Williams v. Hevi-Duty Electric Co.

668 F. Supp. 1062, 55 Fair Empl. Prac. Cas. (BNA) 740, 1986 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 27514
CourtDistrict Court, M.D. Tennessee
DecidedMarch 28, 1986
Docket2-85-0033
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 668 F. Supp. 1062 (Williams v. Hevi-Duty Electric Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, M.D. Tennessee primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Williams v. Hevi-Duty Electric Co., 668 F. Supp. 1062, 55 Fair Empl. Prac. Cas. (BNA) 740, 1986 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 27514 (M.D. Tenn. 1986).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM

MORTON, Senior District Judge.

This is an action brought pursuant to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e, et seq., the Civil Rights Act of 1866, 42 U.S.C. § 1981, and 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging discrimination by the defendants in employment referral and hiring. The plaintiff alleges racial discrimination as well as retaliatory failure to hire in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-3(a). Additionally, plaintiff claims the defendant Hevi-Duty Electric Company (hereinafter “Hevi-Duty”) breached an October 1982 EEOC settlement agreement by penalizing the plaintiff through denial of employment. For the reasons set forth in the following findings of fact and conclusions of law, Fed.R.Civ.P. 52, judgment shall be entered in favor of the plaintiff against the defendant Hevi-Duty. Judgment shall be entered in favor of the remaining defendants, Gerald Block, State of Tennessee, Tennessee Department of Employment Security, Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Employment Security, and Bobby E. Westmoreland.

I.

The court has jurisdiction of this case pursuant to the provisions of 42 U.S.C. § 2000e, et seq., all jurisdictional prerequisites having been fulfilled.

The plaintiff, a black male, resides in Clay County, Tennessee. Defendant HeviDuty is a manufacturing firm with its physical plant located in Clay County, Ten *1064 nessee, and defendant Gerald Block manages the Hevi-Duty plant in Celina. HeviDuty employs more than 15 persons and is an industry affecting commerce as defined by 42 U.S.C. § 2000e. Defendant Tennessee Department of Employment Security is an executive agency of the State of Tennessee created for the purpose of administering the unemployment compensation and employment referral programs in Tennessee. T.C.A. § 50-7-101, et seq. Defendant Bobby Westmoreland is an employee of the Tennessee Department of Employment Security in charge of the Job Services offices in Celina, Tennessee.

In February of 1981, the plaintiff first applied for employment with Hevi-Duty by filing a written application at the HeviDuty plant in Celina. According to the stipulations, the plaintiff is qualified for entry level employment as an hourly employee at Hevi-Duty. Hevi-Duty did not offer a job to the plaintiff, and on March 29, 1982, he filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against Hevi-Duty alleging racial discrimination. In October 1982, the plaintiff and Hevi-Duty resolved the dispute and entered into a settlement agreement. Pursuant to that agreement, HeviDuty paid $1,800 to the plaintiff. Paragraph 2(b) of the agreement provided that the plaintiff “shall not be penalized in any future considerations for employment or any other employment related matters because of proceedings arising under the instant charge.”

In October or November of 1982, shortly following the resolution of the plaintiffs first EEOC charge against Hevi-Duty and in direct response thereto, Hevi-Duty instituted a one-year retention policy for all job applications. Job applications were to be considered “active” for one year from the date of their completion and were to be destroyed after the one-year period. HeviDuty was to hire only from “active” applications; “inactive” applications were to be purged from the files and not considered in the hiring process. Don Keith, industrial relations manager for Hevi-Duty at its headquarters in Goldsboro, North Carolina, directed the institution of the policy. HeviDuty asserts that the policy was legitimately implemented to provide a manageable and efficient method of dealing with job applications. Two secretaries at Hevi-Duty testified convincingly as to their instructions when establishing the retention policy. Although the court accepts the testimony regarding the decision to initiate the policy and the steps taken to do so, a number of factors cast grave doubts upon its continued existence and validity.

Office personnel were instructed not to inform applicants of the new policy; nor were those with applications currently on file notified. Pursuant to the policy, applicants who undoubtedly assumed they were in contention for jobs whenever positions became available were to be systematically excluded without notice after one year. Title VII prohibits the selective use of an otherwise valid application process to discriminate against black applicants. The policy, if operational at all, was followed haphazardly. Proper utilization of the policy dictated that the files be purged monthly in order to maintain applications in a current status. At Hevi-Duty, the secretaries destroyed the outdated applications “when they had time.” Additionally, no method for identifying the one-year anniversaries of the applications was established. At Hevi-Duty, it was necessary to search each individual folder to determine which applications were obsolete. Further stripping credibility from Hevi-Duty’s claim that the one-year retention policy was validly and uniformly maintained is its admission that the new application process was never reduced to writing. While an oral policy is not, of course, invalid in and of itself, the failure to reduce the terms and conditions of an important change in company policy to writing can only be viewed as an aid for company officials to arbitrarily and selectively enforce an everchanging and unascertainable set of rules.

When the one-year retention policy was adopted in October or November of 1982, the plaintiff’s application was more than 18 months old. Although the date of the application was clearly beyond the one-year retention period, Block and Keith discussed *1065 the plaintiffs application and agreed to keep it on file for an additional year from the date of the inception of the policy, ostensibly to “be fair” to the plaintiff. No other applications were given this irregular treatment.

Several times following execution of the October 1982 settlement agreement, the plaintiff visited the Hevi-Duty plant to ensure that his application remained on file. On these occasions, the plaintiff was provided with the original application form and was allowed to make necessary changes and/or additions in order to maintain an accurate and complete application. When the plaintiff returned the “updated” application to the secretary, she dated the changes, signed the application, and refiled it. The last such visit occurred in August of 1983. In actual fact, as hereinafter noted, when the application was permitted to be updated, it became a new application as of that date.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
668 F. Supp. 1062, 55 Fair Empl. Prac. Cas. (BNA) 740, 1986 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 27514, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/williams-v-hevi-duty-electric-co-tnmd-1986.