James Phelan v. City of Chicago

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• concluding that “separate employment actions at different times by different City departments involving different jobs do not constitute the ‘same conduct, transaction or occurrence’ under Rule 15(c)(2)”
• holding that where plaintiff was white, his superiors were white, and his replacement was white, plaintiff was unable to present the necessary “background circumstances” to believe his superiors were inclined to discriminate against white men
• finding no support for reverse discrimination where the plaintiff was a white man, his superiors were white men, and the worker selected to replace him was white.
• “Recently, the Seventh Circuit modified the test to apply to situations where members of majority groups believe they were subjected to employment discrimination.”
• “The McDonnell Douglas test was created to remedy discrimination against groups that have historically suffered.... ”
• the mere length of employment does not provide a right to continued employment

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).