McIver v. Bridgestone Americas, Inc.

42 F.4th 398

Laverne MCIVER, Plaintiff - Appellant,

v. BRIDGESTONE AMERICAS, INC. ; Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations, LLC ; Bridgestone Retail Operations, LLC, Defendants – Appellees,andBridgestone, LLC, Defendant.

No. 20-2310

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued: December 8, 2021

Decided: August 2, 2022

ARGUED: Mark Lowell Hayes, LAW OFFICE OF MARK L. HAYES, Durham, North Carolina, for Appellant. Nicholas Alex Sarokhanian, HOLLAND & KNIGHT, LLP, Dallas, Texas, for Appellees. ON BRIEF: Mary Goodrich Nix, HOLLAND & KNIGHT LLP, Dallas, Texas, for Appellees.

Before NIEMEYER, MOTZ, and RICHARDSON, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed by published opinion. Judge Richardson wrote the opinion, in which Judge Niemeyer joined. Judge Motz wrote a separate opinion, concurring in the judgment.

RICHARDSON, Circuit Judge:

Laverne McIver claims that Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations discriminated against her based on her race by allowing a hostile work environment to pervade its manufacturing plant and by retaliating against her for accusing a co-worker of tampering with her machine. Bridgestone moved for summary judgment, and the district court granted summary judgment in Bridgestone's favor on all claims. McIver now appeals the district court's order, and we affirm.

I. Background

Since 1996, Laverne McIver, a Black female, has worked for Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations in Wilson, North Carolina. Bridgestone manufactures tires, and at first McIver worked in the VMI department.¹ There, McIver worked with Chris Hawley, a White male. According to McIver, they were "friends" and "worked side-by-side" at VMI. J.A. 185.

Hawley later transferred to Bridgestone's MTS department. After Hawley's transfer, McIver heard that Hawley was "not the same as he was in VMI," but she "blew it off because [they] got along great at VMI." J.A. 185. But that changed around 2006 when a noose was found on the machine of two Black employees in the MTS department. McIver did not see the noose personally but saw a picture of it. And, according to McIver, Hawley later told her that he made the noose. Hawley also bragged in the presence of other employees that he hung the noose as well. According to McIver, a different employee, Jason Wheeler, took the blame for the noose so that Hawley would not lose his job. And McIver claims that Wheeler was not disciplined, even after taking the blame, because his uncle managed the Bridgestone plant.

Even so, McIver requested a transfer to MTS within a year of these events (2007). Bridgestone granted her request, and she became the only Black employee in her crew (which is the term Bridgestone uses for shifts) within MTS. Hawley still worked in MTS, on the same crew. After starting there, McIver overheard Hawley say that "[w]e were doing fine without black people on this crew." J.A. 184. After other Black workers joined this crew a year or so later, McIver heard Hawley say that "[McIver] is the reason why black people got to come to this crew." J.A. 185. In 2008, McIver alleged that one of her co-workers, John Ezzell, caused the machine she worked on to malfunction.² Ezzell then left Bridgestone in 2009. McIver filed an EEOC charge related to discrimination in 2009, though it is unclear if this was before or after Ezzell left.

Between 2009 and 2013 McIver did not personally experience any more racial animus, but other racial incidents occurred at Bridgestone during that time that were not directed at her. In either 2012 or 2013, two racist caricatures of Trayvon Martin were drawn in Bridgestone bathrooms. The first drawing appeared in the men's bathroom of the MTS department. After someone told McIver about the drawing, she viewed the drawing by standing outside the bathroom. Above the drawing someone wrote, "TRAYVON OBAMA." J.A. 243. After the drawing was reported, Bridgestone removed it from the wall. But McIver alleges that Bridgestone never acted to identify the person responsible, and "nothing" happened. J.A. 198.

The second drawing of Trayvon Martin was drawn with an "X" for each eye and included a confederate flag and the words "JUSTICE SERVED!" J.A. 244. This drawing was done in the bathroom of another department, not MTS. McIver did not personally see this drawing, but someone showed her a picture of it. Bridgestone also removed the second drawing but once again failed to catch the person responsible.

It appears the drawings weren't the worst of it. Two monkeys made of tire tubing were found hanging from machines in Bridgestone's tubing department. The exact date of these incidents is unclear, but both occurred while McIver was working in MTS and "much earlier" than 2018. J.A. 201–02, 222. One monkey had bulging eyes and a noose around its neck. McIver did not see this monkey but at some point received a picture of it and news of the monkey was "going around the plant at that time." J.A. 202. McIver says that Bridgestone investigated the monkey with bulging eyes but could not find the culprit. The other monkey had no eyes. McIver learned about that monkey from a co-worker and went to the tubing department to see it for herself. After going to see this monkey, McIver expressed dismay that Bridgestone claimed to be unable to catch the person responsible because the area had surveillance cameras all over the place.

In 2013, McIver filed a complaint using Bridgestone's company complaint line alleging that someone was tampering with and sabotaging the MTS machine she worked on.³ She believed that someone was changing the settings on her machine overnight to make them incorrect.

Kimberly Barnes worked with McIver in MTS from 2007 to 2016 and says she "reported the harassment of [McIver] ... many times but management wouldn't do anything about it." J.A. 93. According to Barnes the "vast majority of employees that harassed [McIver] were white males" and Barnes described them as "racist" because she "heard some of these employees make racist comments." J.A. 93–94. Barnes says the MTS employees "teamed up together to try and have [McIver] removed from the department." J.A. 93. According to Barnes, their plan involved telling "the supervisor to start reviewing and noting [McIver's] inability to work well with others." J.A. 93.

And McIver did receive negative evaluations from supervisors. In 2016, McIver's performance review reflected that her "[b]ehavior" was "below expectations" because "[t]here has been issues with other teammates working with Laverne," but Bridgestone agreed to revise it to "meets expectations" after she filed an internal complaint about it. J.A. 57, 258. While pursuing internal complaints about her performance review, McIver met with Michael Darr, her plant manager. Darr told McIver that she needed to "apologize to the boys." J.A. 181. Darr did not specify who he meant by "the boys," and he refused to clarify who he meant or what McIver did that required an apology. But McIver assumed that "the boys" meant Hawley and Wheeler because they "were the only two boys [she] was having a problem with at that time" after she "mention[ed] their names because of the noose rope." J.A. 229.

Consistent with both her theory and Bridgestone's, McIver's 2017 performance review again cited concerns about her teamwork, specifically that "bringing up concerns about sabotage of her machine by other MTS operators that can't be corroborated negatively impacts teamwork and morale." J.A. 46. Like her claims from 2013, McIver claimed the settings on her machine were often incorrect at the beginning of her shift, and she accused the workers on the prior shift of configuring the settings incorrectly to mess her up. Other employees in MTS complained to Bridgestone that they "need[ed] to walk on eggshells around her" because she was often "levying accusations against them and claiming there was a conspiracy against her." J.A. 42. After complaining to management about her 2017 performance review, Andy Moler, Bridgestone's Human Resources Manager, asked McIver to "to go back to where all this got started." J.A. 227. In doing so, she recounted Hawley hanging the noose back in 2006, suggesting she viewed the tampering as an extension of those earlier, racially charged events.

In 2018, on three occasions McIver found grease on the buffer arm of her machine— where grease was not supposed to be because it was a sensor. She told Eddie Barnes, an MTS trainer and specialist, about the grease, and Barnes responded that "somebody had to keep putting it there." J.A. 156. McIver responded "I don't know, Eddie. I didn't see it." J.A. 156. She said she was not accusing anybody of tampering and a "maintenance man" noted that somebody with grease on their hands from working on other parts of the machine may have touched the buffer arm. J.A. 156.

McIver also made a second tampering allegation in 2018 after discovering that the sidewall drum on the MTS machine she operated was "too big." J.A. 158–60. At the time McIver's building partner was Mahlon "Troy" Skelton,⁴ and she told her co-workers that she "saw Troy over in that area." J.A. 162. But when asked whether she believed her MTS coworker intentionally changed the drum size, McIver said, "I don't know." J.A. 161. Bridgestone concluded there was "no evidence" of "sabotage" by Skelton, but there are no details available of its investigation. J.A. 46.

Bridgestone's internal data may provide some support for the idea that McIver's machines were tampered with. Bridgestone kept extensive data on the MTS operators, including data about delays while setting up to begin work. That data reveals that McIver had substantially more set-up delays than other MTS operators. During August 2017 to April 2018, McIver's set-up delays were "double that of any other operator," J.A. 46, which Bridgestone attributed to her "decision making skills related to machine operation." J.A. 246.

Bridgestone believed that McIver falsely accused Skelton of enlarging the sidewall drum on her machine and decided that McIver's...