Freeman v. Package Machinery Co.

Summary

The First Circuit reviews an age-discrimination judgment for Iver J. Freeman against Package Machinery Company under the ADEA and Massachusetts law. The court addresses the sufficiency of the evidence, admission of statistical expert testimony, preservation of evidentiary objections, prejudgment interest, and assessment of expert-witness fees. It applies the manifest-miscarriage-of-justice standard to the challenge to the jury verdict and discusses waiver of objections to evidence admitted after a motion in limine.

Holdings

1. A district court may not displace a jury's verdict merely because it would have reached a different result; a new trial is warranted only when the verdict is against the clear weight of the evidence or otherwise represents a manifest miscarriage of justice. The district court did not abuse its discretion in allowing the verdict to stand.
2. Replacement by a younger person or by someone outside the protected age group is not an element of a plaintiff's prima facie case under the ADEA.
3. An ADEA plaintiff bears the ultimate burden of proving that age was the determinative factor in the discharge. After a prima facie case is shown, the employer has only a burden of production to articulate a legitimate nondiscriminatory reason; the plaintiff must then show both that the asserted reason is false and that it was a pretext for age discrimination.
4. A party generally must make a contemporaneous objection when evidence is offered at trial; a broad motion in limine does not preserve an evidentiary challenge when the trial court's ruling depends on the foundation and context developed at trial. PMC waived its challenge to Cobb's testimony.
5. The district court acted within its discretion in admitting Cobb's statistical testimony and allowing him to rely on undifferentiated termination data; criticisms concerning the size and composition of the data set went principally to weight for the jury rather than admissibility.
6. When a parallel Massachusetts Chapter 151B claim is tried to the court separately from an ADEA claim tried to the jury, a federal district court may, in its discretion, award prejudgment interest on the state-law damages if Massachusetts law permits the award.
7. A prevailing plaintiff in a Chapter 151B action may receive reasonable expert-witness fees as part of the statute's discretionary cost-shifting remedy, and a federal court adjudicating the state-law claim must preserve the flexibility Massachusetts law provides. Crawford Fitting's federal witness-fee limitation did not control the state-law award.

Questions Presented

1. Whether the district court abused its discretion by refusing to set aside the jury's ADEA liability verdict or grant a new trial.
2. Whether PMC waived its challenges to the admission of the statistical expert's testimony by failing to make contemporaneous objections at trial after its motion in limine was only partially granted.
3. Whether the statistical evidence was admissible and sufficiently probative to support the jury's finding of age-discriminatory pretext.
4. Whether the plaintiff was required to prove replacement by a younger person or a person outside the protected age group as part of an ADEA prima facie case.
5. Whether prejudgment interest could be awarded under Massachusetts General Laws chapter 151B when the state-law claim was tried to the court alongside an ADEA claim tried to the jury.
6. Whether the district court could award reasonable expert-witness fees under the Massachusetts Chapter 151B cost-shifting provision despite the federal statutory limitation discussed in Crawford Fitting Co. v. J.T. Gibbons, Inc.

Disposition

affirmed