Williams v. Sterling Healthcare Services, Inc.

United States Court of Appeals
Fifth Circuit
F I L E D
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT August 7, 2006
_______________________ Charles R. Fulbruge III
Clerk
No. 05-30937
Summary Calendar
_______________________
MICHELLE R. WILLIAMS,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
versus
STERLING HEALTHCARE SERVICES, INC.,
Defendant-Appellee.
_________________________________________________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Western District of Louisiana
Docket No. 5:04-CV-1531
_________________________________________________________________
Before JONES, Chief Judge, and BARKSDALE and BENAVIDES, Circuit
Judges.
PER CURIAM:*
Michelle Williams brings this appeal, challenging the
district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of her former
employer, Sterling Healthcare Services, Inc. (“Sterling”). Because
Williams failed to present a genuine issue of material fact as to
her Title VII and Louisiana employment law discrimination claims,
as well as her Family and Medical Leave Act (“FMLA”) retaliation
claim, we AFFIRM.
*
Pursuant to 5TH CIR. R. 47.5, the court has determined that this
opinion should not be published and is not precedent except under the limited
circumstances set forth in 5TH CIR. R. 47.5.4.
I. Background
Sterling sells pharmaceutical products to nursing homes
and long-term care facilities; it operates two pharmacies in
Louisiana. The company is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Omnicare,
Inc. (“Omnicare”), which owns pharmacies nationwide. Sterling is
part of Omnicare’s Southern Region, which is managed out of an
office in Oklahoma City. Omnicare had a longstanding practice of
eliminating redundant jobs in its pharmacies and transferring
management functions to its regional offices. Sterling asserts,
and Williams does not dispute, that by the beginning of 2003,
Omnicare had eliminated all on-site accountants in its Southern
Region, save for Williams.
Williams was hired by Sterling as an accountant in August
2000, after Sterling had been acquired by Omnicare. Beginning in
2001, Williams voluntarily took on various human resource and
administrative responsibilities at Sterling in addition to her
accounting work. When these additional responsibilities became too
much for her to handle on her own, a pharmacy technician, Teresa
Bordelon, became her assistant.
Williams discovered she was pregnant in September 2002,
and promptly notified Sterling. According to their affidavits,
managers at both Omnicare and Sterling made a final decision in
January 2003 to eliminate Williams’s position, owing both to
Omnicare’s consolidation efforts and Sterling’s loss of a primary
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customer, which imminently threatened to reduce Sterling’s revenue
by $300,000 monthly. In February 2003, supervisors at Omnicare
instructed Williams to begin transferring her accounting duties to
Oklahoma City. On April 28, 2003, Williams gave birth and took
FMLA maternity leave; the majority of her accounting
responsibilities had been transferred to the regional office at
this point. Williams returned from leave on June 9, 2003 and was
told by a supervisor at Sterling on June 13 that her position had
been eliminated.
Williams brought suit against Sterling on July 23, 2004,
alleging that she had been wrongfully terminated on the basis of
pregnancy discrimination pursuant to Title VII and Louisiana
employment law, and that her termination was in retaliation for her
taking FMLA leave. Sterling moved for summary judgment, and on
August 29, 2005, the district court granted the company’s motion.
Williams now brings this appeal.
II. Discussion
This court reviews a district court’s grant of summary
judgment de novo. Evans v. City of Houston, 246 F.3d 344, 347 (5th
Cir. 2001). Summary judgment is appropriate if “the pleadings,
depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file,
together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine
issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled
to judgment as a matter of law.” FED. R. CIV. P. 56(c); see also
Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 312-33, 106 S. Ct. 2548,
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2552-53 (1986). On a motion for summary judgment, a court must
review the facts in the light most favorable to the nonmovant.
Walker v. Thompson, 214 F.3d 615, 624 (5th Cir. 2000).
A. Title VII and Louisiana Claims
The familiar McDonnell Douglas framework governs
Williams’s Title VII pregnancy discrimination claim, as well as her
employment discrimination claims brought under Louisiana law. See
King v. Phelps Dunbar, LLP, 743 So.2d 181, 187 (La. 1999)(Louisiana
employment discrimination claims are analyzed in the same manner as
those brought under Title VII). To survive summary judgment, a
plaintiff must first establish a prima facie case of discrimination
by a preponderance of the evidence. Pratt v. City of Houston,
247 F.3d 601, 606 (5th Cir. 2001) (citing McDonnell Douglas Corp.
v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 802-04, 93 S. Ct. 1817, 1824-25 (1973)).
If the plaintiff succeeds in establishing a prima facie case, there
then exists a presumption of discrimination by the employer, who is
required to provide the court with a legitimate, nondiscriminatory
reason for the challenged actions. McDonnell Douglas, 411 U.S. at
802-04, 93 S. Ct. at 1824-25. If the employer furnishes the court
with a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for its actions, the
burden shifts again to the plaintiff to provide the court with
evidence “that the legitimate reasons offered by the defendant were
not its true reasons, but were a pretext for discrimination.”
Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Prods., Inc., 530 U.S. 133, 143, 120
S. Ct. 2097, 2106 (2000).
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Williams devotes a substantial portion of her brief on
appeal to arguing that the district court erred in concluding that
she had failed to establish a prima facie case. She urges that
Sterling conceded the issue for the purposes of summary judgment,
and argues in the alternative that the district court applied the
incorrect legal standard to this reduction-in-force case. Such
arguments are ultimately academic, however, as even assuming
arguendo that Williams can make out a prima facie case, the
district court correctly concluded that Williams failed to present
evidence sufficient to rebut Sterling’s legitimate,
nondiscriminatory reasons for terminating Williams.
Sterling stated that it eliminated Williams’s job based
on Omnicare’s decision to transfer Williams’s accounting functions
to Oklahoma City, and that the decision to terminate Williams
became final after Sterling lost one of its major clients. The
evidence presented by Williams in response is conclusory and
immaterial. Williams claims that other employees whose positions
were allegedly eliminated by Sterling as part of the company’s
cost-cutting measures in fact either resigned or were terminated
for cause. Williams next claims that her performance evaluations
dropped significantly after she became pregnant, and that her
former assistant, Bordelon, received a pay increase after assuming
some of her non-accounting duties. Finally, she alleges that she
was misled regarding the elimination of her position until she
returned from FMLA leave and was terminated.
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Accepting all of these claims as true, Williams still
creates no issue of pretext. At best, Williams’s evidence
indicates that Sterling did a poor job in handling her termination,
but her claims do nothing to call into question the veracity of
Sterling’s explanation that her job was terminated as part of a
reduction in force, whether brought on by a downturn in business,
or by the ongoing consolidation efforts of Omnicare. The fact is
that Sterling chose not to replace other employees who quit or were
fired contemporaneously with Williams, and Bordelon’s replacement
of Williams reduced two positions to one. Finally, because the
decision to centralize accounting was a home-office decision,
Williams’s conversations with or evaluations by her immediate
supervisor are not probative of discrimination. “Generalized
testimony by an employee regarding his subjective belief that his
discharge was the result of [] discrimination is insufficient to
make an issue for the jury in the face of proof showing an
adequate, nondiscriminatory reason for his discharge.” Elliott v.
Group Med. & Surgical Serv., 714 F.2d 556, 566 (5th Cir. 1983). As
such, the district court did not err in granting summary judgment
to Sterling as to Williams’s Title VII or Louisiana employment
discrimination claims.
B. FMLA Retaliation
The FMLA requires employers to provide employees with up
to twelve weeks of unpaid leave in connection with certain medical
events, including the birth of a child. 29 U.S.C. § 2612(a)(1)(A).
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Williams alleges that she was unlawfully terminated in retaliation
for taking FMLA leave following the birth of her child. See
29 C.F.R. § 825.220(c). As with Title VII claims, the McDonnell
Douglas framework applies to those plaintiffs who can state a prima
facie case of retaliation. Hunt v. Rapides Healthcare Sys. LLC,
277 F.3d 757, 768 (5th Cir. 2001).
As discussed, supra, even assuming arguendo that Williams
could state a prima facie case, none of her evidence rebuts
Sterling’s explanation that Williams’s job was cut to achieve a
reduction in force, and the decision to eliminate her job occurred
months before she took FMLA leave. Therefore, the district court
did not err in granting summary judgment to Sterling concerning
Williams’s FMLA retaliation claim.
III. Conclusion
For the foregoing reasons, the decision of the district
court is AFFIRMED.
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