Court Opinion

ID: 9480621
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:53:38.021379+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:47:48.355561
License: Public Domain

*963POSNER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I regret not being able to agree with the majority’s disposition of this appeal. For reasons more fully stated by Judge Hart in his opinion granting summary judgment for the defendant, there is no possible doubt that the plaintiff would have been fired no matter what his age or his pension entitlements. By plaintiffs own account, Kenneth Packer, the defendant’s chief executive officer, is vengeful, vicious, and unethical; the plaintiff crossed Packer; this sealed the plaintiff’s fate. Because the plaintiff was approaching the time at which his pension rights would vest, Packer’s vengeance was particularly sweet: not only was he getting rid of an employee who had defied him, but he was screwing the employee out of a pension. (The affidavits of the plaintiff’s pals state merely that Packer was a nasty guy aware of Visser’s pension status.) This would be important if, but for the opportunity to save some money, Packer would have retained the plaintiff. But even the plaintiff does not argue that, making it apparent that there is no causal connection between the plaintiff’s pension expectations, or anything else to do with his age, and his being fired. No purpose could be served by a trial.
What confuses the issue is the defendant’s natural although foolish effort to portray Packer in a more attractive light by depicting the plaintiff as a disloyal employee, justly fired, rather than as the victim of a tyrant. The plaintiff claims with much force that the charge of disloyalty is a pretext. He was loyal to the defendant, just not to the person of Kenneth Packer, and, in the plaintiff’s words from his reply brief, “Kenneth Packer terminated Visser [the plaintiff] because Visser was disloyal to him not to the corporation or its shareholders” (emphasis in original). Quite so; and this demonstrates that the plaintiff has no case. He was fired not because of age, but, by his own account of what happened, because he was disloyal to his boss. He may have been treated shabbily, cruelly, unjustly; but the Age Discrimination in Employment Act is not a tenure statute for the older employee. It is not a shield against corporate arbitrariness. It does not smite the vengeful. It has, in truth, as Judge Hart found, no possible application to this case.
ORDER
Oct. 3, 1990.
A majority of judges in active service have voted to rehear this case en banc. Accordingly,
IT IS ORDERED that rehearing en banc be, and the same is hereby GRANTED.
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the judgment and opinion entered in this case on July 31, 1990 be, and are hereby, VACATED. This case will be reheard en banc at the convenience of the court.