Hedrich v. Bd. Of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System et al.

• Decision Date: 19 December 2001
• Docket Number: No. 00-3395,00-3395
• Citation: 274 F.3d 1174
• Parties: (7th Cir. 2001) Mary Anne Hedrich, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System, et al., Defendants-Appellees
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 1174

274 F.3d 1174 (7th Cir. 2001)

Mary Anne Hedrich, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 00-3395

In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Argued April 4, 2001

Decided December 19, 2001

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin. No. 99-C-719-C--Barbara B. Crabb, Chief Judge. [Copyrighted Material Omitted] David E. Lasker (argued), Shneidman, Hawks & Ehlke, Madison, WI, for Appellant.

Richard Briles Moriarty (argued), Office of Attorney General, Wis. Dept. of Justice, Madison, WI, for Appellees.

Before Coffey, Manion, and Diane P. Wood, Circuit Judges.

Diane P. Wood, Circuit Judge.

Mary Anne Hedrich was an assistant professor in the Department of Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Coaching at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater (the University). She was unsuccessful in her effort to be awarded tenure, however, and she eventually filed this suit alleging violations of state and federal law. The district court ultimately dismissed all of her theories either under Rule 12(b)(6) or on summary judgment. Hedrich appeals only the court's rulings on her Title VII, equal protection, and liberty interest in future employment counts. For the reasons that follow, we affirm.

I

Given the procedural route the case took in reaching this court, we take the facts in a light favorable to Hedrich. For those parts of the case that were dismissed under Rule 12(b)(6), this means that we ask whether any set of facts consistent with her complaint could be presented that would entitle her to relief; for those parts that were dismissed on summary judgment, the question is whether the facts before the court, taken in the light most favorable to Hedrich, would permit a reasonable finder of fact to rule in her favor. In addition, for the summary judgment portion of the case we must first consider which facts were properly before the court. Rule 56(c) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure says that summary judgment is proper if "the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any" show that there are no genuine issues of material fact and that the moving party is entitled to judgment on the law. In order to facilitate the court's consideration of supporting materials, however, most district courts have enacted local rules to impose some structure on the process. Here, Hedrich failed to follow those rules, and she may have paid a price for that. (We say "may" only because it is not at all clear that the court's enforcement of the local rules made any difference to the ultimate outcome; on the outside chance that it did, we have considered Hedrich's arguments on this part of the case.)

Once the University filed its motion for summary judgment, along with its supporting materials, it was up to Hedrich to show why genuine issues of material fact remained in the case. Although Hedrich did file a response to the University's motion, the court found fatal flaws in her "Response to Defendants' Proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law" and her "Proposed Additional Findings of Fact." Because both of these filings violated the court's local summary judgment procedures in significant respects, the court decided to disregard much of Hedrich's evidence and to treat as admitted many of the defendants' factual propositions. Hedrich contends that this action was an abuse of discretion, because her transgressions were merely technical. Our review of the record convinces us that Hedrich did indeed violate the local rules and that the court was within its discretion to impose the sanctions it did.

The district court found two principal problems with the response and proposed additional facts: first, they violated Western District of Wisconsin Local Rules I.C.2 and II.C.4, which require that [f]actual propositions shall be set forth in numbered paragraphs, and to the extent practicable, each paragraph shall state only one factual proposition; and second, they failed to cite with specificity admissible evidence in support of the factual propositions she advanced. We agree. The purpose of the "numbered paragraphs" rule is to permit the district court to correlate factual propositions with the admissible evidence the party alleges supports her position. Hedrich's submissions did no such thing. Instead, she repeatedly offered long strings of factual propositions in single paragraphs that in some cases stretched on for pages. In some instances, these paragraphs did not even cast doubt on the defendants' proposed facts. Hedrich takes issue with the court's criticism of her citations, but again, she misses the point. While she literally provided citations, they were not in the form called for by the rule and they did not serve the purpose of the rule. Instead, they tended to be string citations at the end of paragraphs containing numerous factual propositions, again often stretching over more than one page. In several instances she concluded a factual statement with only a cross- citation to another fact paragraph that was itself pages long and improperly supported. These citations provided the court no guidance as to which factual propositions could be located where in the record. Not only were these real offense[s] against the local rules, it is precisely to prevent this type of rambling summary judgment submission that such rules exist. Markham v. White, 172 F.3d 486, 490 (7th Cir. 1999) (explaining that strict enforcement of local rules is necessary to allow the court to organize the evidence and identify undisputed facts).

In light of these problems, we cannot say that the district court abused its discretion by choosing an unduly harsh sanction. To the contrary, it is common to punish a party's failure to comply with summary judgment rules by ignoring that party's unsupported factual allegations and accepting as true those of the opposing party. See, e.g., Midwest Imports, Ltd. v. Coval, 71 F.3d 1311, 1313 (7th Cir. 1995) (failure to properly contest factual assertions under local rules constitutes binding admission of those facts); Bordelon v. Chicago Sch. Reform Bd. of Trs., 233 F.3d 524 (7th Cir. 2000) (exclusion not too harsh where submissions undermine purpose of local rules). In this case, both the local rules and a separate reminder that the court issued to the parties left no question that the court would consider only evidence that was set forth in a proposed finding of fact with the proper citation. Hedrich does not claim that she was unaware of the rules or that the rules were not clear, nor does she offer any reasonable excuse for not complying with them. Under the circumstances, the sanction of exclusion was within the district court's discretion. Waldridge v. American Hoechst Corp., 24 F.3d 918, 921-22 (7th Cir. 1994) (collecting cases where strict enforcement of local summary judgment rules has been upheld). Finally, we do not find the district court's rulings too opaque to follow for purposes of appellate review. We thus consider this appeal on the basis of the record the district court found to be properly before it.

II

Hedrich was hired by the University in 1990 as a tenure-track faculty member of the Department of Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Coaching (the Department). When she joined the Department, the majority of the tenured faculty was female, but it also included some men, including Dr. Steven Albrechtsen. Years earlier, Albrechtsen had filed a sex discrimination claim against the University after it failed to promote him. Hedrich and Albrechtsen became friends.

In the late fall of 1995, Hedrich came up for tenure. At that time, the chairperson of the Department was James Miller. Defendant Brenda Clayton (also a tenured faculty member in the Department) succeeded him as chairperson in July 1996. Defendant H. Gaylon Greenhill was Chancellor of the University, defendant Kay Schallenkamp was Provost, and defendant Jeffrey Barnett was Dean of the College of Education (to which the Department belonged).

The tenured faculty in the Department met December 4, 8, and 18 of 1995 to review Hedrich's tenure file, which included materials related to her teaching (peer and student evaluations), her scholarship (research, publications,presentations at professional associations), and her service and committee work for the University. Hedrich made an oral presentation to the committee on December 4, 1995. The committee ultimately rated Hedrich above average in teaching and service, but it gave her a below average rating for scholarly activity. Hedrich had submitted four manuscripts to national peer-reviewed journals for consideration, but none had yet been accepted for publication. At the time of the review, Hedrich had no publications to her credit despite the fact that Barnett had told her in two previous performance reviews that this would be a critical factor in her tenure decision. The committee voted 7 to 1 to deny Hedrich tenure. Only Albrechtsen voted in Hedrich's favor.

Miller reported the committee's decision to Dean Barnett and Chancellor Greenhill, explaining that the committee had discussed Hedrich's research and scholarly activity at length but found the four unpublished manuscripts to be insufficient to demonstrate the requisite degree of scholarly achievement. Barnett, in a memorandum to Chancellor Greenhill dated January 16, 1996, concurred in the committee's recommendation. That memorandum noted that Hedrich had failed to submit documentation of her teaching, research, and service achievements to the faculty committee. Barnett also noted the insufficiency of Hedrich's four unpublished manuscripts.

Hedrich received notice of the faculty committee's decision on January 16, 1996. On January 25, 1996, she received a letter from Provost Schellenkamp telling her that the 1996...