Walbro Employee’s Age May Have Spurred Firing After 41 Years

Remarks a Walbro LLC manager allegedly made in response to a 60-year-old worker’s asking why he was being terminated are potentially direct evidence of discrimination, the Sixth Circuit ruled Wednesday.

A jury could disbelieve that he would have been fired regardless of any bias, it said.

Kenneth Lowe says Tom Davidson, the general manager of the Cass City, Mich., facility where they worked, replied that Lowe was “getting up there in years” and was “at retirement age,” the court said.

Davidson and the human resources manager who attended Lowe’s discharge meeting both deny Davidson made those statements, but the evidence ...