Court Opinion

ID: 9478636
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:53:32.258662+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:31.684786
License: Public Domain

JERRE S. WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur fully in Judge Sneed’s opinion for the Court in all parts except the consideration of and holdings as to damage issues in part V.
The opinion of the Court is correct in holding that starting in December 1985, appellee was not entitled to back pay because he abandoned job hunting efforts and took early retirement under social security. I think it’s regrettable that appel-lee was forced into this alternative because the need of income made it necessary for him to do so. But I agree that under the law he was not entitled to an award of back pay following that date.
But I dissent from the conclusion in the opinion of the Court that the jury verdict must be upset with respect to back pay for the period from March 1984 until December 1985. Until March 1984, appellee engaged in an intensive search for comparable work. The jury had the right to believe his testimony to this effect and also that it was corroborated by the Regional Director of the Texas Employment Commission who received reports of these job hunting efforts.
In March 1984, at the age of 61, he undertook the establishment of a “flea market” business. Admittedly it began as a small operation. He was not a capitalist, and he had been fired from his income source in violation of law by the appellant. The jury had the right to believe his testimony that he continued his search for a job, but not with the prior intensity and also his testimony that if he had obtained such a job he would have taken it immediately. He tried to build up this small part-time operation from scratch into a business which would yield him some income. He did not succeed, and a little over a year later he finally gave up. On the basis of this evidence the jury had the right to conclude that appellee was continuing to attempt to mitigate his losses from his wrongful discharge during the period he undertook to establish this business.
The majority takes the position that our decision in NLRB v. Armstrong Tire & Rubber Co., 263 F.2d 680 (5th Cir.1959) “is dispositive” to the contrary. In that case an employee was wrongfully discharged under the National Labor Relations Act. He attempted unsuccessfully to justify mitigation of back pay damages by going to work in his wife’s business, a small drive-in store, which had never made a profit. There are two distinctions between the Armstrong Tire & Rubber case and the case before us. The first is that the discharged employee was not undertaking to establish a business but was moving into a business already established without really expecting to get any substantial amount of income. The major distinction, significant and critical, is that the discharged employee never undertook to look for a job but simply immediately went to work in his wife’s business.
What the majority opinion is saying in this case is that even though a wrongfully discharged employee fairly close to the age of retirement has intensively looked for work for a substantial period of time without success, he cannot then undertake the relatively slow and difficult process of trying to establish a business of his own on absolutely minimum capital as a means of earning income and mitigating damages. There is no law compelling this result. And there clearly is enough evidence in the *1473record to indicate that this is exactly what this wrongfully discharged employee was trying to do. There may be evidence to the contrary, but the question was one for the jury. We do not have the authority to upset that jury verdict.
On the issue of front pay the Court is properly returning the case to the district court for an evaluation of the award of front pay. Some limitations may need to be placed upon it. At least it can be argued that not all of the critical factors were considered. While I concur in returning the issue of front pay to the district court for re-examination, I do not join in all of the observations and implications in the majority opinion. It is quite true that front pay is a substitute for reinstatement. Appellee should have been reinstated by the company. But it is unrealistic to talk of reinstatement now, although the majority opinion does, when he is 65 years old and when he was almost 64 years old when the district court made its decision. The only practicable remedy to compensate this appellee for the wrongful act of the appellant is the awarding of front pay. If appellant had carried out its obligations under the statute, appellee would have been reinstated in 1983. He would have enjoyed the normal expectation, which he testified was his reasonable expectation, that he would work with the company until the age of 65 and then retire. This evidence, which must be accepted, creates a classic case for front pay. This is the only way that the plaintiff can be made whole as a means of effectuating the purposes of the act. Smith v. Office of Personnel Management, 778 F.2d 258-62 (5th Cir.1985), cert. denied, 476 U.S. 1105, 106 S.Ct. 1949, 90 L.Ed.2d 358 (1986).
The majority opinion was extremely pedantic in concluding that the district court prior to awarding front pay was required in this case to have made its own verbalized finding that reinstatement was not feasible. It was obvious on its face that reinstatement of this man, almost 64 years old, was not feasible. The finding is clearly implied in this case in submitting the issue to the jury, although of course the court can make such a verbalized finding as a matter of form on the remand. My conclusion finds support in a wise dictum in Davis v. Combustion Engineering, Inc., 742 F.2d 916, 923 (6th Cir.1984) in upholding a front pay award for an illegally discharged 59 year old employee. The court said that the failure to award front pay to a 63 year old victim of discriminatory discharge “might be an abuse of discretion.” The court went on to say, "... [Tjhat which makes people whole is a matter of discretion for the trial court under the facts and circumstances of the individual case.”
Finally, I agree with the opinion for the Court that the issue of mitigation in awarding front pay is not clearly resolved by prior court opinion. What is critical in evaluating the role of mitigation is the rec-ognization, as the opinion for the Court does recognize, that the basic thrust of the statute is to make the employee whole for his losses as a result of the improper discharge. The rules with respect to mitigation in the award of back pay are not controlling. Even though front pay is not punitive, it has the function of being awarded in addition to back pay in lieu of reinstatement for the purpose of trying to make the employee whole for the wrong done to him.
In my view, on remand, the issue of the amount of front pay should be determined following these established principles, but the clear implication in the majority opinion is that any award of front pay is questionable because of a lack of mitigation. I do not find this implication acceptable. If there is lack of mitigation, it is only one factor to be considered in awarding front pay in this case. Discharge only seven months before appellee's pension was to vest is certainly another. The later refusal to rehire appellee in another vacant job to which he obviously was suited is another. In sum, appellant was obligated by its violation of the law to reinstate appellee. It did not do so. The statutory policy requires that the judgment of the court came as close as possible to making the victim whole for this violation of the law. 29 U.S.C. § 626(b). Only a substantial front *1474pay award can approach the satisfaction of that objective.