By: dmc-admin//May 13, 2002//
“Dvorak has tried to … show that he did not misuse the laptop, and that he was doing a good job. But that evidence is unresponsive to the issue at hand. Dvorak needed to show instead that the decisionmakers at Mostardi-Platt did not believe that he had misused the computer and were lying when they expressed dissatisfaction with his work. As we have often noted, it does not matter whether the employer was ultimately wrong or unfair in the determination, nor whether a jury in the company’s shoes would have fired him.
Rather, Dvorak would need to show that not even the employer believed the reasons it proffered for firing him. He can point to nothing that suggests that the Mostardi-Platt officials did not genuinely think they were dealing with a problem of computer misuse.
Furthermore, Dvorak has not shown that the decisionmakers were dissembling when they characterized the April 1 memorandum as totally unsatisfactory and something that caused them to lose all confidence in Dvorak. In short, he has no evidence from which a trier of fact could legitimately find that the company’s reasons were pretextual.”
Affirmed.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Plunkett, J., Diane P. Wood, J.