Court Opinion

ID: 9386377
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-04-12 15:00:41.940473+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:18:06.000812
License: Public Domain

21-2899-cv
     Jimenez v. Delta Airlines

                                 UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
                                     FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT

                                             SUMMARY ORDER

     RULINGS BY SUMMARY ORDER DO NOT HAVE PRECEDENTIAL EFFECT.
     CITATION TO A SUMMARY ORDER FILED ON OR AFTER JANUARY 1, 2007, IS
     PERMITTED AND IS GOVERNED BY FEDERAL RULE OF APPELLATE
     PROCEDURE 32.1 AND THIS COURT’S LOCAL RULE 32.1.1. WHEN CITING A
     SUMMARY ORDER IN A DOCUMENT FILED WITH THIS COURT, A PARTY
     MUST CITE EITHER THE FEDERAL APPENDIX OR AN ELECTRONIC DATABASE
     (WITH THE NOTATION “SUMMARY ORDER”). A PARTY CITING A SUMMARY
     ORDER MUST SERVE A COPY OF IT ON ANY PARTY NOT REPRESENTED BY
     COUNSEL.

 1         At a stated term of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit,
 2   held at the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, 40 Foley Square, in the
 3   City of New York, on the 12th day of April, two thousand twenty-three.
 4
 5           PRESENT: BARRINGTON D. PARKER,
 6                            GERARD E. LYNCH,
 7                            RAYMOND J. LOHIER, JR.,
 8                                    Circuit Judges.
 9           ------------------------------------------------------------------
10           VICTOR JIMENEZ,
11
12                           Plaintiff-Appellant,
13
14                     v.                                                         No. 21-2899-cv
15
16           DELTA AIRLINES, INC.,
17
18                            Defendant-Appellee.
19           ------------------------------------------------------------------
20
21           FOR PLAINTIFF-APPELLANT:                                  David A. Berlin, Weisberg
22                                                                     Law, Morton, PA; Scott A.
23                                                                     Korenbaum, New York, NY
 1         FOR DEFENDANT-APPELLEE:                         Ira G. Rosentein, Morgan
 2                                                         Lewis & Bockius LLP, New
 3                                                         York, NY
 4
 5         Appeal from a judgment of the United States District Court for the Eastern

 6   District of New York (William F. Kuntz, II, Judge).

 7         UPON DUE CONSIDERATION, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED, ADJUDGED,

 8   AND DECREED that the judgment of the District Court is AFFIRMED.

 9         Victor Jimenez appeals from a November 1, 2021 judgment of the United

10   States District Court for the Eastern District of New York (Kuntz, J.) denying

11   Jimenez’s discovery motions and granting Delta Airlines, Inc.’s motion for

12   summary judgment as to Jimenez’s claims of disparate treatment and retaliation

13   in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1981. We assume the parties’ familiarity with the

14   underlying facts and the record of prior proceedings, to which we refer only as

15   necessary to explain our decision to affirm.

16         Jimenez worked as an aircraft maintenance technician for Delta at New

17   York’s LaGuardia Airport (“LGA”) from June 28, 2010 until his termination on

18   June 7, 2018. In January 2018 a Delta passenger reported a missing laptop, whose

19   location was later tracked to the home of Dexta Fullwood, a Delta employee. On

20   April 11, 2018, Fullwood told detectives from the Port Authority that Jimenez

                                              2
 1   had given him the laptop and asked him to unlock it. The detectives then

 2   interviewed Jimenez. According to the Port Authority’s investigation summary,

 3   Jimenez denied all wrongdoing but “exhibited many non-verbal signs of

 4   dishonestly [sic] and verbal deflection.” App’x 199. At the conclusion of his

 5   interview, Jimenez provided written statements to the Port Authority and his

 6   duty managers, Jose Matos and Damien Jagarnauth, stating, “I have never given

 7   nor lent Dexta Fullwood any electronic devices including any Macbook.” App’x

 8   206. The Port Authority closed the case pending further investigative leads and

 9   referred the matter to Delta Corporate Security. Fullwood resigned immediately

10   because of his role in the missing laptop. The laptop was never recovered.

11         The next day, John Magnowski, Delta’s station manager at LGA, called

12   Jimenez into his office to discuss the Port Authority investigation. During the

13   meeting, Magnowski allegedly said to Jimenez, “Dominicans are the usual

14   suspects.” App’x 406-07. Jimenez reported the comment to Delta’s employee

15   hotline.

16         On May 17, 2018, Magnowski and Eric Johnson, a Human Resources

17   Manager at Delta, told Jimenez that he was “suspended effective immediately”

18   while Delta further investigated the laptop theft. App’x 649. On June 5, 2018,

                                             3
 1   Magnowski called Jimenez and gave him 24 hours to resign in lieu of being fired.

 2   App’x 750. On June 7, 2018, Jimenez was fired. On August 21, 2018, Jim

 3   Brimberry, an Equal Opportunity Manager at Delta, denied Jimenez’s appeal of

 4   his termination. Brimberry explained that Jimenez was terminated because he

 5   had “provided false and misleading information when [he] denied knowledge of

 6   or contact with [the] laptop,” “failed to report a coworker whom [he] had

 7   knowledge of taking money from a passenger’s purse that was left on an

 8   aircraft,” and “received a Written Coaching letter on May 11, 2017 for

 9   misconduct.” App’x 226-27.

10         In November 2018 Jimenez filed this action against Delta, alleging that, in

11   terminating his employment, the company (1) discriminated against him on the

12   basis of his “Dominican ethnicity and race” and (2) retaliated against him on

13   account of his complaints about Magnowski’s remark, in violation of 42 U.S.C. §

14   1981. Just prior to the close of fact discovery and Delta’s motion for summary

15   judgment, Jimenez filed two letter motions requesting, among other things, a

16   discovery extension and enforcement of subpoenas against Magnowski and

17   Matos, who had left Delta during the pendency of the litigation. The District

                                             4
 1   Court denied Jimenez’s letter motions and granted Delta’s motion for summary

 2   judgment.

 3      I.       Discovery Motions

 4            We affirm the District Court’s denial of Jimenez’s motions for discovery.

 5   “A district court abuses its discretion only when the discovery is so limited as to

 6   affect a party’s substantial rights.” In re Agent Orange Prod. Liab. Litig., 517

 7   F.3d 76, 103 (2d Cir. 2008) (cleaned up). Here, Delta produced Magnowski’s and

 8   Matos’s relevant e-mails and their notes of conversations with Jimenez. Jimenez

 9   deposed Johnson and Brimberry, who testified about their communications with

10   Magnowski and Matos in the course of their work on Jimenez’s complaints and

11   appeal to Delta. Jimenez was therefore “afforded a meaningful opportunity to

12   establish the facts necessary to support his claim[s],” and the District Court did

13   not abuse its discretion when it denied Jimenez discovery-related relief that

14   would have improved his chances of deposing Magnowski and Matos. Id.

15      II.      Claims Under § 1981

16            We review de novo the District Court’s grant of Delta’s motion for

17   summary judgment. Garcia v. Hartford Police Dep’t, 706 F.3d 120, 126–27 (2d

18   Cir. 2013). The burden-shifting evidentiary framework in McDonnell Douglas

                                                5
 1   Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792 (1973), applies to claims of disparate treatment and

 2   retaliation brought under § 1981. See Littlejohn v. City of New York, 795 F.3d

 3   297, 312, 315 (2d Cir. 2015). Even assuming Jimenez established prima facie cases

 4   of both disparate treatment and retaliation, we agree with the District Court that

 5   Jimenez failed to adduce “sufficient evidence to support a rational finding that

 6   the legitimate . . . reasons proffered by [Delta] were false.” Weinstock v.

 7   Columbia Univ., 224 F.3d 33, 42 (2d Cir. 2000) (cleaned up); see also Hicks v.

 8   Baines, 593 F.3d 159, 164-65 (2d Cir. 2010).

 9         It is well settled that in a discrimination case, “we are decidedly not

10   interested in the truth of the allegations against plaintiff.” McPherson v. New

11   York City Dep’t of Educ., 457 F.3d 211, 216 (2d Cir. 2006). Rather, “[w]e are

12   interested in what motivated the employer,” and “the factual validity of the

13   underlying imputation against the employee is not at issue.” Id. (quotation

14   marks omitted). We therefore need only conclude that the undisputed evidence

15   demonstrates that Delta was “[]sincere in [its] own belief” that its charges against

16   Jimenez were true, and that it was in fact motivated by this belief when it

17   terminated his employment. Ya-Chen Chen v. City Univ. of New York, 805 F.3d

18   59, 74 (2d Cir. 2015). Guided by these standards, we find that Jimenez has failed

                                               6
 1   to raise a genuine dispute about the falsity of Delta’s motivations for terminating

 2   his employment.

 3         To begin, Delta terminated Jimenez’s employment after investigating his

 4   involvement in the laptop theft for weeks. Delta reviewed the Port Authority

 5   detectives’ summary of their independent investigation, which stated that during

 6   the interview Jimenez “exhibited many non-verbal signs of dishonestly [sic] and

 7   verbal deflection” and “skirt[ed] around the question” of whether “he would

 8   pass a polygraph exam.” App’x 199. Leading up to his termination and during

 9   his post-termination appeal, Delta also reviewed internal records confirming that

10   Jimenez “was the only AMT assigned to the aircraft” from which the laptop was

11   stolen, and concluded that “there is no evidence to support [Jimenez’s] allegation

12   that others gained access to the aircraft and took the laptop.” App’x 226.

13   Jimenez argues that his daily work schedule at Delta raises a genuine dispute as

14   to whether Jimenez could have given Fullwood a stolen laptop at “around

15   8:15am,” as Fullwood alleged to the Port Authority detectives. App’x 201. But

16   aside from his general work schedule, Jimenez failed to adduce any admissible

17   evidence suggesting that Delta’s laptop-theft justification was pretextual. On this

18   record, a reasonable jury could not conclude that Delta’s reason for terminating

                                              7
 1   Jimenez for what it reasonably believed to be true about his role in the laptop

 2   theft was false.

 3         For the same reason, Jimenez also failed to adduce any admissible

 4   evidence suggesting that Delta’s other justifications for his termination were not

 5   the true reason for its decision. Jimenez contends that he told Matos about his

 6   co-worker’s purse theft soon after he learned about it, but Delta understood

 7   through Johnson that, during his investigation, Jimenez admitted to him and

 8   Magnowski that he had not timely reported the theft because he did not want to

 9   “snitch” on a friend. App’x 214. Applying the standards described above, Delta

10   was entitled to conclude that he had not timely reported the purse theft to a

11   manager. And it is undisputed that Jimenez received a “write-up” in May 2017

12   when he “signed the job card that [a task] was accomplished, but did not

13   complete the task.” App’x 221.

14         As relevant to Jimenez’s disparate treatment claim, we do not take lightly

15   the fact that Magnowski is alleged to have delivered his discriminatory remark

16   while discussing the laptop theft investigation that Delta cited as a central reason

17   for Jimenez’s termination. Cf. Sassaman v. Gamache, 566 F.3d 307, 314 (2d Cir.

18   2009) (“[T]he closer the remark’s relation to the allegedly discriminatory

                                              8
 1   behavior, the more probative that remark will be.” (cleaned up)). But given

 2   Jimenez’s failure to submit any admissible evidence suggesting that Delta’s

 3   laptop-theft justification was false, his § 1981 claim of disparate treatment cannot

 4   survive summary judgment. See Comcast Corp. v. Nat’l Assoc. of African

 5   American-Owned Media, 140 S. Ct. 1009, 1014-15 (2020) (“[Section] 1981 follows

 6   the general rule . . . [that] a plaintiff bears the burden of showing that race was a

 7   but-for cause of [his] injury.” (emphasis added)). We therefore affirm the District

 8   Court’s grant of Delta’s motion for summary judgment.

 9         We have considered Jimenez’s remaining arguments and conclude that

10   they are without merit. The judgment of the District Court is AFFIRMED.

11                                          FOR THE COURT:
12                                          Catherine O’Hagan Wolfe, Clerk of Court

                                               9