Court Opinion

ID: 9498103
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:08:10.299486+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:37.250814
License: Public Domain

SLOVITER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully disagree with the majority’s disposition of this case because I believe that the reason advanced by Met-Pro Corporation for Richard J. Kautz’s termination could be found by a trier of fact to be pretextual.
Of course, an employer is, and should be, free to evaluate an employee’s performance according to its business judgment. But when it uses a method of evaluation that it is inherently unreasonable, the factfinder may infer that the decision was based on some other consideration. In Aka v. Washington Hosp. Ctr., 156 F.3d 1284 (D.C.Cir.1998) (en banc), the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held that: “[i]f a factfin-der can conclude that a reasonable employer would have found the plaintiff to be significantly better qualified for the job, but this employer did not, the factfinder can legitimately infer that the employer consciously selected a less-qualified candidate — something that employers do not usually do, unless some other strong consideration, such as discrimination, enters into the picture.” 156 F.3d at 1294. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has reached a similar conclusion, recognizing that “facts may exist from which a reasonable jury could conclude that the employer’s ‘business decision’ was so lacking in merit as to call into question its genuineness.” Dister v. Cont’l Group, Inc., 859 F.2d 1108, 1116 (2d Cir.1988); see also Ryther v. KARE 11, 108 F.3d 832, 840 (8th Cir.1997) (holding that factfinder was allowed to consider whether the basis purportedly relied upon by defendant in its decision to fire plaintiff was “actually a sound' — -as opposed to pretextual — basis upon which to make employment decisions”); Loeb v. Textron, Inc., 600 F.2d 1003, 1012 n. 6 (1st Cir.1979) (“The reasonableness of the employer’s reasons may of course be probative of whether they are pretexts. The more idiosyncratic or questionable the employer’s reason, the easier it will be to expose it as a pretext. ...”).
Kautz argued that the statistical formula on which Meb-Pro relied was tilted to the disadvantage of the older worker, such as Kautz. Rather than rely on the sales statistics, the traditional evaluator used by *477Met-Pro, which showed that Kautz’s bookings for fiscal year 2001 and fiscal year 2002 were the second highest of the six regional sales managers, Meb-Pro chose to rely on a statistical formula that calculated the percentage of fiscal year 2002 bookings to the 2001 bookings. Under this formula, the total amount that an employee sold was not considered; rather, the determinative figure was the difference between an employee’s sales in fiscal year 2001 and fiscal year 2002. Notably, the three top earners of 2001 had the three worst percentages under the formula adopted. Meb-Pro’s formula confers the worst scores to the best salespersons and the best scores to the less successful salespersons. Under this formula, it is much more likely that the youngest sellers will have the highest percentages while the older, more experienced, employees will have the lowest, when 2002 sales are viewed as a percentage of those employees’ 2001 sales. When use of this formula is considered in light of the bad economy which Met-Pro acknowledges was experienced in 2002, the employees most likely to have the highest percentages are those who were the least able to take advantage of the prosperous economic conditions of 2001. Not surprisingly, two of the three top earners for 2001 were also the oldest employees. This formula therefore is geared to the disadvantage of Met-Pro’s older employees, such as Kautz.
A factfinder could reasonably determine that the use of this method, rather than the sales as such, was so unreasonable that it was a pretext for age discrimination. Because that flawed formula was the basis of Kautz’s termination, I would reverse the grant of summary judgment.