A fact of life in modern business is an employee’s use of social media, or, in some cases, a former employee’s use of social media, and how it fits in with any post-employment restrictions to which they may be subject. In Bankers Life and Casualty Co. v. American Senior Benefits LLC, 2017 IL App (1^st) 160687- U (June 26, 2017), the Illinois Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s ruling that a former employee’s email communications sent to his ex-colleagues asking to connect on LinkedIn and whose LinkedIn profile contained a job posting from his new employer, was not a violation of his non-competition agreement.

Gregory Gelineau was hired by Bankers Life in 2004 as a branch sales manager in Warwick, Rhode Island and in 2006, he signed an employment agreement containing certain non-competition provisions that stated:

“During the term of this Contract and for 24 months thereafter, within the territory regularly serviced by the Manager’s branch sales office, the Manager shall not, personally or through the efforts of others, induce or attempt to induce:

(a) any agent, branch sales manager, field vice president, employee, consultant, or other similar representative of the Company to curtail, resign, or sever a relationship with the company;

(b) any agent, branch sales manager, field vice president or employee of the Company to contract with or sell insurance business with any company not affiliated with the company, or

(c) any policyholder of the company to relinquish, surrender, replace, or lapse any policy issued by the company.”

Gelineau’s employment with Bankers Life ended on January 15, 2015 and he went to work as a senior vice president at American Senior Benefits (“ASB”), which Bankers Life regarded a direct competitor and which, according to Bankers Life, had hired and retained many former Bankers Life employees. In August 2015 Bankers Life filed a complaint against Gelineau, among others, which included a breach of contract claim in which it alleged that after joining ASB, Gelineau recruited or attempted to recruit Bankers Life employees and agents from the Warwick branch by sending LinkedIn requests to connect to three Bankers Life employees. It alleged that the employees would then click onto Gelineau’s profile and see a job posting for ASB. Bankers Life also alleged that Gelineau directed his ASB subordinates to contact Bankers Life employees and agents to seduce them to leave Bankers Life and join ASB.

Gelineau moved for summary judgment, stating that he did not recruit any Bankers Life employees or agents in his area, did not direct subordinates to do so and did not use LinkedIn to send direct messages to Bankers Life employees or agents in the Warwick area for the purpose of hiring or offering them opportunities at ASB. Instead, he stated that all the people on his email contact list were sent LinkedIn generic emails asking them to connect. In response, Bankers Life offered two affidavits. One was from an employee who stated he had received invitations to connect on LinkedIn from Gelineau and one of his ASB subordinates and that he saw the job posting. The other was from a Bankers Life officer stating that Bankers Life needed more discovery to respond to the motion. Replying, Gelineau submitted an affidavit from that same subordinate, which stated that Gelineau had asked him not to recruit Bankers Life agents or employees in the Warwick area. The trial court granted summary judgment to Gelineau, stating that Bankers Life failed to identify any solicitation or other breach of contract by Gelineau, a ruling which Bankers Life appealed.

On appeal, Bankers Life argued that a material issue of fact existed regarding whether or not Gelineau induced or attempted to induce Bankers Life employees and agents to leave Bankers Life in violation of the non-competition provisions when he “affirmatively sent the LinkedIn invitation to the three employees, that the invitations directed its [sic] recipients to a job posting, and that it was Gelineau’s modus operandi to first utilize LinkedIn as a first step in recruiting Bankers Life employees.” The appeals court noted that the question before it was whether the emails sent through Gelineau’s LinkedIn account to the three employees and his other LinkedIn activity sought to induce or attempted to induce the employees in the Warwick office “to curtail, resign, or sever a relationship with Bankers Life,” in violation of his agreement.

To answer that question, the court looked at several cases from other jurisdictions that had weighed similar issues. It noted that in BTS, USA, Inc. v. Executive Perspectives, LLC, 2014 WL 6804545 (Conn. Super. Oct. 16, 2014), the defendant webpage designer updated his LinkedIn account when he left his former company and also made a LinkedIn posting that encouraged his contacts to “checkout” a website he had designed for his new company, BTS. The former employer claimed this violated his non-compete agreement but the court disagreed, noting that there was no evidence that any BTS customer actually viewed or visited the former employee’s LinkedIn page or did business with the new employer.

Conversely, it noted that other courts had ruled the opposite way, notably in a Michigan case, Amway Global v. Woodward, 744 F. Supp. 657 (E.D. Mich. 2010) where the defendant employee posted on his LinkedIn page “If you knew what I knew, you would do what I do.” He argued that his LinkedIn postings and other social media postings could not be considered solicitations because they were “passive, untargeted communications.” The court disagreed, and stated “it is the substance of the message conveyed, and not the medium through which it is transmitted that determines whether a communication is a solicitation” and held that this defendant’s message would easily be characterized as a solicitation.

Based on these cases, the court determined that Gelineau’s invitations to connect on LinkedIn were generic emails that did not contain any discussion of Bankers Life and did not mention ASB. It further determined that the Bankers Life employees had the option to connect or not and once connected their decision to click on Gelineau’s profile or to access a job posting on his LinkedIn page were not something for which Gelineau could be held responsible and that posting a job opening on his LinkedIn profile did not constitute an inducement of solicitation in violation of his non-competition agreement. In fact, it said “[t]o violate his contract, Gelineau would have to, directly recruit individuals working in the Warwick, Rhode Island area” and it found no such conduct.

While it appears that Bankers Life was facing an uphill battle in this case because the court essentially determined that Bankers Life had no evidence that Gelineau’s activity on LinkedIn was solicitation as defined in the non-compete agreement, it illustrates why employers should be careful in defining “solicitation” in their agreements and consider doing it in such a way that it encompasses at least the types of thinly-veiled solicitations on social media seen in Amway Global.

The Fifth Circuit, in Lay v. Singing River Health System, No. 16-60431, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 10758 (5^th Cir. June 19, 2017), recently upheld the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the defendant employer in an age-discrimination case because it agreed with the lower court that the plaintiff had failed to raise a material issue of fact that her termination, which was part of a reduction in force, was pretextual. This case is particularly instructive to companies facing a reduction in force when employees being considered for reduction are members of a protected class.

Virginia Lay began working as director of managed care at Singing River in 1999, a position in which she reported directly to the chief financial officer. In 2013, the managed care department was moved to the clinical-integration department and Lay began reporting to Chris Morgan, then age 50, the vice-president of clinical integration. In early 2014, the company discovered through an audit that it faced an $88 million shortfall caused by overstatements of its accounts receivables. This caused the company to renegotiate all its managed care contracts and reevaluate and restructure all its operations. Part of that restructuring included combining Morgan’s and Lay’s jobs into one position. Morgan decided to leave the company and Lay stated that she did not apply for the new position because it required a master’s degree, which she did not have. However, Lay was encouraged to retire but was permitted to stay on through June 2014 to maximize her retirement benefits. While there appears to have been some dispute about how the retirement option was presented to her and when she was told her position was going to be eliminated, it was undisputed that she retired from Singing River and eventually took a full-time job paying $3,000 per month, significantly less than the $160,000 salary she was making at Singing River.

Meanwhile, back at Singing River, a new CFO initially oversaw some of Lay’s former duties along with his own job responsibilities but in early 2015, Singing River hired Jason Rickley, then 32, to take over the newly-developed, combined position that replaced Morgan’s and Law’s positions. He was initially paid $110,000 and was enrolled in a master’s degree program in health administration at the time he was hired.

In April 2015, Lay filed an age discrimination suit under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (“ADEA”), 29 U.S.C. § 632(a)(1), in the Southern District of Mississippi and the court eventually granted Singing River’s motion for summary judgment because it determined that Lay had not raised any genuine issues of material fact to rebut Singing River’s proffered legitimate, non-discriminatory reason for eliminating Lay’s position. Lay then appealed to the Fifth Circuit.

The appeals court began its analysis by stating that under the ADEA, Lay was required to demonstrate that but for the discriminatory act, she would not have been terminated and noted that its review required it to employ the “more than well-known burden-shifting analysis,” wherein the plaintiff must first state a prima facie case of discrimination, which then shifts the burden to the defendant to proffer a reasonable-non-discriminatory reason for the termination. Under the test, if such a reason is proffered, the burden then shifts back to the plaintiff who must then meet her ultimate burden of persuasion on the issue of intentional discrimination. As to Lay’s specific case, the court also noted that if a plaintiff is terminated during a reduction-in-force, as here, the elements of the prima facie case are “(1) that [s]he is within the protected age group; (2) that [s]he has been adversely affected by the employer’s decision; (3) that [s]he was qualified to assume another position at the time of the discharge; and (4) evidence, circumstantial or direct, from which a factfinder might reasonably conclude that the employer intended to discriminate in reaching the decision at issue.”

Both the district court and the appeals court presumed that Lay had met her initial burden. As such, the appeals court began its analysis by examining Singing River’s proffered reason for eliminating Lay’s position. The court noted that the record evidenced the multi-million dollar shortfall and then stated that it was not the court’s place to question how an entity handled a financial crisis and that the law does not require that a company’s decisions be proper, only that they are non-discriminatory. It then stated that because Lay’s job was not the only one eliminated and because the elimination was part of a restructuring in response to the financial hardship, Singing River had presented a legitimate, non-discriminatory reason for the negative employment action.

In response to Singing River’s proffer, Lay offered nothing more than conclusory statements and hearsay. She first claimed that she was replaced by someone “half her age” and that the new position “entailed 99.9% of her former job duties under a different title” but later admitted that she estimated that total from reading the job profile online and that she did not know the full responsibilities required for the new position. Further, the court noted that the person that filled the newly-created position was not, in fact, half her age. The court stated that because a reasonable fact-finder would not be “persuaded by pure conjecture,” she had not raised a genuine, material fact.

She also claimed that she was “forced” to retire based on her age and pension status but the appeals court quickly disposed of this argument by stating that the record evidenced that the discussion regarding her retirement took place after she had been told that her position was going to be eliminated and that at most, the discussion was made in “a helpful spirit.” As such, the court determined that she had not demonstrated that she had been “forced” to retire and therefore had not raised a genuine fact for trial on that claim.

Finally, the court determined that other claims made by Lay regarding alleged age-derogatory statements allegedly made by members of Singing River’s management were inadmissible hearsay that could not create a genuine issue of material fact. Based on its analysis then, the appeals court affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment to Singing River.

Employers investigating Title VII discrimination claims should take some comfort, based on a recent Fourth Circuit case, that if they terminate an employee for making a false claim after a good-faith investigation, they will likely not be held liable for a Title VII retaliation claim if the claim later proves to be valid. In Villa v. Cavamezze Grill, LLC, No. 15-2543, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 10112 (4^th Cir. June 7, 2017), the Fourth Circuit determined that the plaintiff had no Title VII retaliation claim because her employer reasonably believed she had made a false harassment report when it terminated her, even though that report later proved to be somewhat true. In doing so, the court was required to examine the differences in Title VII’s “participation” and “opposition” clauses and determined under the applicable opposition clause that false reports are not protected so her termination could not, as a matter of law, have been caused by her “opposing” prohibited conduct.

Patricia Villa began working for CavaMezze Grill Mosiac, LLC (“Mosaic”) a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cavamezze Grill, LLC (“CMG”), in the spring of 2012 and by October 2013, she was a low-level manager reporting directly to Mosaic’s general manager, Marcelo Butron. In October 2013, she related to Rob Gresham, CMG’s director of operations, that she had been told by one employee, Judy Bonilla, that Bonilla had been offered a raise by Butron in exchange for sex and that she suspected that another, now former employee, Jessica Arias, had left because Butron had made her a similar offer. As part of an investigation into the allegations, Gresham spoke with both the alleged harassment victims, who each denied that any such offers were made. Gresham determined, based on his investigation, that Villa had fabricated the stories and made a false report regarding Butron. Based on the fabricated report, Gresham fired Villa.

Villa later filed a retaliation complaint with the Virginia Office of Human Rights, cross-filed with the EEOC, but the Office of Human Rights never reached the merits of the case and issued Villa a right-to-sue letter. She filed suit in the federal district court of Virginia against several of the CavaMezze related entities (collectively, “Cava”), alleging retaliation under Title VII. Bonilla’s deposition was taken in that case and in it, Bonilla changed her story and stated that she had, in fact, told Villa that Butron had offered her a raise in exchange for sex, even though she also testified that he had not actually ever made such an offer. At the end of discovery, Cava moved for summary judgment, contending that even if it had incorrectly determined that Villa made up her story, her termination did not constitute Title VII retaliation because the true reason for her firing was that Cava believed that she had made a false report.

Villa did not dispute that that was the true reason for her firing but argued that because she acted in good faith when she reported the story to Gresham, her termination constituted illegal retaliation, regardless of what Cava honestly believed. The district court rejected that argument, along with her alternative argument that Cava’s investigation was not thorough enough, because it determined that there was no factual dispute concerning whether Cava’s desire to retaliate against her was the but-for cause of her termination and granted Cava’s summary judgment motion, a ruling which Villa appealed to the Fourth Circuit.

The appeals court began its analysis by noting that Title VII makes it illegal for an employer to discriminate against an employee either because the employee “opposes any practice made an unlawful practice by” Title VII (the “Opposition Clause”) or “because he has made a charge, testified, assisted, or participated in any manner in an investigation, proceeding, or hearing under” Title VII (the “Participation Clause”). It then noted: “[u]nder either clause, since the statute only prohibits an employer from discriminating ‘because’ the employee has engaged in a certain type of conduct, ‘Title VII retaliation claims require proof that the desire to retaliate was the but-for cause of the challenged employment action’” (emphasis in original) and went on to state “[i]f an employer, due to a genuine factual error, never realized that its employee engaged in protected conduct, it stands to reason that the employer did not act out of a desire to retaliate for conduct of which the employer was not aware.” It also noted that when an employer has acted for a reason not prohibited by the statute, the court will not judge the “correctness, fairness, or wisdom of the employer’s decision.”

In applying the facts of this case to the applicable Title VII rule, the court first stated that while the participation clause – not applicable here since Villa did not “participate” as defined in the statute – protects a person who testifies, even falsely, from being fired, the opposition clause does not protect the making of a knowingly false statement because an employee complaining of conduct she knows did not occur is not “opposing” an unlawful employment practice and that firing someone for making such a false statement does not run afoul of the opposition clause. In fact, in opposition clause cases, the court must employ a balancing test, weighing the purpose of the act to protect people engaging in reasonable acts opposing discrimination against Congress’s desire not to tie an employer’s hands “in the objective selection and control of personnel.” In other words, “[e]ngaging in knowing fabrications certainly does not amount to ‘engaging reasonably in activities opposing . . . discrimination’; and precluding employers from taking any action against employees who have engaged in such deceit obviously would create enormous problems for employers who would be forced to retain dishonest or disloyal employees.”

To prove her case, the court said, Villa had to show that she was fired because of Cava’s desire to retaliate against her for engaging in conduct protected by the opposition clause. It determined that when Cava terminated Villa, it did not know that she had engaged in protected conduct because it was under the good-faith belief, based on its investigation, that she had made up the story. As such, its reason for terminating her was not retaliatory. It noted that if Villa was fired for misconduct that did not actually occur, it was unfortunate “but a good-faith factual mistake is not the stuff of which Title VII violations are made.”

As such, the Fourth Circuit affirmed the trial court’s grant of summary judgment in Cava’s favor.