Opinion
Civil Action No. 93-2297 (JMF)
July 6, 2000
MEMORANDUM OPINION
I. Background
The facts of this case are set out more extensively in an earlier decision in this case by the Circuit Court of Appeals, which remanded the case back to the District Court for trial.Juanita Griffin v. Washington Convention Center, 142 F.3d 1308 (D.C. Cir. 1998). In short, however, Juanita Griffin began working at the Washington Convention Center in 1984 as an apprentice electrician. Having successfully completed her time as an apprentice, she received her journeyman electrician's license in 1987, and at the same time, due to a reorganization, came under the supervision of Cleo Doyle. Mr. Doyle reported to his superiors that Ms. Griffin was incompetent, and recommended that she be fired, which eventually occurred in July of 1992. Ms. Griffin subsequently brought suit under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, claiming that she had been fired because of her gender. Having lost her first trial, plaintiff prevailed before a jury in her second trial, and the jury awarded her $19,000 in compensatory damages.
The verdict form the jury returned only had two questions:
1) "Do you find that Plaintiff proved her case of gender discrimination." Answer — "yes."
2)"If your answer to Question Number 1 is `Yes,' what amount of compensatory damages do you award Plaintiff." Answer — "$19,000."
Jury verdict form filed August 24, 1999.
Despite the jury verdict in her favor, the Washington Convention Center opposes plaintiff's reinstatement to the job from which she was fired. Pia Brown, Director of Exhibitor Services at the Washington Convention Center, testified at the hearing that plaintiff lacked the fundamental skills to be an electrician and that her incompetence as an electrician would endanger the people who work at or visit the Convention Center. On the basis of her testimony, the Convention Center urges that plaintiff not be reinstated.
An appreciation of the Convention Center's current position must be put in the context of the history of this case. In the first trial, the magistrate judge refused to permit plaintiff to elicit testimony as to sexist remarks made by Doyle, plaintiff's immediate supervisor. The judge concluded that Doyle's remarks were irrelevant because Reba Evans, not Doyle, had fired plaintiff. Reba Evans was Director of Operations at the Washington Convention Center and she testified that she had discharged plaintiff because she failed to meet the requirements of her position. The Court of Appeals reversed, holding that evidence of a subordinate's bias is relevant when the ultimate decision maker (Evans) was not insulated from the subordinate's (Doyle's) influence and there was evidence that Doyle was Evans' chief source of information about plaintiff's job performance.Griffin, 142 F.3d at 1312.
At the second trial, Evans and Doyle testified as they had at the first trial. Doyle, in particular, described at length why he believed that plaintiff was incompetent. In the second trial, however, Doyle's remarks about women being unfit to be electricians were admitted into evidence and the jury returned a verdict in plaintiff's favor. Ironically, Pia Brown, who later testified in support of the Convention Center's contention that plaintiff not be reinstated, stated that after the jury verdict, she consulted with Doyle in developing her opinion as to whether the Convention Center would oppose plaintiff's returning to work. Transcript of April 21, 2000 hearing at 189.
The Court: "Another question I had (-) was Mr. Doyle consulted during the course of that decision making process?"
Witness (Pia Brown): "As the manager of the department, yes. I think it was only fair to consult with the manager of the department."
II. Analysis
The Convention Center's request that the Court not order reinstatement must be rejected. The jury verdict in plaintiff's favor can only be read as an explicit acceptance of plaintiff's assertion that she was fired because of her gender and an equally explicit rejection of the Convention Center's assertion, primarily through Doyle's testimony, that the Convention Center fired plaintiff because she was incompetent and her firing had nothing to do with her gender. See fn. 1, supra. In awarding equitable relief, the Court must act in strict accordance with the jury's finding and has no right to determine anew and of its own accord whether a defendant's stated reason for termination should be given credence where the jury has already declined to do so.
In Kolstad v. American Dental Association, 108 F.3d 1431 (D.C. Cir. 1997) rev'd on other grounds, 527 U.S. 526 (1999), the jury found that the defendant had discriminated against the plaintiff on the basis of her gender. The trial judge, however, refused to reinstate plaintiff to the position she claimed she would have received had she not been discriminated against because he found that plaintiff had not proved to his satisfaction that she was victimized by discrimination. The Court of Appeals reversed, stating:
Finally, the district court must also reconsider Kolstad's claims for further equitable relief and attorney's fees. Consistent with the Seventh Amendment's command that "no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States," U.S. Const. amend. VII, "when a case contains claims triable to a jury and claims triable to the court that involve common issues of fact, the jury's resolution of those issues governs the entire case." Bouchet v. National Urban League, Inc., 730 F.2d 799, 803 (D.C. Cir. 1984); See generally Dairy Queen v. Wood, 369 U.S. 469, 82 S.Ct. 894, 8 L.Ed.2d 44 (1962). As our sister circuits have uniformly held in cases involving allegations of intentional discrimination, the district court must therefore follow the jury's factual findings with respect to a plaintiff's legal claims when later ruling on claims for equitable relief. See, e.g., Sorlucco v. New York City Police Dept., 971 F.2d 864, 873-74 (2d Cir. 1992); Miller v. Fairchild Indus., Inc., 885 F.2d 498, 507 (9th Cir. 1989) (citing additional cases). Contrary to this principle, the district court here denied Kolstad's claim for instatement, as well as her petition for attorney's fees, on the ground that she had not proven her claim of intentional sex discrimination "to the Court's satisfaction." Because we agree with the district court that the jury's finding of intentional discrimination must be upheld, Kolstad is entitled to have her claims for equitable relief and attorney's fees properly considered by the court in light of the jury's verdict.108 F.3d at 1440. Accord: Squires v. Bonser, 54 F.3d 168, 173-174(3d Cir. 1995) ("Once the jury has found in favor of plaintiff on liability, the existence of a constitutional deprivation is an established fact which may not be re-examined in the district court's subsequent determinations — including determinations of appropriate equitable remedies."); Price v. Marshall Erdman Associates, Inc., 966 F.2d 320, 324 (7th Cir. 1992) (jury's implicit rejection of defendant's claim that fired employee was incompetent is binding on district court judge considering whether to order employee reinstated); United States Equal Opportunity Commission v. Century Broadcasting Corp., 957 F.2d 1446, 1462 (7th Cir. 1992) (district court erred when it based its denial of reinstatement in part upon a reason the jury rejected); Jones v. Browner, 1997 WL 280757 (N.D.Ill. 1997) (in awarding relief in Title VII action cannot revisit issues resolved by the jury).
As the last two cases indicate, the premise for these is at least in part the principle of issue preclusion, or collateral estoppel, which requires that the court not revisit issues necessarily and actually decided by the jury. Hussein v. Oshkosh Motor Truck Co., 816 F.2d 348, 355 (7th Cir. 1987). See also Ohio-Sealy Mattress Manufacturing Co. v. Sealy, Inc., 585 F.2d 821, 844 (7th Cir. 1978); Lincoln v. Board of Regents, 697 F.2d 928, 934 (11th Cir. 1983).