A discharged managing partner of a New York Life office in Cleveland filed suit claiming age discrimination after he was fired. He went to trial, won and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the verdict, although it reduced the puntive damages award from $10 million to $6 million. Morgan v. New York Life, No. 07-4186 (March 12, 2009).
The court found the strongest evidence of age discrimination to be New York Life's willingness to deviate from its purported standard procedures on behalf of younger employees but refusal to do so for older employees including the plaintiff, Tommy G. Morgan. This evidence included (1) a younger managing partner, Savoie, of another office repeatedly fell below New York Life's claimed performance criteria, received training that was not available to older employees and was not fied; (2) a 39 year old, Cox, was supposedly ineligible for promotion, according to New York Life standards, but was promoted; (3) a 36 year old, Scott, was also promoted despite a worse job performance than Morgan, according to New York Life's criteria; (4) a substantially younger managing partner, Slattery, had a peformance rating of 1.25, which was below New York Life's standards, but received no disciplinary action, while managing partners over 50 with much higher performance ratings were disciplined. The court concluded that more than ample evidence sustained the jury's finding of age discrimination:
Savoie, Cox, Scott, Bravada and Slattery were all younger than Morgan when New York Life departed from its normal practices. All of these individuals received lesser sanctions and in some case cases even favorable treatment despite performance issues. The record supports the district court’s finding that New York Life appeared to be much more willing to consider extenuating circumstances in some instances (such as Scott’s pregnancy) than it was in evaluating Morgan’s performance (such as when Northern Ohio employee John Tijanich embezzled millions of dollars). The district court also contrasted the treatment that the younger managing partners received with that of older managing partners such as Helms and Bartlett, the latter of whom Willson helped to reach a retirement decision, and Torrell, who was not a “manager of the future” because “time has passed Jim by.
