152
Opinion of the Court
regular line, supervised by petitioner, and placed only petitioner on probation. 3 id., at 166-167; 4 id., at 229. Chesnut conducted that efficiency study and, after having testified to the contrary on direct examination, acknowledged on cross-examination that he had recommended that petitioner be placed on probation following the study. 4 id., at 197- 199, 237.
Further, petitioner introduced evidence that Chesnut was the actual decisionmaker behind his firing. Chesnut was married to Sanderson, who made the formal decision to discharge petitioner. 3 id., at 90, 152. Although Sanderson testified that she fired petitioner because he had "intentionally falsif[ied] company pay records," 3 id., at 100, respondent only introduced evidence concerning the inaccuracy of the records, not their falsification. A 1994 letter authored by Chesnut indicated that he berated other company directors, who were supposedly his coequals, about how to do their jobs. Pl. Exh. 7, 3 Record 108-112. Moreover, Oswalt testified that all of respondent's employees feared Chesnut, and that Chesnut had exercised "absolute power" within the company for "[a]s long as [he] can remember." 3 id., at 80.
In holding that the record contained insufficient evidence to sustain the jury's verdict, the Court of Appeals misapplied the standard of review dictated by Rule 50. Again, the court disregarded critical evidence favorable to petitioner— namely, the evidence supporting petitioner's prima facie case and undermining respondent's nondiscriminatory explanation. See 197 F. 3d, at 693-694. The court also failed to draw all reasonable inferences in favor of petitioner. For instance, while acknowledging "the potentially damning nature" of Chesnut's age-related comments, the court discounted them on the ground that they "were not made in the direct context of Reeves's termination." Id., at 693. And the court discredited petitioner's evidence that Chesnut was the actual decisionmaker by giving weight to the fact that
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