Jimenez v. Delta Airlines ( 2023 )

21-2899-cv
Jimenez v. Delta Airlines
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT
SUMMARY ORDER
RULINGS BY SUMMARY ORDER DO NOT HAVE PRECEDENTIAL EFFECT.
CITATION TO A SUMMARY ORDER FILED ON OR AFTER JANUARY 1, 2007, IS
PERMITTED AND IS GOVERNED BY FEDERAL RULE OF APPELLATE
PROCEDURE 32.1 AND THIS COURT’S LOCAL RULE 32.1.1. WHEN CITING A
SUMMARY ORDER IN A DOCUMENT FILED WITH THIS COURT, A PARTY
MUST CITE EITHER THE FEDERAL APPENDIX OR AN ELECTRONIC DATABASE
(WITH THE NOTATION “SUMMARY ORDER”). A PARTY CITING A SUMMARY
ORDER MUST SERVE A COPY OF IT ON ANY PARTY NOT REPRESENTED BY
COUNSEL.
1 At a stated term of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit,
2 held at the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, 40 Foley Square, in the
3 City of New York, on the 12th day of April, two thousand twenty-three.
4
5 PRESENT: BARRINGTON D. PARKER,
6 GERARD E. LYNCH,
7 RAYMOND J. LOHIER, JR.,
8 Circuit Judges.
9 ------------------------------------------------------------------
10 VICTOR JIMENEZ,
11
12 Plaintiff-Appellant,
13
14 v. No. 21-2899-cv
15
16 DELTA AIRLINES, INC.,
17
18 Defendant-Appellee.
19 ------------------------------------------------------------------
20
21 FOR PLAINTIFF-APPELLANT: David A. Berlin, Weisberg
22 Law, Morton, PA; Scott A.
23 Korenbaum, New York, NY
1 FOR DEFENDANT-APPELLEE: Ira G. Rosentein, Morgan
2 Lewis & Bockius LLP, New
3 York, NY
4
5 Appeal from a judgment of the United States District Court for the Eastern
6 District of New York (William F. Kuntz, II, Judge).
7 UPON DUE CONSIDERATION, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED, ADJUDGED,
8 AND DECREED that the judgment of the District Court is AFFIRMED.
9 Victor Jimenez appeals from a November 1, 2021 judgment of the United
10 States District Court for the Eastern District of New York (Kuntz, J.) denying
11 Jimenez’s discovery motions and granting Delta Airlines, Inc.’s motion for
12 summary judgment as to Jimenez’s claims of disparate treatment and retaliation
13 in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1981. We assume the parties’ familiarity with the
14 underlying facts and the record of prior proceedings, to which we refer only as
15 necessary to explain our decision to affirm.
16 Jimenez worked as an aircraft maintenance technician for Delta at New
17 York’s LaGuardia Airport (“LGA”) from June 28, 2010 until his termination on
18 June 7, 2018. In January 2018 a Delta passenger reported a missing laptop, whose
19 location was later tracked to the home of Dexta Fullwood, a Delta employee. On
20 April 11, 2018, Fullwood told detectives from the Port Authority that Jimenez
2
1 had given him the laptop and asked him to unlock it. The detectives then
2 interviewed Jimenez. According to the Port Authority’s investigation summary,
3 Jimenez denied all wrongdoing but “exhibited many non-verbal signs of
4 dishonestly [sic] and verbal deflection.” App’x 199. At the conclusion of his
5 interview, Jimenez provided written statements to the Port Authority and his
6 duty managers, Jose Matos and Damien Jagarnauth, stating, “I have never given
7 nor lent Dexta Fullwood any electronic devices including any Macbook.” App’x
8 206. The Port Authority closed the case pending further investigative leads and
9 referred the matter to Delta Corporate Security. Fullwood resigned immediately
10 because of his role in the missing laptop. The laptop was never recovered.
11 The next day, John Magnowski, Delta’s station manager at LGA, called
12 Jimenez into his office to discuss the Port Authority investigation. During the
13 meeting, Magnowski allegedly said to Jimenez, “Dominicans are the usual
14 suspects.” App’x 406-07. Jimenez reported the comment to Delta’s employee
15 hotline.
16 On May 17, 2018, Magnowski and Eric Johnson, a Human Resources
17 Manager at Delta, told Jimenez that he was “suspended effective immediately”
18 while Delta further investigated the laptop theft. App’x 649. On June 5, 2018,
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1 Magnowski called Jimenez and gave him 24 hours to resign in lieu of being fired.
2 App’x 750. On June 7, 2018, Jimenez was fired. On August 21, 2018, Jim
3 Brimberry, an Equal Opportunity Manager at Delta, denied Jimenez’s appeal of
4 his termination. Brimberry explained that Jimenez was terminated because he
5 had “provided false and misleading information when [he] denied knowledge of
6 or contact with [the] laptop,” “failed to report a coworker whom [he] had
7 knowledge of taking money from a passenger’s purse that was left on an
8 aircraft,” and “received a Written Coaching letter on May 11, 2017 for
9 misconduct.” App’x 226-27.
10 In November 2018 Jimenez filed this action against Delta, alleging that, in
11 terminating his employment, the company (1) discriminated against him on the
12 basis of his “Dominican ethnicity and race” and (2) retaliated against him on
13 account of his complaints about Magnowski’s remark, in violation of 42 U.S.C. §
14 1981. Just prior to the close of fact discovery and Delta’s motion for summary
15 judgment, Jimenez filed two letter motions requesting, among other things, a
16 discovery extension and enforcement of subpoenas against Magnowski and
17 Matos, who had left Delta during the pendency of the litigation. The District
4
1 Court denied Jimenez’s letter motions and granted Delta’s motion for summary
2 judgment.
3 I. Discovery Motions
4 We affirm the District Court’s denial of Jimenez’s motions for discovery.
5 “A district court abuses its discretion only when the discovery is so limited as to
6 affect a party’s substantial rights.” In re Agent Orange Prod. Liab. Litig., 517
7 F.3d 76, 103 (2d Cir. 2008) (cleaned up). Here, Delta produced Magnowski’s and
8 Matos’s relevant e-mails and their notes of conversations with Jimenez. Jimenez
9 deposed Johnson and Brimberry, who testified about their communications with
10 Magnowski and Matos in the course of their work on Jimenez’s complaints and
11 appeal to Delta. Jimenez was therefore “afforded a meaningful opportunity to
12 establish the facts necessary to support his claim[s],” and the District Court did
13 not abuse its discretion when it denied Jimenez discovery-related relief that
14 would have improved his chances of deposing Magnowski and Matos. Id.15 II. Claims Under § 1981
16 We review de novo the District Court’s grant of Delta’s motion for
17 summary judgment. Garcia v. Hartford Police Dep’t, 706 F.3d 120, 126–27 (2d
18 Cir. 2013). The burden-shifting evidentiary framework in McDonnell Douglas
5
1 Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792 (1973), applies to claims of disparate treatment and
2 retaliation brought under § 1981. See Littlejohn v. City of New York, 795 F.3d
3 297, 312, 315 (2d Cir. 2015). Even assuming Jimenez established prima facie cases
4 of both disparate treatment and retaliation, we agree with the District Court that
5 Jimenez failed to adduce “sufficient evidence to support a rational finding that
6 the legitimate . . . reasons proffered by [Delta] were false.” Weinstock v.
7 Columbia Univ., 224 F.3d 33, 42 (2d Cir. 2000) (cleaned up); see also Hicks v.
8 Baines, 593 F.3d 159, 164-65 (2d Cir. 2010).
9 It is well settled that in a discrimination case, “we are decidedly not
10 interested in the truth of the allegations against plaintiff.” McPherson v. New
11 York City Dep’t of Educ., 457 F.3d 211, 216 (2d Cir. 2006). Rather, “[w]e are
12 interested in what motivated the employer,” and “the factual validity of the
13 underlying imputation against the employee is not at issue.” Id. (quotation
14 marks omitted). We therefore need only conclude that the undisputed evidence
15 demonstrates that Delta was “[]sincere in [its] own belief” that its charges against
16 Jimenez were true, and that it was in fact motivated by this belief when it
17 terminated his employment. Ya-Chen Chen v. City Univ. of New York, 805 F.3d
18 59, 74 (2d Cir. 2015). Guided by these standards, we find that Jimenez has failed
6
1 to raise a genuine dispute about the falsity of Delta’s motivations for terminating
2 his employment.
3 To begin, Delta terminated Jimenez’s employment after investigating his
4 involvement in the laptop theft for weeks. Delta reviewed the Port Authority
5 detectives’ summary of their independent investigation, which stated that during
6 the interview Jimenez “exhibited many non-verbal signs of dishonestly [sic] and
7 verbal deflection” and “skirt[ed] around the question” of whether “he would
8 pass a polygraph exam.” App’x 199. Leading up to his termination and during
9 his post-termination appeal, Delta also reviewed internal records confirming that
10 Jimenez “was the only AMT assigned to the aircraft” from which the laptop was
11 stolen, and concluded that “there is no evidence to support [Jimenez’s] allegation
12 that others gained access to the aircraft and took the laptop.” App’x 226.
13 Jimenez argues that his daily work schedule at Delta raises a genuine dispute as
14 to whether Jimenez could have given Fullwood a stolen laptop at “around
15 8:15am,” as Fullwood alleged to the Port Authority detectives. App’x 201. But
16 aside from his general work schedule, Jimenez failed to adduce any admissible
17 evidence suggesting that Delta’s laptop-theft justification was pretextual. On this
18 record, a reasonable jury could not conclude that Delta’s reason for terminating
7
1 Jimenez for what it reasonably believed to be true about his role in the laptop
2 theft was false.
3 For the same reason, Jimenez also failed to adduce any admissible
4 evidence suggesting that Delta’s other justifications for his termination were not
5 the true reason for its decision. Jimenez contends that he told Matos about his
6 co-worker’s purse theft soon after he learned about it, but Delta understood
7 through Johnson that, during his investigation, Jimenez admitted to him and
8 Magnowski that he had not timely reported the theft because he did not want to
9 “snitch” on a friend. App’x 214. Applying the standards described above, Delta
10 was entitled to conclude that he had not timely reported the purse theft to a
11 manager. And it is undisputed that Jimenez received a “write-up” in May 2017
12 when he “signed the job card that [a task] was accomplished, but did not
13 complete the task.” App’x 221.
14 As relevant to Jimenez’s disparate treatment claim, we do not take lightly
15 the fact that Magnowski is alleged to have delivered his discriminatory remark
16 while discussing the laptop theft investigation that Delta cited as a central reason
17 for Jimenez’s termination. Cf. Sassaman v. Gamache, 566 F.3d 307, 314 (2d Cir.
18 2009) (“[T]he closer the remark’s relation to the allegedly discriminatory
8
1 behavior, the more probative that remark will be.” (cleaned up)). But given
2 Jimenez’s failure to submit any admissible evidence suggesting that Delta’s
3 laptop-theft justification was false, his § 1981 claim of disparate treatment cannot
4 survive summary judgment. See Comcast Corp. v. Nat’l Assoc. of African
5 American-Owned Media, 140 S. Ct. 1009, 1014-15 (2020) (“[Section] 1981 follows
6 the general rule . . . [that] a plaintiff bears the burden of showing that race was a
7 but-for cause of [his] injury.” (emphasis added)). We therefore affirm the District
8 Court’s grant of Delta’s motion for summary judgment.
9 We have considered Jimenez’s remaining arguments and conclude that
10 they are without merit. The judgment of the District Court is AFFIRMED.
11 FOR THE COURT:
12 Catherine O’Hagan Wolfe, Clerk of Court
9