Hyams v. CVS Health Corporation

Background

Ryan Hyams was employed as a pharmacist by CVS. The lawsuit arose from his termination after a Drug Utilization Review audit. CVS created a fictitious patient record to test whether pharmacists would identify possible drug interactions. During the audit, Hyams bypassed a warning screen, made notations in the record, approved the prescription, and indicated that he had contacted the prescriber, although he had not done so. Hyams said he understood CVS policy to allow approval if he discussed the interaction with the patient and believed the computer system did not allow him to record that plan accurately.

The evidence conflicted about whether the fictitious patient later spoke with Hyams or another pharmacist and about what occurred during that interaction. The court was required to credit Hyams’s evidence for purposes of summary judgment. The evidence also conflicted about who made the termination decision. Hyams and his supervisor indicated that a committee made the decision, while Thomas Davis stated that he decided to terminate pharmacists who misrepresented that they had contacted prescribers. The court found a factual dispute about Davis’s role and about how CVS’s policy was applied.

Hyams’s First Amended Complaint asserted eight causes of action against CVS Health Corporation, CVS Pharmacy, Inc., Garfield Beach CVS, LLC, and CVS RX Services, Inc.: race or color discrimination under California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act, disparate-impact discrimination, harassment, retaliation, failure to prevent or remedy discrimination and retaliation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress, and wrongful termination in violation of public policy. The defendants moved for summary judgment on all claims. Summary judgment is a decision entered when the evidence shows no genuine dispute about a fact that could affect the outcome and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.

Court’s Analysis

Disparate-treatment discrimination. The court applied the burden-shifting framework used for employment-discrimination claims. CVS offered legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons for terminating Hyams, but the court found evidence creating factual disputes about whether those reasons were a pretext, meaning an explanation that was not the real reason. Those disputes included who made the termination decision, whether the decisionmaker knew Hyams’s race, and whether Davis’s testimony was credible. The court therefore denied summary judgment on the first cause of action.

Disparate-impact discrimination. The court stated that it had dismissed this claim with prejudice after CVS filed its summary-judgment motion. It therefore stated that CVS’s motion concerning the second cause of action was moot. In the conclusion, however, the court also stated that CVS’s motion was denied with respect to the first, second, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth causes of action.

Harassment. Hyams relied on evidence that customers or non-pharmacy employees referred to him as the “Big Black Pharmacist” and that a supervisor said he came across too aggressively because of his skin color and size. The court concluded that Hyams had not presented evidence that these statements altered his working conditions or made it more difficult for him to do his job. The court granted summary judgment on the third cause of action.

Retaliation. Hyams presented evidence that he questioned why, as the only African American pharmacist in his district, he appeared to have been singled out for the audit. The court found a factual dispute about whether this was protected activity. Because his termination followed roughly one month later, the court also found a factual dispute about a causal connection between the complaint and termination. The court denied summary judgment on the fourth cause of action.

Remaining claims. The court treated the failure-to-prevent, emotional-distress, and wrongful-termination claims as derivative of the discrimination or retaliation claims. Because CVS had not obtained summary judgment on those underlying claims, the court denied summary judgment on the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth causes of action.

Evidentiary and administrative motions. The court denied as moot Hyams’s requests to strike evidence and his evidentiary objections. The court denied CVS’s motion to supplement the summary-judgment record because it was improper and untimely, for the reasons stated at the hearing.

Disposition

Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton denied CVS’s motion for summary judgment as to the first, second, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth causes of action, and granted it as to the third cause of action. The order separately stated that the second cause of action had already been dismissed with prejudice and that summary judgment on it was moot.