Katie Lindsey v. Walgreen Co.

In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
No. 10-1036
KATIE LINDSEY,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
WALGREEN CO.,
Defendant-Appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.
No. 1:08-cv-03547—Harry D. Leinenweber, Judge.
ARGUED JULY 8, 2010—DECIDED AUGUST 11, 2010
Before BAUER, RIPPLE, and KANNE, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM. Katie Lindsey was 53 years old when
Walgreens fired her from her job as a staff pharmacist.
She sued the company under the Age Discrimination in
Employment Act (“ADEA”), see 29 U.S.C. § 623(a)(1), but
the district court granted summary judgment against
her. Lindsey appeals, and we affirm the judgment.
Lindsey began working for Walgreens as a staff phar-
macist in 1995. After a few years she was promoted to

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2 No. 10-1036
pharmacy manager by Connie Jenkins, the district phar-
macy supervisor. But before long the company received
complaints about Lindsey from her coworkers. Lindsey
admitted to Jenkins that she had been filling expired
prescriptions and offering unauthorized discounts, among
other violations of company policy. Jenkins determined
that Lindsey was not fit to continue in a managerial
position, so she demoted her to staff pharmacist and
transferred her to another store. She also warned
Lindsey that she would be fired the next time she
failed to follow pharmacy procedures.
Lindsey was not welcomed warmly by her new co-
workers. She testified at her deposition that they called
her “lazy” and “slow” and questioned why Walgreens
repeatedly exiled “old,” “demoted” pharmacists to their
store. She said that she was even subject to disparaging
remarks about her age and abilities from Akua Bamfo-
Agyei, the pharmacy manager and her direct supervisor.
Lindsey lasted only a few months at her new store. The
events leading to her termination began to unfold when
a customer presented Bamfo-Agyei with a prescription
for fluconazole, a drug used to treat fungal infections.
The pharmacy database alerted Bamfo-Agyei to a poten-
tially dangerous interaction between fluconazole and
simvastatin, another medication that the customer was
taking to treat high levels of cholesterol. According to
the database, taking the two medications simultane-
ously produced a high risk of rapid muscle weakness
and wasting. Concerned for the customer’s safety, Bamfo-
Agyei telephoned the prescribing doctor but could not

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No. 10-1036 3
reach him. Although the prescription had already been
entered in the database, Bamfo-Agyei placed it in the
“exception queue” and added a notation that she was
waiting to hear back from the customer’s doctor about
a potentially serious drug interaction.
Lindsey relieved Bamfo-Agyei on duty later that day.
According to Bamfo-Agyei, before she left the pharmacy
she told Lindsey that she was waiting for a call from
the customer’s doctor; Lindsey, however, denies that
Bamfo-Agyei told her any such thing. But the parties
agree that, less than an hour after Bamfo-Agyei left,
Lindsey first entered a notation in the database that
she had “reviewed patient history” and then filled the
customer’s prescription. This process required her to
override the database’s drug-interaction warning.
Lindsey testified that she could not recall whether the
prescription was in the “exception queue” when she
filled it and that in any event she did not see a nota-
tion that Bamfo-Agyei was awaiting a call from the cus-
tomer’s doctor. But she also acknowledged being aware
of a potentially serious interaction between the two
drugs. She decided to override the database’s warning,
she explained, because she thought that the customer’s
condition required immediate attention and that the risk
of a serious drug interaction was minimal. The next day
the customer’s doctor returned Bamfo-Agyei’s call and
told her not to fill the prescription. When Bamfo-Agyei
discovered that Lindsey had already dispensed
fluconazole to the customer, she reported the incident to
Jenkins.

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4 No. 10-1036
Jenkins fired Lindsey after investigating the incident
and concluding that she had violated company policy.
Jenkins reviewed the database record and independently
analyzed the customer’s medical history and the poten-
tial interaction between the two drugs. She concluded
that Lindsey should not have filled the prescription. In
particular she found that Lindsey had violated company
policy by overriding the database’s drug-interaction
warning and that Lindsey had acted recklessly by
ignoring Bamfo-Agyei’s notation and filling the prescrip-
tion before hearing back from the customer’s doctor.
Lindsey filed this lawsuit claiming that Walgreens fired
her because of her age. See 29 U.S.C. § 623(a)(1). She
presented several theories of discrimination to the
district court, including the cat’s paw theory. The term
“cat’s paw” refers to an unbiased decisionmaker who
is being used as a tool by a biased employee. Lindsey
argued that Jenkins was a cat’s paw for Bamfo-Agyei,
who disliked Lindsey because of her age. Lindsey
insisted that Jenkins decided to fire her after “blindly
relying” on biased information from Bamfo-Agyei.
The district court granted summary judgment in favor
of Walgreens. In rejecting Lindsey’s cat’s paw theory, the
court cited Jenkins’ undisputed testimony that she inde-
pendently reviewed the incident before firing Lindsey.
Jenkins was not a cat’s paw, the court reasoned, be-
cause she did not rely solely on information provided
by Bamfo-Agyei.
On appeal Lindsey disputes that conclusion and insists
that the record reveals that Jenkins “blindly relied” on

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No. 10-1036 5
biased information from Bamfo-Agyei. But her argument
is unavailing because she failed to show that the informa-
tion Bamfo-Agyei gave to Jenkins was biased. Instead of
highlighting evidence that Bamfo-Agyei concealed or
pointing to falsehoods that she presented as facts, see
Brewer v. Bd. of Trs., 479 F.3d 908, 917 (7th Cir. 2007),
Lindsey cites the inappropriate remarks about her age
that she says Bamfo-Agyei made on other occasions.
Showing that Bamfo-Agyei uttered offensive slurs, how-
ever, does not establish that she manipulated Jenkins’
decision. See Wallace v. SMC Pneumatics, Inc., 103 F.3d
1394, 1400 (7th Cir. 1997).
Even if Lindsey could show that Bamfo-Agyei provided
Jenkins with biased information, Walgreens presented
undisputed evidence that Jenkins did not rely solely on
what she learned from Bamfo-Agyei. See Martino v. MCI
Commc’ns Servs., Inc., 574 F.3d 447, 452-53 (7th Cir. 2009).
The parties do not disagree that Jenkins conducted an
investigation before firing Lindsey; Lindsey, however,
challenges the thoroughness of the investigation, arguing
in particular that Jenkins should have solicited her side
of the story. But the thoroughness of Jenkins’ investiga-
tion is irrelevant. Because the record reveals that Jenkins
did not rely solely on Bamfo-Agyei’s allegations, Lindsey
cannot make out her cat’s paw theory. See Staub v.
Proctor Hosp., 560 F.3d 647, 659 (7th Cir. 2009), cert. granted,
130 S. Ct. 2089 (2010) (No. 09-400).
And even if Jenkins were a cat’s paw, Lindsey could not
prevail because the evidence established at most that
her age was a motivating factor in Walgreens’ decision to

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6 No. 10-1036
fire her. To establish liability under the ADEA, however,
Lindsey had to show that her age was the determinative
factor. See Gross v. FBL Fin. Servs., Inc., 129 S. Ct. 2343,
2352 (2009); Senske v. Sybase, Inc., 588 F.3d 501, 508-09
(7th Cir. 2009). Yet substantial, undisputed evidence in
the record supports Walgreens’ assertion that it fired
Lindsey not because of her age but because she violated
company policy. She overrode the database’s drug-inter-
action warning. Bamfo-Agyei reported the incident to
Jenkins because she feared for the customer’s well-being.
And Jenkins had warned Lindsey of the harsh conse-
quences she would face if she violated company policy
again. So even if Bamfo-Agyei harbored some age-based
animus, and even if that discriminatory motive could
be imputed to Jenkins, Lindsey has not shown that
Walgreens fired her because of her age.
AFFIRMED.
8-11-10

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