Michael Murray v. Mayo Clinic ( 2019 )


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  •                            NOT FOR PUBLICATION                           FILED
    UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS                       AUG 20 2019
    MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
    U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
    FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
    MICHAEL J. MURRAY, M.D. - a married             No.    17-16803
    man,
    D.C. No. 2:14-cv-01314-SPL
    Plaintiff-Appellant,
    v.                                             MEMORANDUM*
    MAYO CLINIC, a Minnesota nonprofit
    corporation; et al.,
    Defendants-Appellees.
    Appeal from the United States District Court
    for the District of Arizona
    Steven Paul Logan, District Judge, Presiding
    Argued and Submitted June 13, 2019
    San Francisco, California
    Before: GOULD and IKUTA, Circuit Judges, and PEARSON,** District Judge.
    Plaintiff Michael Murray timely appeals from the district court’s granting of
    Defendants’ motion for partial summary judgment, its instructions to the jury, and
    its evidentiary rulings. We address Murray’s challenge to the district court’s jury
    *
    This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
    except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
    **
    The Honorable Benita Y. Pearson, United States District Judge for the
    Northern District of Ohio, sitting by designation.
    instruction regarding the applicable causation standard for his ADA discrimination
    claim in a concurrently-filed opinion.
    1.    The district court properly applied the factors under Leisek v. Brightwood
    Corp., 
    278 F.3d 895
     (9th Cir. 2002), and correctly granted summary judgment on
    Murray’s claim for wrongful discharge in violation of the Uniformed Services
    Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA), 
    38 U.S.C. § 4311
    (a),
    because no genuine issue of material fact exists regarding whether Murray’s
    termination was motivated by antimilitary animus. Viewed in the light most
    favorable to Murray, Defendants’ intraoffice emails do not rise to the level of
    expressed hostility. Nor is the three-month gap between Murray’s return from
    medical leave and Defendants’ investigation of his conduct in the operating room,
    in and of itself, sufficient to support an inference of discrimination based on
    temporal proximity. Murray experienced no negative treatment from his employer
    during this period of time, and his placement on administrative leave occurred
    immediately after the incident in the operating room. Moreover, neither
    Defendants’ decision not to report Murray’s conduct in the operating room to the
    Arizona Medical Board nor Drs. Krahn and Trentman’s questions concerning
    Murray’s anger outbursts and concentration issues are inconsistent with
    Defendants’ decision to terminate Murray based on his conduct. Finally, Murray
    2                                       17-16803
    fails to explain how Dr. Krahn’s involvement in Murray’s medical case after she
    handed the matter off to Occupational Medicine is evidence of disparate treatment.
    In the alternative, Defendants affirmatively established that they would have
    terminated Murray without regard to his military service, based on the incident in
    the operating room. By his own admission, Murray grabbed Dr. Chien by the
    shoulders, pushed him, and yelled at him not to touch the equipment. Murray then
    screamed at Dr. Chien to leave the room. Murray later admitted to Drs. Trentman
    and Krahn that his behavior was inappropriate. Murray, aware that Mayo Clinic
    Arizona had terminated a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist with no military
    affiliation for a similar reason, confessed to his psychiatrist shortly after the
    incident that he was worried he would be terminated. For the same reasons, the
    district court correctly granted summary judgment on Murray’s claim for wrongful
    discharge in violation of USERRA, 
    38 U.S.C. § 4316
    (c), because there is no
    genuine issue of material fact that Defendants lacked cause to terminate Murray.
    2.    The district court properly granted summary judgment on Murray’s FMLA
    and ADA claims against Mayo Clinic on the grounds that Mayo Clinic was not
    Murray’s employer under the FMLA and Murray failed to exhaust his
    administrative remedies. Murray produced evidence suggesting only that Mayo
    Clinic Arizona is a subsidiary of Mayo Clinic. Evidence of a parent-subsidiary
    relationship is insufficient to impute liability to the parent corporation. See United
    3                                       17-16803
    States v. Bestfoods, 
    524 U.S. 51
    , 69 (1998) (corporate personalities are distinct).
    Additionally, Murray made his EEOC charge against only one entity—“Mayo
    Clinic in Arizona.” He did not exhaust his administrative remedies against Mayo
    Clinic.
    3.    The district court did not abuse its discretion by instructing the jury on Mayo
    Clinic Arizona’s “direct threat” affirmative defense. In its original Answer,
    Defendant pleaded that Murray’s ADA claims were barred because “[a]ny
    requested accommodation would impose a direct threat to the health and safety of
    patients and co-workers.” Later, Murray voluntarily dismissed with prejudice his
    failure to provide reasonable accommodation claim. After a hearing on the issue,
    the district court instructed the jury on the defense. Although Defendants’
    affirmative defense was imprecisely pleaded, the district court did not abuse its
    discretion by liberally construing Defendants’ operative Answer.
    4.    The district court did not err by refusing to adopt Murray’s requested jury
    instruction to find causation for Murray’s ADA discrimination claim if Murray’s
    termination was “motivated in part by [Defendants’] concern over conduct that
    may result from a disability that they regarded him as having[.]” This standard
    was derived from Gambini v. Total Renal Care, Inc., in which we held that “a jury
    must be instructed that it may find that the employee was terminated on the
    impermissible basis of her disability” when the employee establishes a causal link
    4                                     17-16803
    between the termination and conduct arising from the disability. 
    486 F.3d 1087
    ,
    1093 (9th Cir. 2007). Gambini’s reasoning does not extend to regarded-as ADA
    claims. “[C]onduct resulting from a disability is considered to be part of the
    disability, rather than a separate basis for termination.” Mayo v. PCC Structurals,
    Inc., 
    795 F.3d 941
    , 946 (9th Cir. 2015) (quoting Humphrey v. Mem’l Hosps. Ass’n,
    
    239 F.3d 1128
    , 1139–40 (9th Cir. 2001)). Furthermore, Murray, who alleged no
    disability and requested no accommodations, has not shown that his conduct
    resulted from a regarded-as disability.
    5.    The district court did not err by refusing to adopt Murray’s proposed jury
    instruction allowing the jury to impute “his supervisors’ bias and discriminatory
    motive . . . to the ultimate decisionmakers, regardless of whether the ultimate
    decisionmakers actually regarded Dr. Murray as disabled or held any
    discriminatory bias of their own when they decided to terminate Dr. Murray.”
    Subordinate bias liability does not apply to FMLA interference claims. “In
    interference claims, the employer’s intent is irrelevant to a determination of
    liability.” Sanders v. City of Newport, 
    657 F.3d 772
    , 778 (9th Cir. 2011). Liability
    under a “cat’s paw” theory, by contrast, is predicated on the imputation of a
    supervisor’s bias onto an employer. See Staub v. Proctor Hosp., 
    562 U.S. 411
    ,
    414, 421 (2011) (“The employer is at fault because one of its agents committed an
    action based on discriminatory animus that was intended to cause, and did in fact
    5                                      17-16803
    cause, an adverse employment decision.”). Moreover, the district court adequately
    instructed the jury on Murray’s theory of subordinate bias liability with regard to
    his ADA discrimination claim.
    6.     The district court did not abuse its discretion in excluding evidence of a
    witness’s drug use and of Defendants’ intraoffice emails. The district court
    reasonably determined that the witness’s drug use 21 months after the operating
    room incident was too remote in time to be relevant. See United States v. Bibo-
    Rodriguez, 
    922 F.2d 1398
    , 1400 (9th Cir. 1991). Additionally, the excluded
    intraoffice emails are irrelevant to Murray’s FMLA and ADA claims. See Fed. R.
    Evid. 402. Even assuming arguendo that the emails had relevance, any probative
    value is substantially outweighed by the danger of confusing the issue of Murray’s
    dismissed USERRA claims with his FMLA and ADA claims. See Fed. R. Evid.
    403.
    AFFIRMED.
    6                                    17-16803