Mroczek v. Bethlehem Steel Corp.

126 F.Supp.2d 379

Terry A. MROCZEK, v. BETHLEHEM STEEL CORPORATION and Mark Reid.

No. CIV.A. 99-CV-4049.

United States District Court, E.D. Pennsylvania.

January 2, 2001.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Alan B. Epstein, Nancy Abrams, Spector, Gadon & Rosen, P.C., Philadelphia, PA, for plaintiff.

Maria E. Rodriguez, Venable, Baetjer and Howard, Baltimore, MD, Kathleen Mills, Bethlehem, PA, for defendants.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

JOYNER, District Judge.

This case has been brought before the Court on motion of the defendants for summary judgment. Having now carefully reviewed the record produced by the parties and for the reasons set forth below, the motion shall be granted and judgment in favor of the defendants as a matter of law shall be entered.

Factual Background

On September 21, 1993, Plaintiff, Terry Mroczek began working as an Employee/Organization Development Specialist in the Human Resources Department at Lukens Steel Company, Bethlehem Steel Corporation's predecessor-in-interest, in Coatesville, Pennsylvania. At that time, Plaintiff was one of two such specialists in the Human Resources Department working under the direct supervision of Hal King doing employee training, performance management, teams and facilitation. Shortly after Plaintiff was hired, however, Mr. King left Lukens and Plaintiff became one of the members of an eight-member self-directed "OD" team which reported directly to the Vice President of Human Resources, Richard Luzzi.¹ Mr. Luzzi directed the self-directed team to elect a leader, and Plaintiff was chosen. Plaintiff was very happy working under Mr. Luzzi, as he gave the team a great deal of freedom and autonomy. Mr. Luzzi, in turn, appeared to be pleased with Plaintiff's job performance as he gave her ratings of "outstanding" and "excellent" at her annual reviews in September, 1995 and September, 1996.

As part of the overall functioning of the self-directed team, the team members divided up the various operations and divisions within Lukens and each team member was assigned certain operations and/or departments for whom they would be the contact person. Plaintiff became the contact person for Lukens' operations in Conshohocken and Washington Specialty Metals. It thus became necessary for her to develop a relationship of trust and confidence with the Human Resources and Plant Managers at those locations, one of whom was Defendant Mark Reid, the HR Manager at the Conshohocken facility. According to Plaintiff, she and Reid became friends, going out for lunch together from time-to-time and for drinks after work on several occasions.

Plaintiff avers that it was sometime during 1995 when they were having drinks together at the Valley Forge Brewing Company that defendant Reid first told her that he was attracted to her and that he told her the same thing again in the summer of 1996. Mr. Reid said nothing else and did nothing else on either of those two occasions. Although plaintiff was uncomfortable about those remarks, she was not offended and did not report them to anyone nor did she tell Mr. Reid that she thought his remarks were inappropriate. Between 1995 and 1996, defendant Reid also remarked on some six different occasions about the number of women with whom he had sexual relations and about his sexual prowess. Plaintiff did not complain to anyone about any of these remarks either, but did tell Reid that she didn't want to hear about his sex life and he stopped talking about it. Also in this same time frame and on three separate occasions, a drawing depicting an oral sex act, a dildo, and a letter regarding foot fetishes were left on Plaintiff's desk in her office in Lukens' Conshohocken facility. Although plaintiff did report the dildo and the drawing to Mr. Reid, she did not do so immediately after finding them and Reid undertook no investigation to her knowledge. She reported the letter to John De Marco, the Labor Relations Manager who, in turn, contacted Security and a camera was installed in plaintiff's office in the hopes that the person who left the letter would return. The surveillance in Plaintiff's office did not turn anything up, however, and the camera was removed a few weeks after it was installed.

In January, 1997, Richard Luzzi determined that the self-directed OD group was no longer functioning as well as he believed it could be and he then promoted Mark Reid to head up the group, which was based at Lukens' corporate headquarters in Coatesville. Plaintiff, who did not believe there was any reason to have Reid promoted, was not happy that he became her immediate supervisor. Thereafter, Ms. Mroczek by her own admission, said very little at staff meetings and generally behaved in a manner which could be interpreted as meaning that there was a problem between herself and Mr. Reid. On January 14, 1997, Reid went into Plaintiff's office and asked her why she was being so distant with him as they previously had been so close and he told her that he wanted to have a relationship with her. When Plaintiff informed him that as far as she was concerned, he was her boss, she was his subordinate and that while she would continue to do good work for him as she had at Conshohocken, there was not going to be a relationship beyond that. Mr. Reid responded that that wasn't good enough. Mr. Reid then brought up an incident in which he alleged that Plaintiff had breached his confidence by telling a fellow co-worker something which Reid had said and said that he could tell Mr. Luzzi anything since he was Mr. Luzzi's confidante and Mr. Luzzi would not ask him for an explanation.

Ms. Mroczek interpreted these remarks as a threat to her employment and she reported these remarks to the company EEO officer, Karen Angeny, the following day. Ms. Angeny told her that she should discuss the matter with Mr. Luzzi as Mr Reid was also her supervisor. On January 31, 1997, Plaintiff met with Mr. Luzzi, who assured her that he would speak with Mr. Reid. Mr. Luzzi subsequently discussed with Mr. Reid his working relationship with Ms. Mroczek and the necessity of the two of them developing a good, solid working relationship.

Although Plaintiff avers no other, similar incidents involving Mark Reid subsequent to their January 14, 1997 meeting, there continued to be problems in their working relationship, which Reid began to document by taking notes on Plaintiff's performance. At Plaintiff's annual evaluation in September, 1997, she still received an overall positive review, but was noted to "need development" in the area of building relationships. Plaintiff therefore received the lowest rating that she had ever received since first becoming employed at Lukens, "Good Solid Performer," and received a much smaller raise than those given previously. Nevertheless, Plaintiff did not indicate that she disagreed with the comments made nor did she contest her appraisal.

The following year, in late February or early March, 1998, Plaintiff and a number of other employees from the Conshohocken facility were having drinks after the Conshohocken annual meeting at a local bar when the subject of the vacant position of Human Resources manager at Conshohocken arose. Several people began questioning Ms. Mroczek as to whether she had applied for the position or if she didn't, whether she knew who was going to fill the position. While Plaintiff contends that she did not reveal any confidences, one of the Conshohocken plant superintendents, Dennis Sullivan, told the Plant Manager, Gary Sarpen, that Plaintiff had said that she knew who was going to get the position, "it was a done deal," and that the job belonged to Tracy Schindler, one of Ms. Mroczek's co-workers in Organization Development. Since the company was still conducting interviews for the position, Mr. Sarpen was angered by this purported disclosure and told Plaintiff that she was "banned" from working in the Conshohocken plant.

At or around this same time, Mr. Luzzi began receiving complaints about Plaintiff's job performance from a number of other Lukens' department heads, who also indicated an unwillingness to have Plaintiff continue working for them. Plaintiff was quite upset by these developments and took several weeks of sick leave from work. Although Mr. Luzzi had told her that he would speak with Sarpen about reversing his decision, he was unable to convince him to do so. Given that Luzzi believed that Plaintiff had lost her credibility within the company and that there was no work for her to do, he terminated her in May, 1998. Plaintiff thereafter filed her Charge of Discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC") and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission on June 24, 1998. She commenced this lawsuit on August 11, 1999 and, following the completion of discovery, Defendants filed their motion for summary judgment on August 29, 2000.

Summary Judgment Standards

The standards governing the disposition of motions for summary judgment are outlined in Fed.R.Civ.P. 56. That rule, reads, in relevant part at subsection (c):

... The judgment sought shall be rendered forthwith if the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law. A summary judgment, interlocutory in character, may be rendered on the issue of liability alone although there is a genuine issue as to the amount of damages.

In this way, a motion for summary judgment requires the court to look beyond the bare allegations of the pleadings to determine if they have sufficient factual support to warrant their consideration at trial. Liberty Lobby, Inc. v. Dow Jones & Co., 838 F.2d 1287 (D.C.Cir.1988), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 825, 109 S.Ct. 75, 102 L.Ed.2d 51 (1988). See Also: Aries Realty, Inc. v. AGS Columbia Associates, 751 F.Supp. 444 (S.D.N.Y.1990).

As a general...