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Ventresco v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Company6/13/2002
tor of production services. For each of the years ending January, 1993, through January, 1996, the plaintiff received an overall rating of "meets expectations" on his then-current performance evaluation, which was in the middle of the scale of possible ratings. The plaintiff never received any warning that his job performance was unsatisfactory even though, throughout this period, Liberty had a written progressive discipline policy in effect providing that employees should be given such a warning and then placed on probation prior to being discharged for such unsatisfactory job performance.
In January, 1996, Lancaster was replaced by Steven Sullivan as the head of the advertising and public relations department which, shortly thereafter, was renamed the Liberty communication services (LCS) department. At the time he was hired, Sullivan was told by Liberty's chief executive officer, Gary Countryman, that the department was "somewhat dysfunctional" and not well-regarded by the other operating departments within Liberty, and that Countryman was looking to him to reorganize the department and turn it into a "world-class communications department."
Sullivan promptly met with all the managers in the department, including the plaintiff, and asked them what they thought their job functions were and what they thought they were doing. Sullivan testified that, as a result of his interview with the plaintiff, he obtained the impression that the plaintiff "didn't have a lot to do" principally because his production duties had declined, and that he was performing a lot of tasks, such as scheduling vacations for secretaries, which should have been performed by other people. Sullivan also testified that he was struck by the fact that the plaintiff seemed content to view his job as a meaningful job, even though it did not appear to Sullivan to have substance.
At or about this same time, Sullivan retained an outside consultant, Walter Pile, to advise him with respect to reorganizing the LCS department. Sullivan met with Pile in late January or early February and specifically told him that the plaintiff's position was "outside the scope of [the department's] assignment" because "the production director titleá.á.á. no longer really applied relative to [the plaintiff's] current responsibilities."
Sullivan thereafter had periodic discussions with Bruce Anderson, who was vice-president and manager of human resource services at Liberty, regarding his plans for reorganizing the LCS department. Sullivan told Anderson during these discussions that he doubted that the plaintiff, who by this time was fifty-one years old, or another employee, Richard Kallio, who was sixty-one years old, would retain positions in the reorganized department due to their poor job performance.
On July 1, 1996, Pile sent Sullivan a letter outlining their joint recommendations for reorganizing the department and the reasons for the recommendations. At Sullivan's request, Pile included in this letter a statement that, as a result of the proposed reorganization, "long-standing under performers will be outplaced, sending an important, positive message to [strategic business unit] clients as well as the LCS staff."
Shortly thereafter, on Julyá17, 1996, Sullivan met with the plaintiff and told him that his position was being eliminated. Sullivan further told the plaintiff at this time that two new positions were being created, including one that would serve an accounting function and one that would serve a trafficking/production function, but that the company would be hiring from the outside to fill those positions. Sullivan also told the plaintiff that he would be allowed sixty days to find another
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