Mary David v. Winchester Medical Center ( 2019 )

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 18-1141
MARY DAVID,
Plaintiff - Appellant,
v.
WINCHESTER MEDICAL CENTER, a/k/a Valley Health System Winchester
Medical Center,
Defendant - Appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia, at
Harrisonburg. Michael F. Urbanski, Chief District Judge. (5:16-cv-00063-MFU-JCH)
Argued: December 12, 2018 Decided: January 11, 2019
Before WILKINSON, MOTZ, and DUNCAN, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
ARGUED: Blackwell N. Shelley, Jr., SHELLEY CUPP SCHULTE, P.C., Richmond,
Virginia, for Appellant. Andrew Seth Baugher, LENHART PETTIT PC, Harrisonburg,
Virginia, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Cathleen P. Welsh, LENHART PETTIT PC,
Harrisonburg, Virginia, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
PER CURIAM:
Mary David worked as an at-will nursing director at Winchester Medical Center
(“WMC”). On September 3, 2014, WMC informed David that she could not maintain
her employment there. The overarching dispute here is whether WMC dismissed David
because she was reporting misbehavior or because she herself was misbehaving.
After her dismissal, David brought two claims under Title VII of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq. (“Title VII”). First, David alleged that WMC
discriminated against her by disciplining her more harshly than a male doctor. Second,
she alleged that her complaints against that doctor qualified as protected activity and that
WMC retaliated by dismissing her. In a careful, written opinion, the district court
rejected those claims at summary judgment. David v. Winchester Med. Ctr., No. 5:16-
CV-00063, 2018 WL 310140, at *1 (W.D. Va. Jan. 5, 2018). We affirm on the basis of
that opinion as to those claims.
David also brought a third claim under Title VII, as well as the Age
Discrimination in Employment Act, 29 U.S.C. § 621 et seq., and the Americans with
Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. § 12101 et seq. She alleged that she engaged in protected
activity by declining WMC’s severance agreement, which caused WMC to retaliate by
assertedly withholding the value of her paid time off (“PTO”), classifying her dismissal
as a termination, and “backdat[ing]” her last work day. The district court granted
WMC’s motion to dismiss this retaliation claim, explaining its reasoning and issuing its
ruling from the bench. David did not include a transcript of this hearing in the record she
submitted to us. For that reason, we briefly address this claim.
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We review de novo the district court’s dismissal of David’s severance-related
claim under Rule 12(b)(6). See Hamilton v. Pallozzi, 848 F.3d 614, 620 (4th Cir. 2017).
We assume the factual allegations in David’s complaint are true, and we draw all
reasonable inferences in her favor. Id. However, we need not accept any “unwarranted
inferences” or “unreasonable conclusions.” Id. Additionally, we may consider a
document “that was not attached to or expressly incorporated in a complaint, so long as
the document was integral to the complaint and there is no dispute about the document’s
authenticity.” Goines v. Valley Cmty. Servs. Bd., 822 F.3d 159, 166 (4th Cir. 2016). If a
conflict exists “between the bare allegations of the complaint and any exhibit attached,”
then the “exhibit prevails.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).
For David to state a retaliation claim, she must plead “that she engaged in a
protected activity” and that, as a result, WMC “took an adverse employment action
against her.” Boyer-Liberto v. Fontainebleau Corp., 786 F.3d 264, 281 (4th Cir. 2015)
(internal quotation marks omitted). The denial of a severance benefit is adverse when the
benefit is “part and parcel of the employment relationship,” even if the employer is
otherwise free not to provide the benefit at all. Gerner v. County of Chesterfield, 674
F.3d 264, 267 (4th Cir. 2012) (internal quotation marks omitted).
David alleges two interrelated retaliatory adverse employment actions. First, she
argues that she was entitled to continued severance negotiations and that WMC harmed
her by “withdr[awing its] offer of a severance payment.” Second, she claims that she was
harmed when WMC reprocessed “her separation from employment as an involuntary
termination, rather than a resignation,” and then withheld the monetary value of her
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accrued PTO. David believes that she is entitled to that sum because she offered to
resign effective October 3, 2014 — that is, one month after WMC expressed its intent to
sever their employment relationship. We address each action in turn.
David claims that WMC pulled out of severance negotiations after she asserted her
rights under various discrimination statutes. But WMC did not withdraw its severance
offer. Rather, David declined it. She did so in explicit terms in a September 18, 2014
letter from her attorney to WMC’s counsel, a letter which David referenced in her
complaint. That letter clearly states that David “rejects the proposed severance
agreement” and “intends to assert claims” against WMC.
Because David rejected the proposed agreement, WMC took no adverse action
against her when it simply accepted this rejection and declined to initiate further
negotiations. There is no adverse employment action when an employer declines to pay
discretionary severance benefits because a terminated employee “refused to sign” a
separation agreement. EEOC v. SunDance Rehab. Corp., 466 F.3d 490, 501 (6th Cir.
2006); accord EEOC v. Allstate Ins. Co., 778 F.3d 444, 452 (3d Cir. 2015).
It would be different if WMC revoked the offer upon David’s mere mention of her
legal rights. The D.C. Circuit addressed such a situation in Paquin v. Federal National
Mortgage Association, where an employer was alleged to have rescinded its offer after
receiving a letter “in which [the employee] claimed that his termination was based on age
and that he was prepared to take legal action if acceptable severance terms were not
offered.” 119 F.3d 23, 31 (D.C. Cir. 1997). The court held that an employer’s
“withdrawal of its severance package offer” qualifies as an adverse action, because the
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employer is revoking a possible benefit. Id. at 32. But here, no such revocation
occurred. Because David turned down the deal, WMC’s decision not to persist in
negotiations does not qualify as an adverse action taken against her.
David’s second contention — that her offer of an eventual October resignation
caused her PTO to vest — is also unpersuasive. David’s pleadings do not allow us to
conclude that she was ever entitled to a PTO payment.
To hold otherwise, we would have to accept that WMC initially processed David’s
dismissal as a voluntary resignation, under which she may have been eligible for a PTO
payment, and then reclassified this dismissal as a termination after David asserted her
legal rights. But the severance agreement that WMC provided David, an agreement that
she referenced in her complaint, states exactly the opposite. WMC offered to
“retroactively reclassify her termination as a voluntary resignation” if she agreed to
WMC’s terms of immediate resignation and waiver of liability, which she did not do.
Likewise, the September 18, 2014 letter from David’s counsel to WMC similarly (and
repeatedly) referred to her dismissal as a “termination” rather than a “resignation.”
For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district court is
AFFIRMED.
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