Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—AGE—W.D. Pa.: Firing over falsified record raises age bias question, (Aug 10, 2026)

By George Basharis, J.D.

Eastman Chemical Resins fired a 58-year-old employee while a younger employee accused of forging a supervisor’s signature received only a documented discussion.

A longtime assistant area supervisor fired for allegedly falsifying a company document may take his age discrimination claim against Eastman Chemical Resins to trial after evidence showed that younger employees accused of comparable violations kept their jobs, ruled a federal district court in Pennsylvania. Repeated questions about his retirement plans could further support a finding of pretext. So could evidence disputing the employer’s claim that the employee had been previously counseled about accurate reporting and showing that his own supervisor directed him to place another employee’s initials on the document that led to his firing. Based on that evidence, the court denied the employer’s motion for summary judgment (Bouchard v. Eastman Chemical Resins, Inc., No. 2:20cv1490 (W.D. Pa. Aug. 7, 2026)).

Questions about age. The employee had spent about 30 years at the employer’s chemical resins plant, first with its prior owner and then with Eastman after it acquired the facility in 2001. He never received a disciplinary citation and consistently earned positive performance reviews. By 2012, he had become an assistant area supervisor overseeing employees who performed equipment inspections and prepared environmental compliance reports.

Despite that employment history, questions about his age and retirement surfaced repeatedly in the years before his termination. A plant manager remarked that he looked old and asked when he planned to retire. His supervisor raised the subject six or seven times, and a human resources employee asked about his retirement plans.

Missing report. The employee’s termination followed a missing Spill Prevention, Control and Countermeasure (SPCC) sheet used to document daily equipment inspections. After the employees could not locate one of the weekly reports in November 2014, he testified that his supervisor instructed him to prepare a replacement and add the responsible operator’s initials. He did so in the supervisor’s presence and signed his own name to confirm his review.

Eastman investigated after its environmental department questioned the initials. The employee acknowledged adding them and later told human resources that his supervisor had directed him to do so. Eastman fired him on November 19, 2014, for falsifying a company document. The employee sued under the ADEA. The employer maintained that the falsification justified his termination, emphasizing the importance of accurate SPCC reports to its environmental compliance obligations. The employer also relied on the employee’s experience and training and asserted that he previously had been counseled about timely and accurate reporting.

Disparate discipline. Several circumstances could allow a jury to reject the employer’s explanation. Most significantly, the company treated younger employees more leniently for comparable misconduct. A 28-year-old employee who copied and pasted his supervisor’s signature onto purchasing cards and reallocation forms received only a documented discussion. An Eastman human resources official agreed that the conduct constituted forgery, the same violation the employee cited to justify immediately firing the older worker. The disparity in discipline could support a finding of pretext.

Questions also surrounded the employer’s claim that the employee had been counseled before his termination. One purported counseling involved a September 2014 conversation in which an environmental employee instructed him on completing an SPCC sheet after he submitted an incomplete report. A jury could view the exchange as instruction rather than discipline, and the employer had no written documentation of the alleged second counseling. A Post-it note memorializing the September conversation also provided little support for the employer’s claim of written discipline. Testimony indicated that the note merely recounted the meeting, with nothing identifying it as formal notice. Taken together, the evidence could undermine the disciplinary history the employer relied on to justify immediate termination.

Conflicting evidence. The circumstances surrounding the SPCC sheets further weakened the employer’s explanation. Its environmental department had accepted an incomplete sheet that the employee completed in its presence in September without disciplining him. He also testified that his supervisor directed him to place the operator’s initials on the November replacement and said he had done the same thing before. Therefore, a jury could find that Eastman had tolerated the practice before treating it as a terminable offense. The evidence also called into question whether the conduct amounted to forgery. The employee maintained that the initials identified the operator who performed the inspection and that he signed his own name to verify his review. A human resources official agreed that the conduct did not meet the definition of forgery because the information on the sheet was accurate.

Eastman’s reliance on the employee’s experience presented another inconsistency. The employer maintained that his extensive training made the violation more serious, but younger employees with similar training committed comparable infractions without being fired. That difference in treatment could further undermine Eastman’s justification for the harsher penalty.

Additional circumstantial evidence supported the employee’s claim. Eastman replaced him with a 36-year-old employee, a sufficient age difference to support an initial inference of discrimination. Several supervisors also had questioned him about retirement in the years before his termination, including two people involved in the investigation that led to his firing. Taken together, the disparate discipline, disputed counseling history, circumstances surrounding the SPCC reports, younger replacement, and repeated retirement inquiries could allow a jury to reject Eastman’s stated reason for the firing and find that age played a determinative role.

The case is No. 2:20cv1490.

Judge: Cercone, D.

Attorneys: Jarrod Timothy Takah (Tershel & Associates) for Elmer Bouchard. Jennifer G. Betts (Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart) for Eastman Chemical Resins, Inc.

Companies: Eastman Chemical Resins, Inc.

Cases: Discrimination AgeDiscrimination Discharge PennsylvaniaNews