Murray v. Chicago Transit Authority
| Decision Date | 10 May 2001 |
| Docket Number | No. 99-3774,99-3774 |
| Citation | 252 F.3d 880 |
| Parties | (7th Cir. 2001) Lorene F. Murray, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Chicago Transit Authority and David Mosena, Defendants-Appellees |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. No. 97 C 7923--Charles R. Norgle, Sr., Judge. [Copyrighted Material Omitted]
[Copyrighted Material Omitted] Before Flaum, Chief Judge, and Coffey and Rovner, Circuit Judges.
On November 13, 1997, Lorene Murray filed suit against the Chicago Transit Authority pursuant to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. sec. 2000e, et seq., and alleged that CTA President David Mosena sexually harassed her and retaliated against her for refusing his sexual advances. She later added a 42 U.S.C. sec. 1983 civil rights discrimination claim against Mosena in his individual capacity. At the conclusion of Murray's case in chief, the district court orally granted defendants' motion for judgment as a matter of law, Fed. R. Civ. P. 50(a). Murray appeals, arguing that the district court erred in granting defendants' 50(a) motion and also erred in various evidentiary rulings dealing with her expert witnesses. We affirm.
Lorene Murray began working for the CTA in 1979 as a staff attorney in the corporate department. In 1992 Murray was promoted to Senior Vice-President of Legal Affairs. Her duties included overseeing the day-to-day operations of the Law Department's 116 employees. In the fall of 1995, Murray received an award for work relating to a financing transaction she had put together that brought $50 million to the CTA. Around the same time, the CTA Chairman of the Board, Valerie Jarrett, addressed CTA's budget problems, issuing a policy that prohibited two CTA representatives from the same department from traveling to the same conference. Jarrett's policy, however, was never strictly enforced by then-CTA President Robert Belcaster.
But on September 3, 1996, Mosena, who had recently been hired as CTA President, issued a memorandum that placed a moratorium on the travel of all CTA Vice- Presidents, General Managers, and Managers, and stated that exceptions to the moratorium would be made only if "there is a compelling business reason." Three days after Mosena released his memorandum, 0CTA General Counsel William Farley informed Jarrett that he and Murray were both scheduled to speak at the annual meeting of the American Public Transit Association ("APTA"). Farley explained to Jarrett that his travel expenses would be "invoiced on the outside counsel line item," but that Murray's "would be taken out of CTA's 'travel' line item which currently is undergoing great scrutiny." Farley asked Jarrett for her thoughts on the matter, and she told him that Murray should speak with Mosena.
On September 23, 1996, Murray submitted a written request to Mosena for the CTA to pay her expenses in relation to the October APTA conference. Three days later, Murray met with Mosena and asked whether her paperwork for the conference had been completed. According to Murray, Mosena responded that he had her paperwork and asked if she were staying at the convention hotel. Murray told him that she was instead staying at the Disneyland Hotel, just down the block from the convention hotel. At this point, Murray alleged that Mosena said, "[w]ell, then you'll be able to have drinks and dinner with me." When Murray informed him that her husband and daughter were coming with her, Mosena told her that Unsure how to respond, Murray told Mosena that maybe she could make some arrangements. She claimed that Mosena then told her "you have to learn who the boss is around here," and that her travel request would not be approved. Murray explained that she was a scheduled speaker, that the programs had been printed, that the trip had been arranged for some time, and that there was money in the budget for her to go. Mosena allegedly responded "maybe now you'll learn who the boss is."
Later that day, upset by Mosena's comments, Murray told her husband about the conversation with Mosena and her belief that Mosena had made a sexual advance, but she did not share her belief with any CTA official. Sometime later she told Farley that she could not attend the conference, but did not tell him any of the details of her conversation with Mosena. Farley spoke with Jarrett on Murray's behalf, but Jarrett told him that she would stand by Mosena's decision and that Murray would not be able to attend the conference. On September 30, Murray spoke with Mosena on the telephone and told him that she would attend the conference, but pay her own expenses. Mosena told her that he was glad she called and that it "would have been a whole lot cheaper [his] way."
After the conversations with Mosena, Murray claims that her working environment changed for the worse. For example, at an October 1996 vice president's meeting, Murray claimed that Mosena publicly ridiculed her by stating that "[she] handled the turnstile incident [in which a young boy caught his head in a CTA turnstile] the same way that Federico Pena had handled the Value Jet crash, and like him, [she] was going to be out of a job." Murray also alleged that, at the same meeting, Mosena announced that the law department would no longer attend the regular executive meetings. Murray, however, had never attended such meetings in the past, and no law department personnel, including Farley, attended these meetings thereafter.
Murray also alleged that Chairman Jarrett contributed to her worsening working environment. For instance, in January 1997, Jarrett instructed Farley to remove Murray from the committees on which she had been a member. Jarrett, however, testified that she told Farley that she wanted the lawyers to advise the committees, rather than sit on them as voting members. Later, after Farley left the CTA as General Counsel, Jarrett hired Duncan Harris, who had previously worked with Jarrett and Mosena for the City of Chicago, without conducting interviews of any of the people Farley had listed as possible replacements, including Murray.
According to Murray, Harris also contributed to her deteriorating working environment. Murray claimed that in 1997 Harris cancelled a luncheon that Murray was scheduled to attend, took away her CTA-issued cellular telephone, reassigned her CTA-car to the CTA pool, and asked her to review cellular phone bills dating back to December 1995 and pay for her personal calls. It is interesting to note that the record reflects that Harris requested that all other law department personnel return their phones and cars and review their phone records as well. Further, Murray alleged that shortly after Harris became General Counsel, he stopped assigning work to Murray's husband, who worked for the CTA as a per diem attorney.
Murray claims as a result of Mosena's harassment (and subsequent retaliation against her), she became depressed, anxious, and even suffered from post- traumatic stress disorder ("PTSD").1 Accordingly, she began a disability leave of absence on June 4, 1997. Prior to taking leave, Murray had told no one at the CTA that Mosena had sexually harassed her or retaliated against her for declin ing a sexual advance. Later in June, Murray's husband met with the CTA's outside counsel and told them of Mosena's harassment who thereafter investigated Murray's complaints. In July Murray filed a charge of discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alleging that Mosena had sexually harassed her between September 26, 1996 and May 13, 1997. Murray's complaint alleged three separate bases for recovery on her sexual harassment claim: 1) hostile work environment harassment; 2) quid pro quo harassment; and 3) retaliation for exercising a statutorily protected right to object to conduct prohibited by Title VII.
After the EEOC denied her claim and issued a right-to-sue letter, Murray timely filed this suit. Three days into the trial, during her case-in-chief, Murray attempted to introduce, under Federal Rule of Evidence 804(b)(1), the deposition testimony of a psychiatrist, Dr. Leonard Weiss, who treated Murray in 1997 and 1998 to show that Mosena's sexual harassment had caused Murray's anxiety, depression, and PTSD. In support of the motion, Murray's counsel informed the district court that Dr. Weiss had been hospitalized and thus was unavailable for trial. Counsel, however, did not know where or for what Dr. Weiss had been hospitalized--indeed, counsel had been unable to locate Dr. Weiss altogether. The district court excluded Dr. Weiss's deposition testimony, noting that defendants had not had the opportunity to fully depose Dr. Weiss (in particular the defendants had not had a chance to depose Dr. Weiss concerning his report prepared and filed pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26, which had not been completed until after his initial deposition), and that the "suspicious circumstances" surrounding his unavailability would unfairly deprive defendants of the opportunity to cross- examine him regarding his credibility and the soundness of his opinions about the cause of Murray's PTSD. After this ruling, Murray moved to admit Dr. Weiss's Rule 26 report, but the district court denied this motion for largely the same reasons as it denied Murray's motion to introduce Dr. Weiss's deposition testimony. Without any testimony from Dr. Weiss on the cause of her PTSD, Murray's counsel then moved to use a rebuttal expert in the case-in-chief. The district court denied this motion as well, finding that the magistrate had not erred in limiting that expert's testimony to rebuttal.
Out of options to present expert testimony, Murray then moved for a mistrial because of her inability to present expert...
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