Opinion ID: 755554
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Evidence of the Compensation of Kedrus, Lustig, and the Habers

Text: 71 Kirsch contends that the district court erred at the second trial in refusing to allow him to introduce evidence as to the compensation that Fleet Street paid to Kedrus, Lustig, and Alan and Steven Haber. He contends that that ruling impeded proof of his damages. We disagree. 72 A backpay award for discriminatory discharge is intended to restore the employee to the status quo he would have enjoyed if the discriminatory discharge had not taken place. McMahon v. Libbey-Owens-Ford Co., 870 F.2d 1073, 1079 (6th Cir.1989) (internal quotation marks omitted); see Loeffler v. Frank, 486 U.S. 549, 558, 108 S.Ct. 1965, 100 L.Ed.2d 549 (1988) (backpay award under Title VII is a manifestation of Congress' intent to make 'persons whole for injuries suffered through past discrimination'  (quoting Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U.S. 405, 421, 95 S.Ct. 2362, 45 L.Ed.2d 280 (1975))); Whittlesey v. Union Carbide Corp., 742 F.2d 724, 727-28 (2d Cir.1984) (same under ADEA). Such an award should be based on what the employee himself would have earned had he not been discharged. Evidence of the salaries paid to other individuals may be relevant to that calculation, but only insofar as the plaintiff lays a sufficient foundation to permit the reasonable inference that his salary would have matched or been pegged to the salaries of others. The trial court has considerable discretion to determine whether there is such a sufficient foundation, see generally George v. Celotex Corp., 914 F.2d 26, 28 (2d Cir.1990) (district court's determination of relevance will not be disturbed unless it evidences an abuse of discretion); and even an erroneous ruling will not lead to reversal unless affirmance would be inconsistent with substantial justice, Fed.R.Civ.P. 61. 73 The record at the first trial of the present case easily justified the district court's conclusion that Kirsch's position was not sufficiently similar to the positions of Kedrus, Lustig, and the Habers. Kirsch had been a road sales representative and in 1985-1990 was also a sales administrator. In the latter capacity he was merely a liaison with the other road reps, responsible for knowing the company's inventory, promotional merchandise, and product lines; he had no supervisory control over the road reps: no authority to set compensation, to establish work schedules, or to hire and fire. Indeed, he was not even privy to the company's decision to fire the other road reps in 1987: he was not informed of that decision in advance, was not invited to attend its implementation, and was not informed of the company's reasons thereafter. 74 Kedrus, in contrast, had previously occupied managerial posts at two major companies in the industry, had supervised staffs of 10-15 salespersons, and was hired to be Fleet Street's national sales director. Kedrus was placed in charge of sales and discipline of the sales staff, was given supervisory authority over Kirsch, and was to locate new growth opportunities for the company and devise marketing strategies. Although Lustig was more similar to Kirsch in that he was a sales representative who reported to Kedrus, Kirsch did not present sufficient evidence of the similarity of their performance or responsibilities in terms of, for example, number or size of accounts, the volume of sales they generated, or their profitability. And the Habers were surely not comparable to Kirsch, for they were not only supervisors of Kirsch's supervisor, they were officers and owners of the company. 75 In sum, given Kirsch's failure to present evidence sufficient to permit a reasonable inference that his compensation would have matched or been linked to theirs, we see no abuse of discretion in the district court's ruling that the compensation paid to Kedrus (totaling $95,000), Lustig ($152,992), Steven Haber ($162,600), and Alan Haber ($200,000), was not relevant to the calculation of the extent to which the constructive discharge injured Kirsch, whose pre-discharge compensation totaled $65,000. 76 Kirsch's reliance on cases such as Stratton v. Department for the Aging for the City of New York, 132 F.3d 869, and Burger v. New York Institute of Technology, 94 F.3d 830 (2d Cir.1996), for the proposition that evidence on damages should be admitted with respect to employees whose job functions were not necessarily identical to those of the plaintiff, is misplaced. Stratton did not permit damages to be shown by evidence of the salary paid to a person in a different position. Rather, we upheld the admission of evidence as to the salary paid to the person who was hired in preference to the plaintiff for one particular position. There was no suggestion that Stratton's backpay entitlement could be measured by the salary paid to her supervisor or her supervisor's supervisors. And Burger dealt not with the calculation of damages at all but rather with the sufficiency of the evidence to show that a discharge had occurred under circumstances giving rise to an inference of discrimination. It contains no suggestion that a plaintiff is entitled to have his backpay for an unlawful discharge based on the compensation paid to other employees whose job circumstances are not similar.