Friday, October 5, 2007
Page No.:1
Court of Appeal Revives Age Discrimination Claim Against Google
Statistics, Comments by Young Executives Suggest Bias, Sixth District Justices Say
By KENNETH OFGANG, Staff Writer
A former Google, Inc. executive who was terminated at the age of 54 produced enough evidence to go to trial on his claim of age discrimination, the Sixth District Court of Appeal ruled yesterday.
Reversing a Santa Clara Superior Court judge’s grant of summary judgment, the court reinstated Brian Reid’s claim that a series of changes in his job title and duties, culminating in the elimination of an educational program he was running and the termination of his employment with it, was a result of his age.
Google maintains that Reid’s termination was solely a result of its decision to dismantle the program, under which Carnegie Mellon University professors taught courses at the company’s headquarters, enabling its engineers to achieve master’s degrees.
Assured Position
Reid, who had previously held the titles of director of operations and director of engineering, testified that he was assured the company intended to maintain the program under his supervision for at least five years but that he was not given a budget or staff to support the program.
Reid was hired by Google in June 2002, after having been an associate professor in electrical engineering at Stanford University. At the time of his hiring, he was 52 years old; the company founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, were under 30; and other high-level officials of the company were in their 30s and 40s, except for Wayne Rosing, the vice president of engineering, who was three years older than Reid.
To support his claim that he was fired because of his age and not his abilities, Reid offered his only written performance evaluation at Google, which described him as having “an extraordinarily broad range of knowledge” and “an excellent attitude,” of projecting “confidence when dealing with fast changing situations,” and as being “very intelligent,” “creative,” and “a problem solver.”
Derogatory Comments
Reid claimed that while he was working at the company, he was subjected to numerous age-related derogatory comments by younger workers, including other executives, who said his ideas were “obsolete” and “too old to matter;” and that he was slow,” fuzzy,” “sluggish,” “lethargic,” an “old man,” an “old guy,” and an “old fuddy-duddy.”
He noted that when he was moved into the graduate program, his duties were divided between two men who were 15 and 20 years younger. In early 2004, he alleged, Rosing told him he was not a “cultural fit” with the engineering department and should look for a job elsewhere in the company.
Reid said he tried to find another position, but could not secure one. In opposition to the summary judgment motion, he presented e-mails showing that company officials who communicated about his situation at the time he was terminated from engineering had already determined there was no place for him at Google.
He also presented the declaration of Norman Matloff, a college professor with 30 years of experience in statistics. Matloff concluded, based on data obtained from the company, that for both high-level and lower-level employees at Google, there was a significant negative correlation between age and performance rating, and that for high-level employees, a significant negative correlation between age and bonus.
Presiding Justice Conrad Rushing, writing for the Court of Appeal, said Reid had presented a prima facie case of discrimination, and had sufficiently rebutted Google’s claim that he was terminated solely because of a business decision to eliminate his position.
Rushing cited the Matloff declaration, the comments allegedly made by Reid’s fellow employees, the fact that Reid was demoted from a substantial position to one that was not viable shortly before his termination, and evidence that the company gave Reid a different reason for his termination before telling him that the educational program was being axed.
The trial judge, Rushing said, “clearly erred” in ruling that the statistical evidence did not raise a triable issue. Google, he noted, “does not offer conflicting expert testimony to dispute Reid’s statistical findings; rather, Google’s counsel offers arguments about why the findings are not sound,” including that the sample sizes were too small.
Those arguments, the presiding justice said, go to the weight of the evidence and must be resolved at trial rather than by summary judgment.
The jurist went on to rejected Google’s claims that it cannot be held liable for discrimination based on what it characterized as “stray remarks” by its employees about Reid’s age. The comments themselves, the fact that some of them were made by executives who had apparent input into the decision to terminate Reid, and their consistency with other evidence of age bias make them significant in the context of the evidence as a whole, Rushing said.
The presiding justice also rejected Google’s contention that the fact that Rosing, who is older than the plaintiff, made the termination decision creates an inference of non-discrimination. While that evidence may persuade a jury, Rushing said, the jury would also be entitled to consider evidence that younger executives, including co-founder Page, influenced the decision.
Nor, Rushing added, is it presumed that because someone is older, he did not discriminate on the basis of age.
The case is Reid v. Google, Inc., H029602.
Copyright 2007, Metropolitan News Company