Evans v. Univ. Med. Ctr.

NORI EVANS, Plaintiff, v. UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER a.k.a.UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTEROF SOUTHERN NEVADA a.k.a. UMC, Defendant.

Case No. 2:15-cv-01136-MMD-CWH

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT DISTRICT OF NEVADA

March 5, 2019

ORDER

I. SUMMARY

Plaintiff Jori Evans sued Defendant University Medical Center of Southern Nevada, who terminated her employment, alleging she was discriminated against on the basis of her race, retaliated against for filing a prior lawsuit, and subjected to a racially hostile working environment. (ECF No. 1.) Pending before the Court are: (1) Plaintiff's motion for reconsideration of the Court's prior order granting summary judgment to Defendant on Plaintiff's employment discrimination and retaliation claims (ECF No. 84);¹ and (2) Defendant's motion for summary judgment on Plaintiff's hostile work environment claim (ECF No. 82).² As explained below, because the Court is unpersuaded there is any basis to reconsider its prior order, and because Plaintiff has failed to present sufficient, objective evidence necessary to establish at least one element of her hostile work environmentclaim, the Court will deny Plaintiff's motion for reconsideration, and grant Defendant's second motion for summary judgment—resolving this case in Defendant's favor.

II. BACKGROUND

The Court refers to its prior order for a description of the relevant facts, which it will not repeat here. (ECF No. 81 at 1-4.)

III. LEGAL STANDARDS

A. Motion for Reconsideration

A motion to reconsider must set forth "some valid reason why the court should reconsider its prior decision" and set "forth facts or law of a strongly convincing nature to persuade the court to reverse its prior decision." Frasure v. United States, 256 F. Supp. 2d 1180, 1183 (D. Nev. 2003). Reconsideration is appropriate if this Court "(1) is presented with newly discovered evidence, (2) committed clear error or the initial decision was manifestly unjust, or (3) if there is an intervening change in controlling law." Sch. Dist. No. 1J v. ACandS, Inc., 5 F.3d 1255, 1263 (9th Cir. 1993). But "[a] motion for reconsideration is not an avenue to re-litigate the same issues and arguments upon which the court already has ruled." Brown v. Kinross Gold, U.S.A., 378 F. Supp. 2d 1280, 1288 (D. Nev. 2005).

A district court may decline to consider claims and issues that were not raised until a motion for reconsideration. See Hopkins v. Andaya, 958 F.2d 881, 889 n. 5 (9th Cir. 1992), impliedly overruled on other grounds in Federman v. Cty. of Kern, 61 F. App'x 438, 440 (9th Cir. 2003). It is not an abuse of discretion to refuse to consider new arguments in a reconsideration motion even though "dire consequences" might result. Schanen v. United States Dept. of Justice, 762 F.2d 805, 807-08 (9th Cir. 1985). Mere disagreement with an order is an insufficient basis for reconsideration. Nor should reconsideration be used to make new arguments or ask the Court to rethink its analysis. See N.W. Acceptance Corp. v. Lynnwood Equip., Inc., 841 F.2d 918, 925-26 (9th Cir. 1988).

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B. Summary Judgment

The Court refers to the legal standard governing summary judgment motions included in its prior order. (ECF. No. 81 at 4-5.)

IV. DISCUSSION

A. Plaintiff's Motion for Reconsideration (ECF No. 84)

Plaintiff requests that the Court reconsider its prior order granting Defendant summary judgment on Plaintiff's employment discrimination and retaliation claims. (ECF No. 84.) Defendant generally counters that the Court's prior order was correctly decided, and that Plaintiff's purported newly-discovered evidence offered in support of its motion is irrelevant and does not merit reconsideration. (ECF No. 92.) The Court agrees with Defendant. The Court will deny Plaintiff's motion because she has not met her burden to show she is entitled to reconsideration. The Court will address what it construes as the primary arguments she raises in her motion below.

1. Evidentiary Issues

Plaintiff argues that reconsideration is warranted to cure manifest injustice because the Court declined to consider some of Plaintiff's evidence in ruling on its prior order—because that evidence was improperly authenticated—without objection from Defendant, and without first giving Plaintiff an opportunity to cure its authentication issues. (ECF No. 84 at 4-5.) The manifest injustice arises, Plaintiff argues, because the Court would have reached a different result in its prior order had it considered Plaintiff's improperly authenticated evidence. (Id. at 5.) The Court disagrees. First, the Court is not required to give Plaintiff notice and an opportunity to cure its authentication issues before declining to consider improperly authenticated evidence, especially where, as here, Plaintiff is represented by counsel, and both parties' counsel conceded they made authentication mistakes in connection with their briefing on Defendant's first summaryjudgment motion.³ (ECF Nos. 84-1, 84-2, 92-1 (fixing authentication issues).) See also Orr v. Bank of Am., NT & SA, 285 F.3d 764, 773 (9th Cir. 2002) (stating that a court can only consider admissible evidence in ruling on a summary judgment motion, and evidence must be authenticated to be admissible). Second, and contrary to Plaintiff's argument, the Court alternatively considered the substance of each piece of evidence it declined to consider in the prior order. (ECF No. 81 at 8 n.11, 10 n.13&14, 12-16, 20-23.) Thus, the Court would have reached the same result in its prior order even if it overlooked all of the evidentiary issues with Plaintiff's opposition to Defendant's first motion for summary judgment.⁴ Therefore, the Court's evidentiary rulings in its prior order were not manifestly unjust, and the Court declines to reconsider its prior order on this basis.

2. Inferences

Plaintiff also argues that the Court clearly erred as a matter of law—meriting reconsideration—because it drew inferences in Defendant's favor, which is inappropriate because Defendant moved for summary judgment, and the Court must draw all inferences in the nonmoving party's favor. (ECF No. 84 at 1, 9-11.) The Court is not persuaded by this argument. Mere disagreement with an order is an insufficient basis for reconsideration. Further, the summary judgment standard upon which Plaintiff relies istempered by an overarching requirement of reasonableness—for example, an issue is genuine if there is a sufficient evidentiary basis on which a reasonable fact-finder could find for the nonmoving party. See Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248-49 (1986). The Court need not draw every possible inference in Plaintiff's favor. Plaintiff specifically takes issue with the Court's finding that Defendant's termination of Plaintiff was not pretextual (ECF No. 84 at 9), but in its prior order, the Court considered all of Plaintiff's proffered evidence, and concluded that evidence, even added together, did not lead to a reasonable inference that Plaintiff's termination was pretextual.⁵ (ECF No. 81 at 12-16.) Moreover, the evidence Plaintiff offered did not amount to "specific" and "substantial" evidence of pretext to create a triable issue even though the Court drew all reasonable inferences in her favor. (ECF No. 81 at 12-16.) See also Earl v. Nielsen Media Research, Inc., 658 F.3d 1108, 1113 (9th Cir. 2011). Because the inferences Plaintiff wishes the Court had drawn in her favor are not reasonable, the Court declines to reconsider its prior order on this basis.

3. Direct vs. Circumstantial Evidence

Plaintiff also argues that the Court clearly erred in characterizing two key pieces of evidence as circumstantial evidence, when the Court should have considered them to be direct evidence of "racial and retaliatory animus." (ECF No. 84 at 1, 19-21, 22.) Plaintiff further argues this makes a difference because a different standard applies to direct evidence under the applicable discrimination and retaliation legal frameworks that wouldhave made Plaintiff's claims more likely to have survived summary judgment. (Id. at 5-8.) The Court is also unpersuaded by this argument because—as explained below—the evidence Plaintiff characterizes as direct was—and is—properly characterized as circumstantial. As the Court treated this evidence as circumstantial in its prior order, reconsideration is unwarranted.

"Direct evidence is evidence which, if believed, proves the fact of discriminatory animus without inference or presumption." Vasquez v. Cty. of Los Angeles, 349 F.3d 634, 640 (9th Cir. 2003), as amended (Jan. 2, 2004) (citation, internal punctuation, and quotation marks omitted). In contrast, circumstantial evidence is evidence "that tends to show that the employer's proffered motives were not the actual motives because they are inconsistent or otherwise not believable." Godwin v. Hunt Wesson, Inc., 150 F.3d 1217, 1222 (9th Cir. 1998), as amended (Aug. 11, 1998). In other words, direct evidence is evidence that requires little or no inference that it is motivated by racial animus,⁶ while circumstantial evidence requires a larger inference. The Court finds that it properly characterized both pieces of evidence that Plaintiff raises here as circumstantial evidence in its prior order because both require a nonnegligible inference to impute racial animus to them. The Court addresses each of the two pieces of evidence, in turn, below.

i. "The Black Issue"

The Court finds that it correctly categorized Plaintiff's supervisor Alicia Jones' purported utterance of the phrase "the black issue" to Alan Booker as circumstantial evidence, and will not reconsider its prior order on that basis. (ECF No. 81 at 13-14 (treating it as circumstantial evidence and determining it was not specific and substantial evidence supporting a finding of pretext in granting summary judgment to Defendant on Plaintiff's discrimination claim).) Jones' use of the phrase "the black issue" is circumstantial evidence because it requires an inference to get to the conclusion Pla...