Court Opinion

ID: 9492319
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:38:10.689762+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:14.761040
License: Public Domain

MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I concur in all of the court’s opinion except the portion of it that upholds the district court’s decision not to submit Ms. Dhyne’s retaliation claim to the jury. With respect, I cannot agree with the court that no reasonable person could have found on this record that Mr. Meiners discharged Ms. Dhyne in retaliation for making a complaint about Mr. Davis’s behavior.
In order to raise an inference that an improper motive animated an employment action, all that a plaintiff has to produce is evidence that the defendant’s professed motive was pretextual, that is, falsely professed. See Ryther v. KARE 11, 108 F.3d 832, 836-38 (8th Cir.1997) (en banc), cert. denied, 521 U.S. 1119, 117 S.Ct. 2510, 138 L.Ed.2d 1013 (1997). Here, there was evidence, in the form of Ms. Dhyne’s testimony, that the act on which Mr. Meiners said he based his decision to fire Ms. Dhyne never in fact occurred. It seems to me inescapable that a reasonable person who believed Ms. Dhyne could infer that Mr. Meiners fabricated his motive for terminating Ms. Dhyne’s employment. The inference itself is hardly inescapable, but it is permissible.
The court alludes to testimony from witnesses that corroborated Mr. Meinérs’s testimony that he tried to verify when Ms. Dhyne had eaten food without paying for it. But, in the first place, the court does not indicate that there was any evidence that in fact tended to show that Ms. Dhyne acted in the way that Mr. Meiners claimed. More fundamentally, even if there was such testimony, the jury would be free to disbelieve it, leaving intact the inference that Mr. Meiners was not telling the truth. That inference would be sufficiently strong to carry the day for Ms. Dhyne. Cf. Kneibert v. Thomson Newspapers, Michigan, Inc., 129 F.3d 444, 456 (8th Cir.1997) (Morris Sheppard Arnold, J., dissenting).
When one adds to the factual mix the evidence that Mr. Meiners changed his story about why he terminated Ms. Dhyne, it is hard to resist the conclusion that an inference is raised that Mr. Meiners was not telling the truth. The court’s discussion certainly makes out an excellent case for Mr. Meiners, but in the end all it does *991is summarize the evidence in a light most favorable to him. It might well be that a verdict for Ms. Dhyne on this point would have been surprising; indeed, it would have surprised me. But the jury was, on this record, entitled to have the case, and believe whatever proof seemed to it to be entitled to credit.
I therefore respectfully dissent from the court’s decision with respect to Ms. Dhyne’s retaliation claim.