A trucker who sued several companies and lost his case over alleged age discrimination during the hiring process has lost his appeal.
Truck driver Timothy McLaughlin initially filed a lawsuit against Teamsters Local 249, CBS Studios Inc., and TriStar Pictures Inc. in a western Pennsylvania court in 2021.
According to the initial complaint, it was alleged that CBS Studios and TriStar Pictures began discriminating against him on the basis of his age starting in 2011. The lawsuit also alleges that his union, Teamsters Local 249, blacklisted him after he complained about hiring practices related to the alleged age discrimination.
McLaughlin was born in 1952, so he was about 58 years old and a longtime member of the Teamsters when, he claims, the discrimination began. McLaughlin worked from 2001 to 2011 as a truck driver for a film and television production studio. At that time, the Teamsters union had a standard agreement with production companies to recommend potential truck drivers to the studio when hiring needs arose. Although unions typically use a seniority system to make these types of hiring recommendations, in this case the union sent the resumes of all interested truck drivers to the program producers, and it was the producers who chose which driver to hire.
In 2010, McLaughlin began complaining to the Teamsters union that the producers’ hiring system was “unfair” because “the production companies have no criteria for knowing which drivers to select,” alleging that the process “encouraged[s] nepotism and favoritism.”
In 2011, the production companies stopped hiring McLaughlin and, instead, began hiring “[s]significantly younger and inexperienced individuals,” who often had “personal ties” to producers or to Teamsters union leaders.
Between 2011 and 2021, McLaughlin wrote letters and emails to union officials and the National Labor Relations Board to complain about the producers’ hiring practices, and filed age discrimination complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission. The complaints were followed by a lawsuit against CBS and Tristar alleging age discrimination.
Throughout his activism, McLaughlin continued to apply for on-set driver positions, but he claims he was placed on a “blacklist” and was not hired for more than 50 productions due to discrimination and/or retaliation.
In 2022, a court ruled that McLaughlin had not provided sufficient evidence that he had been the victim of age discrimination. In 2024, the court also ruled that he had not provided sufficient evidence that he had been placed on the union’s “blacklist.” In both cases, the court did not rule that McLaughlin’s allegations were unfounded, but only that he had failed to prove them.
McLaughlin appealed the rulings in May 2026. On Monday, August 10, Judge Theodore McKee of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the appeal and upheld the District Court’s ruling.
