Hung v. Kaiser Permanente
After Shu Hung was forced to retire from her position as a Kaiser outpatient pharmacist, a position she had held for more than several decades, she brought an action for damages. The trial court granting respondents' motion for summary judgment (Code Civ. Proc., § 437c)[1] and a judgment was entered in favor of respondents Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc., ("KFHP") and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals ("KFH"),[2] and Chris Oliva, the pharmacy director who made the decision to terminate Hung.
On appeal, Hung maintains that the judgment must be reversed because triable issues of material fact remain as to whether the articulated reasons for the decision to terminate her were pretext for discrimination on the basis of disability, age, and gender under the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) (Gov. Code, § 12900 et seq.) and for retaliation on the basis of her exercise of rights under the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) (29 U.S.C., § 2601 et seq.). According to Hung, her evidence showed that the four medication-related incidents on which the termination decision was supposedly based were either fabricated or "occurred in a dramatically different fashion" than described by Oliva and, therefore, a jury should be permitted to "decide whose story is more credible."
Respondents presented sufficient evidence of legitimate, nondiscriminatory and nonretaliatory reasons for the decision to terminate appellant Hung. The evidence as a whole was insufficient to support a reasonable inference that the proffered reasons were untrue or those reasons were merely a pretext for discrimination or retaliation. Accordingly, we affirm.
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