Justia U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Plaintiff sued defendant under the Minnesota Human Rights Act ("MHRA"), Chapter 363A, alleging that defendant terminated her and took other adverse employment actions against her because she made complaints of discrimination. At issue was whether the district court properly granted summary judgment in favor of defendant on plaintiff's retaliation claims. The court affirmed summary judgment and held that plaintiff failed to create a triable issue of fact regarding whether defendant retaliated against her for reporting alleged discrimination where defendant articulated a non-discriminatory ground for plaintiff's termination, violation of a work rule, in which plaintiff failed to show pretext for retaliation.

Appellants appealed from an order granting summary judgment to appellee on a claim arising under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act ("WARN"), 29 U.S.C. 21202, and dismissing without prejudice supplemental state law claims. Appellants alleged that appellee hired them as temporary workers in the midst of a strike and then summarily dismissed them at the strike's conclusion without providing the notice required under the WARN Act. The court held that the district court properly weighed the evidence when determining how to classify the striking workers and did not err in determining that appellants had failed to provided a viable legal theory on which to base its calculations. Moreover, though appellants complained that it was unrealistic to think that 32 striking workers would depart voluntarily, they produced no evidence supporting an alternative scenario. Therefore, appellants' conclusory statements on these issues failed to create a genuine issue of material fact and did not preclude the grant of summary judgment. The court also rejected appellants' claim that the district court erred in considering and rejecting only two of the four theories it proffered where the district court may not have addressed each theory they put forth, but it clearly rejected them all by concluding that the reduction in force was insufficient to satisfy the numerosity threshold. Therefore, the court agreed with the district court that the various theories offered by appellants failed, as a matter of law, to establish that a mass layoff occurred that would trigger notice requirements of the WARN Act. Accordingly, the judgment was affirmed.

Appellant, who had been on a medical leave of absence from appellee for nearly four months, sued appellee alleging violations of the Family and Medical Leave Act ("FMLA"), 29 U.S.C. 2612(a)(1), and the benefits-termination notice provisions of the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act ("COBRA"), 29 U.S.C. 1166(a)(4)(A), when appellee fired him for job abandonment. Appellant appealed the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of appellee on each of his claims. The court held that the district court properly granted summary judgment to appellee on appellant's interference claim under the FMLA where appellant failed to demonstrate any prejudice as a result of his firing on May 1, 2007. The court also held that the district court properly granted summary judgment to appellee on appellant's claim that appellee failed to provide him with notice of the termination of his benefits as required by COBRA where appellant failed to show that a genuine factual dispute existed regarding the means used by appellee to send the notice and where the undisputed facts showed that appellee used a notice method "reasonably calculated to reach" appellant.

Defendant appealed from the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of plaintiff, compelling arbitration of a dispute related to healthcare benefits under an expired collective bargaining agreement. At issue was whether the district court erred in granting plaintiff's motion for summary judgment and issuing an order compelling the arbitration. The court reversed and held that the district court erred in granting summary judgment and compelling arbitration where both parties vigorously disputed issues of both law and fact, including whether the 1994 agreement was ambiguous and whether the summary plan descriptions constituted an intrinsic or extrinsic evidence of the parties' intent. The parties also point to various other extrinsic evidence and vehemently disagree as to whether the bargained for fully-paid health insurance premiums for life or just for the term of the agreement. Under these circumstances, the court held that the question of whether the right to fully-paid premiums vested under the 1994 agreement was best decided in the first instance by the district court and therefore, remanded for further proceedings.

Appellants, David Torgerson and Jami Mundell, sued the City of Rochester ("city") alleging, respectively, disparate-treatment discrimination based on national origin and based on gender when the city decided not to hire them as firefighters. Appellants claimed that the city violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. 2000e-2000e-17, and the Minnesota Human Rights Act ("MHRA"), Minn. Stat. 363A.01-.41. Torgerson also sued under 42 U.S.C. 1981. At issue was whether the district court properly granted summary judgment in favor of the city. As a preliminary matter, the court held that summary judgment was not disfavored, was designed for every action, and there was no employment discrimination case exception. The court affirmed summary judgment and held that appellants failed to present direct evidence of gender or national origin discrimination against them in violation of Title VII; appellants made a prima facie case of discrimination but the city advanced nondiscriminatory grounds for its hiring decisions and appellants failed to show the grounds were pretexts for discrimination; the fact that appellants and hired candidates had relatively similar qualifications did not create a material issue of fact as to pretext. The court also held that Torgerson's section 1981 claim was properly dismissed where he alleged he was discriminated against based on national origin, not race.

The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainment ("BLET") filed a claim with the Union Pacific Railroad Company ("UP") seeking reinstatement and backpay for a member of the BLET when UP terminated him while he was working under a governing collective-bargaining agreement between the UP and the United Transportation Union ("UTU"). At issue was whether the National Railroad Adjustment Board ("NRAB") properly dismissed the claim. The court affirmed the dismissal and held that the NRAB did not ignore the Article C-17 contract provision in the agreement while interpreting the contract; that the NRAB's interpretation of Article C-17 did not violate 45 U.S.C. 153 First (j); the NRAB acted well within its power by invoking a "claim-processsing" rule; the NRAB was well within its authority in construing the agreement as enunciating the "usual manner" in this workplace; once the NRAB determined that the agreement was controlling, the other agreements and bargaining history became largely irrelevant; and the district court did not abuse its discretion where discovery would not have justified setting aside the NRAB's interpretation of the agreement, nor would it have uncovered a due process violation by the NRAB.

Plaintiff, a former Senior Investigator for the St. Louis office of the Department of Labor's ("DOL") Employee Benefits Security Administration, filed an equal employment opportunity ("EEO") complaint alleging hostile work environment and discrimination on account of her sex and age. At issue was whether the district court properly dismissed the complaint on the ground that the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit had exclusive subject matter jurisdiction. The court held that the district court properly ruled that the Federal Circuit had exclusive jurisdiction to review the Merit Systems Protection Board's ("MSPB") dismissal where the MSPB had not reached the merits of plaintiff's discrimination claims in dismissing her mixed case appeal as untimely.

Appellant and appellee entered into two collective bargaining agreements ("2002 Agreement" and "2006 Agreement") covering retiree healthcare benefits that contained dispute resolution procedures. Appellant brought a suit to compel appellee to arbitration pursuant to the Labor Management Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. 185, and 28 U.S.C. 1337, when appellee unilaterally modified certain retirees' healthcare coverage in October 2008. Before the district court ruled on the motion, appellee again unilaterally modified the health care coverage wherein appellant filed another grievance under the 2002 and 2006 Agreements and amended its first complaint to include the grievance. At issue was whether the district court properly dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim. The court held that the district court properly dismissed the amended complaint where the district court concluded that the matters were not arbitrable because they occurred after the agreements terminated and were thus not within the scope of arbitrability as defined by Article XI, Section 4.

Appellant, a pediatric urologist, sued appellees alleging that appellees engaged in a "sham peer review" when they suspended his hospital privileges and reported the suspension to the national practitioner data bank ("NPDB") without a required hearing. At issue was whether the district court properly declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction, and dismissed appellant's remaining causes of actions without prejudice, where it found that only appellant's state claims remained. The court affirmed the district court's judgment and held that the district court correctly dismissed appellant's Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. 2000e, claim where the parties had previously agreed to settlement; the district court properly dismissed appellant's 42 U.S.C. 1981 claim where section 1981 did not apply to his claims based on his Egyptian national origins and where there was no evidence that appellees' legitimate race-neutral reasons for the suspension of his privileges were pretextual; the district court correctly dismissed appellant's Title VI claim, 42 U.S.C. 2000d, where appellant failed to present sufficient evidence to allow a reasonable jury to find any of appellees' acts were a pretext for national origin discrimination; and the district court committed no error in dismissing appellant's state claims where he agreed to a settlement.

Appellant, a firefighter for the City of Sioux Fall's ("City") Fire Rescue Department ("SFFR") and 15 other SFFR firefighters, filed suit against the City seeking overtime compensation under the Fair Labor Standards Act ("FLSA"), 29 U.S.C. 207(p)(1), for work performed at the request of the State of South Dakota ("State") to help fight wildfires in western South Dakota and Nebraska. At issue was whether the district court properly granted summary judgment to the City, finding that the special detail exemption of the FLSA applied because the City firefighters volunteered for the State firefighting assignment and that the State and City were separate and independent employers and therefore, the hours the firefighters worked for the State were not combined with the hours worked for the City for purposes of overtime compensation. The court held that the section 207(p)(1) prong of voluntariness was satisfied where the firefighters have failed to present evidence that those of them who said "no" to the deployment were punished or reprimanded in any way and the firefighters who rejected deployment did so in spite of their refusal causing them to move down on the overtime list. The court also held that the record could be viewed to establish that the City, not the State, was the firefighter's employer during their deployment. Therefore, the court reversed summary judgment and remanded because genuine issues of fact existed as to which entity the firefighters were actually employed by.