Nature of the Case
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Facts
P worked as an angiography technician for D until 2004, when he was fired. P was also a member of the United States Army Reserve, which required him to attend drill one weekend per month and to train full-time for two to three weeks a year. Both Janice Mulally, P's immediate supervisor, and Michael Korenchuk, Mulally's supervisor, were hostile to P's military obligations. Mulally scheduled P for additional shifts without notice so that he would “ 'pay back the department for everyone else having to bend over backward to cover [his] schedule for the Reserves.' Mulally also informed P's co-worker, Leslie Sweborg, that P's “ 'military duty had been a strain on the department,' ” and asked Sweborg to help her “ 'get rid of him.' ” Mulally issued P a “Corrective Action” disciplinary warning for purportedly violating a company rule requiring him to stay in his work area whenever he was not working with a patient. The Corrective Action required P to report to Mulally or Korenchuk “ 'when [he] had no patients and [the angio] cases were completed.' P claims that the company rule invoked by Mulally did not exist; and second, even if it did, P did not violate it. Angie Day, P's co-worker, complained to Linda Buck, D's vice president of human resources, and Garrett McGowan, D's chief operating officer, about P's frequent unavailability and abruptness. Korenchuk informed Buck that P had left his desk without informing a supervisor, in violation of the January Corrective Action. P now contends this accusation was false: He had left Korenchuk a voice-mail notification that he was leaving his desk. Buck relied on Korenchuk's accusation and after reviewing P's personnel file, she decided to fire him. The termination notice stated that P had ignored the directive issued in the January 2004 Corrective Action. P claimed that Mulally had fabricated the allegation underlying the Corrective Action out of hostility toward his military obligations. Buck did not follow up with Mulally about this claim. After discussing the matter with another personnel officer, Buck adhered to her decision. P sued D under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994 claiming that his discharge was motivated by hostility to his obligations as a military reservist. A jury found that P's “military status was a motivating factor in the decision to discharge him.” It awarded $ 57,640 in damages. The Seventh Circuit reversed. The court held that P had brought a “ 'cat's paw' case,” meaning that he sought to hold his employer liable for the animus of a supervisor who was not charged with making the ultimate employment decision. A “cat's paw” case could not succeed unless the non-decision maker exercised such “ 'singular influence' ” over the decisionmaker that the decision to terminate was the product of “blind reliance.” The court said that the “ 'singular influence' ” rule “does not require the decisionmaker to be a paragon of independence”: “It is enough that the decisionmaker is not wholly dependent on a single source of information and conducts her own investigation into the facts relevant to the decision.” Since Buck was not wholly dependent on the advice of Korenchuk and Mulally, the court held that D was entitled to judgment. P appealed.
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