Court Opinion

ID: 9495504
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:04:20.595254+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:03.352646
License: Public Domain

DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
A jury heard all the evidence about Steven Albrechtsen’s claim of retaliation and sex discrimination in violation of Title VII at the hands of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater (UWW), and it decided that Albrechtsen had proven his retaliation case. Largely because Albrechtsen’s lawyer filed a poor brief in this court, the majority has decided to overturn the jury’s verdict and order judgment for the University. While I agree that the briefs filed by both parties in this appeal were seriously flawed — the University’s brief is tendentious, ignores the proper standard of review for jury verdicts, misleadingly disregards facts that were unfavorable to its position, and is thus generally unreliable, while Albrechtsen’s brief is so condensed as to be almost (but not quite entirely, as I explain below) devoid of useful information in support of the judgment — we have a responsibility to assess what is before us fairly and to respect both the perspective of the trial judge and the role of the jury in civil litigation. When one does this, it is apparent that there was sufficient evidence before the jury to support its verdict in favor of Albrechtsen. I therefore respectfully dissent.
As the majority notes, ante at 436, in order to show that the University violated the anti-retaliation provisions of Title VII, Albrechtsen had to establish that
(a) he complained about sex discrimination; (b) the persons who made the decisions in 1998 knew about those complaints; and (c) the adverse actions in 1998 occurred because of the complaints.
The majority’s first misstep is to accept the University’s position that the only instance of a complaint on which Albrecht-sen was relying was to be found in a letter that he wrote on January 10, 1997, to H. Gaylon Greenhill, then the Chancellor of UWW. The University made the same argument before the district court, and the district court rejected this position in its Memorandum and Order denying (apart from the remittitur to which the majority refers) the University’s post-verdict motions under Fed.R.Civ.P. 50(b) and 59. As the district court’s order (to which Al-brechtsen refers specifically in his brief) makes clear, the January 10 letter was not the only evidence of a complaint before the jury:
Defendant [ie., the University] contends that the Court erred in allowing plaintiff to attribute retaliation to the January 10, 1997 letter rather than the events before 1991 expressly articulated in his EEOC charge. This letter was properly admitted to show defendant’s knowledge that plaintiff had opposed gender discrimination.
Defendant contends that this letter does not oppose gender discrimination. The Court disagrees. The letter written by plaintiff to H. Gaylon Greenhill, the *439Chancellor of UWW, states, “These members of the tenured faculty have repeatedly violated the rights of individuals, acted without regard for law and procedure and perpetuated an extremely hostile work environment in Williams Center.” This statement in conjunction with plaintiffs past complaints provided notice to defendant that plaintiff opposed gender discrimination.
Brief for Appellant, App. 17.
At oral argument, counsel for the University conceded that protection for Title VII purposes did not extend only to written documents. Oral complaints of discrimination count too, and evidence of such oral complaints was an important part of Albrechtsen’s case. The district court properly recognized this, when it referred to “plaintiffs past complaints” to give context to the January 10 letter.
Moreover, there was evidence in the record in support of Albrechtsen’s position— to which he referred in his brief — of both the oral complaints and the fact that they were sufficient to make the responsible defendants aware of his position. For example, the brief cites to Chancellor Green-hill’s testimony on cross-examination, Transcript at 2-180, in support of the verdict. If one turns to that page and the one that immediately follows it in the transcript, one finds the following exchange:
Q [Mr. Lasker, Albrechtsen’s lawyer]: You testified on direct examination, Dr. Greenhill, that sex discrimination was a recent issue. What did you mean by that?
A [Greenhill]: It was recent in the sense of it being raised by Dr. Albrecht-sen. I mean the question of sex discrimination in America is, is, been around. But—
Q: So what do you mean by your asserting that Dr. Albrechtsen’s allegation of sex discrimination was recently made?
A: That it isn’t that — it was late in this long litany of stuff, that, of complaints and such that I recall any kind of reference to sex discrimination. It may have been raised by other — to other people, but I, not to me.
Two pages later, at Tr. 2-183, which is also cited in Albrechtsen’s brief, Chancellor Greenhill acknowledged that he received the January 10 letter.
This exchange is important in a number of ways. First, it shows that Albrechtsen indeed did complain expressly about sex discrimination. Second, it shows that the official with final authority over UWW knew about those complaints. Third, it shows that the complaints were recent. Contrary to the majority’s assumption and the University’s representation, the complaints occurred very close in time to the retaliatory actions about which Albrecht-sen was complaining. These points correspond exactly to the three elements the majority acknowledges Albrechtsen had to prove. There was nothing irrational about the jury’s decision to credit this testimony, to use it to illuminate ambiguous references in the January 10 letter, and to base its ruling for Albrechtsen on this evidence. The majority insists on looking at the letter in isolation, which is the only way that it can conclude that no reasonable juror could have understood it to be referring to sex discrimination (in any of its forms— direct, or harassment). That is not the way the evidence was presented to the jury, and the jurors were not required to put on blinders to the rest of the evidence when they considered the letter.
The fact that Dean Barnett testified (in another reference furnished to us by Al-brechtsen’s lawyer) that he did not remember Albrechtsen’s complaints is not dispos-itive. The exchange set forth below is equivocal, and the jury might have con-*440eluded that the Dean was not being fully forthcoming:
Q: Were you [i.e., Barnett] even aware that Steve Albrechtsen had in 1997 complained of sexual harassment?
A: I do not remember those kinds of complaints. It is possible that in one of those complaints it was explicitly mentioned. I do know that he complained about individuals. I do know that he complained about being discriminated against. I do know that he complained that other members in the department were disadvantaged because of their association with him. I do not remember in particular that gender was an issue.
Tr. 2-57-58. Juries are sometimes skeptical about sudden failures of memory on the part of people who otherwise have a detailed recollection of the past.
The jury was also entitled to conclude that the University’s supposed legitimate reasons for taking the actions it did were pretextual. True, a jury certainly could have found that the new department chair (Clayton) wanted fresh resumes from everyone on the faculty, but it equally might have found this to be pointless if Albrecht-sen’s vita had not changed since the last one on file. The jury might have found the University’s newfound concern about his qualifications to teach the summer classes to be phony, since he had taught the very same classes for the past three years, and since some of the very same people (Barnett and Greenhill) had approved the earlier offerings. Moreover, while the majority makes much of the fact that Clayton’s sudden concern with Al-brechtsen’s qualifications could have been the “use of the broom” that new managers frequently bring to office, it might also have noted that Clayton became department chair in the fall of 1996, more than a year and a half before her March 1998 memorandum raising concerns about Al-brechtsen’s ability to teach the workshops. And while she testified on the stand that she was on a trip out of the country at the time of the 1996 approval of the workshops and that a deputy signed off on the workshops in her stead, a responsible department chair who was new to her post — and intent on using her new manager’s broom' — -would almost certainly have reviewed all such documents upon her return. A reasonable jury might have concluded that Clayton had every opportunity to object to Albrechtsen’s qualifications at the beginning of her tenure as department chair in 1996, but did not do so until the following academic year, in the spring of 1998, after a new round of complaints from Albrechtsen.
Furthermore, the courses — “Wilderness Medicine” and “Electrocardiography”— were within the scope of Albrechtsen’s professional training. As the University concedes in its Reply Brief at 19, Albrecht-sen “completed a doctoral degree in physiology and biophysics at Colorado State University, has expertise in cardiovascular physiology and environmental physiology, has teaching experience at UWW, Colorado State University and the University of Colorado, and is a member of the American College of Sports Medicine, the American Association of Cardiovascular* and Pulmonary Rehabilitation, the Wilderness Medical Society and other professional organizations.” The jury also knew that the University’s story about the reason for disapproving the 1998 offerings had shifted; at one point, it said that it received notice of his interest in teaching the classes too late to include them in the catalog, but later, it asserted that the lack of a resume and its concerns about his background were the real reason he could not present them. The jury reasonably could have found that these were just ex*441cuses, and that the University was instead retaliating for his complaints.
The majority also questions why the University would have decided to retaliate against Albreehtsen for his constant complaints when it had promoted him several times. Ante at 437. The answer is simple: it granted him tenure and later promoted him under threat of legal action based on his earlier complaints. Paragraph 404 of Albreehtsen’s complaint sets forth the terms of a settlement agreement that Greenhill and he signed on June 9, 1993, that was designed to govern his promotion process. The 1993 agreement stated in part: “The parties affirm that any evaluation of Dr. Albreehtsen for promotion to rank of full professor shall be conducted under established criteria (involving teaching, research, and service) and procedures at the department, college, and university levels.” The agreement was concluded right in the middle of the promotion process the majority outlines: tenure in 1989, promotion to associate professor in 1991, promotion to full professor in 1995. There is also ample evidence of continued complaints about discrimination over that entire course of time. Thus, the hostility that erupted in 1998 was not new; it merely took on a more virulent form, which amounted to an adverse employment action in retaliation for the recent complaints of sex discrimination described by Chancellor Greenhill.
Because I would affirm the jury’s verdict, as properly modified by the district court, I would also affirm the court’s award of attorney’s fees. I agree with the majority that there is no merit to Al-brechtsen’s cross-appeal, and so to that extent I concur in its opinion. I cannot, however, support this court’s decision to second-guess the verdict of a jury that heard all the testimony pertaining to Al-brechtsen’s claim and concluded that he was the victim of unlawful retaliation. I therefore dissent.