Turner v. Humana, Inc.

901 F. Supp. 2d 1035, 54 Employee Benefits Cas. (BNA) 1609, 2012 WL 4506297, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 142231
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. Ohio
DecidedOctober 2, 2012
DocketNo. 1:11-CV-260
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 901 F. Supp. 2d 1035 (Turner v. Humana, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. Ohio primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Turner v. Humana, Inc., 901 F. Supp. 2d 1035, 54 Employee Benefits Cas. (BNA) 1609, 2012 WL 4506297, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 142231 (S.D. Ohio 2012).

Opinion

OPINION & ORDER

S. ARTHUR SPIEGEL, Senior District Judge.

This matter is before the Court on Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment (doc. 24), Plaintiffs’ Response in Opposition (doc. 27), and Defendant’s Response in Support (doc. 33). The Court held a hearing on the motion on May 24, 2012. For the following reasons, the Court GRANTS Defendant’s motion (doc. 24).

I. BACKGROUND

Plaintiff Steven Turner was hired by Defendant Humana Pharmacy, Inc. d/b/a RightSouree1 in December 2008 as an Inventory Control Manager to work in its West Chester, Ohio facility. He was hired to help Defendant begin distributing pharmaceuticals from the West Chester location by March 2009. Specifically, he was to hire inventory staff, train the staff, implement the warehouse management system, set up procedures, and ensure that [1038]*1038systems were running properly. Mr. Turner had prior experience in warehouse inventory systems and was certified in implementing them, and that experience and those certifications contributed to the company’s decision to hire him.

Mr. Turner’s wife, Plaintiff Jane Turner, has Type I diabetes and heart disease, so understanding the extent of Defendant’s health care benefit was important to them. Consequently, they spoke with several employees of Defendant about the benefit and, in the course of those conversations, shared with those employees information about Mrs. Turner’s health conditions. Specifically, according to Plaintiffs, they spoke with Mr. Turner’s direct supervisor Dan Brais, the recruiter, the pharmacist in charge of the West Chester facility, a secretary whose husband also has diabetes, and the Dispensing Manager Ken Shapiro, who worked near Mr. Turner.

In May 2009, Mr. Turner informed his supervisor Dan Brais that he would need to be out of the office for a couple of days because Mrs. Turner had to have a cardiac procedure done, and in July of 2009 Mr. Turner advised Brais that he would need to miss a meeting because Mrs. Turner needed to be evaluated by a retinal specialist. In June 2009, Mr. Turner was placed on a “Competency and Contribution Improvement Plan”, which read in part, “Since being provided with coaching and feedback on May 1, 2009 regarding meeting deadlines and communicating expected delays in deadlines, your performance has continued to fall below expectations.” It then outlined several specific areas where Mr. Turner’s performance had fallen short: he failed to draft job responsibilities for his staff and failed to explain why he had not done so; he failed to enroll in specific classes for leadership development training; and he missed several deadlines related to the company’s inventory process. Mr. Turner was warned that “[i]f sufficient improvement is not shown immediately, and these, along with other expectations of your role are not met on an ongoing basis, your employment” may be terminated. Mr. Turner acknowledged that all of the issues raised in the Plan were issues that Brais had brought up before. After nearly two months and several meetings regarding Mr. Turner’s performance, Brais determined that Mr. Turner was not improving sufficiently, and Mr. Turner’s employment was terminated on August 11, 2009.

The Turners sued Defendant in April 2011, claiming that Defendant discriminated against Mr. Turner for associating with a disabled person in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Ohio Revised Code Chapter 4112; that Defendant terminated Mr. Turner’s employment in order to prevent him and Mrs. Turner from continuing to use medical benefits in violation of Section 510 of ERISA; and that Defendant intentionally inflicted emotional distress upon Mr. and Mrs. Turner (doc. 1).

Defendant moved for summary judgment (doc. 24), and the motion is ripe for the Court’s decision.

II. STANDARD

A grant of summary judgment is appropriate “if the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law.” Fed.R.Civ.P. 56; see also, e.g., Poller v. Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc., 368 U.S. 464, 82 S.Ct. 486, 7 L.Ed.2d 458 (1962); LaPointe v. United Autoworkers Local 600, 8 F.3d 376, 378 (6th Cir.1993); Osborn v. Ashland County Bd. of Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Servs., 979 F.2d 1131, 1133 (6th Cir.1992) (per curiam). In reviewing the [1039]*1039instant motion, “this Court must determine whether the evidence presents a sufficient disagreement to require submission to a jury or whether it is so one-sided that one party must prevail as a matter of law.” Patton v. Bearden, 8 F.3d 343, 346 (6th Cir.1993), quoting Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242 251-252, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986) (internal quotation marks omitted).

The process of moving for and evaluating a motion for summary judgment and the respective burdens it imposes upon the movant and non-movant are well settled. First, “a party seeking summary judgment ... bears the initial responsibility of informing the district court of the basis for its motion, and identifying those portions of [the record] which it believes demonstrate the absence of a genuine issue of material fact[.]” Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 323, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986); see also LaPointe, 8 F.3d at 378; Guarino v. Brookfield Township Trustees, 980 F.2d 399, 405 (6th Cir.1992); Street v. J.C. Bradford & Co., 886 F.2d 1472, 1479 (6th Cir.1989). The movant may do so by merely identifying that the non-moving party lacks evidence to support an essential element of its case. See Barnhart v. Pickrel, Schaeffer & Ebeling Co. L.P.A., 12 F.3d 1382, 1389 (6th Cir.1993).

Faced with such a motion, the non-movant, after completion of sufficient discovery, must submit evidence in support of any material element of a claim or defense at issue in the motion on which it would bear the burden of proof at trial, even if the moving party has not submitted evidence to negate the existence of that material fact. See Celotex, 477 U.S. at 317, 106 S.Ct. 2548; Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986). As the “requirement [of the Rule] is that there be no genuine issue of material

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901 F. Supp. 2d 1035, 54 Employee Benefits Cas. (BNA) 1609, 2012 WL 4506297, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 142231, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/turner-v-humana-inc-ohsd-2012.