A former employee’s discrimination and retaliation action under Title VII and Michigan law was properly dismissed where she failed to provide comparator evidence, a panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled, affirming summary judgment for the employer.
“[The plaintiff] did not show that another employee engaged in the same performance-related conduct without receiving the same consequences,” Judge Whitney D. Hermandorfer wrote. “During discovery, she produced no evidence that [the employer] treated white or male employees with similar performance issues differently. Indeed, during her deposition, [the plaintiff] could not list a single employee whom [the employer] retained following a failure to meet improvement-plan objectives.”
Detroit lawyer Carla D. Aikens, who represented the employee, said the decision demonstrates how hard it is for an employee to get in front of a jury in an employment dispute.
“The right to a jury trial is getting more and more scarce and I think between the tests for indirect evidence and circumstantial evidence, we’ve lost what the goal is supposed to be of these remedial laws,” she said.
Christopher R. Mikula of Ogletree Deakins in Birmingham, who represented the employer, did not respond to a request for comment on the case.
...
PORTLAND, Maine (WGME) -- A week after employees at the Holy Donut on Park Avenue in Portland told the company they were looking to unionize, the company now says those workers made false accusati...