Espinoza v. Coca-Cola Enterprises, Inc.

F I L E D
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
February 17, 2006
FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT Elisabeth A. Shumaker
Clerk of Court
EDMOND A. ESPINOZA,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v. No. 05-1025
(D.C. No. 03-N-1623-BNB)
COCA-COLA ENTERPRISES, INC., (D. Colo.)
Defendant-Appellee.
ORDER AND JUDGMENT *
Before KELLY, PORFILIO, and BRORBY, Circuit Judges.
Plaintiff appeals from the grant of summary judgment to defendant on his
claims of employment discrimination and retaliation. He alleged that defendant
denied him a promotion because he is Hispanic and later terminated him for that
reason and in retaliation for general complaints he had voiced about disparate
*
After examining the briefs and appellate record, this panel has determined
unanimously that oral argument would not materially assist the determination of
this appeal. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2); 10th Cir. R. 34.1(G). The case is
therefore ordered submitted without oral argument. This order and judgment is
not binding precedent, except under the doctrines of law of the case, res judicata,
and collateral estoppel. The court generally disfavors the citation of orders and
judgments; nevertheless, an order and judgment may be cited under the terms and
conditions of 10th Cir. R. 36.3.
treatment of Hispanics. The district court held that plaintiff failed to establish a
prima facie case for these claims and entered judgment for defendant accordingly.
We affirm, though we frame the dispositive analysis somewhat differently.
Plaintiff was a district sales manager at defendant’s Pueblo, Colorado,
facility when he applied for the top position of sales manager. He had recently
received a write-up for a verbal altercation with a customer and been given a
sub-target performance evaluation, however, and was not interviewed. Instead,
another district sales manager, Donald Podzemny, was promoted to the position.
In the meantime, plaintiff voiced complaints about disparate treatment of
Hispanics and African-Americans. His complaint about racism was tied to a
specific claim by another employee that had led, indirectly, to the discharge of the
sales manager whose position plaintiff sought (who admitted, and was fired for,
lying in an investigation of the employee’s EEOC complaint). His complaint
about national origin discrimination was much more general, based on his
observation that management included very few Hispanics.
Months later, plaintiff submitted many facially irregular Market Execution
Evaluations (MEEs), which are supervisory reports used in determining incentive
bonuses for the account managers working under a district sales manager. The
matter was investigated by human resource manager Ron Paxton and ultimately
resulted in plaintiff’s termination for falsification of company records. Paxton’s
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affidavit discusses in detail the alterations and evident neglect of supervisory
duties the alterations would serve to conceal, all backed up by physical evidence
and interviews with the affected subordinates. See Aplt. App. vol.2, ex. A-4.
Paxton concluded:
It was apparent from my investigation that Plaintiff had not
conducted the Market Execution Evaluations and had forged the
MEEs to cover for his failure to complete his job duties.
Plaintiff was terminated on May 6, 2002 for intentionally and
knowingly altering Company documents by (1) changing the dates
that the MEEs were performed, (2) cutting off the bottom of the
sheets that contained the computer generated date that the documents
were printed, and (3) falsifying both the signatures and dates of
members of his sales team on the MEEs.
Id., ex. A-4, at 5-6.
The district court began its analysis of plaintiff’s discrimination claims by
identifying the pertinent prima facie case under the traditional burden-shifting
analysis from McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792 (1973). For a
failure-to-promote claim, plaintiff had to show that (1) he was a member of a
protected class; (2) he applied for and was qualified for the position; (3) despite
being qualified, he was rejected; and (4) after he was rejected, the position was
filled. Jones v. Barnhart, 349 F.3d 1260, 1266 (10th Cir. 2003). The elements
for a discriminatory-discharge claim are essentially the same, though of course the
plaintiff must show that, despite being qualified, he was discharged from a job he
held and that the job was not simply eliminated. See Rivera v. City & County of
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Denver, 365 F.3d 912, 920 (10th Cir. 2004). The district court concluded that in
light of the facts recited above, which were admitted and/or not effectively
controverted, plaintiff could not satisfy the qualification element common to both
of the controlling prima facie cases.
As a threshold challenge to that decision, plaintiff contends that the court
construed the qualification element too broadly, thereby improperly incorporating
into the prima facie case the analytically subsequent inquiry regarding the
employer’s justification for the adverse action and the plaintiff’s opposing
demonstration of pretext. But, even if that objection were valid, we do not think
the result here is undermined: “whether th[e] analysis [of plaintiff’s qualification
for the job] is conducted in reference to the prima facie case or the business
justification versus pretext inquiry, . . . if the court correctly concludes that the
evidence of discrimination/pretext fails as a matter of law, summary judgment for
the defendant is the proper result.” Sorbo v. United Parcel Serv., 432 F.3d 1169,
1173-74 & n.5 (10th Cir. 2005).
Plaintiff also contends that he presented sufficient evidence of pretext to
warrant a trial. We disagree. As for the failure to promote, plaintiff does not
deny that shortly before applying he received a write-up and an unsatisfactory
performance evaluation by a supervisor unconnected to the promotion, but he
believes these were exaggerated/unwarranted products of personal enmity and
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retribution. This line of argument has two basic flaws. First, by attributing the
write-up and evaluation to the supervisor’s personal grudge against him (and,
more specifically, to retribution for negative ratings the supervisor had received a
year earlier based on subordinates’ comments), see Aplt. App. vol. 3, ex. 1 at 14-
17, ex. 9 at 19; Aplt. Opening Br. at 33, plaintiff imputes “a motive not prohibited
under the civil rights laws,” which obviously undermines his case for actionable
discrimination. Marx v. Schnuck Markets, Inc., 76 F.3d 324, 328 (10th Cir.
1996). Second, in any event, it is the employer’s understanding of the facts, not
plaintiff’s personal belief or interpretation, that is material, Stover v. Martinez,
382 F.3d 1064, 1073 (10th Cir. 2004), and the relevant inquiry is whether the
information given the decision-maker justified the action taken, not whether there
might have been some error in the information relied on, Sorbo, 432 F.3d at 1178;
Salguero v. City of Clovis, 366 F.3d 1168, 1176 (10th Cir. 2004).
Plaintiff also complains that the district sales manager (Podzemny) who
received the promotion was a pre-selected favorite who did not meet some of the
application criteria. We see two flaws in this objection as well. Plaintiff never
explicitly asserts, much less substantiates by record citation, that Podzemny was
pre-selected because he was not Hispanic or that Podzemny was preferred
because plaintiff was Hispanic (indeed, plaintiff contends the first step in this
pre-selection plot involved termination of prior supervisor Jack Waller, whom he
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has never suggested had any Hispanic ties). See Aplt. Opening Br. at 26-27. This
pre-selection argument thus amounts to a complaint that the application process
was a meaningless formality, which “might be inconsiderate or unfair, but it does
not [imply] . . . discrimination.” Jaramillo v. Colo. Judicial Dep’t, 427 F.3d
1303, 1314 (10th Cir. 2005) (following Mackey v. Shalala, 360 F.3d 463, 468 (4th
Cir.), cert. denied, 543 U.S. 876 (2004), which held “preselection is not sufficient
evidence for jurors reasonably to [find] . . . pretext”). As for the point that
Podzemny fell short of the minimum-time-in-current-position requirement and
lacked a supervisor’s nomination for promotion to the sales manager position
(though he had served as the interim replacement after Waller was fired, in part
because plaintiff was off work due to illness), neither of these formal application
deficiencies is remotely comparable to the performance and discipline issues that
undercut plaintiff’s effort to seek the promotion.
Much less need be said about plaintiff’s claim of discriminatory discharge.
The conduct underlying that action – alteration of performance records relating to
compensation of subordinates – clearly supplied a facially legitimate business
justification. And insofar as plaintiff attempts to advance a more innocent
interpretation of his conduct, that is a matter for the judgment of his employer,
not the courts. See Stover, 382 F.3d at 1076 (explaining that “in evaluating
pretext . . . our role is not to second guess an employer’s business judgment”).
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Finally, plaintiff objects to the district court’s rejection of his retaliation
claim for lack of supporting citations to the record. Ironically, his appellate
objection suffers from the same deficiency. Plaintiff neither shows that he did in
fact provide sufficient supporting record citations in his opposition to summary
judgment (the document is not even in his appendix), nor does he include any
record citations here. He merely states that his 25-page affidavit provides
sufficient evidence to defeat the motion for summary judgment on this claim,
without citing a single specific portion, page, or paragraph to substantiate that
conclusion. Aplt. Opening Br. at 16. We review the grant of summary judgment
from the perspective of the district court at the time it made its ruling, and where
the nonmovant failed to support his case with adequate specificity, we will not
fault the court for not searching the record on its own to make his case for him
(nor will we take on that role of advocacy). See Adler v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.,
144 F.3d 664, 671-73 (10th Cir. 1998); see also Gross v. Burggraf Constr. Co.,
53 F.3d 1531, 1546 (10th Cir. 1995).
We note that plaintiff asserts in summary fashion several additional
arguments in his reply brief. To the extent these relate to the issues we have
addressed above, they do not alter our analysis and do not require particularized
discussion. To the extent they raise new points, we deem them untimely.
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See Stump v. Gates, 211 F.3d 527, 533 (10th Cir. 2000) (“This court does not
ordinarily review issues raised for the first time in a reply brief.”).
The judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.
Entered for the Court
John C. Porfilio
Circuit Judge
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