Mendillo v. Prudential Ins. Co. of Am.

156 F.Supp.3d 317

Lisa Mendillo, Plaintiff,

v.The Prudential Insurance Company of America, Defendant.

No. 12-cv-1383 (VAB)

United States District Court, D. Connecticut.

Signed January 12, 2016

Jeffrey S. Bagnell, Scott R. Lucas, Lucas Bagnell Varga LLC, Southport, CT, for Plaintiff.

Catherine Moreton Gray, Pamela J. Moore, McCarter & English, LLP, Elizabeth Mott Smith, Hartford Healthcare Corporation, Hartford, CT, for Defendant.

RULING ON MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT

Victor A. Bolden, United States District Judge

Plaintiff, Lisa Mendillo, brought this action against her former employer, The Prudential Insurance Company of America (“Prudential” or “Defendant”), asserting claims for violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (the “ADEA”), the Americans with Disabilities Act (the “ADA”), the Family Medical Leave Act (the “FMLA”), and the Connecticut Fair Employment Practices Act (“CFEPA”). Defendant has moved for summary judgment on all of Plaintiff's claims. See Doc. No. 59. For the reasons stated below, the motion is GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART.

The Court GRANTS summary judgment as to the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Counts of the Amended Complaint and as to the age discrimination claim of the Third Count. The Court DENIES summary judgment as to the disability discrimination claim of the Third Count and as to the Seventh Count. The Court DENIES summary judgment on the Second Count to the extent it is based on a failure to accommodate under the ADA, but GRANTS summary judgment to the extent it is based on retaliation under the ADA.

I. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND¹

Born in 1962, Ms. Mendillo began working at American Skandia Life Assurance Corporation (“Skandia”) in or about April 1996. Plaintiff's Local Rule 56(a)(2) Statement [Doc. No. 69-24] ¶¶ 1-2. She was hired as part of a Technical Team that ultimately became part of Customer Service. Mendillo Dep. [Doc. No. 69-1] 47:20-49:2. This “eService Team” “worked with the technology and value-added tools that [Skandia] offered to [its] financial professionals” and also functioned like an “external help desk” for those who required technology help and web support. Id. 49:18-50:25, 53:20-23. There also were employees independent of the eService Team responsible for handling the Call Center function, which entailed responding to “product-type calls and general inquiries.” Id. 60:22-61:13.

Prudential acquired Skandia in May 2003. 56(a)(2) Stmt. ¶ 3. At the time, Ms. Mendillo worked on a team of Customer Service Representatives (or “CSRs”) dedicated to eService functions, located in Shelton, Connecticut. Id. ¶¶ 3-4. In 2005, Prudential hired Gary Hogard to oversee its two annuity call centers. Id. ¶ 5. The larger Call Center is located in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, which had approximately four times the number of personnel as Shelton. Gabriel Dep. [Doc. No. 69-2] 19:19-20:7. At all times relevant to this action, Paula Gabriel was the manager or director of the Shelton Call Center. Id. 17:6-20, 109:21-111:9. Ms. Gabriel reported to Mr. Hogard. Id. 20:8-14, 21:7-25.

A. Overview of Shelton Call Center

At the time Mr. Hogard was hired, Ms. Mendillo and other eService Team members provided “support for the online activities of Prudential's annuity customers,” while “[o]ther CSRs in the Shelton [Call Center] handled traditional customer service inquiries via telephone.” 56(a)2 Stmt. ¶ 4. “The nature of the whole eService function, what we did independently as a team was to be able to support all the technology and the wholesalers and anything that came up. And it was a constant ... testing, changing, learning. And the Call Center was just a different function than that.” Mendillo Dep. 61:4-10.

Mr. Hogard “revamped the customer service operations.” 56(a)2 Stmt. ¶ 6. “As part of this revamping, in or around 2006, [Mr. Hogard] decided that the services exclusively performed by the e-service team should be integrated into the services provided by the rest of the CSRs.” Hogard Aff. [Doc. No. 63] ¶ 5. “[T]he idea was that we would no longer have people only doing technology all the time in an individually-staffed group.” Mendillo Dep. 62:6-8. This “required that all CSRs be cross-trained on both traditional telephone and e-service inquiries.” Hogard Aff. ¶ 5. Ms. Mendillo was asked to attend product training for this purpose in 2007. Mendillo Dep. 62:12-25, 63:6-9. She attended formal classroom training for approximately six weeks, followed by two weeks of on-the-job training, and then approximately one month of call review and quality scoring that did not count for performance management purposes. 56(a)(2) Stmt. ¶ 10.

Mr. Hogard also added a new program for evaluating the performance of Customer Service Representatives using criteria established by Dalbar, Inc., which is a company that sets performance standards for call centers in the financial service industry and ranks companies on the quality of their customer service. 56(a)(2) Stmt. ¶ 6. The annuities business is highly competitive, and Prudential has been continuously working to improve customer service in order to help differentiate itself from other companies, with the new call quality program an important component of that effort. 56(a)(2) Stmt. ¶ 7.

The Call Center personnel worked on teams of about twelve to fifteen employees. Gabriel Dep. 29:16-24; Brand Dep. [Doc. No. 69-6] 26:13-16. An associate manager (or “STM”) ran each team and Jennifer Brand served as Ms. Mendillo's associate manager for most of the period relevant to this litigation. See Doc. No. 69-3; Gabriel Dep. 27:7-9, 34:3-8. Each team also had a service team specialist (or “STS”) or “Call Coach,” who was responsible, with the associate manager, for monitoring call performance of Customer Service Representatives on their team. Gabriel Dep. 41:15-42:20; Brand Dep. 37:1-39:12; Litvinchuk Aff. ¶ 4.

In appraising an employee's performance, Prudential considered call monitoring information as one of a number of factors. Gabriel Dep. 41:16-23. Prudential measured the quality of a Customer Service Representative's performance in part by reviewing and scoring a sample of the recordings of telephone calls handled by that Customer Service Representative. Typically, the Call Coach would evaluate two randomly-selected calls per week for each Customer Service Representative on her team. Gabriel Dep. 42:1-20; Litvinchuk Aff. ¶ 4.

The evaluation criteria categories are: Professionalism (10 points); Client Experience (10 points); Service Excellence (20 points); Company Initiatives (15 points); Product Knowledge (25 points); and Workflow (20 points). Litvinchuk Aff. ¶ 6. Each of these categories were comprised of sub-categories, and, if a Customer Service Representative missed a component of a sub-category, “that associate would lose points for the entire category,” Brand Dep. 41:1-4, “even if all other elements under [that category] were covered,” Litvinchuk Aff. ¶ 7. See also Doc. No. 69-19, at 33. A Customer Service Representative may challenge the scoring she receives within five days of receiving it, at which point a manager would review and either uphold or overturn the score. Litvinchuk Aff. ¶ 8. Call scoring involved subjective determinations, and discrepancies in scoring would occur as a result. Gabriel Dep. 48:3-25; Cahill Dep. 79:16-22; Thomas Dep. 38:21-40:19; Brand Dep. 41:5-43:24.

Repeatedly failing to meet call quality expectations could result in a Customer Service Representative being placed in Prudential's Performance Improvement Process (or “PIP”), which can have up to three phases: Performance Building Plan (or “PBP”); Performance Counseling (or “PC”); and Decision Making (or “DM”). 56(a)(2) Stmt. ¶¶ 18-20. The first phase, performance building, “is more of the informal process where the business works with the associate to get wherever they're lacking corrected.” Wells Dep. 77:20-23. A Customer Service Representative could be put onto a Performance Building Plan for “inconsistent” call quality scores. Wells Dep. 79:22-80:22; Hogard Dep. 43:7-44:9; Cahill Dep. 63:12-24. The determination that a Customer Service Representative's call quality scores were sufficiently inconsistent to place her on performance building was made by her manager or assistant manager, and was a somewhat subjective determination that was made on a case by case basis, rather than according to any set formula or pattern. Wells Dep. 80:8-22; Doc. No. 69-14, at 19; Brand Dep. 146:10-14; Cahill Dep. 63:25-64:3.

Once on a Performance Building Plan, a Customer Service Representative can be removed after meeting the call quality goal for three consecutive months. Gabriel Dep. 76:13-17; Wells Dep. 96:6-8. While in the Performance Improvement Process, the number of calls scored per month increased from eight to ten. Litvinchuk Aff. ¶ 4. However, if a Customer Service Representative failed or demonstrated inconsistency in meeting the quality standards after being placed on a Performance Building Plan, the Customer Service Representative could be moved to the next phase of the Performance Improvement Process, Performance Counseling. Gabriel Dep. 89:6-10. There are no formal procedures in place for being moved to or off Performance Counseling; rather, such determinations are made on a case-by-case basis based on informal guidelines. Doc. 69-14, at 21; Gabriel Dep. 113:6-115:6. If the Customer Service Representative continues to fail to meet quality standards while on Performance Counseling, Prudential may choose to place them on Decision Making, at which point the Customer Service Representative has twenty-one days to choose to either “commit to the role and meeting their requirements,” Brand Dep. 194:9-14, or to resign from the company voluntarily with a reduced severance package, Wells Dep. 175:2-6. If the Customer Service Representative chose to stay with the company, she would have a number of additional days, which varied on a case-by-case basis, to demonstrate...