Morales-Guadalupe v. Oriental Bank
| Decision Date | 26 February 2018 |
| Docket Number | CASE NO. 16-1535 (GAG) |
| Parties | GRISEL MORALES-GUADALUPE, Plaintiff, v. ORIENTAL BANK AND TRUST, et al. Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Puerto Rico |
Plaintiff Grisel Morales sued Defendant Oriental Bank & Trust for age discrimination under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), 29 U.S.C. §§ 621 et seq. Morales also invokes the Court's supplemental jurisdiction to bring claims under Puerto Rico Law No. 100 of June 30, 1959, P.R. LAWS ANN. tit. 29, §§ 146 et seq., and Puerto Rico Law No. 80 of May 30, 1976, P.R. LAWS ANN., tit. 29, § 185a. Pending before the Court is Oriental's motion for summary judgment (Docket No. 20); Morales's motion to strike Oriental's statement of facts and motion for summary judgment (Docket No. 28); and Oriental's motion to strike Morales's affidavit under the sham affidavit doctrine. (Docket No. 36). As discussed below, Oriental's motion for summary judgment is GRANTED. Morales's motion to strike Oriental's statement of facts and motion for summary judgment is DENIED. And finally, Oriental's motion to strike Morales's affidavit is DENIED.
Before considering Oriental's motion for summary judgment, the Court addresses three issues: Morales's motion to strike, Local Rule 56 compliance, and Oriental's motion to strike.
Morales moves to strike Oriental's Statement of Uncontested Material Facts (SUMF) and motion for summary judgment because they expose Morales's date of birth, which violates the E-Government Act of 2002 and Local Rule 5.2. (Docket No. 28 at 1). Local Rule 5.2, in compliance with the E-Government Act of 2002, instructs parties to "redact, or . . . partially redact where inclusion is necessary," information such as dates of birth. L. CV. R. 5.2 (a). "If an individual's date of birth must be included in a pleading, only the year should be used." Id. (a)(3).
Oriental asserts it included the full date of birth involuntarily, and asks the Court's permission to refile a redacted SUMF or convert the SUMF into a restricted document. (Docket No. 34 at 2-3). This is a fair and more efficient way of addressing Morales's concerns at this stage of the litigation. Thus, the Court shall restrict public viewing of Oriental's SUMF at Docket No. 20. Morales's motion to strike is DENIED.
Before proceeding to the merits of the summary judgment motion, the Court addresses two issues regarding Local Rule 56. The first is Morales's evidentiary objections to most of Oriental's SUMF. The second is Oriental's failure to reply to Morales's statement of additional facts.
Local Rule 56(b) requires a party moving for summary judgment to include a "statement of material facts, set forth in numbered paragraphs, as to which the moving party contends there is no genuine issue of material fact to be tried." L. CV. R. 56(b). The opposing party "shall admit, deny or qualify the facts supporting the motion for summary judgment . . . ." Id. (c). Per the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, in its opposition, "[a] party may object that the material cited to supportor dispute a fact cannot be presented in a form that would be admissible in evidence." FED. R. CIV. P. 56.
Morales objects to twenty-two of Oriental's forty-two facts based on relevance. Evidence is relevant if it has "any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence." FED. R. EVID. 401. Morales challenges evidence of prior work warnings (Docket No. 20 ¶¶ 3-6, 20-23), Oriental's Employee Handbook, id. ¶¶ 8-14, Morales's duties and responsibilities, id. ¶ 17, checks that were physically damaged in the branch where Morales worked as Operations Manager, id. ¶ 25, Morales's handling of negotiable instruments, id. ¶ 29, and her substitution after being terminated, id. ¶¶ 38-39, 41-42. All of this is relevant to determine if Oriental discharged Morales for legitimate or pretextual reasons and satisfies the low standard set forth by Rule 401.
Natal Perez v. Oriental Bank & Tr., No. 16-1543, 2018 WL 618598, at *2 (D.P.R. Jan. 30, 2018). Copying and pasting the same relevance objection, which borders on frivolous, burdens the Court. It also risks errors, unless Morales owns a time-traveling DeLorean. (Docket No. 25-1 ¶ 22) ("this incident in 2014, 5 years before the discharge") (emphasis added); see BACK TO THE FUTURE (Universal Pictures 1985) ("The way I see it, if you're gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?"). Counsel should desist from walking so close to the edge of the line that separates zealous advocacy from vexatious litigation.
When an opposing party submits additional facts, like Morales in this case, the moving party may reply. In its reply, the moving party must "admit, deny or qualify those additional facts"submitted by the opposing party. L. CV. R. 56(d). If it fails to properly controvert those additional facts, the Court can deem them admitted. L. Cv. R. 56(e).
Oriental did not submit a reply to Morales's statement of additional facts. Oriental was supposed to admit, deny, or qualify Morales's statement of additional facts. By failing to do so, the Court must deem all of Oriental's additional facts as admitted to the extent supported by admissible evidence in the record.
As discussed earlier, a party can contest the admissibility of the opposing party's supporting evidence. FED. R. CIV. P. 64. Although Oriental did not admit, deny, or qualify Morales's additional facts, it moved to strike an affidavit that supports most of these facts. Naturally, if the Court granted Oriental's motion to strike the affidavit, those additional facts would lose their evidentiary support and collapse as well. Here, the Court can decide the case in Oriental's favor without ruling on its motion to strike Morales's affidavit at Docket No. 36. Therefore, Oriental's motion to strike is DENIED.
The Court will take this opportunity to explain why Oriental's motion to strike does not properly controvert Morales's additional facts under Local Rule 56. The reason is simple: if the Court denied the motion to strike on the merits and Oriental did not admit, deny, or qualify Morales's additional facts, Local Rule 56 would oblige the Court to deem the additional facts as admitted. Therefore, the proper procedural approach would have been to do both: admit, deny, or qualify, as well as file the motion to strike.
Grisel Morales was born in 1962 and worked at Oriental Bank from 2012 to 2015. (Docket Nos. 20 ¶¶ 1, 7, 37; 25-1 ¶¶ 1, 7, 37). In 2012, she signed a document certifying that she receivedand read copies of Oriental's policies, including its handbook. (Docket No. 20 ¶ 8). The handbook governs all employees; it bans insubordination and disrespect, prohibits providing false information in any required document, and forbids encouraging other employees to violate its rules. Id. ¶¶ 8-14. A year later, Morales became Branch Operations Manager. (Docket Nos. 20 ¶ 15; 25-1 ¶ 15). As the title suggests, she was in charge of all of the branch's operations. (Docket Nos. 20 ¶ 16; 25-1 ¶ 16).
In 2013, Oriental's regional manager commented that the bank wanted to bring in younger employees, new blood, and new ideas. (Docket No. 25-1 at 14, ¶ 8). Human Resources also proposed and delivered "a more youthful" looking uniform. Id. Also that year, Oriental discharged a fifty-six-year-old operational manager due to an alleged reorganization. Id. ¶ 10.
On August 29, 2014, Morales received a written warning regarding her performance. (Docket Nos. 20 ¶ 20; 25-1 ¶ 20). She was admonished for encouraging her supervisor to cut out a teller's signature from a mistaken report and paste it into a corrected version because the teller was not available to sign the new document. (Docket Nos. 20 ¶ 21; 25-1 ¶ 21). She claims she was joking. (Docket Nos. 20 ¶ 21; 25-1 ¶ 21). Oriental says the suggestion violated its policies; Morales denies that it did by repeating that it was a joke. (Docket Nos. 20 ¶ 22; 25-1 ¶ 22).
On October 10, 2014, Oriental issued Morales another written warning for failing to inform her supervisor that the Vault Reconciliation Report reflected a difference in the physical and electronic cash count. (Docket Nos. 20 ¶ 23; 25-1 ¶ 23). Morales admits to having received the warning but disputes the existence of said difference, claiming that she did not have to inform her supervisor of a difference that did not exist. (Docket No. 25-1 ¶ 23).
Two more incidents occurred in December 2014. The first incident concerned twenty-one sheets of checks that were physically damaged by the branch's printer. (Docket No. 20 ¶ 25; 25-1¶ 25). The second incident involved provisional debit cards. As branch operations manager, Morales was a custodian of the provisional debit card report. (Docket Nos. 20 ¶ 26, 20-1 at 106; 25-1 ¶ 26; 25-2 ¶ 14).1 Morales admitted in her deposition that the reports for December 2014 and the first two weeks of January 2015 were missing. (Docket No. 20 ¶ 32). Nevertheless, she contended in a later affidavit that they were prepared. (Docket No. 25-1 ¶ 32).2
Finally, Morales also had an incident with Mr. González, her thirty-five-year-old supervisor. In 2014, Morales informed Human Resources that González was incurring "in operational faults." (Docket No. 25-1 at 15, ¶ 11). Indeed, Human Resources was informed that González used an unregistered provisional debit card and kept it in his desk. Id. ¶ 12. An investigation also revealed that González looked through...
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