Rodgers v. Western-Southern Life Insurance

792 F. Supp. 628, 1992 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6806, 58 Fair Empl. Prac. Cas. (BNA) 1364, 1992 WL 101604
CourtDistrict Court, E.D. Wisconsin
DecidedMay 9, 1992
DocketCiv. A. 89-C-484
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 792 F. Supp. 628 (Rodgers v. Western-Southern Life Insurance) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. Wisconsin primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Rodgers v. Western-Southern Life Insurance, 792 F. Supp. 628, 1992 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6806, 58 Fair Empl. Prac. Cas. (BNA) 1364, 1992 WL 101604 (E.D. Wis. 1992).

Opinion

■FINDINGS OF FACT AND CONCLUSIONS OF LAW

REYNOLDS, Senior District Judge.

Background

In. 1973, pro se plaintiff James E. Rodgers (“Rodgers”), a forty-six-year-old black man, began working as a life insurance agent in defendant Western-Southern Life Insurance Company’s (“Western-Southern”) Milwaukee, Wisconsin office. In 1980, Rodgers was promoted to an associate sales manager position; on May 20, 1985, he resigned. On July 19, 1985, Rogers filed a timely charge of discrimination with the Wisconsin Equal Rights Division of the Department of Industry, Labor and Human Relations (“ERD”). On January 25, 1989, an ERD administrative law judge determined that Rodgers had failed to prove by a fair preponderance of the evidence that Western-Southern had violated the Wisconsin Fair Employment Act by discriminating against him on the basis of his race; on October 12, 1989, the Wisconsin Labor and Industry Review Commission affirmed the administrative law judge’s decision. 1 On April 3, 1989, Rodgers received notice of his right to sue.

*630 On April 27, 1989, Rodgers commenced this action against Western-Southern under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title 42 United States Code § 2000e et seq., and the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Rodgers alleges in his terse complaint that Western-Southern discriminated against him on the basis of his race by creating a racially hostile environment and by constructively discharging him. On December 21, 1990, this court dismissed Rodgers’ Fourteenth Amendment claim on the ground that Western-Southern is not a state actor. This court then held a bench trial on Rodgers’ claims on January 8-9, 1991, during which Rodgers capably represented himself. For the reasons below, this court finds that Rodgers’ supervisor at Western-Southern subjected him to unlawful racial harassment and that Western-Southern is therefore liable under Title VII.

Findings of Fact

In 1965, when he was 19 years old, Rodgers moved from Arkansas to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In 1973, after holding various jobs, Rodgers became an insurance sales agent in Western-Southern’s Milwaukee office. From 1973 through 1985, Western-Southern’s Milwaukee office employed roughly eighteen to twenty sales agents, four supervisors or associate sales managers, and one district manager. When Rodgers began working as a sales agent in 1973, four of the sales agents were black; that number increased to six or seven by the time Rodgers quit in 1985. Rodgers worked as a sales agent for seven years and under three different associate sales managers, all of whom were white. His duties as sales agent consisted of selling policies, collecting premiums, negotiating loans, and performing weekly and monthly accountings of the premiums he collected. According to all the testimony, Rodgers was one of the top-selling sales agents, winning membership in Western-Southern’s “Million Dollar Club” six of the seven years he was employed as an agent, and he experienced no significant conflicts with any of the associate sales managers who supervised him while he worked as an agent.

In 1980, Rodgers was promoted to an associate sales manager position. At that point two blacks — Rodgers and Mark Thomas (“Thomas”) — filled two of the four associate sales manager positions, and district manager William Mann (“Mann”), a white man in his mid-fifties and with twenty years experience at the firm, became Rodgers’ immediate supervisor. Although it was Mann who had hired Rodgers and had made the decision to promote him to a managerial position, Mann was also the person who constantly directed work-disrupting epithets, and occasional racist comments, at Rodgers.

Rodgers’ duties as an associate sales manager consisted of supervising five sales agents, reporting to district office manager Mann on a daily basis, assisting the sales agents in making sales, training new sales agents, and assisting the new agents to prepare for the state insurance sales licensing exam. On a typical day, Rodgers first received reports from the five sales agents under his supervision regarding their previous day’s sales; at 10:00 a.m., he and the three other sales managers met with Mann in Mann’s office to discuss sales results; at 11:00 a.m., Rodgers again met with his five sales agents to discuss their proposed sales route for the day; and in the afternoon, Rodgers worked in the field selling policies, collecting premiums, and responding to customer complaints. Rodgers and the other sales managers worked long hours, ordinarily from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. weekdays, as well as some work on Saturdays and occasionally on Sundays. In addition to performing their own duties, the sales managers were responsible for handling “open accounts,” that is, temporarily servicing any accounts vacated when one of the sales agents quit, until a replacement agent was hired.

It is undisputed that the daily meetings with Mann were unpleasant experiences, *631 filled with profanity and negative comments. Western-Southern concedes that Mann regularly insulted the sales managers as a motivational technique (Western-Southern Br. in Supp. of Mot. for Summ. Judgment at 4). The parties, agree that Mann routinely called the sales managers “knobheads,” “knuckleheads,” “dunderheads,” and “goons,” and other offensive names. Mann and several other employees also often referred to Rodgers as “rabbit.” Mann claimed that Rodgers had obtained this nickname because of his quick physical mannerisms resembling those of á rabbit. Rodgers testified that Mann often used this term when he wanted to see Rodgers: Mann would step out of his office and yell “Rabbit, get in here,” to the amusement of many of the other sales agents. Both Rodgers and Thomas convincingly testified that Mann’s comments were not limited to such race-neutral epithets, however. Rodgers testified that Mann twice used the term “nigger” and Thomas recalled that Mann had used the term five to ten times during his tenure, although neither could recall the exact context in which Mann used the term. Rodgers recalled that Mann in 1985 made an explicitly racist comment about Rodgers’ sales agents, all of whom were black (except for one short period when one of Rodgers’ sales agents was white). Referring to Rodgers’ agents, Mann stated in a bold, demanding tone that “You black guys are too f***ing dumb to be insurance agents” (Pl.Ex. 1). Mann conceded that he might have made this statement. Mann also admonished Rodgers on one occasion with the statement, “You must think you’re back in Arkansas chasing jackrabbits,” a comment which Rodgers not unreasonably construed as a racial slur intended to malign his black, southern heritage and to suggest that he should not have become an insurance agent. On another occasion, Mann told Rodgers that Mann’s boss, divisional vice-president Dennis Lehman (“Lehman”), had advised Mann not to hire any more black agents. 2 Rodgers never confronted Mann regarding his racially offensive comments, but on two occasions the comments upset him so much that he walked out of the meeting in quiet anger. Thomas, the other black sales manager, also never confronted Mann regarding his occasional use of racist commentary.

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792 F. Supp. 628, 1992 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6806, 58 Fair Empl. Prac. Cas. (BNA) 1364, 1992 WL 101604, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/rodgers-v-western-southern-life-insurance-wied-1992.