56-Year-Old Lawyer Loses Age Bias Suit Over Hiring of 40-Year-Old Rival

SAN FRANCISCO - David Reeves was steamed when he wasn't chosen for a position as a staff attorney with Fairfield-based MV Transportation Inc.

As a lawyer who had handled more than 350 labor arbitrations before various boards and commissions, he felt he was more than qualified for the job that required an attorney experienced in "labor law and employment litigation."

Instead, the position went to Gail Blanchard-Saiger, a senior counsel in labor and employment litigation with Foley & Lardner who at 40 was 16 years younger than Reeves. The passed-over candidate sued for age discrimination.

In a published ruling Friday, San Francisco's First District Court of Appeal affirmed a decision by Solano County Superior Court Judge David Power that granted summary judgment for the transportation company.

"Plaintiff did not have clearly superior paper credentials and defendant did not offer inconsistent justifications for the hiring decision," Justice James Marchiano wrote in Reeves v. MV Transportation Inc., A125927.

Justices Sandra Margulies and Robert Dondero concurred.

According to the ruling, John Biard, who at the time was MV Transportation's general counsel and chief legal officer, testified at deposition that he and Blanchard-Saiger "just clicked" and that she had been recommended by an attorney at Foley & Lardner he "knew and respected."

On top of that, Blanchard-Saiger had clerked with a judge for the Eastern District of California, had graduated in the top five percent of her class from UC-Davis School of Law and had a license to practice in New York, where MV Transportation had operations.

Reeves, meanwhile, the ruling notes, had been a field attorney for the National Labor Relations Board, a lawyer for Kaiser Industries and Kaiser Steel and an attorney with Sempra Energy.

The First District found that the differing experiences were a was ...