PHILADELPHIA – A global data and analytics company has denied that age was a factor in the termination of one of its salespeople from his position, instead pointing to the plaintiff allegedly not meeting the company’s performance standards.
John Hopkins of Phoenixville first filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on March 7 versus LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Inc. (doing business as “LexisNexis”), of Alpharetta, Ga.
“Plaintiff was 67 years old at the time of his unlawful termination from defendant on or about Oct. 7, 2022. Plaintiff was hired by defendant in or about May of 2011, worked and was based from 2520 Renaissance Blvd, Suite 100, King of Prussia, PA 19406. Plaintiff performed the role of inside salesperson. In total, plaintiff was employed with defendant for approximately 10.5 years (until his termination on or about Oct. 7, 2022),” the suit said.
“As of plaintiff’s termination, plaintiff was supervised by Andrea Parks (a Vice-President) and indirectly to Parks’ manager Joe Finazzo (Director of Sales / Vice-President). Towards the end of his employment with defendant, plaintiff was subjected to discriminatory treatment based on his advanced age, specifically by Parks. Prior to late 2021, plaintiff was perceived as a stellar employee with a good history of positive performance evaluations. Indeed, plaintiff worked hard and produced good results. From late 2021 through mid-2022, however, plaintiff was repeatedly placed on performance improvement plans (PIPs) or had them extended.”
The suit added that despite meeting his sales goals, the defendant was allegedly looking for any rationale to terminate the plaintiff and kept documenting his personnel file with unjustified PIPs). Additionally, he was “not sent to the defendant’s headquarters for training, not given leads sheets, was made to cold call to obtain business and treated disparately in many other ways (including as to a continual condescending attitude).”
“It was so blatant that plaintiff complained of age discrimination to Casie Mathes (Employee Relations) via email on May 12, 2022. Plaintiff also mentioned verbally to Parks that plaintiff felt she was treating him differently because plaintiff is older. Plaintiff is unaware of any action(s) or escalation(s) of his verbal and written concerns of disparate treatment based upon his age,” the suit stated.
“Instead, plaintiff was terminated on or about Oct. 7, 2022 for allegedly failing to attain the goals set forth in his PIP, which was pre-textually issued in the first instance. There was nothing plaintiff could do to satisfy alleged performance concerns that were pre-textually identified in the first place, as plaintiff’s sales numbers and performance were already excellent. It was obvious that the PIP was nothing more than the creation of a paper trail to justify plaintiff’s termination since nothing negative existed – from a personnel file standpoint – in the preceding 10 years of his employment, prior to Parks’ supervision of plaintiff. Based on the foregoing, plaintiff believes and avers that he was terminated from defendant after over 10 years of dedicated service because of his advanced age and/or complaints of age discrimination.”
In a Rule 26(f) conference and discovery plan report, the defendant denied the allegations as presented by the plaintiff.
“Defendant terminated plaintiff for legitimate business reasons. Defendant hired plaintiff in May of 2011 for the position of Inside Sales. His job performance during his employment was mostly mediocre to poor, as shown in his annual performance reviews. In October of 2021, his supervisor Andrea Parks placed him on a 90-day Formal Coaching Plan because he was failing to meet the metrics set out for the role. Under this plan, plaintiff was required to meet clear and reasonable objectives. Plaintiff failed to meet these performance objectives. As a result, Parks placed him on a Written Warning Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) with a 60-day improvement period in early May of 2022. The PIP included the same reasonable and measurable improvement objectives as the Formal Coaching Plan,” the report stated.
“On May 10, 2022, after the issuance of the PIP, Plaintiff complained to Human Resources of age discrimination by Parks. Defendant conducted a thorough investigation and concluded plaintiff’s allegation was unsubstantiated. Specifically, the investigators concluded plaintiff was not meeting the requirements of his role and the escalation from Formal Coaching Plan to Written Warning was appropriate. The investigators did not find any evidence to support the allegation that Parks treated plaintiff unfairly because of his age.”
The report continued that Parks “updated the PIP on Aug. 30, 2022, with the status of plaintiff’s performance improvement objectives, noting he had achieved only one of the two objectives”, and that “because plaintiff failed to meet the objectives of the Written Warning Performance Improvement Plan, Parks elevated it to a Final Written Warning with a 30-day improvement period.”
“Even with extra time, feedback and support, plaintiff failed to meet the reasonable performance measures set forth in the Final Written Warning Performance Improvement Plan. As a result, Parks made the decision to terminate plaintiff’s employment. Defendant terminated plaintiff’s employment on Oct. 7, 2022,” the report added.
UPDATE
The defendant supplemented the report with an answer and new matter on May 5, which proffered 10 separate affirmative defenses.
“Plaintiff’s claims fail because defendant terminated his employment for legitimate, non-pretextual and non-discriminatory business reasons unrelated to any protected category. Plaintiff’s claims of alleged disparate treatment fail because he cannot identify any similarly situated individuals who were treated differently or better. To the extent that plaintiff’s claims are based on acts that predate his administrative charge by more than 300 days, plaintiff has failed to exhaust his administrative remedies regarding those claims and/or those claims are time-barred. To the extent plaintiff alleges that any employee of defendant acted in an unlawful manner, such conduct, if it occurred, was outside the course and scope of that individual’s employment, was not authorized or condoned by defendant, and was undertaken without the knowledge or consent of defendant. Thus, defendant is not liable for any such conduct, if it occurred. To the extent plaintiff failed to mitigate his alleged damages, his recovery, if any, must be reduced accordingly,” the new matter said.
“Defendant avers that even if some impermissible motive were a factor in any employment decision concerning plaintiff, a claim that defendant expressly denies, the same decision(s) would have been reached for legitimate business reasons. Defendant was lawfully entitled to terminate plaintiff’s employment with or without notice or cause because plaintiff was an at-will employee. Without conceding that plaintiff suffered any harm, plaintiff’s claims fail to the extent that defendant published firm policies against the alleged conduct and plaintiff unreasonably failed to promptly take advantage of the preventative or corrective opportunities provided by defendant or to avoid harm otherwise. Plaintiff is not entitled to punitive or liquidated damages because defendant made good faith efforts to comply with all applicable anti-discrimination laws. Plaintiff’s claims may be barred in whole or in part by the doctrine of estoppel, unclean hands and/or after-acquired evidence.”
For a count of violating the Age Discrimination in Employment Act and Pennsylvania Human Relations Act, the plaintiff is seeking compensatory damages including back pay, front pay, salary, pay increases, bonuses, insurance, benefits, training, promotions, reinstatement, and seniority, punitive damages, other equitable and legal relief as the Court deems just, proper, and appropriate, costs, expenses, reasonable attorney’s fees and a jury trial.
The plaintiff is represented by Adam C. Lease, Thomas J. Nolan Jr. and Ari Risson Karpf of Karpf Karpf & Cerutti, in Bensalem.
The defendant is represented by Dorothy M. Brackett, Alex S. Drummond and Jacob Oslick of Seyfarth Shaw in Charlotte, N.C., Atlanta, Ga. and New York, N.Y., respectively.
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania case 2:23-cv-00865
From the Pennsylvania Record: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com