An employee gets terminated and is given two different reasons for being let go. She sues the company, charging that the mixed signals prove she was let go so that the supervisor could hire a man to replace her. Who won this real-life case?

The scene:

Warren Bridges looked at the copies of the e-mails handed to him by HR manager Susanna Diaz. “Yes, I wrote both of those,” he said. “So what?”

Susanna looked over her copies as she replied: “Well, you sent them to Lori a couple of weeks before you fired her. The first one says her performance is a problem ‘and could result in your termination.’ The second one thanks her for her service and says you had to let her go ‘as part of a companywide reduction in force.’”

“Right,” Warren nodded. “I was trying to let Lori down easy and say she got caught in a RIF.”

“Here’s the problem,” Susanna explained. “You replaced her with a man.”

“And …” Warren said.

“You gave her conflicting reasons for letting her go — poor performance and a RIF,” she said. “First, we never had a RIF. Second, with all the confusion about the real reason for firing her, you replace her with a man. That looks fishy.

Warren sighed. “I still don’t see the big deal.”

But Lori did. She sued the company for sex discrimination, saying there was no clear reason for the firing, and Warren — a man — replaced her with another man. The company said Warren was just trying to go easy on her, and the hiring of a male replacement was a coincidence.

Did the company win?

The judgment
No the company lost.

Even though the supervisor had good documentation backing his performance-based reasons for the firing, the judge still ruled in favor of the employee.

The judge’s reason: You can have good documentation, but that doesn’t mean there are grounds for throwing out other evidence that might show mixed reasons or bias.

In this case, the conflicting e-mails and the hiring of a male replacement were enough to overshadow the performance documentation. A lack of consistency in documentation and actions always calls into question the motives of the supervisor and the company, the judge said.

Ruling: Employee wins because of the doubt behind the company’s decision.

When there’s a charge of bias, conflicting information from the supervisor tends to set off alarm bells — and questions — in a judge’s mind:
• Why would they say one thing and then another?
• Were they trying to cover up something?

Combine those with the outward appearance of discrimination – a male supervisor replacing a female with a male – and you have the ingredients for a company loss in the courtroom.

[Based on: Parks v. Lebhar-Friedman, Inc.]

Tags: Discrimination, RIF, supervisor