 F.2d 559, 562-63 (1st Cir.1986) (rejecting divide-and-conquer defense strategy); see also Coffman v. Tracker Marine, 141 F.3d 1241, 1246 (8th Cir.1998) ([The] court looks at the combined effect of the employer's actions to determine if there was discrimination) (emphasis added; citation omitted). Thus, otherwise minor slights, relentlessly compounded, may become sufficiently adverse to warrant relief under the FCUA. 40 At the outset we focus on an important consideration--given short shrift by defendants--which sharply distinguishes the present action from the more typical retaliation case. Normally, employers do not leave behind direct evidence of their discriminatory animus, such as express declarations of their retaliatory intentions. Therefore, generally the plaintiff-employee must make do with circumstantial evidence, leaving it to the jury whether to infer from the nature of the materially adverse employment conditions that the defendant-employer harbored a retaliatory animus. 41 In the present case, however, Simas adduced both circumstantial and direct evidence of Silva's retaliatory animus. In her October 8, 1993 memo, Silva not only complained that Simas had harassed the internal auditor, but stated directly to Simas that the charges he made about the Xifiras loan were unwarranted, and that if he persisted in making unwarranted charges or threats [to report his suspicions to the NCUA], he would be terminated immediately. So too, Citizens' senior vice-president told Simas that he thought Silva should have fired Simas outright for stirring [up] the Xifiras matter. See, e.g., Frobose, 152 F.3d at 616 (affirming denial of summary judgment for employer in § 1831j retaliation case where president's express antagonism toward plaintiff was echoed in antagonistic remarks made by other senior officers). 42 The term making unsubstantiated charges, as employed in the Silva memo, is amply expansive to encompass Simas' report to the NCUA, and Silva's express intention to terminate Simas likewise bespeaks a premeditated plan to punish him for the same activity. Given that Silva orchestrated the loan for her friend Xifiras in the first instance, and that the concerns Simas voiced about the loan eventually proved anything but unwarranted, a jury reasonably could conclude that the sole intendment of her October 8 memo was to prevent Silva's regulatory violations from coming to the attention of the appropriate federal authorities. 43 So construed, these direct retaliatory expressions by Silva could be considered materially adverse employment actions which sufficed to preclude summary judgment for defendants. See Hernandez-Torres, 158 F.3d at 47 (adverse employment actions [may include] ... unwarranted negative job evaluations). 44 Section 1790b prohibits discrimination relating to conditions of employment. Although the term conditions may mean merely the physical setting in which one's work is performed, (e.g., reassignment to a remote cubicle), it is not so limited in scope as to exclude illicit supervisory directives conditioning continued employment upon prohibitions against employee conduct which is authorized by federal laws governing employer-employee relations. Thus, the explicit direction from Silva that Simas refrain from exercising his federal legal right to contact the NCUA clearly came within section 1790b. 45 If nothing else, Congress intended that section 1790b deter federal credit unions from expressly dissuading their employees in exercising the statutory right to report suspected regulatory violations. In our case, it is no exaggeration to observe that the not-so-veiled threat made by Silva, which by its terms was self-perpetuating, hung like a sword of Damocles over Simas' head. 6 Moreover, pursuit of the Xifiras loan investigation by Simas was in no sense ultra vires, since it is difficult to conceive a condition more materially adverse to the proper performance of the fiduciary duties of the senior vice-president for loan collections. 46 At this juncture, of course, we do not suggest that a jury would be compelled to construe this direct evidence adversely to defendants, who presumably would contend that (i) Silva truly believed the Xifiras loan was not problematic, 7 (ii) Simas raised his concerns in bad faith because he was disgruntled with what he perceived as Silva's preferential treatment of her daughter to the detriment of other Citizens officers; and (iii) Silva's memo sought only to urge Simas to cease his overly aggressive efforts to initiate an internal investigation, and keep any intentions to contact the NCUA to himself. 47 Be that as it may, any such credibility determinations are for the factfinder at trial, not for the court at summary judgment. Perez-Trujillo, 137 F.3d at 53. [T]rial courts should 'use restraint in granting summary judgment' where discriminatory animus is in issue. DeNovellis v. Shalala, 124 F.3d 298, 306 (1st Cir.1997) (citation omitted). 48 Further, given defendants' concessions regarding the allocation of burdens of proof, see supra Section II.B, the Silva memo would support a finding that whatever other motives Silva may have harbored (e.g., her pique at Silva's alleged badgering of the internal auditor), a retaliatory motivation was at least one contributing factor in her campaign to oust or silence Simas. Thus, the burden of persuasion would pass to the defendants to adduce clear and convincing evidence that they would have engaged in the same litany of alleged employment actions even if Simas had not contacted the NCUA. See Frobose, 152 F.3d at 615 (Given that the burden of proof on this point is assigned to the defendant, and questions of intent and credibility will often be raised, particular care must be taken to resolve all doubts in favor of the plaintiff.) (emphasis added; citations omitted). 8 49 In all events it is unnecessary to determine definitively whether the direct evidence, standing alone, demonstrated a materially adverse employment action. At a minimum the direct evidence necessarily colors and informs the circumstantial evidence of the adverse employment action which followed.  '[T]erms, conditions, or privileges' is pretty open-ended language ... [which] obviously includes opportunities that are not strictly entitlements, and a number of cases have extended coverage to slights or indignities that might seem evanescent. Randlett v. Shalala, 118 F.3d 857, 862 (1st Cir.1997). Typically, the employer must either (1) take something of consequence from the employee, say, by discharging or demoting her, reducing her salary, or divesting her of significant responsibilities, or (2) withhold from the employee an accouterment of the employment relationship, say, by failing to follow a customary practice of considering her for promotion after a particular period of service. Blackie v. State of Maine, 75 F.3d 716, 725 (1st Cir.1996). Determining whether an action is materially adverse necessarily requires a case-by-case inquiry. Moreover, the inquiry must be cast in objective terms. Work places are rarely idyllic retreats, and the mere fact that an employee is displeased by an employer's act or omission does not elevate that act or omission to the level of a materially adverse employment action. Id. (emphasis added; citations omitted). 50 Our review leads us to conclude that these employment actions, viewed in aggregate, could be considered materially adverse. The fact that Citizens did not reduce Simas' salary or benefits, though plainly relevant, is not conclusive. See Serrano-Cruz, 109 F.3d at 26 (ADEA); Collins v. State of Illinois, 830 F.2d 692, 702-03 (7th Cir.1987) (Title VII). 51 The district court overlooked the crucial, undisputed fact that Silva withdrew from Simas all responsibility for the Xifiras account. See Burlington Indus. v. Ellerth, 524 U.S. 742, 118 S.Ct. 2257, 2268, 141 L.Ed.2d 633 (1998) (conduct is adverse employment action if it constitutes a significant change in employment status, such as ... reassignment with significantly different responsibilities); Collins, 830 F.2d at 703 & n. 7 (describing various changes to basic aspects of the job). As the vice-president for collections and credit, Simas' core responsibility was to collect delinquent loans, and the $838,000 Xifiras loan was by far the largest Citizens loan. 9 Thus, Simas clearly was not acting ultra vires in investigating the Xifiras loan. Rather, there can be no serious question that removing Citizens' chief loan and collection officer from any responsibility whatever for its largest outstanding loan represented a very substantial divestment of responsibility. Thus, since the FCUA implicitly focuses on individuals like Simas insiders with an optimal opportunity to uncover improprieties it would be ironic to hold that a jury could not even consider whether Silva's decision to take the Xifiras loan account away from Simas constituted an adverse employment action. 52 There was evidence that Simas had been divested of other responsibilities and perquisites as well. For example, Simas attested that he had been stripped of his supervisory authority over credit department personnel and the power to approve credit-card applications. See Dahm v. Flynn, 60 F.3d 253, 258-59 (7th Cir.1994) (noting that terminating [plaintiff's] supervisory authority over other employees may constitute an adverse employment action) (First Amendment retaliation). Yet the district court found this evidence too vague and conclusory to survive summary judgment because Simas proffer[ed] no facts to explain the extent of his prior authority and the significance of the 'removal.'  Simas, 996 F.Supp. at 85. We cannot agree. 53 It is axiomatic on summary judgment, of course, that the nonmoving party 'may not rest upon mere allegation or denials of [the movant's] pleading, but must set forth specific facts showing that there is a genuine issue' of material fact as to each issue upon which he would bear the ultimate burden of proof at trial. DeNovellis, 124 F.3d at 306 (quoting Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 256, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986)); Smith v. Stratus Computer, Inc., 40 F.3d 11, 12-13 (1st Cir.1994). Nor may the court accept the nonmovant's subjective characterizations of events, unless the underlying events themselves are revealed. See Santiago v. Canon U.S.A., Inc., 138 F.3d 1, 6 (1st Cir.1998). On the other hand, the competence of the nonmovant's own testimony is treated no differently than that of any other potential trial witness. Thus, the nonmovant's statements normally pass muster provided they (1) are made on personal knowledge of the facts or events described; and (2) neither depend on inadmissible hearsay nor (3) purport to examine the [movants'] thoughts as well as their actions. See, e.g., Maiorana v. MacDonald, 596 F.2d 1072, 1079-80 (1st Cir.1979); see also Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(e). 54 Although pithy, the attestations made by Simas adverted to such facts and events. Simas undoubtedly would have direct personal knowledge of his own job functions, including whether he had exercised authority over credit department personnel and approved credit-card applications in the past. Therefore, his attestations are statements of fact, not subjective characterizations. Thus, while the defendants may present evidence contesting their truth, to the extent they do so they simply preclude summary judgment for either party. See Brennan, 150 F.3d at 26 (plaintiff's prima facie burden is  'not onerous' ... [and] '[a]ll that is needed is the production of admissible evidence which, if uncontradicted, would justify a legal conclusion of discrimination.' ) (emphasis added). Nor can we say that no rational jury could conclude that these two privileges were consequential, if for no other reason than defendants' own concession that Simas' official job title was vice-president of collections and credit. DeNovellis, 124 F.3d at 308 ( '[A]t the summary judgment stage the judge's function is not ... to weigh the evidence and determine the truth of the matter but to determine whether there is a genuine issue for trial.' ). 55 In a similar vein the district court ruled that the contention that Simas had been denied a car loan could not demonstrate an adverse employment action. Simas, 996 F.Supp. at 83. Defendants argue that (1) they have no record of the loan application and Simas failed to adduce a copy; and (2) Simas failed to attest to facts demonstrating that he was otherwise qualified to receive a car loan. Neither argument is valid. 56 First, there is no general rule that proof of a fact will be excluded unless its proponent furnishes the best evidence in his power. See Allstate Ins. Co. v. Swann, 27 F.3d 1539, 1543 (11th Cir.1994) (citation omitted). Thus, Simas can prove he filed a loan application simply through his own trial testimony. See Fed.R.Evid. 1002 (To prove the content of a writing, ... the original writing ... is required, except as otherwise provided in these rules or by Act of Congress.) (emphasis added); Fed.R.Evid. 1004(1) (original document need not be produced if the original was lost or destroyed, except where party opposing admission proves the proponent lost or destroyed the original in bad faith); Fed.R.Evid. 1004(3) (original need not be produced if it was under the control of the party against whom it was offered, which did not produce it at hearing); see also United States v. McMahon, 938 F.2d 1501, 1509 n. 4 (1st Cir.1991). 57 Second, Simas attested to the fact that Citizens had always approved his loan applications in the past, without objection. At least absent evidence that his financial condition had changed, this constituted competent evidence that Citizens considered Simas financially qualified to receive such loans. See Blackie, 75 F.3d at 726 ([U]nder certain circumstances an employer's inaction can operate to deprive an employee of a privilege of employment that an employee had reason to anticipate he would receive.). Hence, Simas met his prima facie burden of proof, and the burden of persuasion thereupon shifted to defendants to show the true reason for the loan denial. 10 Finally, we cannot say that the denial of a car loan must be considered inconsequential per se. 58 Simas likewise attested that he was denied unfettered access to the file vault. The only rejoinder from defendants is that Citizens banned all officers, not only Simas, from accessing the vault, and that Simas was permitted to obtain any file he wanted through a vault clerk. These claims are flawed as well. 59 For one thing, Simas was only required to attest that the new vault-access procedure was materially adverse. As vice-president in charge of collections, his need for vault access was evident. Moreover, in light of Silva's October 8 memo, a jury reasonably could find the timing of the new procedure especially suspect, since it interposed a vault clerk between Simas and important bank documents at precisely the time Silva sought to deter any further investigation of the Xifiras loan by Simas. Requiring Simas to make a request for a specific document from a vault clerk clearly had two adverse effects: (1) Simas could not anonymously examine documents in the vault; and (2) Silva could learn from the vault clerk precisely which files Simas was examining. Although Silva explained: We were having a problem with the vault[,] of officers going into the vault, and pulling files and never being replaced[,] her decision to make the new vault-access procedure applicable to all bank officers does not preclude a finding that she harbored an illicit motive in doing so; that is, to reduce access to information by Simas. 11 Thus, the burden of persuasion would pass to defendants to show by clear and convincing evidence that the new vault-access procedure was necessary for reasons independent of Simas' threats to alert the NCUA. 60 Finally, although the evidence of yet other adverse employment actions may be less compelling, it is not so obviously makeweight as to compel inferences in defendants' favor. 12 Since we are required to assess defendants' conduct in context and in totality, rather than piecemeal, see Calhoun, 798 F.2d at 562-63; Coffman, 141 F.3d at 1246, we conclude that summary judgment on the FCUA claim was improvidently granted, and must be vacated. The state-law claims for defamation, wrongful termination, and tortious interference with an advantageous relationship must be reinstated as well, since the district court dismissed them solely for lack of supplemental jurisdiction. See Alexis v. McDonald's Restaurants of Mass., Inc., 67 F.3d 341, 354 (1st Cir.1995) (remand on state-law claims warranted where federal claim is reinstated). 61 The district court judgment is vacated and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. Costs are awarded to appellant. 62 SO ORDERED. 63