Stamey v. Forest River, Inc.

37 F.4th 1220

Sam STAMEY, Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.FOREST RIVER, INC., Defendant-Appellee.

No. 21-1539

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued November 16, 2021

Decided June 17, 2022

Patrick Francis O'Leary, Attorney, Windsor Office Park, Elkhart, IN, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

R. John Kuehn, Jesse M. Barrett, Patrick O'Rear, Attorneys, Southbank Legal: Ladue Curran Kuehn, South Bend, IN, for Defendant-Appellee.

Before Brennan, Scudder, and Jackson-Akiwumi, Circuit Judges.

Scudder, Circuit Judge.

Sam Stamey installed wiring in cargo trailers at Forest River, Inc.'s plant in Elkhart, Indiana for over ten years. He resigned in August 2018 at age 62 and then sued Forest River alleging that the company constructively discharged him in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act by refusing to address a relentless and ruthless campaign of age-based harassment undertaken by his coworkers. The district court saw the facts differently and entered summary judgment for Forest River.

We reverse. While this case is close, what tips it to trial is the requirement at summary judgment that we view the facts, and draw all reasonable inferences, in Stamey's favor. If we credit his account that—in less than a year—his coworkers hurled upwards of 1,000 age-based insults at him without management taking effective steps to end the misconduct, a jury could return a verdict in Stamey's favor. On the other hand, if Forest River shows that Stamey's account lacks credibility, the company may prevail. Our role is not to weigh evidence or resolve factual disputes—it is up to the jury to decide.

I

A

Sam Stamey began working at Forest River in October 2007 at age 51. He accumulated a strong work record, receiving several raises and avoiding any discipline.

Stamey maintains that his coworkers began harassing him in the fall of 2017, when he was 61. The alleged harassment continued for roughly 10 months and took two forms. First , there was verbal harassment, which Stamey described as escalating to the point where he "caught old age insults practically every morning on [his] way into the building, when [he] left for the day, during breaks, and whenever [he] walked into other parts of the plant." The insults included comments that either explicitly or implicitly referred to Stamey's age, with coworkers calling him "Walmart greeter, grandma, old b----, and a lot more stuff." Coworkers also asked questions like "You still alive? What the F?"; "When the f-- you retiring?"; "What's up homo? Looks like your dentures are about to fall out."; and "What are you doing here? I thought you died last week." When asked in his deposition, Stamey estimated that he received around 1,000 insults between late 2017 and early 2018. By the end of his time at Forest River, he believes approximately two dozen coworkers had participated.

Second , the alleged harassment went beyond the verbal and included acts to interfere with Stamey's work. His coworkers repeatedly defaced his workstation, including by writing profanity on his tool cabinet, in the bathroom, and around the plant, and zip tying his tools together. At different times, unidentified coworkers taped or glued his tool cabinet shut; screwed it closed and stripped the screw heads; and drove screws into the wheels of his wire cart, immobilizing it. On one occasion, Stamey had to spend 45 minutes prying his cabinet open. Another time, he found undercoating sprayed on his lunch plate. Still more, someone once cut the power cord to his new electric coffee maker in several places, exposing its wiring. Sometime after the alleged harassment began in 2017, Stamey's fiancée called Jeff Rowe in Forest River's human resources department to report the misconduct. Rowe suggested that Stamey contact Wendy Tubicsak, who also worked in HR. Stamey did so, leaving Tubicsak a voicemail message. But he then never heard back from her.

Stamey next turned to his supervisor, Frank Pontius. Stamey testified that he and Pontius had approximately 10 conversations over about two months in late 2017 about the alleged harassment. For his part, Pontius reacted to the complaints by conferring with another manager who, in turn, told Stamey that the harassment would stop. Stamey acknowledges that the insults and related disruptions with his workspace and tools did stop for a week or two. But they then resumed.

After Pontius died, Mike Brady became Stamey's new supervisor in January 2018. When the alleged harassment resumed, Stamey had two or three conversations with Brady and gave him the names of those coworkers who had leveled the worst, most insulting age-based comments. Stamey also told Brady that he believed these same coworkers were responsible for defacing his workstation and spray-painting derogatory comments around the plant. Brady responded by telling Stamey that, without certainty about the identity of the perpetrators, he could not help.

Nothing much changed through the end of 2017 and into early 2018. In the spring of 2018, Stamey tried once more to get help from management but again received little relief. He brought pictures of some of the alleged physical harassment to Forest River's corporate office and asked to speak with Tubicsak in HR. Finding her out of the office, Stamey left her a voicemail message informing her once again of the ongoing harassment. Without responding directly to Stamey, Tubicsak did call plant manager Scott McDonald and asked him to follow up. McDonald did so the next day by approaching Stamey.

Stamey showed McDonald some of the graffiti and described not only the profane insult written on the bathroom wall, but also what he kept finding at his workstation, including his tool cabinet being taped or screwed shut. McDonald told Stamey that he "shouldn't have gone over his head" by complaining to Tubicsak in HR. McDonald later spoke to Stamey's supervisor (Mike Brady), several plant workers, and other supervisors, telling them that the "horseplay" must end, but stopping short of threatening any consequences if it persisted. Stamey was not present during that conversation and was never told about it. McDonald apparently took no step to confirm the harassment had stopped or to monitor the situation, and indeed he later testified that he never learned that it resumed.

The alleged harassment nevertheless persisted and, in June 2018, Stamey filed a charge of discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He alleged "co-workers have insulted, taunted, and tormented [him] on account of his age." Forest River reacted by itself investigating and concluding that "there are no facts to support [Stamey's] allegations."

By Stamey's account, the alleged physical harassment stopped after he filed his EEOC complaint, but the verbal harassment continued and indeed grew more frequent. Stamey then appealed to his supervisor Brady one last time. As before, Brady said that he could do nothing without certainty as to the perpetrators—despite Stamey identifying a few of the "workers who seemed to be the worst offenders."

Stamey alleges that he suffered emotionally and physically because of his coworkers' behavior. He had trouble eating and sleeping, dreaded going to work, felt depressed and humiliated, and found his hands shaking while at home. He testified that the last straw came on August 10, 2018, when a supervisor in another department taunted him in front of his coworkers by quipping: "Damn, Sam, you still kicking? You've got one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel!"

Stamey quit that day. Mike Brady, Stamey's supervisor, called him and told him to come back because he still had his job. Stamey did not do so and instead later filed a second charge of discrimination with the EEOC.

B

Stamey sued Forest River, alleging that the company constructively discharged him in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. See 29 U.S.C. § 621 et seq. Following discovery, the district court granted Forest River's motion for summary judgment. It concluded that Stamey could not show his working conditions to be so intolerable that a reasonable person would have been compelled to resign. The district court also determined that Stamey acted unreasonably in assuming that the company's management would not help him further.

As for the working conditions, the district court reasoned that, although "the harassment here is worse than other cases" in which summary judgment was warranted on a constructive-discharge claim, it was not "nearly as egregious" as in constructive-discharge cases that went to a jury. Rather, in the district court's view, the "name calling may have been humiliating," but "[n]one of the comments were made by Mr. Stamey's direct supervisors" and the alleged physical harassment was best seen as "physical pranks" with "a more attenuated connection to age, if any at all."

From there the district added that a reasonable person in Stamey's position would not have quit, but instead tried another time to get help from Forest River management. Stamey's own assumption "that his supervisors would be of no help to him," the district court determined, was unreasonable "particularly when Forest River's system of handling complaints had worked, on occasion perfectly well and on other occasions less well" and that it had never proved "futile" to make a complaint. Because there was no "extraordinary condition here," such as a threat of violence, a "scheme to accuse him of a crime" or "resounding silence in the face of myriad complaints," the district court concluded that Stamey was not constructively discharged. So it entered summary judgment for Forest River.

Stamey now appeals.

II

We owe no deference to the district court's view of what findings and inferences the factual record permits. To the contrary, our obligation is to take our own fresh look at whether Stamey has identified genuine disputes over facts material to the resolution of his constructive discharge claim. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a...