Filed: Apr. 14, 2017
Latest Update: Mar. 03, 2020
Summary: NOT PRECEDENTIAL UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT _ No. 16-1887 _ MANHUA MANDY LIN, Doctor, Appellant v. ROHM AND HAAS COMPANY, DBA Dow Advanced Materials _ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (D.C. No. 2-11-cv-03158) District Judge: Hon. Legrome D. Davis _ Argued: March 16, 2017 _ Before: GREENAWAY, JR., SHWARTZ, GREENBERG, Circuit Judges. (Filed: April 14, 2017) Stephen L. Braga, Esq. Ajani Brown [ARGUED] Brandon Christensen
Summary: NOT PRECEDENTIAL UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT _ No. 16-1887 _ MANHUA MANDY LIN, Doctor, Appellant v. ROHM AND HAAS COMPANY, DBA Dow Advanced Materials _ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (D.C. No. 2-11-cv-03158) District Judge: Hon. Legrome D. Davis _ Argued: March 16, 2017 _ Before: GREENAWAY, JR., SHWARTZ, GREENBERG, Circuit Judges. (Filed: April 14, 2017) Stephen L. Braga, Esq. Ajani Brown [ARGUED] Brandon Christensen ..
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NOT PRECEDENTIAL
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
______________
No. 16-1887
______________
MANHUA MANDY LIN, Doctor,
Appellant
v.
ROHM AND HAAS COMPANY,
DBA Dow Advanced Materials
______________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
(D.C. No. 2-11-cv-03158)
District Judge: Hon. Legrome D. Davis
______________
Argued: March 16, 2017
______________
Before: GREENAWAY, JR., SHWARTZ, GREENBERG, Circuit Judges.
(Filed: April 14, 2017)
Stephen L. Braga, Esq.
Ajani Brown [ARGUED]
Brandon Christensen [ARGUED]
University of Virginia Law School
580 Massie Road
Charlottesville, VA 22903
William J. Fox, Esq.
1219 Spruce Street
Philadelphia, PA 19107
Counsel for Appellant
Jason A. Cabera, Esq.
Philip G. Kircher, Esq.
Raymond A. Kresge, Esq. [ARGUED]
Cozen O’Connor
1650 Market Street
One Liberty Place, Suite 2800
Philadelphia, PA 19103
Counsel for Appellee
______________
OPINION
______________
SHWARTZ, Circuit Judge.
Manhua “Mandy” Lin sued Rohm and Haas Company for retaliating against her in
violation of Title VII, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-3(a) and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act
(“PHRA”), 43 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 955(d). Following an eleven-day bench trial, the District
Court entered judgment in favor of Rohm and Haas. For the reasons set forth below, we
will affirm.
I1
A
The parties’ dispute has a long history. In 1989, Rohm and Haas hired Lin to
work as a senior scientist. In 1995, Lin was tasked with producing a catalyst to convert
This disposition is not an opinion of the full Court and pursuant to I.O.P. 5.7
does not constitute binding precedent.
1
We recite only those facts necessary to decide this appeal. We accept as true the
facts found by the District Court to the extent those factual findings are unchallenged.
CG v. Pa. Dep’t of Educ., 734 F.3d 229, 234 (3d Cir. 2013).
2
propane to acrylic acid (“AA”). Lin successfully produced such a catalyst, Rohm and
Haas patented the discovery, and Lin was listed as an inventor.
Lin subsequently began to work with a modified version of the catalyst at the
request of one of her supervisors, Scott Han. Lin researched the potential use of this
modified catalyst in converting propane to AA, while Han and other scientists, led by
Fernando Cavalcanti, explored using this modified catalyst to convert isobutane to
methacrylic acid (“MAA”). Lin did not work on MAA-related research but was exposed
to the research in meetings, through confidential reports, and in conversations with other
scientists.
In early 1999, Lin filed a charge of discrimination against Rohm and Haas with
the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”). She alleged that she
requested a promotion after making her discovery, but Rohm and Haas denied that
request, “likening her to a ‘monkey’ that had accidentally invented something.” App. 37.
Lin and Rohm and Haas settled this charge and entered an agreement, which provided,
among other things, that Lin would leave the company and not disclose Rohm and Haas’s
confidential information, unless she received permission from Rohm and Haas to do so.
To this end, Lin agreed to identify the information she sought to use so that Han could
review the material to determine if it contained trade secrets. If a dispute arose, Rohm
and Haas’s Chief Technology Officer, Charles Tatum, would conduct an additional
review.
Before leaving Rohm and Haas, Lin met with Han to discuss her future
publications and presentations. Han agreed that Lin could give a presentation at an
3
American Chemical Society (“ACS”) conference in March 2000, provided that the
presentation was limited to data predating 1996. Lin emailed Han an outline of her
presentation. Both Han and Tatum reviewed it and concluded that it revealed post-1996
data. Han informed Lin of this conclusion and warned her that Rohm and Haas would
consider legal action if she presented the post-1996 data. Despite this warning, Lin gave
her presentation. Lin subsequently wrote a letter to the EEOC, complaining that Rohm
and Haas had violated the EEOC settlement agreement by attempting to prevent her from
giving the presentation.
In June 2000, Rohm and Haas sued Lin in the Montgomery County Court of
Common Pleas, claiming that Lin had disclosed confidential information during her ACS
presentation in violation of her fiduciary and contractual duties to the company. In
response, Lin filed a second charge with the EEOC, alleging that Rohm and Haas filed
the Montgomery County lawsuit in retaliation for her complaining to the EEOC about its
efforts to prevent her from presenting her research. In April 2001, the Court of Common
Pleas found that Lin had disclosed trade secrets during her ACS presentation and took
confidential documents with her when she left the company, and preliminarily enjoined
her from using Rohm and Haas’s confidential information and from making any
presentation or publication without approval from Han and/or Tatum after a 90-day trade
secret review.
In August 2001, Lin filed a third charge of discrimination against Rohm and Haas
with the EEOC. Lin claimed that Rohm and Haas had retaliated against her by delaying a
4
trade secret review of a presentation she had planned to give in Chicago, forcing her to
cancel the presentation.
In June 2002, Lin sued Rohm and Haas in the United States District Court for the
Eastern District of Pennsylvania based on her second and third EEOC charges. See Lin
v. Rohm & Haas Co. (“Lin I”), 301 F. Supp. 2d 403 (E.D. Pa. 2004). Lin alleged that
Rohm and Haas violated Title VII and the PHRA by seeking the preliminary injunction in
retaliation for the charges she filed with the EEOC.
Id. at 405-06. The court ultimately
granted summary judgment in favor of Rohm and Haas.
Id. at 406-07.
In March 2003, an outside lawyer for Rohm and Haas discovered an abstract for a
grant proposal that Lin submitted to the Department of Energy (“DOE”) for a project
related to MAA. The abstract indicated that EverNu, a single-member LLC owned by
Lin, would receive the grant money. The outside lawyer forwarded this abstract to James
Vouros, an in-house intellectual property lawyer for Rohm and Haas who managed the
Montgomery County litigation. Vouros asked Han and Cavalcanti for their opinions on
the abstract, and both indicated that they were concerned that the proposal drew from
Cavalcanti’s research.
Rohm and Haas served Lin and EverNu with discovery demands in the
Montgomery County litigation related to the DOE abstract. Both Lin and EverNu
objected to the discovery and refused to comply with orders directing them to produce the
documents, and the Court of Common Pleas ordered monetary sanctions, none of which
were ever paid.
5
EverNu was scheduled to present at a DOE-sponsored exhibition and asked Rohm
and Haas to agree that the preliminary injunction did not apply to EverNu’s information.
After Rohm and Haas refused, EverNu filed an emergency motion, asking the Court of
Common Pleas to hold that EverNu was not bound by the injunction’s trade secret review
requirement. The Court of Common Pleas denied the motion. Nonetheless, EverNu,
through Lin, presented the material at the exhibition.
In early 2006, Rohm and Haas sought discovery from Temple University, which
provided research facilities and support to EverNu in exchange for twenty percent of its
DOE grant money. In particular, Rohm and Haas sought to depose Daniel Strongin, a
Temple chemistry professor who worked with EverNu, and sought all documents related
to Lin and Strongin’s work on the DOE project.
After a court ruling compelling production, Temple produced the documents in its
possession related to the DOE project with EverNu, but the production was limited
because Lin had moved her operation from Temple to Villanova University in 2004 and
had taken most of her research with her. Han and Cavalcanti reviewed the Temple
documents. They were concerned that the documents contained Rohm and Haas’s
confidential information but lacked sufficient information at that time to reach a concrete
conclusion. Their concerns were well founded. During Strongin’s March 2007
deposition, Rohm and Haas showed Strongin two confidential research documents related
to Cavalcanti’s MAA research at Rohm and Haas. Strongin testified that the chemistry in
those documents looked similar to the chemistry used in his work with Lin.
6
During a break on the second day of Strongin’s deposition, Vouros and Mari
Shaw, lead outside counsel for Rohm and Haas, orally extended a settlement offer to
Hugh Hutchison, Lin’s counsel, and John Chesney, EverNu’s counsel.2 Rohm and Haas
offered to drop the Montgomery County litigation and waive all of the accumulated
sanctions if (1) EverNu granted Rohm and Haas a royalty-free, nonexclusive patent
license to any MAA technology it patents in the future and (2) Lin granted Rohm and
Haas a general release from all current or future claims, including EEOC charges.
According to Hutchison and Chesney, Vouros threatened to destroy EverNu’s
relationship with the DOE if Lin declined the settlement offer. Vouros denied making
this threat.3 In any event, Lin rejected the offer, and the Montgomery County litigation
continued.
In the course of the Montgomery County litigation, Rohm and Haas produced to
Lin forty-five pages of documents reflecting Cavalcanti’s 1999 MAA research. These
documents were subject to a confidentiality stipulation, which prohibited Lin from
sharing the documents with anyone without Rohm and Haas’s consent. Nevertheless, Lin
sent the forty-five pages of documents to the DOE without informing Rohm and Haas or
the Court of Common Pleas, and she asked the DOE to compare the information in those
forty-five pages to her DOE proposal and determine if there was any overlap. In
2
At trial, Vouros testified that he did not believe Chesney was present during this
settlement discussion. However, both Chesney and Hutchison testified that Chesney was
present.
3
Rohm and Haas indicated that Shaw would also testify about her recollection of
this settlement conversation. However, Rohm and Haas ultimately did not call Shaw to
testify.
7
December 2007, Vouros learned about the unauthorized disclosure from a newspaper
article, contacted the DOE, and the DOE returned the documents.
Around this same time, Rohm and Haas moved for a default judgment against Lin
in the Montgomery County litigation due to her noncompliance with discovery. In May
2008, the Court of Common Pleas granted Rohm and Haas’s motion and, among other
things, (1) permanently enjoined Lin from using or disclosing any information Rohm and
Haas considers to be confidential or a trade secret, and (2) required Lin to submit to a 90-
day trade secret review with Rohm and Haas for any presentation, publication, or
proposal for three years.
Vouros informed the DOE of the default judgment, and requested information
about EverNu’s DOE-funded project and the DOE’s planned course of action with
respect to Lin and EverNu, including whether the DOE had stopped all funding of Lin’s
project.4 The DOE told Vouros that it had made only one award to EverNu with respect
to MAA, that all research under the grant had been completed in June 2006, and that the
DOE had no plans to award EverNu additional funds.
B
4
Vouros contacted the DOE about Lin and EverNu several times, from December
2007, when Rohm and Haas learned about Lin’s unauthorized disclosure of confidential
information to the DOE, through August 2008, when he inquired as to whether the DOE
had stopped funding Lin and EverNu’s project and whether any DOE funds destined for
EverNu could be forwarded to Rohm and Haas to pay the outstanding sanctions.
8
Simultaneous with Lin’s failure to produce discovery in the Montgomery County
litigation, Lin filed her fourth charge of discrimination with the EEOC, which is the
charge underlying this case. Lin alleged that Rohm and Haas was retaliating against her
for filing charges with the EEOC by serving burdensome discovery requests on her and
EverNu in the Montgomery County litigation. The EEOC sent this fourth charge to
Rohm and Haas’s employment law group, of which Vouros was not a member. In
October 2004, Raymond Kresge, Rohm and Haas’s outside counsel who had represented
the company in Lin I, wrote a letter to the EEOC, arguing that the dispositive issue in the
charge had already been decided in Lin I. In December 2004, the EEOC dismissed the
charge for lack of jurisdiction. Lin challenged the EEOC’s dismissal. In March 2005,
the EEOC agreed to reconsider its jurisdiction, and Kresge submitted a letter to the
EEOC in opposition to the reconsideration. In April 2007, the EEOC concluded that it
had jurisdiction over Lin’s charge.5
In March 2011, the EEOC issued a right-to-sue letter to Lin, and she subsequently
filed this lawsuit against Rohm and Haas in the United States District Court for the
Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The District Court conducted a bench trial on Lin’s
Title VII and PHRA retaliation claims and issued a sixty-three page opinion setting forth
its findings of fact and conclusions of law. The District Court credited Vouros’s version
5
At trial, Vouros testified that he did not remember learning of the fourth EEOC
charge until the Spring of 2007, when he ran into Kresge on the street and Kresge
informed him that the EEOC had decided to exercise jurisdiction over the charge.
However, Lin established that Vouros had sent an email with respect to the fourth EEOC
charge in April 2005, and Vouros conceded that he must have known of the charge at that
time.
9
of events, finding that Vouros’s actions in directing the Montgomery County litigation,
including the discovery demands, were motivated by a good faith belief that Lin may
have been using Rohm and Haas’s confidential information and thus jeopardizing its
intellectual property. Similarly, the District Court concluded that Vouros contacted the
DOE because of his reasonable belief that Lin was using Rohm and Haas’s confidential
information in her DOE-funded work. Therefore, the District Court found that Rohm and
Haas had legitimate, non-discriminatory reasons for taking those actions, and Lin failed
to prove that her filing of charges with the EEOC was the but-for cause of the adverse
actions taken against her. The District Court then entered judgment in favor of Rohm and
Haas on Lin’s Title VII and PHRA claims. The District Court subsequently denied Lin’s
post-trial motions. Lin appeals.6
II7
A
“When reviewing a judgment entered after a bench trial, we exercise plenary
review over the District Court’s conclusions of law and review the District Court’s
findings of fact for clear error.” CG v. Pa. Dep’t of Educ., 734 F.3d 229, 234 (3d Cir.
2013) (citation omitted). A trial court’s finding with respect to the existence of
intentional discrimination is a finding of fact, Anderson v. City of Bessemer City, 470
6
Lin requests that we remand this case for a new trial. The District Court,
however, determined that Lin waived her motion for a new trial by failing to present any
argument in support of such a request in her post-trial motions. Lin does not challenge
this conclusion on appeal.
7
The District Court had jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331 and 1367. We have
jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291.
10
U.S. 564, 573 (1985), which “must not be set aside unless clearly erroneous,” Fed. R.
Civ. P. 52(a)(6). A finding of fact is clearly erroneous where “although there is evidence
to support it, the reviewing court on the entire evidence is left with the definite and firm
conviction that a mistake has been committed.”
Anderson, 470 U.S. at 573 (citation and
internal quotation marks omitted).
We give great deference to factual findings that rest on credibility determinations
because the trial judge is in a “superior[ ] . . . position to make determinations of
credibility,” given that, unlike an appellate judge, “the trial judge [is] aware of the
variations in demeanor and tone of voice that bear so heavily on the listener’s
understanding of and belief in what is said.” Id. at 574-75; see also Fed. R. Civ. P.
52(a)(6) (stating that a “reviewing court must give due regard to the trial court’s
opportunity to judge the witnesses’ credibility”); Dardovitch v. Haltzman,
190 F.3d 125,
140 (3d Cir. 1999) (explaining that because “[t]he credibility of witnesses is
quintessentially the province of the trial court, not the appellate court,” a trial court’s
finding on credibility may be rejected only in “rare circumstances”). Therefore, “when a
trial judge’s finding is based on his decision to credit the testimony of one of two or more
witnesses, each of whom has told a coherent and facially plausible story that is not
contradicted by extrinsic evidence, that finding, if not internally inconsistent, can
virtually never be clear error.”
Anderson, 470 U.S. at 575; see also
id. at 574 (stating that
“[w]here there are two permissible views of the evidence, the factfinder’s choice between
them cannot be clearly erroneous”).
B
11
To prevail on claims under Title VII and the PHRA, a plaintiff must prove that
“(1) she engaged in [protected] activity . . . (2) the employer took an adverse employment
action against her; and (3) there was a causal connection between her participation in the
protected activity and the adverse employment action.” Moore v. City of Phila., 461 F.3d
331, 340–41 (3d Cir. 2006) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted); Atkinson v.
LaFayette Coll.,
460 F.3d 447, 454 n.6 (3d Cir. 2006) (noting that PHRA claims “are
interpreted coextensively with Title VII claims” (citation omitted)). The District Court
concluded that Lin had engaged in protected activity by filing charges of discrimination
with the EEOC and that Rohm and Haas had taken adverse actions against her by
pursuing the Montgomery County litigation and contacting the DOE. Those conclusions
are not challenged on appeal.
Rather, this appeal concerns only whether Lin proved that her protected activity
was the but-for cause of the adverse actions taken against her. See Univ. of Tex. Sw.
Med. Ctr. v. Nassar, 133 S. Ct. 2517, 2533 (2013) (“Title VII retaliation claims must be
proved according to traditional principles of but-for causation . . . . This requires proof
that the unlawful retaliation would not have occurred in the absence of the alleged
wrongful action or actions of the employer.”); Marra v. Phila. Hous. Auth.,
497 F.3d 286,
301 n.11 (3d Cir. 2007) (“[T]he burden of persuading the trier of fact that the defendant
intentionally retaliated against the plaintiff remains at all times with the plaintiff.”
(citation omitted)). The District Court found that she had not and that Rohm and Haas
was at all times motivated by a good faith belief that Lin may have been improperly using
Rohm and Haas’s confidential information. In her appeal of this ruling, Lin raises a
12
single issue: “Whether the district court’s decision to credit Vouros’ testimony that
[Rohm and Haas’s] actions were not motivated by any retaliatory intent against Lin was
clearly erroneous.” Appellant’s Br. 3.
In support of her position that the District Court clearly erred in crediting Vouros’s
testimony, Lin argues: (1) Vouros’s testimony contained gaps in knowledge and
inconsistencies and was not supported by other evidence in the record, (2) the District
Court should have drawn an adverse inference against Vouros’s testimony because Rohm
and Haas failed to produce Shaw as a witness, and (3) the District Court cannot assume
that Vouros lied on the witness stand and yet choose to credit his testimony about other
aspects of the case.8 We will address these arguments in turn.
1
8
Lin also argues that the District Court erred in limiting the evidence she could
offer to events that occurred after January 2005. The District Court imposed a time-
based limitation on the evidence because it determined that claims arising from before
2005 were barred by res judicata due to the resolution of Lin I. The District Court,
however, permitted the parties to offer evidence from the pre-2005 period as background
information. While Lin does not challenge the District Court’s res judicata ruling on
appeal, she contends that she should have been allowed to offer evidence from the pre-
2005 period to establish a course of conduct indicative of Rohm and Haas’s retaliatory
intent. As Rohm and Haas correctly observes, however, this argument is waived because
Lin did not list this issue as an “issue presented” by this appeal in her opening brief. See
Appellant’s Br. 3; see also Nagle v. Alspach, 8 F.3d 141, 143 (3d Cir. 1993) (“When an
issue is either not set forth in the statement of issues presented or not pursued in the
argument section of the brief, the appellant has abandoned and waived that issue on
appeal.” (citations omitted)); Simmons v. City of Phila.,
947 F.2d 1042, 1065 (3d Cir.
1991) (noting that an appellant’s brief “must contain statements of all issues presented for
appeal, together with supporting arguments”). Even if the issue is not waived, the
District Court did not abuse its discretion in limiting the evidence, and, in any event, any
error in limiting this evidence was harmless, as the District Court permitted and
considered a substantial amount of pre-2005 evidence at trial.
13
Lin argues that the District Court clearly erred in crediting Vouros’s testimony
because his testimony was inconsistent, implausible, and contradicted by the evidence.
First, Lin notes that Vouros testified that he did not learn of her fourth EEOC charge until
he saw Kresge in the Spring of 2007, when in fact he sent an email about the charge in
April 2005. Although Vouros had apparently learned about the charge before he ran into
Kresge in 2007, it is unsurprising that he would remember his chance encounter with
Kresge more clearly than a single email he had sent about the case. As the District Court
noted, Vouros sent the April 2005 email almost a decade prior to the time he testified at
trial. The District Court did not clearly err in finding that Vouros credibly testified to the
best of his recollection about when he knew of Lin’s fourth EEOC charge.
Second, and relatedly, Lin argues that the District Court clearly erred in
concluding that Vouros did not monitor the progress of the fourth EEOC charge because
he had been involved in Rohm and Haas’s dispute with Lin from the beginning. There is
undoubtedly some evidence, such as the April 2005 email, to indicate that Vouros had
knowledge of Lin’s fourth EEOC charge, but this does not show he played an active role
in or even monitored the charge. The evidence showed that the EEOC sent notice of
Lin’s fourth EEOC charge to Rohm and Haas’s employment law group, of which Vouros
was not a member. Further, the evidence indicated that the fourth EEOC charge was
stagnant until April 2007 when the EEOC ultimately decided that it had jurisdiction over
the charge, and Vouros did not litigate the jurisdictional issue. Accordingly, there was
ample evidence to permit the District Court to conclude that Vouros did not actively
monitor the progress of Lin’s fourth EEOC charge. See Anderson, 470 U.S. at 574
14
(holding that a factfinder’s choice between two permissible views of the evidence cannot
be clearly erroneous).
Third, Lin argues that Vouros’s consistent failure to recall information about
topics that would have been under his purview at Rohm and Haas severely undermined
his credibility as a witness. However, as noted above, Vouros’s lack of recollection
about specific aspects of the numerous disputes between Lin and Rohm and Haas is
hardly surprising or suspicious given their unusually lengthy history and the gaps in time
between many of the relevant events and the trial. The District Court, therefore, did not
clearly err in finding Vouros credible despite his lapses in memory.9
2
Lin notes that Rohm and Haas stated that it would produce Shaw as a witness to
testify about the March 2007 settlement proposal discussion in which Vouros allegedly
threatened to destroy EverNu’s relationship with the DOE, but it did not call her.
Because Rohm and Haas never called Shaw as a witness, Lin argues that the District
Court should have drawn an adverse “missing witness” inference against Rohm and
Haas. The missing witness inference is “based on the simple proposition that if a party
who has evidence which bears on the issues fails to present it, it must be presumed that
such evidence would be detrimental to his cause.” United States v. Hines, 470 F.2d 225,
230 (3d Cir. 1972) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). Accordingly, a
factfinder could infer that the missing witness’s testimony would have been adverse, or,
9
We have also considered the other purported inconsistencies in Vouros’s
testimony that Lin identified in her brief. None provides a basis to conclude that the
District Court clearly erred in its credibility determination.
15
at the least, not helpful to the party who declined to produce the witness. Id. Here, the
District Court assumed that Vouros threatened to destroy EverNu’s relationship with the
DOE during the March 2007 settlement discussion and therefore effectively adopted the
version of events Lin proffered. By making this assumption, the Court did more than
draw an inference that Shaw’s testimony would have undermined Vouros’s account of
the settlement discussion. Rather, it assumed Vouros’s account was not truthful. In this
circumstance, a missing witness inference was unnecessary, and the District Court did not
err in declining to draw any inference from Shaw’s absence.
3
Lin also argues that the District Court erred in finding that Vouros was generally
credible despite assuming that he testified falsely about the settlement discussion. Where
a factfinder concludes that a witness has testified falsely concerning one matter, the
factfinder may either reject the remainder of the witness’s testimony or may credit those
parts of the witness’s testimony believed to be true. See Lambert v. Blackwell, 387 F.3d
210, 256 (3d Cir. 2004). Thus, the District Court was not required to conclude that
Vouros testified falsely about any other event in the case merely because it assumed he
testified falsely about the settlement discussion.
Moreover, even if the District Court found, instead of simply assumed, that
Vouros made the threat and that Vouros made good on this threat by contacting the DOE
about EverNu, such findings would not establish that Vouros’s actions were motivated by
an intent to retaliate against Lin for filing charges with the EEOC. Indeed, there is no
evidence that Rohm and Haas or Vouros acted in retaliation for Lin’s EEOC charges. To
16
the contrary, the evidence established that Lin took numerous actions that provoked
Vouros’s well-founded concern that she was using Rohm and Haas’s confidential
information, including (1) presenting confidential information at the ACS conference
despite Rohm and Haas’s explicit directive that she could not, (2) taking confidential
documents with her when she left Rohm and Haas, (3) submitting a grant proposal to the
DOE that appeared to draw on Cavalcanti’s research, (4) refusing to respond to any
discovery in the Montgomery County litigation despite numerous court orders, (5)
presenting at the DOE-sponsored exhibition despite orders from both Rohm and Haas and
the Court of Common Pleas that she could not, and (6) submitting forty-five pages of
Rohm and Haas’s confidential information to the DOE in violation of the confidentiality
stipulation entered in the Montgomery County litigation. As a result, the District Court’s
conclusion that Vouros, on behalf of Rohm and Haas, was motivated only by a legitimate
concern that Lin may have been using Rohm and Haas’s confidential information was
well-supported and not erroneous.
III
For the foregoing reasons, we will affirm the judgment of the District Court.
17
