Alberti v. Carlo-Izquierdo

DR. REBECCA ALBERTI, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. DR. JOSÉ R. CARLO-IZQUIERDO; DR. SUANE E. SÁNCHEZ-COLÓN;DR. GLORIA E. ORTIZ-BLANCO; DR. ANGÉLICA MATOS-RÍOS;CARMEN T. LÓPEZ-RODRÍGUEZ; LEYRA FIGUEROA-HERNÁNDEZ; DR. MARÍA C. DECLET-BRAÑA;IRIS RAMOS-VIERA; IRIS RIVERA-COLÓN; JUDITH MIRANDA; VIRGINIA SANTIAGO;THE UNIVERSITY OF PUERTO RICO, Defendants, Appellees.

No. 12-1982

United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit

December 18, 2013

Not for Publication in West's Federal Reporter

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO

[Hon. Daniel R. Domínguez, U.S. District Judge]

Before

Torruella, Baldock,^* and Thompson,

Circuit Judges.

Manuel R. Suárez-Jiménez, for appellant.

Diego Ramírez-Bigott, with whom Raquel M. Dulzaides and Jiménez, Graffam & Lausell, were on brief for appellees.

Baldock, Circuit Judge. Dr. Rebecca Alberti held three positions at the University of Puerto Rico. When the University discharged her from these positions, she sued the University and a number of university officials and students claiming violations of her rights under the United States Constitution and federal and local law. Defendants moved for summary judgment. The district court treated Defendants' motion as effectively unopposed because Alberti failed to comply with numerous court orders, as well as the local district court rules. The court then granted Defendants' motion for summary judgment and later denied Alberti's motion for reconsideration in two separate published opinions. Alberti v. Univ. of Puerto Rico, 818 F. Supp. 2d 452, 456-57 & n.1-2 (D.P.R. 2011) (Alberti I) reconsideration denied, 869 F. Supp. 2d 231 (D.P.R. 2012) (Alberti II). Alberti now appeals, claiming the district court (1) abused its discretion in handling her numerous extension motions and deeming Defendants' summary judgment motion effectively unopposed and (2) erred in granting summary judgment to the Defendants on the merits on all claims. Exercising jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we affirm.

I.

Alberti first argues the district court abused its discretion by not granting her more time to file her opposition to Defendants' motion for summary judgment and by deeming Defendants' motion effectively unopposed. She also attempts to add an extra1400 pages to the record on appeal, claiming these are documents the district court should have considered below. Defendants oppose this attempt. Thus, before addressing Alberti's appeal on the merits, we must first determine (1) whether the district court properly handled Alberti's numerous motions for filing extensions, (2) whether the court properly found Defendants' motion for summary judgment effectively unopposed, and, (3) on a related note, which parts of the "joint appendix" we may properly consider in this appeal. As such, we first recount the relevant procedural history of this case.

Alberti filed her original complaint on April 25, 2008. At a settlement conference three years later, on May 3, 2011, the district court issued an order stating any dispositive motions in Alberti's case were due by June 1 and any oppositions were due by June 30, 2011. This order also scheduled trial for August 15-September 9, 2011. The court emphasized that "NO extensions of time" would be allowed to either side. (bold in original). Defendants complied with this order and filed, on June 1, their Motion for Summary Judgment, Statement of Uncontested Material Facts, and Memorandum in Support of their Motion. Alberti, on the other hand, did not comply with the district court's order, nor with the numerous extensions the court eventually gave her.

Rather than comply with the district court's initial order, Alberti filed a motion on June 29 seeking an extension untilJuly 5 to file her opposition. The court granted this extension. Alberti then filed a second motion on July 5 for extension until July 6 at 8:00 a.m. The court apparently did not rule on this request, but it made no difference as, on July 6, Alberti filed a third motion for extension until 6:00 p.m. on July 6. Alberti claimed in this motion that she was having "technical difficulties" uploading her "exhibits, memorandum of law and statement." Thus, she moved in the alternative for leave to file all of these documents in hard copy that same day, July 6, as a "plan B." The Court granted this motion in part, giving Alberti until 2:00 p.m. on July 6 to file her opposition with the court and until 5:00 p.m. to provide a copy of her opposition to defense counsel. Rather than comply with this second granted extension, Alberti moved for the district court to modify its order to give her until 5:00 p.m. to file her opposition with the court. The District court granted this motion in part, stating:

Plaintiff is granted a final extension of time, that is, July 6, 2011 at 2:30 p.m. to file the opposition to defendants' motion for summary judgment. Plaintiff's counsel shall try to file the exhibits by 2:30 p.m. today, or may file the exhibits through a separate motion today. If counsel still has difficulty with the filing of the exhibits, he should contact the Help Desk . . . . No further requests for extensions of time will be entertained by the Court. IT IS SO ORDERED.

Alberti did not comply with this third extension. Instead, she filed only her Opposing Statement of Material Facts, and even that she did not file until 4:54 p.m.—two and a half hoursafter her entire opposition was due. Furthermore, at a status conference the next day, July 7, Alberti admitted her Opposing Statement of Material Facts was not properly filed because she failed to file with it more than 100 supporting exhibits. In response, the court "made pellucidly clear to [Alberti's] counsel that a set of exhibits only is to be filed in hard copy, and shall be hand delivered to the defendants on July 8, 2011 by noon." (emphasis in original). This status conference concluded at 7:40 p.m. Alberti did not file these exhibits by noon the next day, and so the court issued an order taking notice of Alberti's failure and stating that "no further documents shall be filed by the parties . . . unless otherwise ordered by the court." Despite the court's order, Alberti submitted hard copies of her exhibits, the vast majority of which were still in Spanish, two hours later, at around 4:45 p.m. on the evening of July 8. Alberti eventually filed a Memorandum of Law in Opposition on July 20—fourteen days after it was due and in violation of the court's July 6 and July 8 orders. Alberti I, 818 F. Supp. 2d at 456-57 & n.1-2 (D.P.R. 2011).

When Defendants filed their motion for summary judgment, they also requested leave to file Spanish documents as exhibits and an extension until July 18 to file the certified translations of said documents, which the court granted. On July 19, Defendants moved for a second extension until August 1 to file the certified English translations of its exhibits, which the court also granted.Alberti, on the other hand, filed most of the exhibits accompanying her Opposing Statement in Spanish but never requested leave to do so. Furthermore, she did not request leave to file certified translations of these documents until July 27, four weeks after such a motion should have been filed, and three weeks after the court's final extension to her had expired. In this motion, she requested until August 29—two weeks after trial was scheduled to begin—to submit these translations. The District court denied this motion.

Before granting Defendants' motion for summary judgment on the merits, the district court explained that Alberti "force[d]" it to "consider as uncontested most of Defendants' Statement of Uncontested Material Facts" because (1) she disregarded numerous court orders and failed to file the exhibits supporting her Opposing Statement of Material Facts on time, (2) the majority of her exhibits were filed in Spanish without certified English translations, and (3) she repeatedly violated District Court Local Rule 56 by, for example, failing to include in her Opposing Statement particularized citations to the record and supporting evidence. Alberti I, 818 F. Supp. 2d at 456 n.1. The district court also pointed out that it would not consider Alberti's Memorandum of Law in Opposition because it was filed two weeks late and in violation of a court order. Id. at 457 n.2.

On appeal, Alberti argues (1) the district court either gave her another extension to file her exhibits at the July 7 status conference until the end of the day on July 8 but failed to put it in the minutes or, in the alternative, abused its discretion by giving her only until noon on July 8 to do so; (2) the district court abused its discretion when it did not grant Alberti leave to file English translations of her exhibits; and (3) the district court abused its discretion in deeming Defendants' motion for summary judgment effectively unopposed.

Because all of these claims are based on the district court's enforcement of its own scheduling orders, we review them for abuse of discretion. O'Connell v. Hyatt Hotels, 357 F.3d 152, 155 (1st Cir. 2004); see also Mendez v. Banco Popular de Puerto Rico, 900 F.2d 4, 7 (1st Cir. 1990) ("In the absence of a manifest abuse of discretion . . . we will not interfere with a district court's reasoned refusal to grant incremental enlargements of time."); Guzmán-Ruíz v. Hernández-Colón, 406 F.3d 31, 33 (1st Cir. 2005) (reviewing the district court's rejection of a party's belated request for abuse of discretion). With this in mind, we turn now to Alberti's procedural arguments.

A.

Alberti first alleges that at the July 7 conference the district court in fact gave her until the end of the day on July 8 to submit the exhibits supporting her Opposing Statement. Albertiprovides no evidence to support this claim. She did file a motion asking the court to amend its July 7 conference minutes, which the court never ruled on. But the minutes from the July 7 conference state the court "made...