Court Opinion

ID: 9483082
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:10:23.986992+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:24.604965
License: Public Domain

MANION, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Although I agree with the court’s legal analysis and conclusions, I respectfully disagree with the factual analysis in part IV of the opinion and therefore dissent.
Initially, Artis made several claims against Clearing, including failure to train and retaliation. Both were dismissed, and Artis did not appeal. The issue before the jury narrowed to failure to recall from layoff. To succeed on this claim, under the indirect method of proof outlined in McDonnell-Douglas, Artis needed to show that Clearing’s articulated “legitimate business purpose for choosing to bybass Artis” was a pretext, leaving only race as the “but for” cause of the bypass. (Op. at 1140.) Although McKnight required that the jury verdict be set aside, the trial court’s reliance on the jury finding requires our de novo analysis of the evidence. (Op. at 1138-39.) It is from this evidentiary analysis that I must depart from the court’s decision.
The central theme of the pretext finding rests on the fact that “Hale asked the three operators remaining on the job to do the work_” (Op. at 1136.) When they refused, Hale disregarded seniority and recalled two employees who had Poreba experience; Hale claimed he wanted to recall a *1145lathe operator with Poreba experience.1 But, an expert testified that an operator could start work on the Poreba lathe with very little training. This apparent inconsistency of first offering the work to employees without Poreba experience and then insisting on recalling only those employees with Poreba experience apparently sets the stage for the pretext.
A reasonable juror could believe that, since further training is such a minor obstacle, disregarding seniority does not make much business sense. However, the law is that a company may not be punished for making a bad business decision, and in our JNOV review, we must ensure that the jury has not done so. See Pollard v. Rea Magnet Wire Co., 824 F.2d 557, 559-60 (7th Cir.), cert, denied, 484 U.S. 977, 108 S.Ct. 488, 98 L.Ed.2d 486 (1987) (“No matter how medieval a firm’s practices, no matter how high-handed its decisional process, no matter how mistaken the firm’s managers, Title VII and § 1981 do not interfere.”). The court stated, correctly, that a business justification may be so silly that a reasonable juror could believe it to be a pretext for discrimination. (Op. at 1140.) But, this is not a case like the court’s “floppy hats” hypothetical.
It is undisputed that the three lathe operators without Poreba experience whom Clearing first asked to work on the Poreba lathe were already on the job and barely had enough work to keep them busy. It made economic sense to train one of them on the Poreba and have all three busy, thus avoiding having to recall another employee and pay another salary. This option having failed, the next step, and the logical one, was to look for employees who had Poreba experience. In Clearing’s judgment, this avoided the costs of training. Accordingly, Clearing recalled Glowacki and later McDonnell. Glowacki was fourth on the list, below Artis and two white employees. McDonnell was ' actually thirteenth on the layoff seniority list. (One person with Poreba experience who was higher on the list than McDonnell declined recall.) Thus, when McDonnell was recalled, Clearing skipped Artis and eleven white employees.
This business reason is not implausible. No matter how minimal the hindsight evidence at trial showed the cost of training Artis on the Poreba lathe to be, Clearing made a business judgment, at the time, about how to get the work on the Poreba lathe done at the lowest cost. This is not silliness on the level of floppy hats so that a reasonable juror could believe that the stated business reason was “bunkum.” What is implausible is the court’s conclusion that Clearing purposely “cooked up the Poreba experience criteria” — and skipped over eleven white employees — “in order to avoid rehiring Artis, solely because of the color of his skin.” (Op. at 1140.)2
The court may be perplexed with Artis’ testimony that in the twenty-four years with the company “he had never felt discriminated against.” Nevertheless, that is what he said. The only explanation for this jury finding of discrimination is that it did not like Clearing’s perceivably weak business reason for skipping over one black and eleven white employees. That may *1146have been a breach of the collective bargaining agreement, and that may have been a poor business judgment; but when eleven whites are treated the same as one black, it is implausible to conclude that race was a determining factor in the company’s recall decision. I would reverse the district court.

. The court notes, op. at 1139, that "Artis had a contractual right to be recalled first." Even if this was true, it only shows that Clearing violated the collective bargaining agreement; it does not support a finding that Clearing violated Title VII. In any case, we are not faced with a breach of the collective bargaining agreement. To the contrary, as the court points out, the trial court instructed the jury "that Clearing had lived up to the terms of the collective bargaining agreement when it recalled lathe operators out of turn." (Op. at 1143.) Thus, with breach of contract excluded, and retaliation and failure to train claims dismissed, only one question remained for jury consideration: Did Clearing not recall Artis because he had no Poreba experience? Or did that excuse cover up the real reason for its failure to recall Artis — because he was black?

. Also without foundation is the court’s speculation that the company may have wanted to recall younger and perhaps more flexible workers. (Op. at 1140-41.) Perhaps the two recalled employees showed more flexibility in the past by their willingness to learn the Poreba machine. If so, to recall them for the Poreba experience would be a legitimate business reason. If not, it was a breach of contract, but that was excised from the jury’s consideration.