Lackey v. Heart of Lancaster Regional Medical Center

704 F. App'x 41
Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit·Decided July 27, 2017·No. 16-3986·Unpublished·Cited by 28 cases

Opinion

OPINION *

GREENBERG, Circuit Judge.

I. INTRODUCTION

Plaintiff Linda Lackey appeals from the District Court’s order granting summary judgment to her former employer, defendant Heart of Lancaster Regional Medical Center, on claims she brought alleging discrimination and retaliation under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (“ADEA”) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”). Lackey alleged that Heart of Lancaster terminated her employment because of her age and her disabilities. Heart of Lancaster successfully moved for summary judgment on all of her claims and this appeal followed.

For the reasons that we set forth below, we will affirm the District Court’s order granting summary judgment to defendant Heart of Lancaster.

II. • FACTUAL BACKGROUND

Lackey, a woman now in her seventies, was an employee at Heart of Lancaster or *43 its predecessors for nearly fifty years. 1 App’x at 120a, 178a. From 2006 until her termination, Lackey scheduled appointments for several departments at the hospital. Id. at 126a.

During her time as a scheduler, Lackey received consistent negative feedback in counseling sessions and performance reviews with her supervisors. During the 2006-2008 period, she received counseling about being more careful with her work and at least ten verbal counseling sessions for failing to complete paperwork properly and use correct forms. Id. at 212a, 219a, 221a.

Lackey’s performance evaluations during the period of 2008 through 2012 showed a similar theme. She received an evaluation in 2008 ranking her as “[n]eed[ing] improvement” in over half of the areas related to scheduling. Id. at 214a-17a. In 2009, she received an evaluation rating her below 3 on a 6-point scale, on which scores below 3 meant “[p]artially meet[ing] performance standards,” in a number of performance areas primarily relating to scheduling accuracy and attention to detail. Id. at 223a-35a. At the end of 2009, her performance evaluation highlighted the need to improve in those same areas. Id. at 237a-48a. Her 2011 evaluation reiterated issues with respect to Lackey’s errors, attention to detail, and working with technology, resulting in a corrective action plan to be implemented by early 2012. Id. at 253a-62a. Her 2012 evaluation continued to list missed details, accuracy, and technology issues as problem areas. Id. at 267a-77a. Lackey’s 2013 evaluation showed that she failed to meet performance standards regarding making errors, attention to detail, and her ability to use technology; her overall score was rated as needing “immediate improvement” and required placement on a performance improvement plan. Id. at 334a-345a.

Lackey also received numerous specific written warnings for errors she made at work. One warning from March 2011 addressed her failure to properly screen a patient for a procedure, resulting in inconvenience and a potential safety risk for the patient. Id. at 250a-51a. Several written warnings from February 2012, January 2013, and October 2013 addressed scheduling errors Lackey made which resulted in problems for patients and hospital staff. Id. at 279a-80a, 285-86a, 282a-83a.

In November 2013, Lackey received a warning because of “multiple complaints that involve patients having to cancel [and] reschedule resulting in patient dissatisfaction” and because “[c]omplaints of substandard work have created reworking [for] co-workers and confusion among multiple departments.” Id. at 291a. This warning was listed as “final” and the recommended corrective action was for all of Lackey’s work to be reviewed by a coworker and then sent back to her if there were errors to be corrected. 2 Id. at 291a-92a.

Lackey was placed on a performance improvement plan and received several months of additional oversight from late 2013 into early 2014. Id. at 362a. Neverthe *44 less, she received a termination notice effective February 14, 2014, which listed the reason for the termination as continued repeated errors in scheduling patient appointments. Id. In May 2014, Heart of Lancaster hired a 41-year-old empldyee to fill Lackey’s former position. Id. at 498a, 506a.

Lackey identifies several younger schedulers who worked at various points at Heart of Lancaster. 3 One of Lackey’s younger co-workers testified that she made less than five mistakes in her seven months working for Heart of Lancaster but she was not disciplined for those mistakes. Id. at 514a-15a. A different younger worker who was in a training period testified to having made a mistake “at least once” without receiving formal discipline. Id. at 505a. Another younger co-worker who shared Lackey’s supervisor for several years testified that the supervisor had spoken to.her about “maybe an error or two that [she had] made and how to correct it” in those several years, without receiving more formal discipline. Id at 524a. While this co-worker was assigned to assist Lackey with training for a new scheduling system, she testified to noticing Lackey make “repeated mistakes” and that she was sure that she had gotten frustrated with Lackey because Lackey “would make the same mistake again and again.” Id. at 525a, 529a. She testified that during the course of reviewing Lackey’s work, she reported back more than twenty mistakes that Lackey made to their shared supervisor. Id. at 526a. She testified that she was not assigned to help train the other scheduler at the time because any issues that other scheduler had “navigating the system” were “minor” and she was not having problems “to the degree that [Lackey] was.” Id.

Lackey testified that sometime in July 2012, her supervisor asked her how old she was and if she was planning to retire. Id. at 165a. She also testified that this was the first time that her supervisor had raised the issue of her age. Id at 166a. She sent an email to the director of human resources on July 24, 2012, stating that she was “getting incredible pressure to retire” and was being harassed by her supervisor. Id. at 264a-65a. She met with human resources and her supervisor about the incident. Id. at 167a-68a. Lackey claims that she felt that there was a “general atmosphere” pressuring her to retire but testified that no one made any other comments at any other point regarding her age or retirement. Id at 166a-67a. She also testified that “some of the allegations” she made to human resources in 2012, such as feeling like she was “being pushed out the door,” might have been “an exaggeration,” Id. at 168a.

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Lackey v. Heart of Lancaster Regional Medical Center, 704 F. App'x 41 (3d Cir. 2017).

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