UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT
_______________________
No. 98-40875
Summary Calendar
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JOHN ARAMBULA,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
versus
CITY OF LAREDO; CARLOS VILLARREAL; FLORENCIA PENA,
Defendants-Appellees.
_________________________________________________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Texas
(L-96-CV-112)
_________________________________________________________________
June 2, 1999
Before HIGGINBOTHAM, JONES, and DENNIS, Circuit Judges.
EDITH H. JONES, Circuit Judge:*
John Arambula brought age discrimination and other claims
stemming from his turbulent last six months as the Risk Manager for
the City of Laredo in 1994-95. The district court granted summary
judgment for the defendants. Agreeing that no genuine issue of
material facts exists, we affirm.
For his first two years as Laredo’s Risk Manager,
Arambula received relatively positive job evaluations. Things
changed, however, when Defendant-Appellee Peña became the new
*
Pursuant to 5th Cir. Rule 47.5, the court has determined that this
opinion should not be published and is not precedent except under the limited
circumstances set forth in 5th Cir. Rule 47.5.4.
Director of Administrative Services -- and Arambula’s new
supervisor -- in September 1994. Although Peña approved a merit
pay raise for Arambula in November (based mostly upon Arambula’s
work for Peña’s predecessors), Arambula was terminated in March
1995.
The six-month overlap in Arambula’s and Peña’s tenures
was dominated by rancor; Arambula’s complaint to the Texas
Commission on Human Rights used 45 single-spaced pages to describe
approximately 80 incidents between them. Arambula’s appellate
brief quotes extensively from the numerous memos he sent to Peña
and the city manager about his feelings of being “oppress[ed] and
harass[ed]” by Peña’s “antagonistic” pattern of “berating,
embarrassing and demeaning” behavior toward Arambula and others.
In response to Arambula’s prima facie case of age
discrimination -- he was replaced by a younger worker -- the
defendants argued that Arambula was, “[i]n general, ... terminated
for insubordination, confrontations with co-workers and
supervisors, substandard work, substandard work performance, and a
complete lack of confidence by his supervisors that he could
perform the essential functions of his job.” The district court
granted summary judgment to the defendants because Arambula did not
produce evidence of pretext or of direct age discrimination to
refute the employer’s proffered reasons for the termination.
On appeal, Arambula argues that his and Peña’s stories
differed on the details of several incidents and who was to blame
for them. He contends that these differences justify a denial of
2
summary judgment under Bienkowski v. American Airlines, Inc..1 In
that case, this court found that sharply opposed accounts from the
employee and his supervisors raised questions of fact about
motivation that were “barely sufficient to create a jury issue.”2
Bienkowski, however, is factually distinguishable because it
involved no claims of serious mutual animosity like those before
us, and there was some evidence of age-material conduct.
It is clear in this circuit that “if the evidence put
forth by the plaintiff to rebut the employer’s reasons is not
substantial, a jury cannot reasonably infer discriminatory
intent.”3 Moreover, the plaintiff must prove not “only that the
defendant’s proffered reason is pretextual,” but also that
“‘discrimination was the real reason.’”4 Arambula is simply wrong
in his assertion on appeal that, “as a matter of law,” the
defendants “assumed the burden of conclusively establishing
nondiscriminatory motivation.”
Taken as a whole, the record does not include substantial
evidence that the defendants’ proffered reasons -- including the
well-documented difficulties in Arambula and Peña’s relationship --
were not the true reason for Arambula’s termination. Nor, as the
district judge correctly observed, does Arambula’s contention that
1
851 F.2d 1503 (5th Cir. 1988)
2
Id. at 1507.
3
Bennett v. Total Minatome Corp., 138 F.3d 1053, 1060 (5th
Cir. 1998).
4
Walton v. Bisco Indus., Inc., 119 F.3d 368, 370 (5th Cir.
1997) (quoting St. Mary’s, 509 U.S. at 515, 113 S. Ct. at 2751).
3
Peña was often in the wrong in their disputes suffice to meet his
further burden of proving that discrimination was the real
motivating factor. Arambula presents a couple of age-related
comments by Peña, but they are stray remarks, apart from which
there is no evidence that Peña’s dislike for Arambula was “in any
way connected to [Arambula’s] age.”5
The district court correctly granted summary judgment in
favor of the defendants on Arambula’s age discrimination claims.
In addition, for essentially the reasons stated in the
district court’s comprehensive opinion, we affirm summary judgment
in favor of the defendants on Arambula’s state law claims for
workers compensation retaliation, intentional infliction of
emotional distress (against both the City and Peña), and libel and
slander.
AFFIRMED.
5
Waggoner v. City of Garland, 987 F.2d 1160, 1166 (5th Cir.
1993). In fact, in one of the allegedly hostile comments, Peña
called Arambula a “joto raton [snitching queer],” which evinces
nothing about age.
4