McCorquodale v. DG Retail, LLC

Background

Steven McCorquodale alleged that his former employer, DG Retail, LLC, doing business as Dollar General, denied him a promotion to District Manager because of his age and then terminated him because he complained about age discrimination. He asserted claims under the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) and the Minnesota Human Rights Act (MHRA).

McCorquodale had worked for Dollar General as a Store Manager since 2014. The company twice assigned him temporarily to District Manager duties, and his performance reviews generally rated him as meeting expectations. In 2017 and 2018, his supervisors classified him as promotable or high potential, with readiness projected within 0–12 months. After a 2018 reorganization, however, company managers expressed concerns about his store’s condition, his leadership, and his earlier performance in a training program used to evaluate Store Managers for possible promotion.

Dollar General promoted 29-year-old Nathan Lowey instead of McCorquodale. On May 25, 2018, McCorquodale complained internally that younger and less experienced managers were being promoted. On June 6, he became involved in a physical altercation with a customer at the Hilltop store. Dollar General investigated the incident and concluded that he violated its workplace-violence and shoplifter policies. The company terminated him on June 13. The termination decision was made after company employees had learned about his age-discrimination complaint.

Summary judgment on age-discrimination claims

Dollar General sought summary judgment, which is a ruling that claims cannot proceed to trial because no reasonable jury could find for the opposing party on the evidence. The court applied the same general analysis to McCorquodale’s ADEA and MHRA claims.

The court found that McCorquodale could make the initial showing required for an age-discrimination claim: he was over 40, was not promoted, and was passed over for a substantially younger candidate. The court also found that a reasonable jury could view him as qualified for promotion. Dollar General, however, offered legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons for not promoting him, including concerns about his readiness, store visits, training results, and store conditions.

The court then held that McCorquodale had not produced enough evidence to show that those reasons were a pretext, meaning a false explanation covering intentional discrimination. His positive performance history did not overcome the more recent negative feedback. The court also found that the evidence showed Lowey was at most similarly qualified, not less qualified, and that McCorquodale’s evidence about Dollar General’s promotion of other younger managers did not show that older, more qualified applicants had been passed over. The court therefore granted summary judgment on the ADEA and MHRA age-discrimination claims in Counts I and II. McCorquodale also asked to dismiss his termination-based age-discrimination claims in Counts V and VI, and that request was granted.

Summary judgment on retaliation claims

McCorquodale claimed that Dollar General terminated him because he engaged in protected activity by complaining about age discrimination. Dollar General did not dispute that the complaint was protected activity or that termination was an adverse employment action. It argued that the termination was caused instead by the June 6 customer altercation.

The court held that a reasonable jury could find a causal connection between the complaint and the termination. The termination recommendation or approval occurred 17 days after, four days after, or on the same day that relevant decisionmakers learned about the complaint. Emails discussing the termination referred to McCorquodale’s allegations. The court also found that a jury could view the investigations into the complaint and the altercation as intertwined, and could consider whether the investigation of the altercation was limited compared with the company’s stated investigation practices.

The court further found evidence supporting a possible finding of pretext. Before making his age-discrimination complaint, McCorquodale had been involved in a similar customer altercation after confronting a suspected shoplifter. Dollar General did not investigate or discipline him for that earlier incident. A reasonable jury could find the earlier conduct comparably serious and could view the company’s different response after McCorquodale’s complaint as evidence of retaliation. The court therefore denied summary judgment on the ADEA and MHRA retaliation claims in Counts III and IV.

Motion to exclude expert testimony

Dollar General also moved under Rule 702 of the Federal Rules of Evidence to exclude testimony from McCorquodale’s damages expert, Greta Bormann. Bormann planned to testify about lost earnings and the reasonableness of McCorquodale’s efforts to find work after termination.

The court denied the motion. It found that Bormann’s education and ten years of work as a vocational rehabilitation consultant qualified her to offer opinions about lost wages, job searches, and the labor market. The court concluded that the criticisms of her calculations, assumptions, sources, and failure to address certain matters generally concerned the weight or credibility of her testimony rather than whether it was admissible. Dollar General could challenge those issues through cross-examination and competing evidence.

The court also explained that Bormann’s front-pay testimony would not be presented to a jury because front pay is an equitable issue for the court. To the extent Dollar General sought to exclude that testimony from future court proceedings, the request was denied. The final order denied Dollar General’s motion to exclude expert testimony.