Stray remarks add fuel to discrimination claims. (Age Discrimination).(Brief Article)

Imagine you're sitting in on a promotion discussion involving a worker who is close to retirement age and someone in the room says, "Well, she's not going to be around very long anyway." Would you think the person meant that the older worker was going to retire soon and was not a "qualified applicant" for the job? Many people would, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has said that such a comment--combined with other facts--was enough to win an employee a full trial on her age discrimination claim [Danville v. Regional Lab Corporation, 292 F.3d 1246 (10th Cir. 2002)].

The court noted that the hiring committee that was considering applicants for a new managerial position--a position that would have meant a promotion for a 64-year-old employee who had already been rated as "highly …