United States District Court, S.D. Indiana, Indianapolis Division
ORDER GRANTING DEFENDANT'S MOTION FOR SUMMARY
JUDGMENT
TANYA
WALTON PRATT, UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT JUDGE
This
matter is before the Court on a Motion for Summary Judgment
filed pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56 by
Defendant inVentiv Health Clinical, LLC
(“inVentiv”) (Filing No. 68). Plaintiff
Maman Bio (“Bio”) filed this lawsuit after
inVentiv terminated him from his management position with the
company. Bio filed this action asserting claims for gender,
race, and national origin discrimination under Title VII of
the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e, et
seq. (“Title VII”), and the Civil Rights Act
of 1866, 42 U.S.C. § 1981 (“Section 1981”),
as well as a claim for retaliation. After answering the
Complaint, inVentiv filed the instant Motion, asserting that
Bio was terminated for legitimate business reasons, and there
is no evidence of discrimination. For the following reasons,
the Court grants inVentiv's Motion for
Summary Judgment.
I.
BACKGROUND
The
following facts are not necessarily objectively true, but as
required by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56, the facts are
presented in the light most favorable to Bio as the
non-moving party. See Zerante v. DeLuca, 555 F.3d
582, 584 (7th Cir. 2009); Anderson v. Liberty Lobby,
Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 255 (1986).
inVentiv
is a health industry company that provides clinical,
commercial, and consulting services to pharmaceutical,
biotechnology, and life sciences companies. It enters into
project-based contracts with pharmaceutical companies such as
Eli Lilly and Company (“Lilly”), Bayer, and
Pfizer. Under these contracts, teams of inVentiv employees
provide statistical analysis staffing and services for
discrete clinical research projects and other needs as
defined by its clients (Filing No. 70-1 at 2).
Distinct
groups within inVentiv provide contracted services to
clients, including strategic resourcing, which serves
early-stage clinical research ventures; Phase II-III, which
serves clients in mid-stage phases of clinical trials; and
late stage, which focuses on Phase IV studies of FDA-approved
products (Filing No. 70-2 at 6; Filing No. 70-3
at 10).
Bio is
Black and was born in Niger, Africa. He began working for
inVentiv in February 2010 as a senior statistical programmer.
He was the only Black employee in the statistical programming
group, and he was the only employee from Niger. Bio's
duties as a senior statistical programmer were to provide
programming work for inVentiv's clients. He performed his
duties well, and his work evaluations were “meets
expectations” or better (Filing No. 74-1 at
3).
In
November 2012, Bio was promoted to the position of manager in
the statistical programming group. After his promotion,
Bio's supervisor was Steve Benjamin
(“Benjamin”), the director of the group.
Bio's duties as a manager of statistical programming were
to assign programming projects to the programmers on his
team, monitor those projects to ensure they were done
properly, evaluate the performance of programmers on his team
and audit their time entries to ensure they were properly
billing and coding, tracking billing receipts, and consulting
and communicating with inVentiv's clients regarding
projects. Id. at 3-4.
Bio and
his team provided services on statistical programming
projects for Lilly (Filing No. 70-1 at 3; Filing
No. 70-4 at 5-7). The statistical programming managers
in the Lilly group each supervised approximately ten
statistical programmers (Filing No. 70-1 at 3). When
Bio became a manager in November 2012, he was one of eleven
managers. After February 2014, he was one of four managers.
After February 2014, Bio no longer communicated and consulted
with Lilly; instead, Aicha Bassile (“Bassile”),
another manager, became the liaison with Lilly (Filing
No. 74-1 at 2, 4).
In
March 2014, Lilly communicated to inVentiv that it was
insourcing its oncology projects performed by inVentiv, which
included the statistical programming work performed by
Bio's team. inVentiv held a meeting with its managers to
discuss its insourcing strategy. It also created a
“frequently asked questions” document as a
reference for managers when responding to questions from
their team members about the insourcing. Bio attended the
managers' meeting and received the follow-up
communications about the Lilly insourcing. When the oncology
projects were insourced by Lilly in March 2014,
inVentiv's understanding was that only the oncology
projects were being insourced; it believed that the other
Lilly work would remain with inVentiv. In fact, the managers
were informed that Lilly had renewed its contract with
inVentiv for three more years. However, in late 2014 and
early 2015, Lilly continued to insource additional
statistical programming work (Filing No. 70-1 at 4;
Filing No. 70-4 at 29-30; Filing No. 70-5 at
9-12; Filing No. 74-5 at 12-13; Filing No.
74-6 at 22-34).
Around
this same time, as part of inVentiv's reorganization
efforts in response to Lilly's insourcing, Bio began
reporting to Paul Slagle (“Slagle”), an associate
director of statistical programing (Filing No. 70-4 at
11).
In
November 2014, Bio complained to human resources that Slagle
was improperly micromanaging him and his team. He sent an
email explaining that he was going through a manager/employee
situation that prevented him from doing his job properly, and
the situation was getting worse. The situation involved the
way Slagle was handling Bio's treatment and discipline of
a team member who was Slagle's friend. Donna Elbert
(“Elbert”), vice president of human resources,
met with Bio to discuss his concern. He complained that
Slagle was micromanaging him and his team. After the meeting,
Elbert investigated Bio's complaint, but she could not
find evidence to support the allegations of Slagle's
micromanagement (Filing No. 70-4 at 36-40, 61- 63;
Filing No. 70-6 at 2-3).
In
January 2015, Bio sent another email to Elbert explaining
that his situation was not getting better. Elbert asked Katie
Koers (“Koers”), a human resources manager, to
meet with Bio and Slagle to discuss their situation. Koers
met with Bio and Slagle in February 2015, and at the
conclusion of the meeting, Koers believed the dispute had
been resolved (Filing No. 70-6 at 3, 14; Filing
No. 70-7 at 1). However, the dispute was not resolved,
and Bio took his complaints to inVentiv's CEO.
(Filing No. 74-1 at 7, ¶43.)
In late
2014 and early 2015, Bio provided Slagle the performance
reviews and employee rankings for the members of his
programming team, and Bio recommended promotions for some of
his team members. Slagle reviewed Bio's proposed
assessments and made some revisions. Bio disagreed with
Slagle's revisions. On March 20, 2015, Bio sent an email
to Gregg Dearhammer (“Dearhammer”),
inVentiv's chief operating officer, and copied Elbert on
the email. In the email, Bio explained generally his
disagreement with Slagle's management of his team and
more specifically the revisions Slagle made to Bio's
employee assessments. Dearhammer responded the same day,
thanking Bio for raising his concerns and informing him that
Elbert and others would evaluate his concerns. Bio's
concern was referred to Tracy Mayer (“Mayer”),
vice president of strategic resourcing, and Elbert. Mayer and
Elbert investigated Bio's concerns and determined that
Slagle was properly managing Bio's team and made
appropriate revisions to Bio's evaluations and
recommendations. On April 7, 2015, Mayer responded to Bio,
informing him that the compensation ratings had been
investigated and would not be changed (Filing No. 70-4 at
64-68; Filing No. 70-6 at 3-4, 6).
Bio's
team initially had worked exclusively on programming projects
for Lilly. However, beginning in September 2014, Bio's
team did programming work for non-Lilly companies in addition
to its work for Lilly. Slagle and Bio decided to
“globalize” the programming work of Bio's
team because of Lilly's insourcing. All the managers in
the statistical programming group met on a weekly basis to
discuss the projects they were working on and to see if any
team in the group needed assistance. Bio's team began
doing programming work for inVentiv's Phase II-III
program, which was led by Nancy Fish, an associate director
of statistical programing. Bio estimated that, by May 2015,
his team was working on Lilly programming about 20% of the
time, and about 80% of their time was spent on non-Lilly work
(Filing No. 74-1 at 3-4).
As
Bio's team completed statistical programming projects for
Lilly, Lilly was not replacing those completed projects with
new work. Bio knew that his team's statistical
programming projects for Lilly were diminishing, so he was
involved in keeping his team members busy on other teams'
projects (Filing No. 70-2 at 5; Filing No. 70-4
at 33-35; Filing No. 70-5 at 4-5, 9-12). From
April 2015 until July 2015, Bio was assigned as a manager
exclusively to Lilly projects even though his team members
were temporarily working on other projects (Filing No.
70-5 at 19).
Because
the Lilly work to which Bio was assigned was coming to an
end, in May 2015, Benjamin and Koers began efforts to find
another management position at inVentiv for Bio by using the
company's redeployment tracker, an internal job placement
tool. Bio remained in the redeployment tracker through June
2015, but no management positions were identified for him to
fill. During this time, Benjamin asked other directors and
managers to consider Bio's team members for permanent
assignments. Benjamin frequently communicated to Bio that his
team's programming work for Lilly was going to end, his
team members would be available for other fulltime
assignments in July 2015, and he needed to prioritize
permanent placements over temporary assignments for his team
members. Bio kept his team ...