Rickey B. Bryant, et al. v. Food Lion, Inc., et al.

This case comes to us after some ten years of proceedings in the
district court, which culminated in a bench trial spanning several
weeks during 1997. On May 26, 2000, the district court entered a 74-
page opinion setting forth its findings of facts and conclusions of law
pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 52. The result was a judgment in favor of
the defendants on all claims of the plaintiffs that remained in the case
after the lengthy pretrial proceedings.

One of the principal arguments raised in this appeal is that the dis-
trict court applied the wrong legal standard in evaluating evidence of
certain internal memoranda of Food Lion (and conversations or dis-
cussions) relating to an alleged policy by Food Lion against "hanging-

on" by employees, i.e., an alleged policy to discourage employees
from maintaining their employment when they were perceived to be
simply hanging on to vest in the company's ERISA-governed profit
sharing plan.

Appellants' theory of the case was that Mr. Bryant (and others)
were terminated (or not rehired) in violation of the Employee Retire-
ment Income Security Act (ERISA), 29 U.S.C. S 1001, et seq., for a
prohibited discriminatory reason, viz., in order to keep them from
vesting in the plan, which vesting would occur after five years of
Food Lion employment. It was claimed by appellants that manage-
ment personnel had a self-interest in preventing"hanging-on," in that
a terminated employee's pre-vesting profit share would be forfeited
back into the general fund, thus, to some small extent, increasing the
share of other Food Lion employees, including managerial decision-
makers. Appellants claimed that the evidence in question was proba-
tive of the ERISA-prohibited policy and motivation of decision-
makers, including those who made decisions relating to the remaining
plaintiffs in this case. The district court, citing this Court's decision
in Henson v. Liggett Group, Inc., 61 F.3d 270 (4th Cir. 1995), stated,
at one point in its 74-page opinion, that "[s]uch evidence is as a mat-
ter of law not probative of any plaintiff's claim." The appellants claim
that by barring such evidence from its consideration, the district court
made an error of law.

Affirmed.

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