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A federal judge in Maryland has tossed a former Accenture in-house lawyer's age discrimination suit against the global management consulting and professional services firm, ruling that the man was fired because of poor communication skills and aggressive emails to his boss.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis of the District of Maryland, sitting in Greenbelt, Maryland, also rejected plaintiff Joseph Mott's claim that firing him because of “his resistance to changes” was discriminatory. Mott was 61 when hired in December 2014 as senior manager in the global offerings support team in the compliance, offerings, regulatory and ethics division of Accenture's legal department, according to Xinis' April 29 memo supporting her grant of Accenture's motion for summary judgment. Mott, who had worked as a lawyer for 35 years, including 10 years in the health care regulatory field, prior to joining Accenture, was 63 when fired in November 2016.

Neither Mott, nor his attorney Christopher Mackaronis, a principal at Stone Mattheis Xenopoulos & Brew in Washington, D.C., could immediately be reached for comment about the ruling.

According to Xinis' memo, Mott's time at Accenture got off to a rocky start. Although he earned the rating of “met expectations” in nine of the 11 categories and “exceeded expectations” in the other two, his midyear review, which covered his first six months on the job, noted his tendency to go on tangents and difficulty getting to the point quickly—a sentiment echoed in his annual review about six months later and by colleagues.

Things did not improve after a reorganization within the legal department's offerings team resulted in a new supervisor for Mott, as well as assumed responsibility for a newly defined area. Shortly after he agreed to the new assignment, his supervisor encountered difficulty getting him to complete tasks—taking several months to upload job and priorities to an online system as part of a new collaborative priorities process, a task that generally took other employees about an hour and a half to complete.

A few months before he was fired, Mott, rather than following his supervisor's orders regarding uploading priorities, “instead became increasingly hostile and disrespectful toward” her, the memo said, adding that in an email he wrote, “I have great difficulty with our interaction, and frankly I am exasperated” and “even the manner in which you have dictated that I approach the issue denotes a lack of professional regard that is affronting.”

Such evidence of Mott's resistance to implement specific changes arising from the company's reorganization, including his reluctance and, at times, outright refusal to comply with Accenture employment practices, as conveyed in increasingly “extremely aggressive” emails “amply supports Accenture's legitimate grounds for terminating Mott,” Xinis said in her memo.

“Although some [c]ourts have recognized that resistance to change is an age-related stereotype which the [law] was created to combat, in this context, no evidence supports the inference that [the firing supervisor's] statements reflect some code for Mott's age rather than his difficult personality and other communication challenges,” it said.

In addition to Mackaronis and Laura Wynn, an associate at Stone Mattheis, Mott also was represented by Robert Hillman of Samuel I. White. Accenture was represented by counsel Mary Monica Lenahan and partner Michael Roche of Winston & Strawn.

In an emailed statement, Accenture said it is “gratified” by the outcome of the case.

“We have always believed that Mr. Mott was treated fairly and in compliance with the law and our policies,” it said.