ELEVENTH CIRCUIT OVERTURNS ALABAMA JURY VERDICT AND SIDES WITH EMPLOYER

ELEVENTH CIRCUIT OVERTURNS ALABAMA JURY VERDICT AND SIDES WITH EMPLOYER

John Hithon, an African-American, filed suit against his employer, Tyson Foods, Inc. (“Tyson”), under 42 U.S.C. §1981, alleging Tyson wrongfully denied him a promotion to shift manager on the basis of his race. See Ash v. Tyson Foods, No. 08-16135, ____ F.3d ____ (11th Cir. Aug. 17, 2010). A jury from the Northern District of Alabama returned a verdict in favor of Mr. Hithon, awarding him $335,000 in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages. The trial court granted Tyson’s motion for judgment as a matter of law as to the punitive damages award, but denied Tyson’s motion with respect to compensatory damages. Both parties appealed.

Tyson had two available shift manager positions for which Mr. Hithon applied and in which Tyson placed two white males, one of whom Mr. Hithon argued did not have a college degree (a qualification the decisionmaker communicated to Mr. Hithon was necessary for the position) and the other who, according to Mr. Hithon, was less experienced and capable of performing the position than Mr. Hithon. Mr. Hithon also argued Tyson deviated from its company hiring and promotion procedures and presented evidence showing there were three other African-American males who applied, but were not selected for the positions.

Tyson argued Mr. Hithon did not present sufficient evidence from which a reasonable jury could find Tyson’s reason for selecting the two white males for the positions was pretextual. Tyson presented evidence demonstrating that its plant was performing poorly financially and that based on the plant’s poor financial performance, the decisionmaker, Tyson’s new plant manager, wanted to select people for the shift manager positions who had not been in managerial positions at the plant while it was having its financial problems.

The Eleventh Circuit sided with Tyson, holding “the evidence established beyond any genuine dispute that the overriding consideration used in filling the two open slots was that the person selected be free of the taint of having been part of the plant's management during the period it had performed poorly”. Id. at *38. The Court also held that because this was the overriding consideration and none of the black candidates fulfilled it, any failure of Tyson to follow its normal hiring procedures could not have been motivated by a desire to discriminate against blacks.