{"id":7491,"date":"2009-10-16T10:31:50","date_gmt":"2009-10-16T15:31:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=7491"},"modified":"2009-10-16T10:31:50","modified_gmt":"2009-10-16T15:31:50","slug":"california-appeals-court-overturns-objectionable-employment-discrimination-decision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2009\/10\/california-appeals-court-overturns-objectionable-employment-discrimination-decision\/","title":{"rendered":"California Appeals Court Overturns “Objectionable” Employment Discrimination Decision"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"California\"<\/a> As reported by California Case Law<\/a> (via a tip by friend of the blog, Jack Sargent), the imponderable case of Nazir v. United Airlines, Inc., No. A121651 (Cal. App. Ct. October 8, 2009)<\/a><\/span>:<\/p>\n

In plaintiff’s race and employment discrimination lawsuit against United Airlines, the trial court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of defendants is reversed as to eight causes of action as they must be decided by the jury.\u00a0 Furthermore, the trial court’s order sustaining\u00a0 763 of 764 of defendant’s objections was a manifest abuse of discretion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I can only do this case justice by stating precisely some of the court’s decision. This is all takes place in the context of a rather ordinary race discrimination in employment claim:<\/p>\n

At the same time, the summary judgment procedure has become the target of criticism on a number of fronts.\u00a0 Some particular criticism is directed to the procedure in employment litigation, including that it is being abused, especially by deep pocket defendants to overwhelm less well\u2011funded litigants.\u00a0 More significantly, it has been said that courts are sometimes making determinations properly reserved for the factfinder, sometimes drawing inferences in the employer\u2019s favor, sometimes requiring the employees to essentially prove their case at the summary judgment stage.\u00a0 Here we confront the poster child for such criticism, in a case involving what may well be the most oppressive motion ever presented to a superior court . . . .<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

Defendants filed a motion for summary judgment\/summary adjudication, seeking adjudication of 44 issues, most of which were not proper subjects of adjudication.\u00a0 Defendants\u2019 separate statement was 196 pages long, setting forth hundreds of facts, many of them not material\u2014as defendants\u2019 own papers conceded.\u00a0 And the moving papers concluded with a request for judicial notice of 174 pages.\u00a0 All told, defendants\u2019 moving papers were 1056 pages.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Plaintiff\u2019s opposition was almost three times as long, including an 1894-page separate statement, papers the trial court would later disparage as \u201cmostly verbiage,\u201d a description with which, as will be seen, we disagree.\u00a0 Curiously, no such criticism was leveled at defendants\u2019 papers, not even those in reply, papers that defy description.<\/p>\n

Defendants\u2019 reply included, and properly, their response to plaintiff\u2019s additional disputed facts.\u00a0 Defendants\u2019 reply also included, not so properly, a 297-page \u201cReply Separate Statement\u201d and 153 pages of \u201cExhibits and Evidence in Support of Defendants\u2019 Reply.\u201d\u00a0 And the reply culminated with 324 pages of evidentiary objections, consisting of 764 specific objections, 325 of which were directed to portions of plaintiff\u2019s declaration, many of which objections were frivolous.\u00a0 In all, defendants filed 1150 pages of reply.<\/p>\n

Five thousand, four hundred, fifteen pages of material were before the trial court which, following argument, issued its order granting summary judgment, the substance of which order began as follows:<\/p>\n

\u201cUpon due consideration\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. and having taken the matter under submission,\u00a0 [\u00b6]\u00a0The Court finds as follows:\u00a0 [\u00b6]\u00a0Despite its girth, Plaintiff\u2019s opposition to the separate statement of material facts is mostly verbiage, and utterly lacking in the identification and presentation of evidence demonstrating a disputed issue of fact.\u201d\u00a0 There followed several pages of discussion which did not consider the evidence favorably to plaintiff, as the law requires.\u00a0 Then, after granting summary judgment, the order ends with these two one\u2011sentence rulings:<\/p>\n

\u201c2.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Plaintiff\u2019s 47 evidentiary objections are OVERRULED.
\n\u201c3.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Defendants\u2019 evidentiary objection No. 27 is OVERRULED, and the remainder of the Defendants\u2019 evidentiary objections are SUSTAINED.\u201d . . . .<\/p>\n

We have referred to the misleading picture painted by the mass of paper before the trial court, and to the error that resulted.\u00a0 And the two are undoubtedly related, as what apparently happened is that the trial court did not read all the papers, shown, for example, by the facts that it sustained \u201cobjections\u201d to evidence where no objection was set forth and saw a \u201cphysical assault\u201d of Avellan despite all the evidence of \u201carm wrestling.\u201d\u00a0 While not reading the papers cannot be condoned, it can perhaps be understood, as we hesitate to speculate how long it would take a trial court to meaningfully digest over 2200 pages of separate statements, analyze and rule on 764 objections set out in 325 pages, review it all in light of the applicable law, and then write a proper order.<\/p>\n

The incredible volume of material here simply has no place in a system where overburdened trial courts labor long and hard.\u00a0 Thus, we conclude with some guidance in the event a trial court is ever again confronted with anything remotely close to that here.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Needless to say, the appellate courts rips the lawyers and the trial court another you-know-what.\u00a0 This case is an evidence\/employment discrimination law professor’s dream and why people like Walter Olson rightly believe in some cases that litigation is just plain overlawyered.<\/p>\n

I can’t imagine being the lawyers involved in this case and the shame that will inevitably come with being associated with a name that is just too closely related to the word, “nadir,” as in the nadir of all litigation.<\/p>\n

Really, read the whole opinion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As reported by California Case Law (via a tip by friend of the blog, Jack Sargent), the imponderable case of Nazir v. United Airlines, Inc., No. A121651 (Cal. App. Ct. October 8, 2009): In plaintiff’s race and employment discrimination lawsuit against United Airlines, the trial court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of defendants is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[88,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evidence","category-labor-employment-law","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7491\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}