Lettieri v. Equant Incorporated

478 F.3d 640

Lorraine LETTIERI, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. EQUANT INCORPORATED, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 05-1532.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued September 20, 2006.

Decided March 5, 2007.

ARGUED:

Angela Hope France, Albo & Orlon, L.L.P., Arlington, Virginia, for Appellant. Beverly W. Garafolo, Brown, Raysman, Millstein, Felder & Steiner, L.L.P., Hartford, Connecticut, for Appellee.

ON BRIEF:

Seth C. Berenzweig, Albo & Orlon, L.L.P., Arlington, Virginia, for Appellant. George L. Washington, Jr., Equant, Inc., Oak Hill, Virginia, for Appellee.

Before MICHAEL, Circuit Judge, and N. CARLTON TILLEY, JR., United States District Judge for the Middle District of North Carolina, sitting by designation, and THOMAS E. JOHNSTON, United States District Judge for the Southern District of West Virginia, sitting by designation.

Affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded by published opinion. Judge MICHAEL wrote the opinion, in which Judge TILLEY and Judge JOHNSTON joined.

OPINION

MICHAEL, Circuit Judge.

The plaintiff, who appeals the summary judgment awarded to her former employer, claims that she was fired because of her gender and in retaliation for complaining of discrimination, all in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq. The appeal centers on whether the plaintiff has established a prima facie case on these claims. Based on our prior decision in Miles v. Dell, Inc., 429 F.3d 480 (4th Cir.2005), we hold that the plaintiff has made out a prima facie case of sex discrimination even though she was fired and her replacement was hired by different decisionmakers. We also hold that she has made out a prima facie case of retaliation because the evidence of her employer's recurring retaliatory animus is sufficient to establish a causal link between her complaint of discrimination and her termination. The Title VII claims are therefore remanded for further proceedings. Finally, the plaintiff also sues for $50,000 in sales commissions under her employment contract, and we affirm the district court's award of summary judgment to the employer on that claim.

I.

A.

Because the plaintiff, Lorraine Lettieri, was the non-moving party in the summary judgment proceedings, we state the facts, with reasonable inferences drawn, in the light most favorable to her. See Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 255 106 S.Ct. 2505, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986). Lettieri was employed by Equant Inc. and its predecessor company, Global One, from 1989 until July 2002. Both companies provided international data and voice telecommunications services. In July 2001 Global One was acquired by, and merged into, Equant. Prior to the merger Global One had been partly owned by Sprint International Inc. (Sprint) and was the exclusive provider of certain telecommunications services to Sprint. Equant expected that Sprint would continue to be a customer after the merger.

Before the July 2001 merger Lettieri's position at Global One was Director of Alternate Sales Channel. During premerger planning, however, Equant decided that the team of Global One sales employees that Lettieri supervised would be reorganized into a new Equant unit called the Sprint Channel. The reorganization included the creation of a new management position, called Head of Sprint Channel. The person chosen for this position would lead the unit and coordinate the relationship between Equant and Sprint. In June 2001, a month before the merger, Lettieri interviewed for the Head of Sprint Channel position with Sean Parkinson, a Senior Vice President at Equant. During the interview Parkinson asked Lettieri many personal questions, including whether she had children, what her child care responsibilities were, and how her family felt about her weekly commute between Equant's headquarters in Reston, Virginia, and the family home in New York. Parkinson specifically asked Lettieri "how [her] husband handled the fact that [she] was away from home so much, not caring for the family." J.A. 423. Lettieri replied that she, her husband, and their children "all helped each other" and worked together to function as "a successful family." J.A. 424. Parkinson persisted, saying that he had "a very difficult time" understanding why any man would allow his wife to live away from home during the work week. Id. After the interview Lettieri contacted her then-supervisor, Jim Hamrick, to express her uneasiness about the gender stereotyping evident in Parkinson's questions and comments. Lettieri was convinced, as she emphasized to Hamrick, that Parkinson was not considering her professional qualifications.

In early July 2001 Parkinson called Lettieri to tell her that the Head of Sprint Channel job had been given to Equant employee Michael Taylor. Parkinson told her that Taylor had experience she lacked in running a freestanding, profit and loss organization, which might be the new business model for Sprint Channel. Parkinson also informed Lettieri that the key reason for Taylor's selection was that Taylor's children, unlike hers, were already raised, and Taylor and his wife could make a committed move to Reston; Lettieri, on the other hand, still had child care and other family responsibilities in New York.

Later in July 2001 Lettieri wrote a letter to and talked with Lauren Stoll in Equant's Human Resources Department about her interview with Parkinson and his explanation of why Taylor had been chosen. Lettieri told Stoll that she was shocked by Parkinson's sexist presumptions and attitude; she did not ask for any specific action to be taken, and none was.

When Taylor took over as Head of Sprint Channel, he directly supervised two employees, Lettieri and Laure Travers, also a female middle manager. Lettieri continued with the title of Director, supervising a nationwide sales team of approximately fourteen people. In November or December of 2001, after working under Taylor for several months, Lettieri again complained to Human Resources, this time about Taylor's intolerable treatment of her. Lettieri reported that Taylor alternately screamed and cursed at her or gave her the "silent treatment." J.A. 522. Human Resources took no action on this complaint either.

Taylor's other female subordinate, Travers (based in New York), also had problems dealing with Taylor because of his sexist attitude and biased treatment "based upon gender stereotypes." J.A. 251. Although Travers was a managerial employee with an M.B.A., Taylor told her that he wished she worked in Reston where she could do his photocopying and that her only value was her ability to use her French charms on male customers. Twice (once in the fall of 2001 and once in April 2002) Taylor referred to Travers and Lettieri as "bitches" or "stupid bitches" in front of other Equant employees. J.A. 315, 687. Taylor's sexist comments were not limited to Travers and Lettieri. On as many as five or six occasions, in front of Lettieri and others, Taylor talked about the "physical attributes" ("her figure, her shape, [her] attractive[ness]") of Kimberly Wood, another female employee. J.A. 312. Once, in Lettieri's presence, Taylor said to Parkinson, "I'd like to get a piece of that [Kimberly Wood's] ass." J.A. 314.

The relationship between Equant and Sprint began to deteriorate following the merger. After a time Sprint requested that Equant's Sprint Channel sales team stop the longstanding practice of interacting directly with Sprint's customers. Sprint also began looking to other vendors when Equant did not meet certain pricing demands.

In mid-December 2001 Taylor e-mailed Lettieri a suggested restructuring plan for the Sprint Channel unit that would have reduced her supervisory responsibilities and reassigned her to the New York office. This proposal came on the heels of Taylor's repeated suggestions to Lettieri that she should consider returning to New York to be with her family. Under Taylor's proposal Lettieri would no longer manage a nationwide sales team, but would work on large accounts in the New York area and serve as a coach to only two or three sales-persons. Because the proposal called for her demotion, Lettieri immediately (on December 17) contacted the Director of Human Resources, Jill Hausner, to complain of discrimination in Taylor's plan and in the June 2001 interview with Parkinson. Lettieri also made the broader complaint that there was a "major problem w[ith the] way women are being perceived" in the organization and that the "management structure is biased against women." J.A. 262. Hausner immediately informed Taylor and Parkinson of Letteri's complaints, but took no other action. Following Lettieri's return from the Christmas holidays, she met with Taylor to discuss the restructuring plan and her complaints. Although Taylor agreed not to implement his proposal, Lettieri described him as angry and red faced during the meeting.

Within weeks of Lettieri's December 17th discrimination complaints, Taylor took away significant aspects of her job responsibilities. At a mid-January 2002 meeting of the entire Sprint Channel sales team, Taylor announced that he was taking over Lettieri's role of leading the team. Specifically, Taylor said that he would be responsible for overall direction and strategy, he would be increasing his direct interaction with team members, he would be making direct contact with Equant's clients at Sprint, and he would be assuming all of Lettieri's pricing authority. Lettieri had previously exercised final pricing authority in over ninety percent of the deals Equant did with Sprint. Lettieri did not report her loss of job responsibilities to Human Resources because "no action was taken the first time [she] complained, and that all it did was create an atmosphere of more hostility." J.A. 575-76.

The Sprint Channel unit was generating lower than anticipated revenues in the first part of 2002. In February or March 2002 Taylor and Parkinson discussed...