Wilkes v. Biffs, Inc.
- John Tunheim
- 0:19-cv-01504
- U.S. District Court · District of Minnesota
- 11
In Wilkes v. Biffs, Inc., Judge Tunheim denied dismissal for delay, granted Title VII dismissal, and dismissed state claims without prejudice.
Sharon Wilkes’s federal Title VII claims were dismissed, while her state-law claims were dismissed without prejudice. Biffs, Inc. prevailed on those dismissals but did not obtain dismissal for failure to prosecute or failure to comply with court orders.
What happened
In Wilkes v. Biffs, Inc., Sharon Wilkes sued her former employer, alleging discrimination and retaliation after new owners took over the company. She also alleged that Biffs retaliated after she reported suspected misconduct and fired her. Biffs asked the court to dismiss the case because Wilkes had delayed complying with court orders and had not stated a valid claim.
The court denied dismissal based on Wilkes’s delay and failure to follow court orders, finding little prejudice to Biffs and no showing of harm to the court. It granted Biffs’ request to dismiss Wilkes’s federal discrimination claims because she brought them under Title VII, the federal workplace-discrimination law, even though her allegations involved disability, age, and marital status—categories Title VII does not cover.
The court also dismissed Wilkes’s remaining state-law claims without prejudice because it declined to continue hearing them after dismissing the federal claims. Judge Tunheim entered judgment accordingly, and the opinion states that Wilkes may choose to refile those state-law claims in state court within the applicable limitations period.
The detailed version
- Wilkes v. Biffs, Inc. · No. 0:19-cv-01504
- John Tunheim
- Aug. 11, 2020
Background
Sharon Wilkes sued her former employer, Biffs, Inc. She alleged that she worked for Biffs for 15 years and held the titles of director of finance and human resources director when new owners, Heather and Derek Pauling, took over in 2015. Wilkes alleged that she reported suspected misconduct, including driving under the influence of drugs, improper tax deductions, unreported payments to workers, and operating in Wisconsin without a license.
Wilkes alleged that Biffs retaliated against her after those reports through insulting remarks, unjustified criticism, public embarrassment, false accusations, and requiring her to perform work that she believed could worsen her arthritis. She also alleged discrimination based on age, disability, and marital status, as well as intentional infliction of emotional distress. Biffs fired her on March 16, 2018.
Wilkes filed a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on April 7, 2018. The agency issued her a notice of the right to sue on April 12, 2019. She filed this federal lawsuit on June 7, 2019.
Procedural history
A magistrate judge ordered Wilkes to file an amended complaint by August 1, 2019, and to provide Biffs with a copy of that order. She did not meet that deadline or notify Biffs of the order. After a second order set a September 27 deadline, Wilkes filed her amended complaint on September 28 and did not notify Biffs of the amended complaint or second order until October 11.
Biffs moved to dismiss under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), 16(f), and 41(b). Rule 12(b)(6) allows dismissal when a complaint does not state a legally sufficient claim. Rule 16(f) permits sanctions for failing to obey a scheduling or pretrial order, and Rule 41(b) permits dismissal for failure to prosecute a case or comply with court rules or orders.
Failure to prosecute and failure to follow court orders
The court denied Biffs’ request for dismissal based on failure to prosecute and failure to comply with court orders. Although the court recognized Wilkes’s delay, it found that the delay caused minimal, if any, prejudice to Biffs. Biffs had not shown that the delay harmed the court, and lesser sanctions had not yet been imposed. The order specifically states that dismissal for failure to prosecute was denied and dismissal for failure to comply with a court order was denied.
Federal claims
The court granted Biffs’ Rule 12(b)(6) motion as to Wilkes’s Title VII claims. Title VII prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The court held that Title VII does not provide claims for the disability, age, or marital-status discrimination alleged by Wilkes. The court also noted that Wilkes did not bring claims under the federal statutes that address those other forms of discrimination. The opinion further states that any federal claims arising before June 11, 2017, were outside Title VII’s 300-day limitations period.
State-law claims
The court dismissed all remaining state-law claims without prejudice. Those claims included state-law discrimination claims, retaliation claims under the Minnesota Whistleblower Act, and intentional-infliction-of-emotional-distress claims. The court declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction, meaning its authority to hear related state-law claims after resolving the federal claims, once it had dismissed all claims over which it had original federal jurisdiction.
The opinion states that Wilkes may choose to refile the state-law claims in state court within the limitations period as extended by the federal supplemental-jurisdiction statute. The order entered judgment accordingly.
Disposition
The motion to dismiss was granted in part and denied in part. Dismissal for failure to prosecute was denied; dismissal for failure to comply with a court order was denied; dismissal for failure to state a claim under Title VII was granted; and all remaining state-law claims were dismissed without prejudice.
Read the full 11-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.