News
Litigation Principal David Morrison has won two separate federal appeals for Abbott Laboratories in discrimination cases this month - one in the District Court of Kansas and the other before the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.
On July 31, 2015, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court of Kansas' decision granting Abbott Laboratories summary judgment on claims of sex discrimination, FMLA interference and FMLA retaliation in the case of Didier v. Abbott Laboratories. David represented Abbott in the original case.
The Court of Appeals ruled that a supervisor’s purported comments to a female employee —including that young women with children should stay home — while archaic and unsuitable for the 21st century workplace, lacked the context, temporal proximity, or clear discriminatory connotation to constitute direct evidence of sex discrimination. Nor, said the Court, were the comments sufficient under the burden-shifting approach to support an inference of discrimination on the employer’s part because the supervisor was not the final decisionmaker in her
termination.
On July 8, 2015, David won an appeal before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which affirmed the Northern District of Illinois' decision granting Abbott Laboratories summary judgment on claims of sex and race discrimination in the case of Ho v. Abbott Laboratories. David represented Abbott in the original case.
