Caldwell reported a drop in production in the summer of 1995 to the director of manufacturing, Powe Chesnut, who was also married to the president of the company, Sandra Sanderson.

He alleged that Chesnut "had demonstrated age-based animus" while they were working together, and that he had "absolute power" to make employment decisions, due to his position and his relationship with the president of the company.

[5] She also noted that they would assume that the plaintiff met his burden in laying out a prima facie case against the defendant, because again, nobody had disputed that contention, and ample supporting evidence had been presented.

[5] She then turned to the next stage of the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting framework to determine whether the defendant had then provided adequate evidence that the employment decision in question had been made for "a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason.

[7] On this point, the court noted that most of the defendant's evidence for nondiscrimination was negated by the plaintiff at trial, and also that the Fifth Circuit agreed, but did not find this to be sufficient for a ruling in favor of Reeves.

She determined that respondent had not been entitled to a judgment as a matter of law, both because there was a question of fact to be decided by a jury in evaluating the truth of the defendant's nondiscriminatory explanation, and because the court of appeals should have reviewed the entire record in a manner favorable to the nonmoving party, which in this case was Reeves.