Tigers strike out on former employee’s age bias claim

A federal court has denied the Detroit Tigers Inc.’s motion for summary judgment in a longtime employee’s age discrimination lawsuit.

The baseball organization said it terminated the employee who had worked for the Tigers for 42 years for a legitimate and unrebutted nondiscriminatory reason: poor performance.

But U.S. District Judge David M. Lawson noted that the employee’s performance evaluations showed improved performance and compliments from his supervisor.

“There is plenty of evidence in this record from which a jury could conclude that [plaintiff’s] age was the reason he was fired,” the judge said.

The decision is Nelson v. Detroit Tigers Inc. ( MiLW 02-107884 , 19 pages).

Fired after 42 years

John Nelson started his 42-year career with the Detroit Tigers as a bat boy in 1979. He worked his way up through the organization and, in 1992, was promoted to visiting clubhouse manager.

Nelson was 58 years old when he was fired on Oct. 11, 2021, allegedly based on complaints about poor performance tending to the needs of visiting team players.

The decision to fire Nelson was made solely by 31-year-old Sam Menzin, who joined the Tigers organization as an intern in 2013 and rapidly ascended the ranks to director of baseball operations in 2021.

The day after Nelson was terminated, 34-year-old Dan Ross a former visiting clubhouse assistant manager was promoted to fill the role. He was elevated a year later to home clubhouse manager.

The Tigers organization claimed Nelson was fired for an inability to improve his performance during the 2021 season, citing a Major League Baseball visiting players survey that was used to rank the quality and conditions of visiting clubhouses across baseball.

Nelson, however, contended his performance reviews demonstrated that his performance had improved significantly in the time leading up to his termination.

Nelson’s written evaluations in 2017 and 2018 showed a need for improvement, but reviews in the following years were more positive.

In fact, Schmakel who prepared written evaluations for Nelson for several years said he would have rated Nelson’s performance as “pretty good” had he prepared a 2021 evaluation. That didn’t happen as Nelson was fired the day after the season ended.

Nelson filed suit, claiming he was fired because of his age, alleging age discrimination under federal and state laws, including the Age Discrimination in Employment, or ADEA, and the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act, or ELCRA.

The Tigers moved for summary judgment, saying it had a legitimate nondiscriminatory reason for firing Nelson and that he provided no proof that he was qualified for the job. The Tigers also said it was entitled to deference for exercising its own business judgment and therefore is entitled to a judgment of dismissal as a matter of law.

Prima facie case

Four elements are required to show a prima facie case of age discrimination: membership in a protected group; qualification for the job; an adverse employment action; and circumstances that support an inference of discrimination. The Tigers organization acknowledged that Nelson satisfied the first and third elements.

“The defendant attempts to cast Nelson's supposed performance failures as negating his showing on the second element that he was qualified for the job,” Lawson wrote. “However, there are substantial questions of fact about the plaintiff’s job performance in 2021 when he was let go, and in any case other evidence in the record suffices to suggest that the plaintiff amply was qualified for the job of Visiting Clubhouse Manager.”

There was no dispute that Nelson held that role for nearly three decades. That was enough to establish a question of fact as to whether he was qualified to perform the job.

“The defendant has not identified any other objective criteria for the position that the plaintiff did not satisfy in 2021, and it is not identified any way in which the objective qualifications for the job had evolved during the plaintiff’s tenure so as to render him unqualified to continue in the position,” Lawson noted.

The judge then rejected the Tigers’ challenge to the fourth element.

“[T]he plaintiff’s evidence that he was replaced by his former subordinate who was 24 years younger at the time suffices to raise such an inference,” Lawson said. “It is undisputed here that Dan Ross was promoted immediately after plaintiff’s termination to fill the vacant position. It is also undisputed that Ross was more than two decades younger than the plaintiff when he was promoted.”

Performance reviews

While the Tigers cited poor performance as the reason for the firing, Nelson presented evidence that it had no basis in fact sufficient to put to a jury whether his supposed performance deficiency in 2021 was grounded in fact.

“The record evidence shows that Nelson received glowing performance reviews in 2019 and 2020, which reflected no hint of the poor performance that gave rise to complaints compiled by the 2017 MLB Clubhouse Survey and noted in the plaintiff’s disparaging 2017 and 2018 performance reviews,” Lawson wrote. “The 2019 and 2020 evaluations suffice to raise a question about whether, as the defendant contends, the plaintiff had failed to improve his performance over the ensuing three years.”

The judge said Menzin’s testimony on this subject was “evasive and insubstantial,” and no documentary evidence of complaints or specific factual details were provided. Schmakel, meanwhile, wrote that some visiting teams told him how well the clubhouse was run.

“Based on the absence of any substantive details in Menzin’s testimony, contrasted with the specific and contrary documentation in Schmakel’s evaluations, a jury reasonably could question the veracity of Menzin’s testimony and dismiss his assertion that unnamed sources had complained to him in 2021 that Nelson had failed to improve his performance as clubhouse manager,” Lawson said.

Here, the judge said Nelson offered “sufficient evidence to allow a jury to conclude that he achieved a dramatic turnaround in his performance from 2017 to 2020, to the point that his work was deemed, ‘Fully Satisfactory’ in his last written review, and that the supposed failure of performance in 2020 and 2021 in fact never occurred.”

Lawson denied the defendant’s motion for summary judgment.

“The plaintiff has presented sufficient evidence to establish all the elements of his prima facie case and to rebut the defendant’s proffered non-discriminatory reason for the termination decision,” he concluded. “Genuine questions of fact remain about whether age had a determinative influence on the defendant’s decision to fire him.”

If you would like to comment on this story, contact Cory Linsner at clinsner@milawyersweekly.com .

 

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