Not for Publication in West’s Federal Reporter
Citation Limited Pursuant to 1st Cir. Loc. R. 32.3
United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 02-2608
CHARLES F. SCHMITZ,
Plaintiff, Appellant,
v.
INTEL CORPORATION,
Defendant, Appellee.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
[Hon. Reginald C. Lindsay, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Boudin, Chief Judge,
Lipez and Howard, Circuit Judges.
John D. Corrigan, with whom O'Malley and Harvey, LLP, were on
brief, for appellant.
Michele A. Whitham, with whom Vijay Moses and Foley Hoag LLP,
were on brief, for appellee.
June 10, 2003
Per Curiam. Plaintiff Charles F. Schmitz appeals the
district court's award of summary judgment to defendant Intel
Corporation on his state law claim of unlawful age discrimination.
See Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 151B. Schmitz contends that the court
erred in concluding that his claim was both untimely and
inadequately supported to withstand summary judgment. We bypass
the court's statute of limitations ruling and proceed directly to
the merits, summarizing the facts relevant to our decisional basis
in accordance with the dictates of Fed. R. Civ. P. 56.
In May 1998, Intel acquired from Digital Semiconductor a
computer chip manufacturing facility known as "Fab 17" located in
Hudson, Massachusetts. Following the transaction, Intel
transferred Schmitz (who had been with Digital since 1990 and had
been performing equipment maintenance in a Digital laboratory) to
a position as a manufacturing technician in Fab 17's manufacturing
department. On June 23, 1998, Schmitz turned 48 years old.
The manufacturing department, one of several departments
within Fab 17, was responsible for manufacturing computer chips and
maintaining Fab 17's equipment. Intel assigned four shifts to work
within the manufacturing department and organized the employees on
each shift into eight functional areas. Intel further divided the
employees within each functional area into "module teams." Intel
assigned Schmitz, who worked "Shift 7," to the "Front End" module
team within the manufacturing department's "Etch" functional area.
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During the summer of 1998, Fab 17 was operating at only
25 percent of its manufacturing capacity. In order to keep its
pricing competitive, Intel decided to lay off approximately 450
employees, including approximately 110 of its 320 manufacturing
technicians. Intel's senior management established a hierarchy of
criteria that would be used in selecting which manufacturing
technicians would be retained. The management team charged with
implementing the layoffs (the "Selection Committee") was to
prioritize the retention of workers with skills critical to keeping
the manufacturing department fully operational despite a reduced
workforce. In determining which workers possessed these critical
skills, the Selection Committee was to look at the number and
quality (there were three skill levels) of operational proficiency
"certifications" that each employee had earned. Next, the
Committee was to prefer employees with high job performance
ratings. Finally, as a tie-breaker, the Committee was to prefer
employees with seniority.
As it happened, the Selection Committee deemed the first
criterion a sufficient predicate upon which to base its decisions
and never consulted information other than that relevant to this
criterion. Thus, in making its selections, the Committee had no
information about the job performance ratings, length of service,
or ages of the manufacturing department employees subject to
layoff. Nonetheless, at a September 21, 1998, meeting convened to
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notify employees about the impending workforce reduction, a
management representative suggested that job performance and
seniority had played a role in the layoff decisions.
In building Fab 17's new manufacturing department, the
Selection Committee first attempted to identify the minimum number
of employees within each module team necessary to perform all of
the team's work, and then added employees from different module
teams (but from within the same functional area) if necessary to
fill any skills gaps. The Committee did not move manufacturing
technicians between or among shifts and functional units; instead,
it treated each functional area within each shift as a distinct
unit for decisional purposes.
The Selection Committee retained only eleven of the
twenty-seven manufacturing technicians who had previously been
working in the Shift 7 Etch functional area. The persons chosen to
staff the new Shift 7 Etch had earned the most, and the highest
levels of, certifications as of the last week in August 1998 -- the
cut-off date used by the Committee. In the Committee's estimation,
these employees would be able to run Shift 7 Etch by themselves.
The Committee also transferred into Shift 7 Etch a thirty-eight
year old engineering technician (who had been laid off pursuant to
a distinct and unrelated selection process) named David O'Connor.
Intel regarded engineering technicians as having much higher skill
sets than manufacturing technicians, and the Committee decided that
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O'Connor's skills would complement those of the eleven remaining
Shift 7 Etch manufacturing technicians.
Schmitz was the only manufacturing technician who had
zero current certifications (Intel only considered a certification
"current" if the employee had performed the process for which he or
she was certified within Fab 17 in the previous year) at the time
the Committee made its selections. Consequently, the Committee
decided to lay Schmitz off. Schmitz was notified of the
Committee's decision in a letter dated September 22, 1998. In
December 1998, Schmitz received a final performance review in which
Intel mistakenly identified him as an employee with more technical
and leadership responsibilities than his personnel grade would
warrant. As a result, the review unfairly cited Schmitz's lack of
leadership skills and technical proficiency as causes for concern.
On January 16, 1999, Intel terminated Schmitz's employment.
Because Schmitz believed that Intel carried out its
workforce reduction with an eye towards purging Fab 17 of some of
its older workers (including himself), he filed a charge of
discrimination with the Massachusetts Commission Against
Discrimination and subsequently sued Intel under Massachusetts'
anti-discrimination statute -- Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 151B -- in state
superior court. Intel removed the case to the district court on
the basis of diversity jurisdiction and in due course moved for
summary judgment. The court granted the motion on a number of
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grounds, only one of which is relevant to our analysis. The court
determined that, to the extent that Schmitz had adequately pleaded
a disparate treatment claim at all, the claim foundered on the
complete absence of evidence of discriminatory animus towards him.
Schmitz contests this determination, arguing that a factfinder
reasonably could conclude from the record that Intel had not
truthfully explained the reason for his termination and that
(contrary to the court's "animus is necessary" ruling) such
evidence is all that is needed to forestall summary judgment under
Massachusetts law. We reject on factual grounds the premise of
Schmitz's argument and thus do not address Schmitz's assertion of
legal error.
Schmitz asserts that, alone or in combination, four
pieces of evidence in the summary judgment record permit a finding
that Intel was being less than fully truthful in explaining that
Schmitz had been discharged because of a lack of certifications.
Schmitz first contends that evidence of certifications Schmitz had
earned with Digital between 1995 and 1997 and with Intel in
September 1998 calls into question whether the Selection Committee
genuinely believed that he had zero certifications. But Schmitz
has no answer to Intel's supported rejoinder that Schmitz's Digital
certifications were not current and that his Intel certifications
were earned after layoff decisions already had been made.
So too with the second and third portions of the record cited
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by Schmitz: that Intel "replaced" Schmitz with the younger
O'Connor and misstated (at the September 21, 1998 meeting) the
criteria that actually guided the layoff decisions. Schmitz has no
response to Intel's evidence that O'Connor was retained instead of
Schmitz because he possessed skills that Schmitz lacked, and that
the management representative who presented at the September 21
meeting simply erred in referencing the originally developed
criteria instead of the ground on which decisions actually were
made. Finally, Schmitz has not explained how the fourth
evidentiary item to which he points -- evidence that Intel
mistakenly assumed he was in a higher personnel grade during his
December 1998 performance review -- casts doubt on the veracity of
the reason given for a termination decision that was made months
earlier. And we are unable to make the connection on our own.
Affirmed.
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