Hylind v. Xerox Corp..

749 F.Supp.2d 340

Eileen M. HYLIND, Plaintiff

v.XEROX CORPORATION, Defendant.

Civil No.: PJM 03–116.

United States District Court,D. Maryland,Greenbelt Division.

Sept. 17, 2010.

Brian A. Loffredo, Offit Kruman P.A., Fulton, MD, Brian Joseph Markovitz, Joseph Greenwald and Laake P.A., Greenbelt, MD, Carolyn Susan Koch, Law Office of Carolyn S. Koch, Fairfax, VA, Laurence S. Kaye, The Kaye Law Firm, Rockville, MD, Thomas Samule Willamson, Jr., Covington and Burling LLP, Washington, DC, for Plaintiff.Elena D. Marcuss, McGuire Woods LLP, Baltimore, MD, Patrick Sheridan, Fedder and Garten P.A., Baltimore, MD, Robert Ross Niccolini, Ogletree Deakins Nash Smoak & Stewart P.C., Washington, DC, for Defendant.

OPINION

PETER J. MESSITTE, District Judge.I. Introduction

Eileen Hylind won a jury verdict against Xerox Corporation on claims of sexual discrimination and retaliation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, and the jury awarded her compensatory damages, subsequently capped at the statutory maximum of $300,000. The Court now addresses various post-trial motions of the parties.

Hylind has filed:

1) A Motion for Economic Damages, claiming entitlement to back pay and front pay, arguing that she sustained disabling migraine headaches and became unable to work as a result of Xerox's actionable behavior;

2) A Motion for Injunctive Relief, seeking to prevent Xerox from retaliating against her and others who helped her during her case, and to require Xerox to take company-wide steps to prevent potential future situations of sexual discrimination and retaliation; and

3) A variety of post-trial motions asking the Court to reconsider its past decisions, to add new claims, to grant sanctions against Xerox, and to provide various other types of relief.

Xerox has filed:

1) A Motion to Strike certain exhibits contained in Hylind's post-trial request to add new claims.

The Court has considered the parties' briefs and has heard oral arguments as to the first two motions. The Court decides the other motions on the papers, finding a further hearing unnecessary. Local Rule 105.6 (D. Md.).

For the reasons that follow, Hylind's Motion for Economic Damages is GRANTED IN PART AND DENIED IN PART. Her Motion for Injunctive Relief is DENTED. All of her other motions are DENTED. Xerox's Motion to Strike is rendered MOOT.

II. Case History

The Court set out the facts and history of this case in its Order of August 18, 2008 [Paper No. 341], when it addressed a previous set of post-trial motions. That factual recitation remains operative, and to the extent additional factual or procedural matters are relevant, the Court will refer to them in the course of this Opinion.

III. Plaintiff's Motion for Economic Damages

As a general rule, back pay is awarded to successful Title VII plaintiffs. Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U.S. 405, 421–22, 95 S.Ct. 2362, 45 L.Ed.2d 280 (1975). This furthers the objectives of Congress in enacting Title VII to create incentives for employers to provide equality of employment opportunities and to make persons whole for injuries suffered on account of unlawful discrimination. Id. at 418–19, 95 S.Ct. 2362. An award of back pay ensures that victims of unlawful employment practices are “restored to a position where they would have been were it not for the unlawful discrimination.' ” Id. at 421, 95 S.Ct. 2362. “To make the plaintiff whole, the award of back pay should be the difference between what the employee would have earned had the wrongful conduct not occurred from the period of termination to judgment, and the actual earnings during that period.” Ford v. Rigidply Rafters, Inc., 984 F.Supp. 386, 389 (D.Md.1997). District courts have broad equitable discretion in determining the award. Franks v. Bowman Transp. Co., 424 U.S. 747, 763–64, 96 S.Ct. 1251, 47 L.Ed.2d 444 (1976).

With these objectives in mind, the Court calculates back pay in this case guided by four considerations: 1) the time period for which the back pay should be awarded, 2) the appropriate salary and fringe benefit rates for that period, 3) whether Xerox is entitled to an offset for amounts paid to Hylind as disability pay, and 4) the appropriate rates of pre-judgment and postjudgment interest.

A. Time Period of Back Pay Award

Both parties accept that Xerox's conduct contributed to Hylind sustaining disabling migraine headaches in 1995 and affected her ability to work, such that she is clearly entitled to some amount of back pay. They dispute, however, the length of time for which Xerox's conduct contributed to her disability, and thus differ as to the appropriate period for which she should be awarded the back pay. Hylind contends that Xerox's conduct left her permanently disabled and unable to work, such that she is entitled to back pay from the time she stopped working at Xerox, i.e., 1995, through judgment in 2007, as well as front pay for the rest of her working life. Xerox submits that Hylind returned to her pre-incident ability to work by 1999, and that that year should be the cutoff date for any back pay.

As an initial matter. Hylind argues that the Court is obliged to give greater weight to the testimony of her treating physician over that of other medical experts in evaluating her medical condition, which is to say that the Court should give more credit to the testimony of her expert and treating physician, Dr. Blake, than to that of Xerox's expert, Dr. Ammerman. While it is true that testimony by treating physicians may be accorded greater weight in Social Security disability benefits cases, see 20 C.F.R. § 416.927(d)(2), this rule does not automatically transfer to other areas of the law where not mandated by statute or regulation. See Black & Decker Disability Plan v. Nord, 538 U.S. 822, 834, 123 S.Ct. 1965, 155 L.Ed.2d 1034 (2003) (rejecting application of “treating physician rule” in ERISA cases since not required by statute or relevant regulations). The treating physician rule is not mandated either under the language of Title VII nor under any relevant regulations, nor does there appear to be any Fourth Circuit caselaw mandating application of the rule in Title VII cases. In fact, the Fourth Circuit has declined to give dispositive weight to the conclusions of treating doctors in other contexts. See Nichols v. Ashland Hosp. Corp., 251 F.3d 496, 504 (4th Cir.2001) (determining in FMLA case that District Court was not bound to follow plaintiff's treating psychiatrist's opinion). The Court, therefore, declines to apply a rule according greater weight to the treating physician's testimony and will instead weigh the testimony of Hylind's and Xerox's medical experts based on the same factors that ordinarily affect the credibility and reliability of expert medical witnesses.

Reviewing the testimony of both Dr. Blake and Dr. Ammerman, the Court concludes that the period of disability attributable to Xerox's actionable conduct in this case, and thus the period of back pay, should be 8 years. In determining this number, the Court credits testimony from both sides' experts.¹

The Court finds Dr. Ammerman credible in his testimony that, based upon his experience. Hylind's disabling migraines would not last for the rest of her life, but that she would eventually return to her pre–1995 baseline level of work capability.² See Ammerman Test. (June 19, 2007) 148:2–150:9. Dr. Ammerman did not give a specific year by which he believed that Hylind would be back at her pre–1995 baseline, opining instead that she had begun to improve by 1999 and that her period of disability would definitely be less than 13 years, the extraordinarily long time it took for the case to come to trial in 2007, and certainly less than the remainder of her lifetime. See id.

Dr. Blake's testimony also bears on the appropriate length of the period of back pay. Dr. Blake testified that, in her capacity as Hylind's physician, she cleared Hylind to work part-time for up to 20 hours per week in 1999. See Blake Test. (June 12, 2007) 48:5–:20, 88:16–:22. The Court finds the determination that Hylind could begin working up to 20 hours per week in 1999 credible since it reflected Dr. Blake's pre-litigation observations of Hylind made in a treatment context. This evidence also reflects, however, that Hylind's migraines, though exacerbated by Xerox's actions, were capable of improvement. The Court finds this testimony at odds with Hylind's contention that Xerox's conduct has left her permanently disabled. Finding that Hylind was steadily improving 4 years after the events sued upon in this case, the Court, in its discretion, considers 8 years to be the appropriate duration of the disability to attribute to Xerox's actionable conduct. Accordingly, the Court will award Hylind back pay for the years of 1995 to 2002.³ Since the only pay due that the Court attributes to Xerox's actionable conduct ends in 2002, there is no occasion to make a front pay award.

B. Salary and Fringe Benefits

Hylind believes that the Court should calculate its award of base salary based upon promotions she feels she would have received and sales goals she feels she would have met if the incidents in this case had not happened and she had continued working. Her numbers are based in large part upon projections by her vocational expert and in part on earnings data of other Xerox employees.⁴ The Court finds the promotion and sales goal scenarios suggested by Hylind much too speculative in nature. Additionally, these scenarios would result in base salaries far in excess of those that Hylind was actually receiving prior to and up through 1995, before Xerox's actionable conduct. The Court has decided that the appropriate base salary for measuring Hylind's back pay should be the average of the salaries she actually received in the four years preceding her discontinuance of work in 1995, with increases to reflect reasonable expected salary increases over the relevant 8–year period....