The case Braun v. St. Pius X Parish involved a non-Catholic Episcopalian fifth-grade teacher at a Catholic school whose one-year contract was not renewed after approximately 20 years of service when she was 63 years old. Braun sued the parish, school, and principal for age discrimination under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act and Oklahoma public policy (Burk tort), as well as religious discrimination under Title VII. The court granted the defendants' motion for summary judgment and denied the plaintiff's. On the religious discrimination claim, the court held that Section 702(a) of Title VII exempts religious educational institutions from liability for employment decisions based on religion, regardless of whether the employee's duties were religious or secular. On the age claims, the court found no genuine issue of material fact, applying the same-actor inference and concluding that documented parental complaints about Braun's performance supplied a legitimate, non-discriminatory reason for non-renewal.
This case involved a Title VII religious discrimination claim brought by the EEOC on behalf of Samantha Elauf, a Muslim applicant not hired by Abercrombie & Fitch because her headscarf violated the company's Look Policy prohibiting headwear for sales employees. The court addressed cross-motions for summary judgment on liability, focusing on whether the EEOC established a prima facie failure-to-accommodate claim and whether Abercrombie showed undue hardship. The court determined that Abercrombie had notice of Elauf's religious practice from her interview, that no interactive accommodation process occurred, and that the company failed to demonstrate undue hardship from allowing the headscarf. It therefore granted the EEOC's motion on liability while denying Abercrombie's cross-motion.
This case is a business dispute between CTI Services LLC (Citadel), which develops pipeline repair products, and Energy Maintenance Services Group I, LLC (EMS) concerning competing composite wrap systems, with claims including breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duties, misappropriation of trade secrets, and violation of the Oklahoma Consumer Protection Act. EMS moved for partial summary judgment on multiple grounds, including the statute of frauds due to the absence of a signed distributorship agreement, lack of standing for plaintiff Roger Walker, displacement of common-law claims by the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, and plaintiffs' ineligibility as consumers under the OCPA. The court granted the motion in part, holding that Walker lacked standing on non-trademark claims, common-law misappropriation was displaced by the OUTSA, fiduciary-duty claims based on trade secrets were displaced, and the OCPA claim failed because plaintiffs were not consumers; it denied the motion on statute-of-frauds grounds for fiduciary duties and deemed other issues moot.
This case is a False Claims Act qui tam action brought by the personal representative of a former Boeing employee's estate against Boeing, alleging the company submitted false claims to the U.S. Air Force by breaching a contractor logistics support contract requirement to use only FAA-certified parts in maintaining E-4 aircraft. Boeing moved for summary judgment on grounds that the court lacked subject matter jurisdiction because the allegations were based on publicly disclosed information from a prior government investigation and the relator was not an original source under 31 U.S.C. § 3730(e)(4)(A). The court analyzed whether the earlier investigation by the U.S. Attorney constituted a qualifying public disclosure, whether the claims were based upon it, and related issues of original source status, while noting that certain claims remained pending for further proceedings.
The case involved a dispute over the denial of long-term disability benefits under an ERISA-governed plan provided by ONEOK, Inc. to employee Thomas Arnold, who had applied for benefits in 2004 after becoming disabled. The plan defined total disability differently for the first 24 months (inability to perform any job within the company) versus afterward (inability to perform any occupation qualifying for Social Security disability benefits), and it tied later eligibility to SSA determinations, but ONEOK terminated benefits after Arnold's initial SSA denial. The court reviewed the denial under an arbitrary and capricious standard due to the plan's grant of interpretive discretion to the administrator and held that the denial was arbitrary and capricious because the administrator improperly applied the SSA standard to the initial 24-month period. It ordered retroactive reinstatement of benefits for that period and remanded the post-24-month eligibility issue to the plan committee.
In this ERISA case, plaintiff Barry Schultz sued UnumProvident and related entities alleging underpayment of long-term disability benefits under an employer-sponsored policy, challenging Unum's calculation of gross benefits and its offsets for Social Security disability payments and a third-party tort settlement. The district court reviewed Unum's benefit determinations under the arbitrary-and-capricious standard, taking into account Unum's inherent conflict of interest as both administrator and insurer, and examined whether the policy's definitions of monthly earnings, deductible sources of income, and offsets supported the reductions. The court upheld Unum's decisions, finding they were grounded in reasonable interpretations of the policy language and supported by the administrative record, including the treatment of pre-tax premiums and the recovery of overpayments from ongoing benefits rather than specific settlement funds. It therefore denied Schultz's appeal and affirmed the benefit calculations.