Yesterday, the Franklin County Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal on summary judgment of an age discrimination claim involving the denial of a promotion, and retaliation and a claim for invasion of privacy for not maintaining the confidentiality of a performance plan document. Dautartas v. Abbott Laboratories, 2012-Ohio-1709. First, the Court had no difficulty rejecting the denial of promotion claim in that the person selected was only two years younger than the plaintiff and the plaintiff testified that one of the decisionmakers stated afterwards that she did not even know the plaintiff's age. Consideration of the plaintiff's age for purposes of succession planning (i.e., determining who might need to be replaced) was by itself insufficient to constitute evidence of direct discrimination. The passage of two months between the plaintiff's complaint of discrimination and the alleged retaliatory action was too remote by itself to create the inference of retaliation, particularly when the plaintiff had requested the Human Resources Manager to not conduct an investigation. Finally, the Court rejected the invasion of privacy claim because the attachment of a performance plan to a calendar entry accessible by plaintiff's peers was shown to be false, was not an intentional action and did not concern purely private matters because the statements concerned her professional and business life.
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