Filed: Mar. 07, 2016
Latest Update: Mar. 02, 2020
Summary: NOT PRECEDENTIAL UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT _ No. 15-1836 _ MANUEL MATOS, Appellant v. MERCK & COMPANY, INC. _ On Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania District Court No. 2-13-cv-02648 District Judge: The Honorable Juan R. Sanchez Submitted Pursuant to Third Circuit L.A.R. 34.1(a) February 29, 2016 Before: SMITH, HARDIMAN, and SLOVITER, Circuit Judges (Filed: March 7, 2016) _ OPINION* _ SMITH, Circuit Judge. * This disposi
Summary: NOT PRECEDENTIAL UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT _ No. 15-1836 _ MANUEL MATOS, Appellant v. MERCK & COMPANY, INC. _ On Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania District Court No. 2-13-cv-02648 District Judge: The Honorable Juan R. Sanchez Submitted Pursuant to Third Circuit L.A.R. 34.1(a) February 29, 2016 Before: SMITH, HARDIMAN, and SLOVITER, Circuit Judges (Filed: March 7, 2016) _ OPINION* _ SMITH, Circuit Judge. * This disposit..
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NOT PRECEDENTIAL
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
_____________
No. 15-1836
_____________
MANUEL MATOS,
Appellant
v.
MERCK & COMPANY, INC.
_____________
On Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
District Court No. 2-13-cv-02648
District Judge: The Honorable Juan R. Sanchez
Submitted Pursuant to Third Circuit L.A.R. 34.1(a)
February 29, 2016
Before: SMITH, HARDIMAN, and SLOVITER, Circuit Judges
(Filed: March 7, 2016)
_____________________
OPINION*
_____________________
SMITH, Circuit Judge.
*
This disposition is not an opinion of the full court and pursuant to I.O.P. 5.7 does not
constitute binding precedent.
1
This is an employment discrimination and retaliation case in which the plaintiff
alleges that the defendant passed him over for multiple openings due to his race, national
origin, and/or disability.
I.
Manuel Matos, a Hispanic and a native of Puerto Rico, worked as a union
pipefitter in Merck & Company’s West Point, Pennsylvania, facility from May of 1999
until September of 2007. In September of 2007, Matos applied for, and was hired as, a
second-shift supervisor on the Vial Filling Line located at the same facility.
Approximately six months into the new position, Matos’ performance was already under
significant scrutiny. For example, as a result of an incident occurring in late March 2008,
Matos’ supervisor, Timothy Cooper, issued to Matos, as well as to his peer first- and
third-shift supervisors, a memorandum reprimanding Matos and the other supervisors for
violations of company safety protocol. Also beginning around March of 2008, Cooper
became concerned with other aspects of Matos’ performance as a supervisor, and began
working with the human resources department to determine how to address these
concerns. It was decided that Cooper would draft and deliver to Matos a “Performance
Expectations Memo” informing Matos of the areas needing “substantial improvement,”
and warning Matos that failure to achieve this improvement could ultimately result in his
termination. Although Cooper never ended up delivering this memorandum to Matos –
because, as will be explained below, Matos began disability leave before the
memorandum was completed – a copy was placed in his personnel file and was
accessible by human resources employees.
2
Due to the stresses associated with his new position, Matos took short-term
disability leave beginning in April of 2008. This leave lasted until he resigned from the
company in October of 2008 to take a position as a pipefitter with Schering-Plough, then
a Merck competitor. Just three days before beginning his employment at Schering-
Plough, and without previously informing anyone at Merck, Matos delivered his letter of
resignation and employee badge to a Merck security guard.1
Not long into his new employment with Schering-Plough, and due in part to the
longer commute from his home in Pennsylvania to Schering-Plough’s New Jersey
facility, Matos began applying for union pipefitter positions at Merck’s West Point
facility, and continued applying for such positions after Merck acquired Schering-Plough
in November of 2009. At least one Merck manager, Tom Guellich, expressed interest in
having Matos return to work for him as a pipefitter. Nevertheless, Matos was never
given an interview for any of the approximately nine positions to which he applied.2 All
of the individuals hired to fill these positions were white men with no prior experience
working at Merck.
After these failed applications, Matos filed an internal complaint of discrimination
with the company’s Office of Ethics, stating that he was “forced to conclude” that since
his “former associates within Merck want my return to the plumber/pipefitter position,”
1
Matos claims that he originally intended to hand the letter and badge directly to
someone in human resources but opted instead to give them to the security guard only
after he “wait[ed] and [he] waited and [he] waited” for someone from human resources to
meet him at the security checkpoint.
2
Indeed, someone from Merck’s human resources department told Guellich that Matos
“d[idn’t] even stand a chance of getting an interview,” though that person would not tell
Guellich why.
3
and because his “work as a plumber/pipefitter was excellent,” “there is no legitimate
business reason as to why I cannot be rehired as a plumber/pipefitter within Merck.”
Instead, he assumed that it must have been on account of his race, national origin, or
perceived disability.
As a result of this complaint, Charles Brown of the Office of Ethics conducted an
internal investigation to determine why the company did not rehire Matos. Brown
interviewed employees in Merck’s human resources department as well as the Merck
manager “most aware of [Matos’] previous behavior and performance” at Merck. These
employees informed Brown that, through their own digging both at the time Matos was
being considered for the interviews and later in response to Brown’s inquiries, they
learned that others thought Matos “was not a good pipefitter,” that Matos had serious
performance deficiencies during his time as a supervisor, and that Matos had tendered his
resignation from the company in a way others deemed unprofessional. Brown therefore
concluded that “the reason [Matos] was not interviewed for the new pipe fitters jobs was
not related to his disability, race or national origin,” but rather was “based on his previous
performance issues and the way that he left Merck previously.”
Matos then filed a charge of discrimination with the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) and the Pennsylvania Human Relations
Commission. After the EEOC issued to him a notice of right to sue, Matos brought the
present action, alleging race, national origin, and/or disability discrimination in violation
of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (“Title VII”) (42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq.), the
Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) (42 U.S.C. § 12101 et seq.), and the
4
Pennsylvania Human Relations Act (“PHRA”) (43 Pa. Stat. § 951 et seq.). He also
asserted claims of retaliation under each of the foregoing statutes as well as pursuant to
42 U.S.C. § 1981. Merck filed a timely motion for summary judgment as to all claims.
The District Court held that Matos could point to no facts in the record on which a
reasonable jury could rely to conclude that Merck’s articulated business reasons for not
rehiring Matos were mere pretext for unlawful discrimination. The District Court
therefore granted Merck’s motion in its entirety.
Matos appeals from this grant of summary judgment, raising two issues for our
consideration: first, whether the District Court erred in concluding that Matos failed to
establish that Merck’s articulated business reasons for not rehiring Matos were
pretextual; and second, whether the District Court erred in concluding that Matos did not
establish his retaliation claim under the ADA.
II.3
“We exercise plenary review over the District Court’s grant of summary judgment
and apply the same standard that the District Court should have applied.” Shuman ex rel.
Shertzer v. Penn Manor Sch. Dist., 422 F.3d 141, 146 (3d Cir. 2005) (internal quotation
marks and citation omitted). Summary judgment is appropriate “if the movant shows that
there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment
as a matter of law.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). The facts must be viewed in the light most
favorable to the non-moving party and all reasonable inferences from the evidence must
3
The District Court had subject matter jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1331. This Court
has jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291.
5
be drawn in his favor. Conopco, Inc. v. United States, 572 F.3d 162, 165 (3d Cir. 2009).
After reviewing the record and applying the above standard, we will affirm for
substantially the same reasons stated by the District Court in its memorandum opinion.
All of Matos’ claims are governed by “[t]he familiar McDonnell Douglas burden
shifting analysis.” Sarullo v. U.S. Postal Serv., 352 F.3d 789, 797 (3d Cir. 2003) (citing
McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green,
411 U.S. 792 (1973)); see also Jones v. Sch. Dist. of
Phila.,
198 F.3d 403, 410 (3d Cir. 1999) (Title VII, § 1981, and PHRA discrimination
claims); Newman v. GHS Osteopathic, Inc.,
60 F.3d 153, 157 (3d Cir. 1995) (ADA
discrimination claim); Shellenberger v. Summit Bancorp, Inc.,
318 F.3d 183, 187 (3d Cir.
2003) (ADA retaliation claim). Under this framework, Matos “bears the initial burden of
establishing a prima facie case by a preponderance of the evidence.”
Sarullo, 352 F.3d at
797. If he can do this, then Merck must “articulate some legitimate, nondiscriminatory
reason for” its decision not to rehire Matos.
Id. (quoting McDonnell Douglas, 411 U.S. at
802). If Merck does this, the burden shifts back to Matos to demonstrate, again by the
preponderance of the evidence, that Merck’s articulated business reasons “were merely a
pretext for discrimination, and not the real motivation for the unfavorable job action.”
Id.
In order to avoid summary judgment at the “pretext” stage of the framework,
Matos “must point to some evidence . . . from which a factfinder could reasonably either
(1) disbelieve the employer’s articulated legitimate reasons; or (2) believe that an
invidious discriminatory reason was more likely than not a motivating or determinative
cause of the employer’s action.” Fuentes v. Perskie,
32 F.3d 759, 764 (3d Cir. 1994). It
is not enough for Matos to show that Merck’s articulated reasons for not rehiring him
6
were unwise or mistaken, see id. at 765; rather, Matos must point to evidence in the
record sufficient to “allow a factfinder reasonably to infer that each of the employer’s
proffered non-discriminatory reasons was either a post hoc fabrication or otherwise did
not actually motivate the employment action (that is, the proffered reason is a pretext).”
Id. at 764 (citation omitted). This can be done by pointing to “weaknesses,
implausibilities, inconsistencies, incoherencies, or contradictions in the employer’s
proffered legitimate reasons for its action.”
Id. at 765.
Although the standard for demonstrating pretext “places a difficult burden on the
plaintiff,” id., it is necessary in order to balance “the goal of all discrimination law”
against “our society’s commitment to free decisionmaking by the private sector in
economic affairs.” Ezold v. Wolf, Block, Schorr & Solis-Cohen,
983 F.2d 509, 531 (3d
Cir. 1992).
We agree with the District Court that, even assuming Matos can establish prima
facie claims of race, national origin, and/or disability discrimination, or of retaliation
under the ADA, he simply has not pointed to any evidence that would allow a reasonable
jury to conclude that Merck’s articulated reasons for not rehiring him as a pipefitter –
various performance deficiencies both as a pipefitter and in his role as supervisor,
including the March 2008 incident involving a violation of Merck safety protocols, and
the seemingly unprofessional manner in which he left the company – were pretextual.
The closest Matos comes to meeting this “difficult burden” are statements in two emails,
both sent after Matos was turned down for the interviews and had filed his internal
complaint with Merck. In the first, a human resources employee, Michelle Thrush, wrote
7
to another Merck employee about Matos and referred to him as “Manny” Matos, even
though Matos does not go by that nickname. In another email, in response to a question
from Thrush about whether he knew anything about Matos, a Merck employee named
William Flear said he had heard from others that Matos “went off the deep end –
figuratively (nerves) and left the Company.” Nevertheless, the District Court properly
held that neither of these pieces of evidence provides an adequate basis for a finding of
pretext since there is no evidence that any of the relevant decisionmakers ever called him
by the nickname “Manny” or that they “shared—or were even aware of—th[e]
perception” that Matos suffered “some sort of nervous condition.” Matos v. Merck &
Co., No. CIV.A. 13-2648, 2015 WL 894253, at *8 n.23, *9 n.24 (E.D. Pa. Mar. 3, 2015).
III.
Matos repeatedly states throughout his brief that what Merck’s true motivations
were for its decision not to rehire Matos “is a state of mind issue” that should be left to a
jury, not to the judge. While the question whether an employer’s stated reasons for
taking an adverse employment action against the plaintiff are pretextual is undoubtedly a
question of fact to be decided at trial by the jury, at the summary judgment stage the
plaintiff must at least point to evidence in the record on which a reasonable jury could
base a finding of pretext. This Matos has failed to do. We will therefore affirm the
judgment of the District Court.
8
