Age Discrimination: Nursing Home Administrator's Lawsuit Thrown Out
Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession
April 1999
Quick Summary: To file a wrongful discharge lawsuit for age discrimination an employee must:
Be forty to seventy years old;
Perform her job up to her employer’s expectations;
Be discharged; and
Be replaced by a substantially younger person.
Even so, the employer can say in its defense that the employee may have been meeting some performance objectives, but on balance was not performing fully up to expectations. UNITED STATES CIRCUIT COURT, EIGHTH CIRCUIT, 1998.
According to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, discussing retirement with a sixty-one year-old management-level employee as an option to resolve ongoing performance issues is not, in and of itself, proof of intent to commit age discrimination if the employee is later terminated.
The court also said that effective relations with subordinates, ability to delegate, effective communication and overall staff morale are important considerations in managing a nursing home, above and beyond bottom-line financial efficiency.
Deficiencies in these areas after a long period of ongoing attempts at correction and improvement can be legitimate, non-discriminatory reasons for terminating a management-level employee, without opening up liability for age discrimination, the court ruled. Ziegler v. Nursing, 133 F. 3d 671 (8th Cir., 1998).
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