Hawkins v. Ctr. for Spinal Surgery

34 F.Supp.3d 822

Demica D. HAWKINS, Plaintiff

v.The CENTER FOR SPINAL SURGERY, Defendant.

Case No. 3:12–cv–1125.

United States District Court, M.D. Tennessee, Nashville Division.

Signed July 29, 2014.

Douglas S. Johnston, Jr., Barrett Johnston, LLC, Nashville, TN, for Plaintiff.

Charles K. Grant, Megan M. Sutton, Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, PC, Nashville, TN, for Defendant.

MEMORANDUM

ALETA A. TRAUGER, District Judge.

The defendant has filed a Renewed Motion for Summary Judgment (Docket No. 76), to which the plaintiff, Demica Hawkins, has filed a Response in opposition (Docket No. 87), and the defendant has filed a Reply (Docket No. 93). Hawkins also filed a Partial Motion for Summary Judgment on the Issue of Interference with Plaintiff's Family and Medical Leave Act Rights (Docket No. 73), to which the defendant filed a Response in opposition (Docket No. 91), and the plaintiff filed a Reply (Docket No. 98).¹ For the reasons explained herein, only Hawkins' retaliatory discharge and FMLA interference claims related to her termination will proceed to trial.

BACKGROUND

The Center for Spinal Surgery (“CSS” or “the hospital”) hired Hawkins, who is black, as an Accounts Payable Coordinator within its Business Department in February 2009.² Hawkins was employed in this role at CSS through March 1, 2013. Hawkins alleges that, during and after her period of employment, CSS discriminated against her on the basis of race, retaliated against her multiple times for bringing discrimination or retaliation charges against CSS, and discriminated or retaliated against her for taking pregnancy leave.

I. July 2010 Alleged Pay Discrimination and the Associated First EEOC Charge

When Hawkins was hired, she became responsible for all functions related to accounts payable (“A/P”) for the hospital. She was paid at a rate of $20.00 per hour, which amounted to approximately $40,000.00 per year. In April or May 2009, CSS approached Hawkins to add some human resource and payroll functions to her workload, apparently as part of a change in ownership and in anticipation of a national accreditation survey for the hospital. Other employees at the hospital similarly took on additional responsibilities for the same reasons. Hawkins performed the additional functions (along with her A/P responsibilities) without incident through approximately August 2010. The accreditation survey took place in June 2010 and CSS received the accreditation.

On July 7, 2010, Hawkins met with Kathy Watson, the Administrator in Chief of Nursing for CSS, to discuss her job duties and compensation. Based on research she had done regarding jobs in the middle Tennessee area, Hawkins asked Watson for a $20,000 pay raise because she believed she was doing “too much” and was entitled to more money going forward. (see Watson Dep. Vol. I at 161:24–162:3.) Watson was polite, listened attentively, told Hawkins that she was doing a good job, and told Hawkins that she would speak with Corey Ridgway, CSS's President, about the possibility of a raise. Watson spoke with Ridgway, who decided to deny Hawkins the requested raise. Rather than giving her a raise, Watson reassigned Hawkins' non-A/P duties (human resources and payroll) to three white employees: Director of Finance Angie Crow and Business Office Manager Alissa Christiansen (who took on the human resources functions), and Lindsey Patterson (who took on the payroll functions). Watson claims that she did so to address Hawkins' “complaints” about her existing workload. By contrast, Hawkins contends that Watson was seeking to avoid giving a pay raise to Hawkins because she is black. It is undisputed that neither Christian nor Crow received a pay raise for assuming Hawkins' human resource functions. As to Patterson, it is undisputed that she received a $1.00 pay raise, although the basis for the raise is disputed. Patterson was hired on May 17, 2010 as a probationary employee in the Business Office (the same office in which Hawkins worked), earning $16.00 per hour. On June 28, 2010, Patterson's probationary period ended and she became a full-time employee. After becoming a full-time employee, Patterson received a $1.00 raise (to $17.00 per hour) at approximately the same time that she assumed the payroll work that Hawkins had been performing. According to Watson's declaration, Patterson received the raise simply because she switched to full-time work, although Watson admitted at deposition that not every PRN employee receives a raise upon the completion of their probationary period.

In addition to the alleged differential wage treatment relative to Patterson, Watson contends that she was “similarly situated” to four other white employees who (1) had taken on additional responsibilities in the spring and summer of 2010 in the context of the hospital's accreditation and certification, (2) requested wage increases from Watson following the certification, and (3) received the requested wage increases.³ The circumstances of these four employees are as follows:

• Judy Statham works in the Nursing Department and was promoted from a Charge Nurse to Nurse Manager. Her promotion carried with it an increase in pay. As the Nurse Manager, Statham is responsible for all nursing functions throughout the facility and supervises all staff in Pre-op, Post Anesthesia Care Unit, and Pre–Admission Testing.

• Toni Walker also works in the Nursing Department and was promoted from Nurse to Clinical Educator. Her promotion carried with it an increase in pay. As the Clinical Nurse Educator, Walker is responsible for evaluating patient care and facilitating the professional development of the nursing staff.

• Stephanie Purtee works in the Quality Management Department and was promoted from Quality Manager to Quality Director. Her promotion carried with it an increase in pay. As the Quality Director, Purtee is responsible for planning, organizing, coordinating, and evaluating the activities and functions of performance improvement, risk management, infection control, and special projects.

• Yanci Pence works in the Nursing Department as an Operating Room RN, and occasionally fills in as Charge Nurse. The Charge Nurses are responsible for patient care and were provided a pay raise from $1.50 to $3.00 an hour because, according to Watson, “a pay adjustment was long overdue.”⁴

On November 8, 2010, Hawkins filed an EEOC charge related to the July 2010 incident (the “First EEOC Charge”), alleging race discrimination.

II. Alleged Retaliation for the First EEOC Charge

Hawkins contends that, shortly after filing the First EEOC Charge, CSS retaliated against her by writing her up for three workplace mistakes that occurred in December 2010 and January 2011.

First, in late December 2010, Hawkins accidentally overpaid a vendor by approximately $4,000. According to Watson, she (Watson) discovered the overpayment and verbally coached Hawkins. According to Hawkins, she (Hawkins) discovered the issue herself, corrected it, and self-reported to Watson both the issue and the means by which she resolved it. It is undisputed that Watson did not immediately write up Hawkins for the issue at the time. Second, in December 2010 or January 2011,⁵ Hawkins mistakenly entered an invoice into the hospital A/P software without obtaining the requisite approval from either Crow or Watson. Crow verbally counseled Watson for this mistake. According to Hawkins, Crow or Watson was equally culpable for this mistake, because Hawkins only inputted invoices after receiving them back from Crow or Watson (with their signature), meaning that Crow or Watson must have returned the invoice to Watson without signing it as they should have.⁶ Third, in January 2011, Hawkins failed to close the hospital's accounts payable for that month. Hawkins had asked to take the day off on the date the accounts were closing (January 28, 2011) and had told Crow and Christiansen that she would close the accounts before her vacation day. Hawkins in fact failed to close the accounts before her vacation day. After Crow learned that certain A/P errors had not been corrected and that Hawkins had failed to close the A/P account period, Crow corrected the errors and closed the A/P account period herself. Although Hawkins had told Crow and Christiansen to call her with any issues, no one contacted her that day.

On February 2, 2011, Christiansen and Crow issued an Employee Counseling Report (“ECR”) to Hawkins relating to the three incidents.⁷ According to Crow and Watson, they believed it was necessary to issue the ECR because Hawkins had made several errors in a relatively short time frame, the last of which was the most serious. Hawkins refused to sign the ECR, although she acknowledges that she made all three mistakes referenced in it. At deposition, Hawkins contended that she believed that her supervisors were retaliating against her by issuing the ECR, because the mistakes were “common” and fell within the “margin of error” for her company. However, in her briefing here, she does not identify any comparators related to the mistakes for which she received the ECR.

Notwithstanding receipt of the ECR, Hawkins was not terminated or suspended. In fact, she received a favorable performance review in February 2011, and she received an annual wage increase of three percent.

III. Second EEOC Charge and Alleged Retaliation Relative to that Charge

At an unspecified point after she received the February 2, 2011 ECR, Hawkins filed another EEOC charge against CSS (the “Second EEOC Charge”), alleging that CSS had retaliated against her for filing the First EEOC Charge.⁸ Hawkins alleges that, soon after she filed the Second EEOC Charge, she suffered “other forms of petty retaliation.” She provides only one specific example. In February 2012, Watson asked Troy Raymer, a CSS maintenance employee, to check whether Hawkins was using a space heater that did not comply with company policy. Raymer determined that Hawkins in fact was using a space...