Plaintiffs Stacie Culp and Stephanie Peters sued defendant Remington of Montrose Golf Club, LLC in the United States District Court for the District of Colorado, raising claims of sexual harassment, retaliation, and negligent supervision under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA). The district court granted Remington summary judgment on Peters’s retaliation claim, and a jury found against the plaintiffs on all remaining claims but inconsistently awarded Culp punitive damages; the plaintiffs appealed to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Factual Overview
Stacie Culp and Stephanie Peters worked as servers at Remington’s restaurant in Montrose, Colorado, where they allegedly experienced sexual harassment from bartender Jason DeSalvo. Initially, neither reported the harassment because Peters believed management had been dismissive of past harassment complaints, and Culp feared nothing would be done. When Culp applied to return to her former job at Applebee’s, she mentioned the harassment to an Applebee’s manager, and this information reached Remington’s management.
Remington’s management team, consisting of General Manager Eric Feely, Food and Beverage Manager Rick Crippen, and Human Resources Director Beth Feely, met with Culp and began an investigation. The investigation was limited to interviews with ten female servers, asking only two questions without specific follow-up. Despite indications of problematic behavior from DeSalvo, including reports that he spoke about servers’ bodies, touched others inappropriately, and was “overtly sexual” with underage girls, Remington suspended DeSalvo for five days without pay, demoted him from assistant floor manager to bartender, and placed him on 30-day probation.
Culp claimed that following her report, Remington reduced her hours, leading to her resignation. Peters alleged that Remington retaliated by scheduling her to work with DeSalvo after his return from suspension, during which he refused to fill her drink orders, cursed at her, and shoved her. When Peters complained about being scheduled with DeSalvo, Feely allegedly responded, “Gosh, Steph, do we have to do this every week?” Peters immediately left and never returned to work.
The plaintiffs filed suit against Remington. The district court granted summary judgment on Peters’s retaliation claim but allowed the other claims to proceed to trial. At trial, the jury found against the plaintiffs on each claim but inconsistently awarded Culp punitive damages on a Title VII claim despite finding no Title VII violation. The district court resolved this inconsistency by setting aside the punitive damages award.
Legal Analysis
Peters’s Retaliation Claims:
The court affirmed summary judgment on Peters’s retaliation claims, finding she did not suffer a materially adverse employment action. Peters argued that Remington took two materially adverse actions: conducting a “half-hearted investigation” and placing her on the same shift as DeSalvo after his suspension.
The court held that an employer’s failure to investigate a discrimination complaint cannot support a retaliation claim absent demonstrable harm, citing circuit precedent in Daniels v. United Parcel Service. Regarding the scheduling issue, the court acknowledged that intentionally scheduling an employee with a harassing coworker could be materially adverse in some circumstances. However, given that DeSalvo regularly worked four or five evenings a week and Peters almost always worked evenings, Remington could not have given Peters much work without their shifts overlapping. The court noted that Remington did not change its scheduling practices upon DeSalvo’s return, and Peters never requested a schedule change. The court concluded that requiring employers to impose the harshest possible punishment as an initial sanction would be inconsistent with the Supreme Court’s pragmatic approach to Title VII.
Inconsistent Jury Verdict:
The court held that the jury’s verdict on Culp’s claims was irreconcilably inconsistent, as the jury found that Remington had not violated Culp’s Title VII rights but nonetheless awarded her punitive damages predicated on these nonexistent violations.
The district court had attempted to resolve the inconsistency by disregarding the punitive damages award, offering two rationales: (1) the jury could have found that Culp was sexually harassed and retaliated against for reasons other than those protected by Title VII, and (2) the punitive damages award was mere surplusage because the jury violated the verdict form’s instructions.
The Tenth Circuit rejected both rationales. It found the first explanation implausible because the punitive damages question specifically required a finding of a Title VII violation. It also rejected the “surplusage” approach, noting that the court could not know in which order the jury reached its verdicts and that the format of the verdict form might have confused the jury.
The court further addressed whether courts can resubmit special verdicts to the jury for reconsideration. Prior Tenth Circuit precedent had held that courts could not resubmit special verdicts. However, the court noted that this precedent has been undermined by the Supreme Court’s decision in Dietz v. Bouldin (2016), which held that district courts have inherent power to rescind a jury discharge order and recall a jury for further deliberations after identifying an error in the jury’s verdict. The court indicated that in future cases, district courts should resubmit special verdicts to the jury when inconsistencies are identified, rather than struggling to reconcile them.
Evidentiary Rulings:
The court addressed three evidentiary challenges:
- Peters’s Later Employment: Peters challenged the district court’s ruling that if she pursued ongoing emotional-distress damages, Remington could introduce evidence that she worked as an exotic dancer after leaving Remington. The court found this issue was not preserved because Peters chose to waive her claim for post-employment emotional damages rather than allow the evidence in. Following Supreme Court precedent in Luce v. United States, the court held that when a party forgoes pursuing a claim to avoid the admission of evidence, the party cannot appeal the conditional ruling.
- Testimony Regarding Culp’s Prior Employment: Culp challenged the admission of testimony from a Remington employee who had also worked with Culp at Applebee’s, concerning alleged issues at her prior job. The court found that Culp did not properly preserve this objection because her counsel made only a general “Rule 403” objection without explaining how the testimony would be unfairly prejudicial and failed to move to strike the testimony after it was given.
- The Anderson Testimony: Culp appealed the admission of testimony from Leah Anderson, a Remington employee, concerning conversations of a sexual nature that she had with Culp. The court concluded that Culp did not preserve her Rule 403 and 404(b) objections because her counsel did not provide sufficient specificity about why the testimony should be excluded and did not move to strike the testimony after it was given.
The court affirmed the judgment on Peters’s claims and on Culp’s negligent supervision claim, vacated the jury’s verdict on Culp’s harassment and retaliation claims, and remanded for a new trial on those claims.
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