July 17, 2025
Don’t Drop the Ball on Documentation
This is the half-empty side of the July 14th story, “Documentation Saves the Day!” On July 17th the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (covering MI, OH, KY TN) found that a manager could proceed with his age discrimination claim.
The manager was reportedly fired for “creating a toxic culture” despite having “had consistently positive ratings as a manager from his employees.” The employee alleged “culture was a catchall term to obfuscate their systematic efforts to remove older employees in favor of younger ones.” The fired manager who was 59 was replaced by a 33-year old with no management experience. The court (and the EEOC prior to claim being filed) found the employer “had no record of disciplinary actions or warnings in his personnel file.” For the records they did have, the employer had destroyed all original documents related to the manager’s employment including reasons for his termination and “did not implement a uniform document destruction policy.”
The only document the employer was able to provide appeared to have been created by the employer after the employee submitted his complaint to HR. With no documentation to rebut the former manager’s claims, the court found he had “offered sufficient evidence of age discrimination to rebut [the employer’s] proffered nondiscriminatory reason for terminating [the employee]…’culture.’”
Lessons learned.
Document, document, document. Train managers about why it is so important as well as how to do it objectively. Ensure managers document in real time, not retroactively.
Document retention and destruction procedures. Notice the court pointed out that the employer had no such policy. This could give rise to an appearance or inference that the former manager’s records were destroyed because he filed a complaint, not despite the fact that he filed a complaint. If you don’t have these procedures, talk to your company’s litigating counsel about developing them.
