Last week, the Cuyahoga County Court of Appeals reversed summary judgment in favor of an employer in an age discrimination claim when the plaintiff's evidence showed that he was fired in 2003 for alleged poor sales performance (in not meeting his sales goals for five consecutive years) even though the employer maintained the employment of younger salespersons whose sales quota were similar or worse, he was replaced by newly hired younger salespeople and the employer had taken away hi four largest accounts and reassigned them to younger salespeople before claiming his performance was unacceptable. Pattison v. W.W. Grainger Inc., 2010-Ohio-2484. The case bounced up and down the appellate chain on various procedural motions involving whether there was a final appealable order and timely appeal. However, when the merits of the trial court's summary judgment decision finally reached the court of appeals, it reversed the decision.
The Court of Appeals found two errors by the trial court. First, the trial court erred in finding that the plaintiff failed to satisfy his prima facie burden of proving that he was qualified for his position when it relied on the evidence asserted by the employer to justify his termination. The prima facie burden is not supposed to be difficult and the plaintiff had been employed in his sales position for more than 25 years before his termination. Former customers also spoke highly of him and several customers decreased the amount of their business with the employer after he was terminated. Thus, he was clearly "qualified" for purposes of his prima facie case.
Second, the Court of Appeals found that the plaintiff produced more than sufficient evidence of pretext to justify sending the case to a jury to resolve the factual disputes. To raise a genuine issue of fact as to pretext and defeat a summary judgment motion under this position, [a plaintiff] must show one of the following: "(1) that the proffered reason had no basis in fact, (2) that the proffered reason did not actually motivate the action, or (3) that the proffered reason was insufficient to motivate the action." First, the plaintiff produced evidence that he had been fired for failing to meet sales goals when at least five younger salespeople had similarly failed to meet the same goals and had not been terminated. Indeed, he showed that he had received performance warnings and reprimands from his new, younger, supervisor when similarly situated younger employees had similarly failed to meet the same sales goals, but were not reprimanded. On the contrary, one of the younger salespeople had been promoted even though his sales volume was less than plaintiff's volume and others were simply transferred. "Given that [the employer] transferred or promoted significantly younger TM's, who were not meeting sales goals, while terminating [the plaintiff], who was by no means the least productive, raises an inference that [the employer's] stated reason for terminating [the plaintiff] was pretextual." In fact, the court found that the employer's stated reason for his termination was false. It was also arbitrary in that the decision of when to fire a salesperson based on poor performance was left to the discretion of the manager instead of a formula.
Second, the plaintiff showed that his accounts were distributed among younger salespeople (two of whom were newly hired and one was hired four months earlier), which was evidence of setting up the plaintiff to fail and discriminatory animus. Third, he showed that in the year before his termination only 1 of the 13 territory managers (his position) met his sales goal for the prior year and that person had just been hired and did not have any performance goals. Indeed, the supervisor testified that the territory had failed to meet sales goals in five of the last seven years. Finally, the plaintiff alleged that the supervisor had forced out other, older salespeople like himself.
In light of the plaintiff's factual evidence, the court remanded the case back to the trial court for a jury trial.
NOTICE: This summary is designed merely to inform and alert you of recent legal developments. It does not constitute legal advice and does not apply to any particular situation because different facts could lead to different results. Information here can change or be amended without notice. Readers should not act upon this information without legal advice. If you have any questions about anything you have read, you should consult with or retain an employment attorney.
