Salami v. North Carolina Agricultural ( 2006 )

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 05-1622
MOHAMMED REZA SALAMI,
Plaintiff - Appellant,
versus
NORTH CAROLINA AGRICULTURAL & TECHNICAL STATE
UNIVERSITY,
Defendant - Appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle
District of North Carolina, at Durham. Frank W. Bullock, Jr.,
District Judge. (CA-03-909-1)
Submitted: June 9, 2006 Decided: June 28, 2006
Before KING, GREGORY, and SHEDD, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
J. Elliott Field, Charlotte, North Carolina, for Appellant. Roy
Cooper, North Carolina Attorney General, Kimberly D. Potter,
Assistant Attorney General, NORTH CAROLINA DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE,
Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
See Local Rule 36(c).
PER CURIAM:
Mohammed Reza Salami appeals from the final judgment in favor
of his employer, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State
University (“A&T”), in this employment discrimination civil action.
The judgment appealed from is the result of a five-day jury trial
in the Middle District of North Carolina (in which the jury
unanimously found for A&T), and the district court’s partial award
of summary judgment to A&T. As explained below, we affirm.
I.
Since 1987, Salami, who was born in Iran, has been employed by
A&T, a public land-grant university located in Greensboro, North
Carolina. Salami began his employment with A&T as an associate
professor in A&T’s College of Engineering (the “COE”), eventually
earning tenure as a full professor. During his time as a professor
at A&T, Salami has generally received good performance evaluations,
and he has brought more than one million dollars in research
proposal funds to A&T. In July 1998, Salami was appointed
Associate Dean of the COE for a twelve-month period by then-Dean
Lonnie Sharpe, Jr. With his new appointment, Salami received a
twenty-percent increase in salary, twelve months’ pay per year
(rather than ten months’ pay), increased benefits, and a promotion.
Salami remained Associate Dean for the next several years,
maintaining favorable employment evaluations.
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In July 2000, Sharpe was replaced as Dean of the COE by Joseph
Monroe. Under Monroe, Salami was responsible for federal “Title
III grants.” In that capacity, Salami was expected to monitor the
status of funds for the COE’s graduate students and report his
conclusions to Monroe. Monroe, in turn, would report to Kenneth
Murray, A&T’s Title III Director. Under Murray’s predecessor,
Salami had not received any negative criticism for his management
of Title III grant money. Murray, however, accused Salami of
mismanaging Title III funds, even though all of Salami’s changes to
the Title III budget were approved by Murray himself, along with
Monroe.
Salami asserts that Murray held a negative view of him on
account of his national origin. According to Salami, Murray once
told him that “A&T is first for blacks, then for whites, and then
for you.” Salami also presented evidence that Murray remarked to
a job applicant that Salami did not possess the work ethic of most
Iranians, and did not work as hard as Chinese faculty members.
When Murray was the interim Dean of the COE in 1995, he rejected
Salami’s application for a full professorship. Salami reapplied in
1996, and Murray again denied the application. Following the 1996
denial, Salami’s application was reviewed by a neutral person, and
Salami was awarded a full professorship on July 1, 1997.
In August 2001, Salami learned that the United States
Department of Education (“DOE”) had decided to conduct a site audit
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of A&T’s Title III grant program. Upon learning of the impending
audit, Murray expressed concern to Salami and Monroe about Title
III budget changes that Murray and Monroe had approved. Murray and
Monroe asked Salami to prepare a report explaining those budgetary
changes. Salami complied, and his report was approved by Monroe
without incident. Murray, however, called the report “worthless”
and directed Salami and Monroe to redo it. Murray later had Salami
removed from administration of the Title III grant program. Murray
was eventually relieved of his Title III responsibilities pursuant
to a DOE request.
On November 28, 2001, Salami received a renewal letter from
A&T Chancellor James Renick, which informed Salami that he would
continue in his position as Associate Dean of the COE for the 2001-
2002 school year. On December 7, 2001, Salami met with Monroe to
discuss job performance and, according to Salami, Monroe had no
negative comments. Five days later, on December 12, 2001, however,
Monroe gave Salami an undated letter that informed him of his
demotion from the Associate Dean position, effective January 1,
2002. Although the letter asserted that the demotion was due to a
reorganization of the Dean’s staff, Monroe allegedly told Salami he
was being demoted because Murray could no longer bear working with
him.
In response to his demotion, Salami filed a charge with the
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (the “EEOC”) on May 2,
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2002. According to Salami, A&T thereafter retaliated against him
for filing that EEOC charge by failing to renovate Graham Room 10,
a room on A&T’s campus that Salami used for conducting research.
Salami asserts that he had requested $250,000 in renovations to
Graham Room 10, and his request was approved in August 2000. The
undisputed evidence shows that the only work undertaken on Graham
Room 10, however, consisted of a ten-to-fifteen thousand dollar
renovation, which was completed in the fall of 2000. On October
31, 2002, Salami filed a second EEOC charge, contending that A&T
had impermissibly retaliated against him for having filed his May
2, 2002 EEOC charge by, inter alia, ending the renovations to
Graham Room 10.
On July 9, 2003, Salami received a right to sue letter from
the EEOC regarding his May 2, 2002 EEOC charge and, on July 22,
2003, he obtained a right to sue letter pertaining to his October
31, 2002 charge. Subsequently, on September 24, 2003, Salami
instituted this civil action by filing a complaint in the Middle
District of North Carolina. By his complaint, Salami asserted
claims for breach of contract; demotion on the basis of national
origin, in contravention of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of
1964; and unlawful retaliation, also in violation of Title VII.
The parties then proceeded through discovery. On November 17,
2004, before the close of discovery proceedings, A&T filed a motion
to have its expert report deemed timely served. Salami filed an
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opposition thereto and a motion to exclude A&T’s expert report on
November 29, 2004. A&T then filed a motion for summary judgment on
November 30, 2004.
By Order of April 13, 2005, the district court, as relevant,
granted A&T’s motion to have its expert report deemed timely
served, denied Salami’s motion to exclude the expert report, and
granted in part A&T’s motion for summary judgment. See Salami v.
N.C. Agric. & Technical State Univ., 394 F. Supp. 2d 696 (M.D. N.C.
2005). With respect to its summary judgment ruling, the court
permitted all of Salami’s claims to survive, except for his
retaliation claim, to the extent it was premised on A&T’s non-
renovation of Graham Room 10. The court subsequently conducted a
jury trial in late April 2005. On April 25, 2005, the jury
returned a unanimous verdict, finding that Salami had not
substantiated any of his claims for relief. Thereafter, on April
27, 2005, the court entered a final judgment in favor of A&T.
Salami has timely noted an appeal therefrom, and we possess
jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291.
II.
A.
Salami first contends that the district court erred in
awarding summary judgment to A&T on his retaliation claim, to the
extent that claim was premised on A&T’s non-renovation of Graham
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Room 10. We review de novo an award of summary judgment, viewing
the facts and inferences drawn therefrom in the light most
favorable to the non-moving party. Baqir v. Principi, 434 F.3d
733, 741 (4th Cir. 2006). Summary judgment is not appropriate
unless “‘the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories,
and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, show that
there is no genuine issue of material fact and that the moving
party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.’” Id. (quoting
Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c)) (alteration and internal quotation marks
omitted).
In pertinent part, section 704(a) of Title VII prohibits an
employer from taking an adverse employment action against any
employee “because he has made a charge, testified, assisted, or
participated in any manner in an investigation, proceeding, or
hearing under this subchapter.” Title VII § 704(a), 42 U.S.C.
§ 2000e-3(a). Under the burden-shifting framework formulated by
the Supreme Court in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v Green, a Title VII
plaintiff bears the initial burden of making out a prima facie case
of retaliation. See 411 U.S. 792, 802-04 (1973). “In order to
establish a prima facie case of retaliation, a plaintiff must prove
three elements: (1) that []he engaged in a protected activity; (2)
that [his] employer took an adverse employment action against
[him]; and (3) that there was a causal link between the two
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events.” EEOC v. Navy Fed. Credit Union, 424 F.3d 397, 405-06 (4th
Cir. 2005).
Salami is unable to demonstrate a causal nexus between his May
2, 2002 EEOC charge and A&T’s discontinuation of the renovations on
Graham Room 10. The undisputed evidence shows that the last
renovations on Graham Room 10 occurred in the fall of 2000, and
there is no evidence to suggest that plans to resume renovations
may have been scuttled after Salami filed his EEOC charge. The
discontinuation of such renovations could not therefore have been
due to Salami’s May 2, 2002 EEOC charge. See Thompson v. Potomac
Elec. Power Co., 312 F.3d 645, 651 (4th Cir. 2002) (recognizing
that “the continuation of the alleged adverse action after the
filing of a discrimination complaint [does] not, without more,
support [the plaintiff’s] prima facie burden of showing
causation”). The district court thus did not err in awarding
summary judgment to A&T on Salami’s claim of retaliation based on
the failure to renovate Graham Room 10.
B.
Salami also seeks a new trial, relying solely on his
contention that the district court erred in deeming A&T’s expert
report timely served and, consequently, allowing A&T’s expert, Dr.
Gringer Calloway, to testify. Dr. Calloway’s testimony concerned
Salami’s mental condition, and was therefore relevant only to the
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issue of damages. The jury, however, found Salami’s claims for
relief unsubstantiated and, accordingly, it had no occasion to
consider the damages issue. “The court at every stage of the
proceedings must disregard any error or defect in the proceeding
which does not affect the substantial rights of the parties.” Fed.
R. Civ. P. 61. In these circumstances, Calloway’s testimony could
not have affected Salami’s substantial rights, and its admission,
even if erroneous, must be disregarded.
III.
Pursuant to the foregoing, we affirm the judgment in favor of
A&T. We dispense with oral argument because the facts and legal
contentions of this appeal are adequately presented in the
materials before the Court and argument would not aid us in the
decisional process.
AFFIRMED
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