Rodriguez v. Puerto Rico Marine Management, Inc.

• Decision Date: 29 July 1997
• Docket Number: Civil No. 94-1619(DRD).
• Citation: 975 F.Supp. 115
• Parties: Ferdinand RODRIGUEZ, et al. v. PUERTO RICO MARINE MANAGEMENT, INC., et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Puerto Rico

975 F.Supp. 115

Ferdinand RODRIGUEZ, et al. v. PUERTO RICO MARINE MANAGEMENT, INC., et al., Defendants.

Civil No. 94-1619(DRD).

United States District Court, D. Puerto Rico.

July 29, 1997.

Pedro J. Salicrup, Hato Rey, PR, for Plaintiffs.

Rafeal Cuevas-Kuinlam, Antonio Cuevas-Delgado, Cuevas, Kuinlam & Bermudez, Hato Rey, PR, Francisco Chevere, Manuel Fernandez-Bared, McConnell Valdes, San Juan, PR, Salvador Antonetti-Zequeira, Luis A. Oliver-Fraticelli, Fiddler, Gonzalez & Rodriguez, Francisco A. Ojeda-Diez, Dept. of Justice, San Juan, PR, Lino J. Saldana, Hato Rey, PR, for Defendants.

DOMINGUEZ, District Judge.

Plaintiffs, retired employees of Puerto Rico Marine Management Inc., filed the present action after their retirement benefits were reduced to correct a miscalculation in the computation of their benefits. Plaintiffs filed this action against Puerto Rico Marine Management Inc. ("PRIMI"), Buck Consultants, Inc. ("Buck"), Puerto Rico Maritime Shipping Authority ("PRMSA"), and Juan Albors, president of the board of directors of PRMSA, for alleged violations of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act ("ADEA"), 29 U.S.C. § 621 et seq.; the Older Worker Benefit Protection Act ("OWBPA"), 29 U.S.C. § 626(f)(1) et seq.; the Employee Retirement Income Security Act ("ERISA"), 29 U.S.C. § 1001; section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1983; Puerto Rico's Law 100, P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 29 § 146 et seq.; and breach of contract.

Pending before the Court is defendant Buck's Motion to Dismiss(Docket No. 42) and Plaintiffs' Opposition and Request for Partial Summary Judgment (Docket No. 87)¹ The Court entertained oral arguments on these and other motions on June, 1997.

CONTENTIONS OF THE PARTIES

In pertinent part, Plaintiffs contend: 1) that they were constructively discharged because of their age in 1992; 2) that they were deliberately forced to retire through an enticing and lucrative retirement plan based exclusively on age criteria; 3) that Buck Consultants Inc. is responsible under ADEA and Law 100 as agent, co-employer and "co-conspirator of an illegal scheme to discriminatorily dismiss the plaintiff [sic] and further develop a cover-up for the discrimination with a false and pretextual, early retirement plan created with the inherent purpose of covering up the age-discrimination"; and 4) that Buck is a co-employer violator of OWBPA "by inducing Plaintiff to sign waivers under said Act, and more than a year later, deliberately recant of their previous representation and express obligations by unilaterally proposing PRMMI to violate the waivers." Finally, Plaintiffs argue that Buck is responsible as a fiduciary under ERISA for the unilateral reduction of Plaintiffs' benefits.

Defendant Buck contends that the Court should dismiss all the claims against it because Buck Consultants, Inc. merely provided actuarial services to co-defendant PRMMI. Buck further argues that it is not an employer, co-employer or agent of PRMMI for purposes of ADEA, Law 100, or OWBPA; 2) Buck has no contractual relationship with defendants; 3) Buck is not a fiduciary under ERISA; and 4) Buck is not an arm of the state, thus, no § 1983 liability may ensue against it.

STANDARD OF REVIEW

As the Court indicated at the hearing of June, 1997, the filing of statements of uncontested and contested facts with attached documentation in the subsequent filings for and against Buck's Motion to Dismiss has converted said motion into one for summary judgment. Thus, both, the Motion to Dismiss by Buck (Docket No. 42) and Plaintiff's Opposition and Request for Summary Judgment (Docket No. 87) will be considered under Fed.R.Civ.P. 56 standard. Vega-Rodriguez v. Puerto Rico Telephone Co., 110 F.3d 174, 177 (1st Cir.1997); Garita Hotel Ltd. v. Ponce Federal Bank, 958 F.2d 15, 18-19 (1st Cir.1992).

The function of summary judgment is "to pierce the boilerplate of the pleadings and examine the parties' proof to determine whether a trial is actually necessary" Vega-Rodriguez, 110 F.3d at 178 (1st Cir.1997) (citing Wynne v. Tufts Univ. Sch. of Med., 976 F.2d 791, 794 (1st Cir.1992)). A court may grant summary judgment "if the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact ..." Fed. R.Civ.P. 56(c). "To defeat a motion for summary judgment, the nonmoving party must demonstrate the existence of a trial worthy issue as to some material fact." Cortes-Irizarry v. Corporacion Insular, 111 F.3d 184, 187 (1st Cir.1997). "In applying this formulation, a fact is `material' if it potentially affects the outcome of the case", Vega-Rodriguez, 110 F.3d at 178, and "genuine" "if a reasonable factfinder, examining the evidence and drawing all reasonable inferences helpful to the party resisting summary judgment, could resolve the dispute in that party's favor." Cortes-Irizarry, 111 F.3d at 187. "Speculation and surmise, even when coupled with effervescent optimism that something definite will materialize further down the line, are impuissant in the face of a properly documented summary judgment motion. Moreover, even in cases where elusive concepts such as motive or intent are at issue, summary judgment may be appropriate if the nonmoving party rests merely upon conclusory allegations, improbable inferences, and unsupported speculation." Ayala-Gerena v. Bristol Myers-Squibb Co. 95 F.3d 86, 95 (1st Cir.1996) (citations omitted)

Further, pursuant to Local Rule 311.12, the proponent of a summary judgment motion shall serve and file "annexed to the motion a separate, short, and concise statement of the material facts as to which the moving party contends there is no genuine issue to be tried and the basis of such contention as to each material fact, properly supported by specific reference to the record." (emphasis ours). Local Rule 311.12. These facts are deemed admitted unless the nonmoving party files a similarly "separate, short, and concise statement of the material facts as to which it contends that there exists a genuine issue to be tried, properly supported by specific reference to the record." Id.

A fellow district Judge, recently underscored the importance of this rule to "lay[] out the material facts in dispute clearly for a district court that is swamped with an over-whelming number of civil and criminal dispositive motions." Dominguez v. Eli Lilly and Co., 958 F.Supp. 721, 727 (D.P.R.1997). "Without such a rule, the Court would have to search through the record, with or without the assistance of counsel, for lurking evidence of a genuine issue of material fact. Local Rule 311.12 prevents `the recurrent problem of ferreting through the record' and `the specter of district judges being unfairly sandbagged by unadvertised factual issues.'" Id. (quoting Stepanischen v. Merchants Despatch Transport. Corp., 722 F.2d 922, 920-31 (1st Cir.1983) (internal citations omitted)). Moreover, "[w]ithout specific references to the Record, the list of uncontested and contested facts does not serve its purpose. The Court would have to continue to ferret through the record, read all the answers to the interrogatories, study all the attached documents, and carefully scrutinize all the depositions for lurking genuine issues of material fact." Id. Accordingly, failure to comply with the "anti-ferreting rule" can have severe consequences; indeed, as "Stepanischen warns ... [,] the failure to make specific references to the Record `would, where appropriate, be grounds for judgment against the party.'" Id. (quoting Stepanischen, 722 F.2d at 931).

VIOLATIONS OF THE ANTIFERRETING RULE

Plaintiffs, despite having triggered the summary judgment standard through the filing of their Opposition and Request for Partial Summary Judgment (Docket No. 87), have been the most recalcitrant transgressors of the anti-ferreting rule. The statement of uncontested facts included in Plaintiff's Opposition and Request for Partial Summary Judgment consists of a nine page list of thirty three "uncontested facts" plagued with speculation, argumentation, conclusory assertions, and unsubstantiated facts without specific reference to the record.² In this respect, defendant Buck filed a motion to strike certain portions of Plaintiffs' statement of uncontested facts on June 10, 1996(Docket No. 97).

The Court partly granted defendants' unopposed motion to strike on March 31, 1997, striking specific portions of Plaintiffs' statement of uncontested facts. See Docket No. 117. Plaintiffs, then, filed a similarly inadequate motion purporting to cure the defects of their first statement of contested facts. See Supplementary Opposition to Buck Consultants, Inc. Motion to Dismiss in Accordance to Rule 56(e), (f) (Docket No. 120). This motion, which included the entire two hundred (200) page transcript of the deposition of Mrs. Iris Hernandez as Exhibit 1, barely stated that "the deposition clearly establishes and confirms the factual version submitted with our opposition". Id. at p. 2., ¶ 5. This motion again failed to comply with the anti-ferreting rule, because it is filled with generalities, argumentation, conclusory assertions, and unsubstantiated facts and again does not make specific reference to the record.³

Additionally, as if the record was not cluttered enough, on May 22, 1997, almost a year after defendants filed their motion to strike and more than a month after the Court issued its order striking portions of Plaintiffs' statement of uncontested facts, plaintiffs for the first time opposed the motion to strike through a Motion for Reconsideration (Docket No. 123) which included the whole deposition of Mr. Ferdinand Rodriguez in support of certain portions that were stricken, and requesting reconsideration of some other portions. This submittal again failed to make any specific reference to the pertinent portions of Mr. Ferdinand Rodriguez' deposition.

Defendants are...