Huarbe-Velez v. Soto-Santiago
| Decision Date | 11 June 2008 |
| Docket Number | Civil No. 06-2145 (FAB). |
| Parties | Daniel JUARBE-VELEZ, et al., Plaintiffs, v. Lemuel SOTO-SANTIAGO, et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Puerto Rico |
Nydia Gonzalez-Ortiz, Santiago & Gonzalez Law Office, Yauco, PR, for Plaintiffs.
Claudio Aliff-Ortiz, Michael C. McCall, Gary H. Montilla-Brogan, Aldarondo & Lopez Bras, Damaris Delgado-Vega, Guaynabo, PR, for Defendants.
Pending before the Court is the summary judgment motion filed by defendants Lemuel Soto-Santiago, Mayor of Arecibo, Luis Soto-Morales, Director of Arecibo's Emergency Management Office, and the Municipality of Arecibo itself (Docket No. 59). Plaintiffs Daniel Juarbe-Velez, Juan Morales-Colon, Alex Torres-Guzman, Luis J. Deida-Martinez, and Jack L. Arenas-Rodriguez opposed defendants' motion for summary judgment (Docket No. 78). Defendants filed a reply to the opposition (Docket No. 87). For the reasons stated below, the Court GRANTS IN PART and DENIES IN PART defendants' motion for summary judgment.
As an initial matter, it is necessary to discuss Local Rule 56. The Rule requires a motion for summary judgment to be supported by a statement of material facts. L.Civ.R. 56(b). A party opposing summary judgment is then required to submit a statement of facts admitting, qualifying or denying the facts submitted by the movant. L.Civ.R. 56(c). The opposing statement may also contain a separate section of additional facts. Id. Nowhere in the Rule does it require or allow parties to submit legal analysis or conclusory statements of mixed fact and law. Both plaintiffs and defendants have run afoul of the Rule by doing just that.
While both parties at least attempted to cite to the record, neither one provided a statement of material facts as required by the Rule. Instead, both parties provided conclusory legal analysis with no factual details to support their points. For example, defendants asserted that "Plaintiff Deida does not have sufficient evidence to establish that his political affiliation was a substantial or motivating factor in any adverse employment action allegedly suffered by him." (Docket No. 60, p. 5.) Plaintiff's then responded simply by restating plaintiffs assertion in the positive, "Plaintiff Deida has sufficient evidence to establish that his political affiliation was a substantial or motivating factor in any adverse employment action suffered by him." (Docket No. 80, p. 3.) Both of these statements belong in each party's memorandum of law, not their Local Rule 56 statements of fact.
Had only one of the parties provided a statement of facts which complied with Local Rule 56, then the Court would have accepted those facts in their entirety, where properly supported. L.Civ.R. 56(e); see Arroyo-Audifred v. Verizon Wireless, Inc., 527 F.3d 215 (1st Cir.2008); Alsina-Ortiz v. Laboy, 400 F.3d 77, 80 (1st Cir. 2005); Garcia Sanchez v. Roman Abreu, 270 F.Supp.2d 255, 258-59 (D.P.R.2003). Where both parties submit non-compliant statements, however, the Court is forced either to ferret through the record on its own, or accept the facts as alleged in the complaint. In this instance, the Court exercises its discretion to construct the factual record on its own from the parties' submissions at summary judgment given its belief that the parties' failure to comply with the requirements of Local Rule 56 was not done in bad faith.
Plaintiffs Daniel Juarbe-Velez, Juan Morales-Colon, Alex Torres-Guzman, Luis J. Deida-Martinez, and Jack L. Arenas-Rodriguez ("plaintiffs") are career employees of the Municipality of Arecibo who were hired prior to the start of defendant Lemuel Soto-Santiago's term as mayor of the municipality. All five plaintiffs work under defendant Luis Soto-Morales in the Emergency Management Office. All five plaintiffs claim that they have been discriminated against based upon their political affiliation. Although two of the five plaintiffs are members of the same political party as the two individual defendants, they claim that they have faced political discrimination because they worked under the prior administration.
The factual basis for each individual plaintiffs' claim is as follows:
A. Luis Deida-Martinez
Luis Deida-Martinez was hired on April 1, 2003, during the administration of a Popular Democratic Party ("PDP") mayor, and currently holds the career position of Emergency Medical Technician. Deida-Martinez is a member of the New Progressive Party ("NPP"), which is the same political party to which defendants Lemuel Soto-Santiago and Luis Soto-Morales belong. Deida-Martinez alleges that he has suffered a number of adverse employment actions. First, he alleges that on or about September 2005, he was stripped of all the equipment needed to carry out the Search and Rescue assignments. At summary judgment, the record as to this claim is muddled. It appears that under the previous, PDP, administration, emergency medical personnel were "loaned" ambulance equipment that Deida-Martinez calls "pressure equipment." (Docket No. 60-5, p. 50.) Once Soto-Morales became the director, however, he reclaimed all of this equipment (from all emergency medical personnel) and kept it in the office. (Id.) Deida-Martinez does not state that this action was directed at only PDP party members, or specific emergency medical personnel.
Second, Deida-Martinez claims that as of June 2005 he was stripped of his job functions and was not allowed to attend any rescue emergencies in the Municipality of Arecibo. Instead, he alleges, these emergency situations have been handled by volunteer personnel "mostly identified" with the NPP (Docket No. 2, p. 17). The record at summary judgment shows that Deida-Martinez continues to work as an Emergency Medical Technician; it neither supports nor hinders his claim that he has been prevented from attending rescue emergencies.
Third, Deida-Martinez alleges that the defendants prevented him from applying for the position of paramedic, which under the Soto-Santiago administration is separate from the position of Emergency Medical Technician. He alleges that these positions were filled by two unqualified NPP members. The record shows that Deida-Martinez received notice of the position opening two days prior to the deadline for applications. Although Deida-Martinez did not apply for the paramedic position, he claims that he did not do so because he spoke with defendant Soto-Morales who told him "no, the position is not convenient for you" (Docket No. 60-5, p. 19).
Fourth, Deida-Martinez alleges that defendants addressed memoranda to him commenting negatively upon his job performance in order to intimidate him. At summary judgment, it appears that Deida-Martinez received three such memoranda: the first for improperly securing an oxygen tank in his ambulance, the second for watching a DVD during official work hours, and the third for arriving late. Deida-Martinez stated that other people had used the same ambulance with the third oxygen tank and not received a negative write up, and therefore he believed that the memorandum was a form of harassment.
Deida-Martinez alleges that both individual defendants know that he is a NPP member but that they discriminated against him anyway for being associated with the prior PDP administration. In his deposition, Deida-Martinez said that Soto-Morales knows that he is a member of the NPP, and by extension that he worked in the prior administration, because Deida-Martinez was the ambulance driver for Soto-Morales, who in turn was an emergency medical technician, for a period of five months to one year beginning when Deida-Martinez first started to work in the emergency and rescue department in 2003 (Docket No. 60-5, p. 25).
Deida-Martinez has had no similar personal contact with the defendant Mayor, Soto-Santiago. He tried to talk with the mayor between five to ten times, and once he even went to the mayor's house, where he spoke with the mayor's wife (Docket No. 60-5, p. 30). On other occasions, he and others attempted to deliver an unspecified number of letters to the mayor and to request an administrative hearing with the mayor to discuss complaints they had regarding matters in the emergency and rescue department (Docket No. 60-5, p. 35). Some of these letters were given to the mayor's secretary, others to the Human Resources Director, and others to Soto-Morales (Id. at pp. 35-36). Although Deida-Martinez never met with the mayor, he did meet with three different directors of human resources (Id. at p. 36.).
The sole direct evidence offered by plaintiffs in the record that supports Soto-Morales's alleged mistreatment of Deida-Martinez is plaintiff Torres-Guzman's testimony that Soto-Morales said that the plaintiffs are not to be trusted because they come from the past administration and that "if it [were] up to him" they "would not be there because he has fifty-two volunteers" in whom he trusts (Docket No. 80, Ex. E, p. 34).
B. Jack Arenas-Rodriguez
Jack Arenas-Rodriguez was hired on April 1, 2003, during the administration of a PDP mayor, and currently holds the career position of Emergency Medical Technician. Arenas-Rodriguez is a member of the NPP, which is the same political party to which defendants Soto-Santiago and Soto-Morales belong.
Arenas-Rodriguez alleges that he suffered similar forms of adverse employment actions as plaintiff Deida-Martinez did. First, he alleges that in or around September 2005, he was stripped of all the equipment needed to carry out Search and Rescue assignments. At summary judgment, the record as to this claim is muddled. Unlike plaintiff Deida-Martinez, Arenas-Rodriguez said that Soto-Morales's policy of collecting the equipment was not applied to everyone in the department (Docket No. 80, Ex. D., p. 158). On the other hand,...
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