Opinion ID: 880569
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: did the court commit error in limiting the testimony of plaintiff's statistician with regard to age discrimination?

Text: In Montana, an employee has the right to obtain and hold employment without discrimination as to age. Section 49-1-102(1), MCA. Courts have recognized that statistics are commonly used in discrimination cases. As the United States Supreme Court has observed: ... Our cases make it unmistakably clear that [s]tatistical analyses have served and will continue to serve an important role in cases in which the existence of discrimination is a disputed issue. Teamsters v. United States (1977) 431 U.S. 324, 339, 97 S.Ct. 1843, 1856, 52 L.Ed.2d 396, 417. In this case the court limited the plaintiff's statistical expert to testimony of statistical tests performed on the Laurel nonunion employees. The District Court refused to allow the expert to testify to results from a statistical analysis of company-wide terminations of employment including union members. Obviously, the inclusion of union employees in the statistical population, whose employment contracts contained seniority rights, would skew the figures affecting older terminated nonunion employees as to the probability that older nonunion employees were discriminated against on the basis of age. The court was correct in so limiting the testimony. The result of the limitation was that the entire population of terminated employees considered by defendant's statistical expert was forty-nine persons. On cross-examination of defendant's statistical expert, the plaintiff's counsel used an elementary statistics textbook which indicated such a number was insufficient for a chi-squared test. The plaintiff is not now barred from reinforcing the textbook with live testimony on retrial relating to the statistical effect of low-numbered samples.