Daphne Craddock v. Lincoln National Life Insuranc

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 13-1123
Daphne M. Craddock,
Plaintiff - Appellant,
v.
Lincoln National Life Insurance Company,
Defendant – Appellee,
and
LINCOLN NATIONAL CORPORATION; LINCOLN LIFE AND ANNUITY
DISTRIBUTORS, INC.; LINCOLN FINANCIAL INVESTMENT SERVICES
CORPORATION,
Defendants.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle
District of North Carolina, at Greensboro. Catherine C. Eagles,
District Judge. (1:12-cv-00684-CCE-LPA)
Submitted: June 21, 2013 Decided: July 22, 2013
Before DAVIS and THACKER, Circuit Judges, and HAMILTON, Senior
Circuit Judge.
Vacated and remanded by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Norman B. Smith, SMITH, JAMES, ROWLETT & COHEN, LLP, Greensboro,
North Carolina, for Appellant. M. Robin Davis, Joshua M.
Krasner, JACKSON LEWIS LLP, Cary, North Carolina, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
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PER CURIAM:
Plaintiff-Appellant Daphne Craddock appeals the district
court’s dismissal of her employment discrimination suit against
Defendant-Appellee Lincoln National Life Insurance Company
(“Lincoln”), which terminated her employment under disputed
circumstances. The district court found that Craddock’s
allegations that Lincoln violated the Age Discrimination in
Employment Act (the “ADEA”), 29 U.S.C. §§ 621-634, and the
Americans with Disabilities Act (the “ADA”), 42 U.S.C. §§ 12101-
12213, failed to state a claim upon which relief could be
granted. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6). We vacate the judgment
and remand for further proceedings.
I.
Craddock began working for Lincoln’s predecessor entity,
Pilot Life Insurance Company (“Pilot”), in 1969. 1 A 1980
automobile accident left her with a “massive brain injury,” and
rendered her unable to return to work for over a year. J.A. 40.
When she did return to work after the accident, Pilot
1
The facts set out here are alleged in Craddock’s proposed
second amended complaint. As explained below, the district court
denied as futile Craddock’s motion to file the second amended
complaint, but considered the allegations therein when assessing
Lincoln’s motion to dismiss. We therefore view the second
amended complaint as the operative complaint in reviewing the
district court’s dismissal order. Given our remand for further
proceedings, the second amended complaint should be properly
docketed in the district court.
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accommodated her disabilities, apparently by assigning her to
perform filing and file maintenance, and to process mail. 2 Though
Craddock does not make clear if or how her resulting impairments
changed since the accident, at the time of her 2011 termination
they included “short-term memory impairment, somewhat limited
ability in reading and writing, limited keyboard speed, and
weakness of eye muscles.” J.A. 41.
Craddock alleges that around 2010, when Lincoln appointed a
new manager of the mail room, Lincoln “embarked . . . on a
strategy and scheme to bring about [her] discharge . . . on the
basis of either her disability or her age, or both.” J.A. 41-42.
Around this time, Craddock alleges, Lincoln “imposed on [her]
and her co-employees” “quality standards” of 98 percent and
“quantity standards” of 91 percent. J.A. 43. Craddock’s
“quality” performance was 97.4 percent, missing the minimum goal
by .6 percent, and her “quantity” performance was 77.84 percent,
missing the minimum goal by 13.16 percent. Id.In May 2011 Craddock received an “oral warning” that she
had been making mistakes, and in June 2011 she received a
“written warning” that she needed to improve and become more
efficient. J.A. 42. Craddock alleges that these warnings
2
Craddock’s complaint is unclear as to whether these were
also her pre-accident job duties.
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“falsely claim[ed] that she had been making mistakes when in
fact she had not,” and “falsely stat[ed] that she needed to
improve and become more efficient, when in fact she was
performing her job duties in an acceptably efficient manner . .
. .” J.A. 42. On July 26, 2011, Craddock received a “final
written warning” and was terminated that same day. Id. She was
59 years old at that time.
Craddock makes several additional allegations to support
her claims. First, she alleges that Lincoln trained all non-
disabled and younger employees in her department to use a
scanner, and though she repeatedly requested that training (as
she believes she could have performed scanning work despite her
disabilities), Lincoln refused to provide it. Several positions
at Lincoln involving scanner operation were available, and
Craddock says she could have been reassigned to those positions.
Second, she alleges that when she started receiving warnings,
she requested reassignment to other jobs at Lincoln that she
believed she could adequately perform, but was told she could
not do so for six months (a period that had not expired by the
time she was discharged). Finally, she alleges that after her
discharge, she sought to be rehired by Lincoln, but that
Lincoln’s human resources personnel told her she could not work
again for Lincoln, whether as a temporary or permanent employee.
5
On June 5, 2012, Craddock sued Lincoln in North Carolina
state court, alleging violations of the ADEA and the ADA.
Lincoln removed the action to the United States District Court
for the Middle District of North Carolina. Lincoln then filed a
motion to dismiss Craddock’s complaint for failure to state a
claim. Craddock filed an amended complaint, and Lincoln filed
another motion to dismiss. Craddock then filed a second amended
complaint. In response, Lincoln filed a motion to strike the
second amended complaint. On January 11, 2013, the district
court entered an order granting Lincoln’s motion to dismiss and
denying as futile Craddock’s motion to amend.
II.
We review de novo the district court’s grant of Lincoln’s
motion to dismiss. CGM, LLC v. BellSouth Telecommunications,
Inc., 664 F.3d 46, 51 (4th Cir. 2011). Like the district court,
we must assume all well-pled facts to be true, and draw all
reasonable inferences in Craddock’s favor. Nemet Chevrolet, Ltd.
v. Consumeraffairs.com, Inc., 591 F.3d 250, 253 (4th Cir. 2009).
However, “legal conclusions, elements of a cause of action, and
bare assertions devoid of further factual enhancement fail to
constitute well-pled facts for Rule 12(b)(6) purposes.” Id. at
255 (citing Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009)). The
“‘[f]actual allegations must be enough to raise a right to
relief above the speculative level’ and have ‘enough facts to
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state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.’” Wahi v.
Charleston Area Med. Ctr., Inc., 562 F.3d 599, 615 n.26 (4th
Cir. 2009) (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544,
555, 570 (2007)).
III.
We turn first to Craddock’s ADEA claim. The ADEA forbids an
employer “to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any
individual or otherwise discriminate against any individual with
respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of
employment, because of such individual’s age.” 29 U.S.C. §
623(a)(1).
The district court concluded that though “[t]he allegations
in the Second Amended Complaint are detailed, [they]
affirmatively show that Ms. Craddock was not meeting her
employer’s legitimate expectations when she was terminated.”
J.A. 56. Accordingly, the court held that Craddock had failed
to establish a prima facie case of age discrimination under the
ADEA.
We are not persuaded that Craddock pled herself out of the
very claim she sought to assert. The district court based its
conclusion on a misreading of Fourth Circuit and Supreme Court
precedent. The court quoted Hill v. Lockheed Martin Logistics
Management, Inc., 354 F.3d 277 (4th Cir. 2004), for the
proposition that to demonstrate a prima facie case of age
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discrimination at the pleading stage, a plaintiff must show that
“‘(1) she is a member of a protected class; (2) she suffered
adverse employment action; (3) she was performing her job duties
at a level that met her employer’s legitimate expectations at
the time of the adverse employment action; and (4) the position
remained open or was filled by similarly qualified applicants
outside the protected class.’” J.A. 56 (quoting Hill, 354 F.3d
at 285). But that test is an evidentiary standard under the
“pretext” framework set out by McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green,
411 U.S. 792 (1973), and is “not a pleading requirement.”
Swierkiewicz v. Sorema N.A., 534 U.S. 506, 510 (2002).
Crucially, Hill applied the test at the summary judgment stage -
- a fact the district court did not recognize.
In Swierkiewicz, the Supreme Court rejected the notion that
“the requirements for establishing a prima facie case under
McDonnell Douglas also apply to the pleading standard that
plaintiffs must satisfy in order to survive a motion to
dismiss.” 534 U.S. at 511. This is at least in part because “if
a plaintiff is able to produce direct evidence of
discrimination, he may prevail without proving all the elements
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of a prima facie case,” which is an indirect method of proof.
Id. 3
That leaves the question of whether the allegations in the
second amended complaint state a claim to relief under the ADEA
that is plausible on its face. Though it is a close question,
drawing all reasonable inferences in Craddock’s favor (as we
must), we conclude that they do.
Two of Craddock’s allegations support this conclusion.
First, Craddock alleges that Lincoln trained all younger
employees in her department to use a scanner, but despite her
requests did not train her. Second, Craddock alleges that
Lincoln’s human resources personnel told her she could not work
again for Lincoln, whether as a temporary or permanent employee.
J.A. 45-46. Lincoln may well have neglected to train Craddock,
and refused to consider rehiring her, based on one or more
permissible reasons. But the inference that Lincoln did so
because of Craddock’s age may also be reasonably drawn from the
3
In Twombly, the Court later “explicitly overruled” the
standard that a court may dismiss a complaint for failure to
state a claim only if it is clear that no relief could be
granted under any set of facts that could be proved consistent
with the allegations. Francis v. Giacomelli, 588 F.3d 186, 192
n.1 (4th Cir. 2009) (citing Twombly, 550 U.S. at 562-63). But
Twombly did not alter the Swierkiewicz rule that a plaintiff
need not set out the elements of a prima facie case for an
indirect method of proof in order to survive a motion to
dismiss.
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facts alleged. This suffices to allow her ADEA claim to survive
a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim upon which
relief can be granted.
IV.
We turn next to Craddock’s ADA claim. “The ADA prohibits
discrimination against ‘a qualified individual on the basis of
disability.’” Young v. United Parcel Serv., Inc., 707 F.3d 437,
443 (4th Cir. 2013) (quoting 42 U.S.C. § 12112(a)). To plead a
claim of disability discrimination under the ADA, a plaintiff
must allege that (1) she had a disability as defined in the ADA;
(2) she was a “qualified individual,” i.e., able to perform the
essential functions of her job with or without reasonable
accommodation; and (3) her employer took an adverse action
against her on account of her disability. Id.The district court first concluded that neither Craddock’s
amended complaint nor the second amended complaint provided “any
factual allegations to support [the] conclusory statement” that
she was fired on the basis of her disability. J.A. 57. In the
court’s view, such allegations could have included “allegations
of negative comments made about people with disabilities,”
“allegations of harassment or bias related to [Craddock’s]
disability,” or “circumstantial facts supporting an inference of
bias against disabled people.” Id. Second, the court concluded
that the second amended complaint itself “establish[ed] that she
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was not qualified for her position, . . . and the only suggested
accommodation -- that the employer tolerate the level of
mistakes -- is not reasonable.” Id. The court thus held that
Craddock failed to state a viable ADA claim.
We disagree. Drawing all reasonable inferences in
Craddock’s favor, we conclude that the second amended complaint
states a plausible claim to relief under the ADA. As noted
above, Craddock alleges that all non-disabled employees in her
department received a form of training (i.e., regarding
scanning) that she did not, that she could have performed
scanning work, and that scanning positions were available. She
also alleges that Lincoln refused to consider rehiring her.
These allegations render plausible Craddock’s claim that she was
discharged on the basis of disability, and that Lincoln failed
to reasonably accommodate her disability.
It is true that several of Craddock’s proposed
accommodations are not accommodations at all, but rather
suggestions that Lincoln tolerate lower performance regarding
quality and quantity. But Craddock also alleges that she could
have performed other duties such as scanning, and that several
scanning positions were available. The ADA expressly recognizes
“reassignment to a vacant position” as a reasonable
accommodation. 42 U.S.C. § 12111(9)(B). In short, like the age
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claim, the disability claim is not susceptible of resolution on
the pleadings.
V.
For the reasons set forth, we vacate the judgment of the
district court and remand for further proceedings consistent
with this opinion. Of course, we express no view as to the
ultimate merits of Craddock’s claims. We dispense with oral
argument because the facts and legal contentions are adequately
presented in the materials before this court and argument would
not aid the decisional process.
VACATED AND REMANDED
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