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25-year hospital security guard's firing after incident with patient upheld

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A federal appeals court has upheld dismissal of a 25-year hospital security guard following an incident with a psychiatric patient, in a divided opinion.

Anita Loyd, an African-American woman who was 52 at the time, had worked as a security guard for 25 years at Saint Joseph Mercy Oakland/Trinity Health Hospital in Pontiac, Michigan, according to Wednesday’s ruling by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati in Anita Loyd v. Saint Joseph Mercy Oakland et al.

On June 16, 2011, Ms. Loyd was dispatched to a room housing a female psychiatric patient. The patient was agitated and combative, and the medial staff needed help in restraining her. “Loyd told the patient that she could leave the hospital if she had been admitted for a drug-related or alcohol-related (as opposed to a psychiatric) reason,” said the opinion.

“Loyd’s actions exacerbated the patient’s condition to the point where the patient tried to pull an IV out of her own arm,” said the ruling. Two other security guards eventually succeeded in restraining the patient without Ms. Loyd helping, according to the hospital in the ruling.

Ms. Loyd denied she had failed to help restrain the patient, and that the patient had become more combative as a result of Ms. Loyd’s actions.

Ms. Loyd was terminated by the hospital in July of 2011 following an internal investigation and replaced by a 39-year old African-American woman, the ruling said.

Ms. Loyd filed suit in 2012 in U.S. District Court in Flint, Michigan, charging the hospital with age, race and sex discrimination. The District Court granted the hospital summary judgment dismissing the case, concluding Ms. Loyd could not show “its proffered reason for firing her was intended to disguise unlawful discrimination.” Ms. Loyd appealed the ruling.

Today’s majority opinion said Ms. Loyd had previously received written warnings in 2001 and 2004. In addition, in a 2010 incident, she left work because of illness without first obtaining her supervisor’s permission, and in a second incident the same year she left her post without excuse or permission, said the ruling.

Pointing to the hiring of an African-American woman to replace her, the opinion said Ms. Loyd had failed to establish a prima facie case of either race or sex discrimination. On the age discrimination charge, the appeals panel agreed with the District Court that she could not show its reason for terminating her was pretextual.

The District Court relied on the “honest-belief rule” in upholding her dismissal, said the panel. This provides that an employer is entitled to “summary judgment on pretext, even if its conclusion is later shown to be mistaken, foolish, trivial or baseless,” said the appeals court, in citing an earlier case.

“The hospital took witness statements and made a reasonable assessment of the available evidence before terminating Loyd,” said the appeals panel, in a 2-1 ruling. “The law does not require the hospital to do anything more … To require otherwise would unduly frustrate an employer’s ability to terminate insubordinate employees for legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons, said the ruling.

“Loyd has simply offered no evidence to rebut the hospital’s honestly held belief that Loyd committed a major infraction on June 16, 2011, and this lack of evidence dooms Loyd’s age discrimination claims,” said the ruling in upholding the case’s dismissal.

The dissenting opinion said in part Ms. Loyd had presented “sufficient evidence to establish genuine disputes of material fact in this case.”

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