The Fifth Circuit affirms a judgment in favor of the employer. The manager was terminated after an investigation into his inappropriate comments and behavior toward female employees, which included comments about a female employee’s breasts, attempts to touch her, and asking her to raise her skirt. The terminated employee brought suit against the company for age discrimination, primarily relying on a remark the COO allegedly made to another coworker in 2006 that the employee was an “old, gray-haired fart” and that the coworker would be in charge when the employee retired. The Fifth Circuit says that the remark did not present direct evidence of age discrimination, since he “has not shown that the comment was proximate in time to the termination or related to the employment decision.”
The plaintiff’s “self-serving statements that he did not commit sexual harassment are insufficient to create a triable issue of fact as to whether [the employer’s] explanation is false,” the Court says.
“In cases in which an employer discharges an employee based on the complaint of another employee, the issue is not the truth or falsity of the allegation, but ‘whether the employer reasonably believed the employee’s allegation and acted on it in good faith,’” which in this case the company did, the Fifth Circuit holds. Jackson v. Cal-Western Packaging Corp.
