National Litigation Hotline

The Third Circuit has held that where an employer proffered legitimate, non-discriminatory reasons for an employee's discharge, its termination of that employee 6 weeks before her pension vested was not a pretext for age discrimination prohibited by the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, 29 U.S.C. ' 621, et seq., (ADEA). Leyva v. Computer Sciences Corporation, 2006 WL 542526 (March 7).

Affirming the lower court's grant of summary judgment to the employer, Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC or 'the Company'), the Third Circuit found that assuming plaintiff Maureen Leyva had made out a sufficient prima facie case, she had not met her additional burden to rebut CSC's stated reasons for her termination with evidence that such reasons were pretextual. Under Fuentes v. Perskie, 32 F.3d 759, 764 (3d Cir. 1994), once the employer confronts an employee's prima facie case of age discrimination with a nondiscriminatory reason for its adverse employment action, the employee may then defeat summary judgment by ”point[ing] to some evidence, direct or circumstantial, from which a factfinder could reasonably either: 1) disbelieve the employer's articulated legitimate reasons; or 2) believe that an invidious discriminatory reason was more likely than not a motivating or determinative cause of the employer's action.”