Velez v. Awning Windows, Inc.

• Citation: 375 F.3d 35
• Decision Date: 09 July 2004
• Docket Number: No. 03-2277.,03-2277.
• Parties: Minerva VÉLEZ a/k/a Minerva Vélez-Cortes a/k/a Minerva Vélez-Cortez, Plaintiff, Appellee, v. AWNING WINDOWS, INC. and Estate of Ismael Nieves-Valle, Defendants, Appellants.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (1st Circuit)

Page 35

375 F.3d 35

Minerva VÉLEZ a/k/a Minerva Vélez-Cortes a/k/a Minerva Vélez-Cortez, Plaintiff, Appellee, v. AWNING WINDOWS, INC. and Estate of Ismael Nieves-Valle, Defendants, Appellants.

No. 03-2277.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard May 5, 2004.

Decided July 9, 2004.

Arturo Luciano Delgado for appellants.

Celina Romany, with whom Juan M. Frontera and Celina Romany Law Offices were on brief, for appellee.

Before SELYA, Circuit Judge, COFFIN, Senior Circuit Judge, and LYNCH, Circuit Judge.

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

This appeal tells a cautionary tale of the risks run by parties who adopt a laissez-faire attitude toward court-imposed deadlines. The defendants in this case — Awning Windows, Inc. (AWI) and the Estate of Ismael Nieves-Valle (the Estate) — acted in that fashion. The district court, after patiently granting several extensions and issuing pointed warnings, finally decided that enough was enough. It held the defendants to the deadlines previously announced, denied certain of their motions for noncompliance with the court's scheduling order, disregarded the defendants' tardy opposition to a motion for partial summary judgment, took the proffer of plaintiff-appellee Minerva Vélez-Cortes (Vélez) as true, and resolved the issue of liability in Vélez's favor. A jury thereafter awarded Vélez nearly three-quarters of a million dollars in damages. The defendants appeal. Discerning no semblance of error, we affirm.

I. TRAVEL OF THE CASE

Vélez began work for a company owned by Ismael Nieves-Valle (Nieves) in 1987. In time, Vélez and Nieves became romantically entangled. Vélez claims that after she broke off their adulterous affair, she was sexually harassed. She further claims that, in March 2000, this harassment culminated in her dismissal.

On March 26, 2002, Vélez commenced an employment discrimination action against AWI and Nieves in Puerto Rico's federal district court.¹ Her complaint invoked 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e to 2000e-16 (Title VII) and a plethora of Puerto Rican discrimination statutes. See, e.g., 29 P.R. Laws Ann. §§ 146, 155-155l. Pretrial discovery revealed a dalliance gone sour and, on the plaintiff's account, an ensuing campaign of harassment leading to her discharge.

As this appeal turns largely on the travel and procedural history of the case, we eschew any further discussion of the facts at this point. Instead, we set out a procedural chronology (each date refers to the time when the filing in question was entered on the district court's docket).

1. March 26, 2002. The plaintiff instituted the action.

2. April 30, 2002. The plaintiff moved for the entry of default, see Fed.R.Civ.P. 55(a), because the defendants failed to answer or otherwise plead within the allotted twenty-day period.

3. May 3, 2002. The district court ordered the defendants to show cause, on or before May 15, why a default should not be entered.

4. May 22, 2002. The plaintiff renewed her motion for entry of default, noting that neither defendant had responded to the show-cause order.

5. May 31, 2002. The district court defaulted both defendants.

6. June 6, 2002. Citing Nieves's sudden death in a helicopter accident on May 25, AWI asked the district court to set aside the default and afford the defendants forty-five additional days within which to answer the complaint.

7. June 24, 2002. The district court granted the plaintiff's request to substitute the Estate in Nieves's stead as a party defendant. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 25(a)(1). The court also granted AWI's request to set aside the default and ordered the defendants to answer or otherwise plead by July 19. The court warned that failure to comply "on or before the aforementioned date SHALL result in the Court re-entering default and proceeding with a Damages Hearing."

8. July 11, 2002. The defendants answered the plaintiff's complaint. Discovery then ensued.

9. November 15, 2002. The plaintiff moved for partial summary judgment on the issue of liability.

10. December 2, 2002. The defendants' opposition to the motion for partial summary judgment was due, but none was filed.

11. December 5, 2002. The district court granted the defendants until December 13 to submit their opposition.

12. December 13, 2002. Instead of filing their opposition by the extended deadline, the defendants moved for a further extension.

13. December 17, 2002. The district court held an omnibus scheduling conference (the OSC).

14. December 20, 2002. The court entered an order that, inter alia, directed the defendants to file (i) no later than January 7, 2003, answers to the plaintiff's interrogatories; (ii) no later than January 17, 2003, a legal memorandum, concerning the "admissibility of hearsay and other evidence" following a party's death prior to discovery; and (iii) no later than January 17, 2003, a memorandum detailing AWI's finances and the Estate's assets. The court admonished that the defendants' failure to comply with any of these directives would "result in sanctions including ... elimination of all defenses set forth in their answer to the complaint."

In tandem with these orders, the court further extended the time for filing an opposition to the plaintiff's motion for partial summary judgment. The court fixed February 20 as the due date for the opposition, warned the defendants that "[n]o extensions will be given," and advised them that, should they "fail to file an opposition on or before the aforementioned date the Court SHALL consider Plaintiff's motion as unopposed."

15. January 7, 2003. The defendants served their answers to interrogatories.

16. January 15, 2003. The defendants filed a motion to dismiss, alleging that the plaintiff did not have a cause of action against Nieves (and, therefore, could not sue the Estate) because supervisors are not personally liable under Title VII.

17. January 17, 2003. The defendants moved for an extension of time, up to and including February 4, 2003, within which to file the hearsay memorandum and comply with the remaining commands of the OSC. Although the court took no immediate action on this motion, the defendants failed to make the required filings.

18. February 5, 2003. Citing the plaintiff's delay in completing her deposition and answers to interrogatories, the defendants moved to extend the deadline for filing an opposition to the motion for partial summary judgment from February 20 to February 28.

19. February 20, 2003. (This was the date set by the district court for the filing of the opposition to the motion for partial summary judgment.) Although the court had not yet ruled on their last previous motion for an extension, the defendants asked for another extension, this time to March 3, for the filing of their opposition.

20. March 18, 2003. The defendants made multiple submissions: (i) they finally filed their opposition to the plaintiff's motion for partial summary judgment; (ii) in the same memorandum, doubling in brass as a motion to dismiss, they claimed for the first time that the plaintiff had failed to file a timely administrative complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (the EEOC) and that, as a consequence, her action should be jettisoned for want of subject-matter jurisdiction; and (iii) in a separate memorandum, they addressed the district court's hearsay concerns.

21. March 20, 2003. Faithful to its earlier warning that no extensions of time would be countenanced, the district court disregarded the defendants' out-of-time filings, denied their sundry extension requests, and deemed the plaintiff's motion for partial summary judgment unopposed. As a sanction for the defendants' failure to comply with the court's earlier order to submit both a legal memorandum anent hearsay evidence (which had been filed over two months late) and a memorandum detailing the defendants' financial resources (which had not been filed at all), the court denied the defendants' motion to dismiss the supervisory liability claim.

22. March 23, 2003. The district court refused to dismiss the case for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction.

23. March 25, 2003. The district court handed down an opinion in which it granted the plaintiff's motion for partial summary judgment. See Vélez Cortes v. Nieves Valle, 253 F.Supp.2d 206 (D.P.R. 2003). That decision resolved the issue of liability.

24. July 22-24, 2003. The district court convened a damages hearing before a jury and, pursuant to the jury's verdict, entered final judgment for the plaintiff in the sum of $740,000.

25. August 15, 2003. The defendants filed a timely notice of appeal.

II. DISCUSSION

The defendants' assignments of error can be grouped under three headings: (i) errors concerning the lower court's entry of partial summary judgment; (ii) errors concerning the lower court's denial of the defendants' two motions to dismiss; and (iii) errors pertaining to the lower court's issuance of an order for legal memoranda anent hearsay evidence. We address each grouping in turn.

A. The Motion for Partial Summary Judgment.

The defendants' principal complaint is that the district court erred in granting the plaintiff's motion for partial summary judgment without considering their late-filed opposition. On the defendants' view of the proceedings, the trial judge's decision to commit the case to a fast-track schedule caused him to turn a blind eye to the defendants' pressing need for additional time to conduct discovery and muster their opposition.

We agree with the defendants that trial courts should refrain from entertaining summary judgment motions until after the parties have had a sufficient opportunity to conduct necessary discovery. See Carmona v. Toledo, 215 F.3d 124, 132-33, 135-36 (1st Cir.2000); Berkovitz v. Home Box Office, Inc., 89 F.3d 24, 29-30 (1st Cir.1996). It follows that when a party moves for summary judgment, the opposing party must be afforded a fair chance to obtain and synthesize available information before being...