concluding summary judgment was warranted in the defendant’s favor because the plaintiff offered “no evidence that [his supervisor] recommended to [the final decision maker] that [the plaintiff] be discharged, that [the supervisor] was sufficiently involved to be aware of [the decision maker’s] reason for terminating [the plaintiff] or that [the supervisor] had the ability to influence [the decision maker’s] decision.”
How later courts described this case
- concluding summary judgment was warranted in the defendant’s favor because the plaintiff offered “no evidence that [his supervisor] recommended to [the final decision maker] that [the plaintiff] be discharged, that [the supervisor] was sufficiently involved to be aware of [the decision maker’s] reason for terminating [the plaintiff] or that [the supervisor] had the ability to influence [the decision maker’s] decision.”
- holding that under the ADEA, if plaintiff succeeds in establishing her prima facie case, the burden then “ ‘shifts to the employer to articulate legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons for the challenged employment decision’ ”
- concluding that an employee’s discriminatory remark was insufficient to save a claim from summary judgment when there was no evidence that the employee influenced the decision to fire the plaintiff
- finding no evidence of discrimination where there was no evidence that the plaintiffs supervisors, who allegedly made discriminatory remarks, actually participated in employer’s discharge decisions
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
KAREN LeCRAFT HENDERSON, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
While I concur in the result, I write separately to point out that the first sentence of paragraph 6 of Hall’s affidavit (as Hall’s lawyer — who acknowledged he drafted the affidavit — conceded at oral argument), which avers that Sanford “informed [Hall] that the true reason for [Hall’s] termination was [Hall’s] age, not the other reasons raised earlier,” is Hall’s lawyer’s gloss on Sanford’s actual words quoted in the next two sentences of paragraph 6 — that he was “too old,” that she wanted “younger,” safer drivers and that he “had to go.” Hall Aff. ¶ 6, reprinted in App. 24. Hall, then, does not aver that Sanford in fact said “the true reason for [his] termination was [his] age,” id., and there is no other evidence of discrimination in the record. Accordingly, Hall failed to establish a prima facie case of discrimination and I find it unnecessary to go further.