Rod Satterwhite and David Greenspan are members of the Labor & Employment group at McGuireWoods LLP. Both handle employment litigation on behalf of employers, and advise companies on employment issues regularly.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - Posts

How Not to Fire a Coach

Frequently, I read the report of a case, and after reviewing the facts, ask myself, "I wonder what really was going on here?"  Such a case is Peirick v. Indiana University-Purdue University (I always thought they were two different schools)  Indianapolis, a recent gender and age discrimination claim. 
 
The school fired Peirick, the women's tennis coach, after 13 years of work, and immediately after the tennis team went undefeated during regular season play (a first), won the conference championship, became the first women's team at the school to advance to the NCAA post-season tournament, and after she was named a College Coach of the Year by the U.S. Professional Tennis Association.
 
Okay, folks.  Big red flag here -- if you're going to fire a coach after she's led your athletic team to its best year in school history, and recognition at a national level, you'd better have solid evidence of some pretty significant misconduct or other failing.  What you absoutely can't do is summarily terminate her with no warning, on the basis of:  equivocal complaints by a couple of players about coaching style, a complaint about driving habits, and allegedly blaming school administrators for failure to properly schedule a tennis tournament in a selected venue.  You especially can't terminate someone for this conduct if you wait months after the last incident before making the termination decision and don't bother to raise any of these complaints with the coach yourself.  Finally, you absolutely, positively should not terminate a female coach for this conduct after you've tolerated similar conduct on the part of male coaches and given them the chance to improve, and you replace the 13-year veteran coach with a 23-year-old novice and start by paying her more than the 13-year veteran. 
 
Of course, this is exactly what the University did and the 7th Circuit called the administration on it.
 
Like I said earlier, I wonder what really was going on.  My guess is that somebody badly wanted the tennis coach gone for a reason that no one wanted to articulate and so the administration cobbled together whatever bad things it could find in order to justify the decision.  Or perhaps the 23-year old replacement was perceived to be a dramatic upgrade in quality of coaching and the administration wanted to bring her in right away.  But the entire decision smells fishy -- which is exactly why there's going to be a trial to sort this all out.  But I'm guessing we still won't know the real reason at the end of the process.
 
 
posted Tuesday, December 18, 2007 10:50 AM by Lou Michels with 0 Comments

Old School Flying

The saying goes that, "There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots."  It's also true that in the United States, there are no old commercial pilots at all, at least over the age of 60, because the FAA has consistently enforced a rule first put into effect back in the 50s that requires commercial pilots to retire at age 60.  The basis of the rule is the belief that flying requires keen sensory acuity and rapid-fire reflexes that are incompatible with the condition of average pilot once he reaches age 60.  These kinds of attributes were especially critical in emergency situations. 
 
Of course, this type of blatant age stereotyping has been undercut by the fact that we now have astronauts fly at or above age 60.  And the requirement that pilots need to be at the absolute peak of physical capability has been reduced substantially by the numerous automated systems in modern commercial jets that greatly limit the need for instantaneous, "white-knuckle" responses to in-flight emergencies.  So it was not too surprising when Congress passed a bill recently lifting the mandatory retirement age to 65 for commercial pilots.
 
Most modern aviation accidents are the result of some type of error in judgment on the part of the crew, either in misinterpreting or misreading instrument settings, or misjudging the weather or physical state of the aircraft.  And there is no doubt that more "experienced" pilots generally have better judgment than younger pilots in these types of situations.
 
The President signed the legislation almost immediately.  Strike another blow against age-related stereotyping, although international treaty requirements will mandate that airlines cannot put two pilots over the age of 60 in the same cockpit at the same time.  I suspect that restriction will eventually fall by the wayside as well as the air-traffic control corridors become more regulated and flying safety becomes even less dependent on physical capability.
posted Tuesday, December 18, 2007 10:38 AM by Lou Michels with 0 Comments