Vasquez v. City of Idaho Falls

Filing 41

MEMORANDUM DECISION AND ORDER Plaintiff's Motion for Reconsideration (Dkt. 37 ) is DENIED. Signed by Judge David C. Nye. (caused to be mailed to non Registered Participants at the addresses listed on the Notice of Electronic Filing (NEF) by (jp)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF IDAHO
LUIS AUGUSTINE VASQUEZ,

Case No. 4:16-cv-184-DCN

Plaintiff,

MEMORANDUM DECISION AND
ORDER

v.
CITY OF IDAHO FALLS,
Defendant.
I. OVERVIEW
This employment discrimination case comes before the Court on Plaintiff’s
Motion for Reconsideration. Dkt. 37. Plaintiff Luis Augustine Vasquez argues the Court
erred in granting summary judgment in favor of Defendant the City of Idaho Falls and,
accordingly, asks the Court to reconsider its decision. Having reviewed the record, the
Court finds that the parties have adequately presented the facts and legal arguments in the
briefs. Accordingly, in the interest of avoiding further delay, and because the Court finds
that the decisional process would not be significantly aided by oral argument, the Court
decides the pending Motion on the record without oral argument.1 Dist. Idaho Loc. Civ.

1

The Court notes that Plaintiff, through counsel, requested oral argument on this Motion. The
Court typically only hears oral arguments on dispositive motions to dismiss, motions for
summary judgment, or when the Court feels oral argument would aid it in the decision process.
This case does not fall under any of these categories. Moreover, the Court heard extensive oral
argument on this case at the summary judgment stage. As most of Plaintiff’s arguments in the
pending Motion are repetitious of the arguments he made at the summary judgment stage, the
Court does not see a need to hear oral argument on the Motion for Reconsideration.
MEMORANDUM DECISION AND ORDER –1

R. 7.1(d)(2)(ii). For the reasons set forth below, the Court finds good cause to DENY the
Motion for Reconsideration.
II. BACKGROUND
This Court granted Defendant the City of Idaho Falls’ Motion for Summary
Judgment on December 20, 2018. Dkt. 33. The Court set forth the entire factual
background of this case in that Decision. The Court now incorporates, in full, that factual
background by reference. That Decision also disposed of all of Plaintiff’s claims.
Accordingly, the Court entered Judgment and dismissed the case in its entirety. Dkt. 37.
On January 31, 2018, Plaintiff filed the current Motion for Reconsideration. The Motion
is now fully briefed and ripe for review.
III. LEGAL STANDARD
It is true that “neither the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure nor the Local Rules
provide for a motion to reconsider.” Magnus Pac. Corp. v. Advanced Explosives
Demolition, Inc., No. 2:13-CV-0060-EJL-CWD, 2014 WL 3533622, at *1 (D. Idaho July
15, 2014). Nevertheless, the Ninth Circuit has instructed that courts should treat motions
to reconsider “as motions to alter or amend under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e).”
Id. (citing Sierra On–Line, Inc. v. Phoenix Software, Inc., 739 F.2d 1415, 1419 (9th Cir.
1984)). “While Rule 59(e) permits a district court to reconsider and amend a previous
order, the rule offers an ‘extraordinary remedy, to be used sparingly in the interests of
finality and conservation of judicial resources.’” Carroll v. Nakatani, 342 F.3d 934, 945
(9th Cir. 2003) (quoting 12 James Wm. Moore et al., Moore’s Federal Practice § 59.30[4]
(3d ed. 2000)). Accordingly, a district court should only grant a motion for
MEMORANDUM DECISION AND ORDER –2

reconsideration if (1) it “is presented with newly discovered evidence,” (2) it “committed
clear error,” or (3) “there is an intervening change in the controlling law.” Id. (citation
omitted). “A Rule 59(e) motion may not be used to raise arguments or present evidence
for the first time when they could reasonably have been raised earlier in the litigation.”
Id. “Whether or not to grant reconsideration is committed to the sound discretion of the
court.” See Navajo Nation v. Confederated Tribes & Bands of the Yakama Indian Nation,
331 F.3d 1041, 1046 (9th Cir. 2003) (citing Kona Enter., Inc. v. Estate of Bishop, 229
F.3d 877, 883 (9th Cir. 2000)).
IV. ANALYSIS
Plaintiff argues the Court should reconsider its summary judgment decision
because it committed three clear legal errors. Plaintiff also asserts it has new evidence
that requires reconsideration. The Court will address each of these arguments in turn.
First, Plaintiff argues the Court erred “in concluding that [his] supervisor, Jeff
Baird, who obviously had a deep and thoroughgoing discriminatory animus against
Hispanic or Mexican people in general, and Plaintiff in particular, because as a technical
matter he was not among the small group of people to whom the defendant delegated the
decision to fire Plaintiff.” Dkt. 37-1, at 2. Put differently, Plaintiff argues the Court’s
decision is contrary to Vance v. Ball State University, 133 S. Ct. 2434 (2013).
The Court directly addressed this argument in its last decision. See Dkt. 33, at 1718. Under Vance, when “an employer . . . confine[s] decisionmaking power to a small
number of individuals, . . . the employer may be held to have effectively delegated the
power to take tangible employment actions to the employees on whose recommendations
MEMORANDUM DECISION AND ORDER –3

it relies.” Vance, 133 S. Ct. at 2452 (emphasis added). Vance necessarily requires that
there be evidence that the employer relied on the recommendation of an employee in
taking an employment action. The totality of the record shows the City did not rely on
Baird in terminating Plaintiff.
The primary evidence Plaintiff has relied on throughout this case is the declaration
of Daris Powell, a previous employee of the City of Idaho Falls who had no personal
knowledge of the facts giving rise to this case. The Court struck portions of Powell’s
declaration after finding them inadmissible. Plaintiff does not challenge the decision to
strike Powell’s declaration. Rather, Plaintiff continues to insist that Powell’s declaration
shows Baird had influence over the City’s decision to fire him. The Court reiterates that
Powell’s experience five years prior has no bearing on the facts giving rise to this case.
In his Motion for Reconsideration, Plaintiff points to the City’s policy, which
authorized Baird to discipline City employees under his supervision (including Plaintiff).
Just because Baird was authorized, in general, to discipline employees does not mean he
disciplined Plaintiff in this instance or recommended Plaintiff’s termination to the City.
More evidence is required for Plaintiff’s claim to survive summary judgment.
Plaintiff also cites to the fact that Greg Weitzel had little or no interaction with
Plaintiff before he notified Plaintiff that the City was terminating him. This fact also does
not change the outcome of this case. The record as a whole indicates the City terminated
Plaintiff because it found credible complaints filed by City employees that accused
Plaintiff of sexual harassment. The record does not show that the City terminated Plaintiff
for poor performance over an extended period of time. In such circumstances, it is not
MEMORANDUM DECISION AND ORDER –4

unusual for a higher level manager, with little direct knowledge of the accused employee,
to investigate the accusations. Therefore, this fact is not evidence that the City laundered
Baird’s alleged discriminatory animus through Weitzel.
In sum, none of Plaintiff’s evidence gives rise to a reasonable inference that Baird
in fact influenced the City’s decision to terminate Plaintiff. Accordingly, Plaintiff has
failed to establish that the Court’s previous decision contained a clear error that requires
reconsideration.
In addition to a lack of evidence that Baird influenced the City’s decision to
terminate Plaintiff, the Court had before it evidence to the contrary. The City provided a
declaration from Brent Martin that, at the time the City terminated Plaintiff, “Baird was
under investigation for improper use of City equipment.” Due to this investigation, Baird
was not acting as a supervisor when the City terminated Plaintiff and the City did not
consult Baird before taking this action. The Court gave this declaration credence as it was
made under oath and had not been contradicted. The Court noted the absence of any
declaration from Baird to the contrary.
This brings the Court to the second reason Plaintiff has cited in support of his
Motion for Reconsideration. Plaintiff asserts that the City “carefully withheld Jeff Baird
as a potential witness, disclosing neither his address, telephone number, nor the critical
information that he allegedly was under investigation at the same time as Agustin and had
since been terminated.” Dkt. 37-1, at 9. Plaintiff maintains that the City withheld “this
information until after the discovery cutoff and after Plaintiff responded to the city’s
motion for summary judgment.” Id. Finally, Plaintiff argues that the Court should allow
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him “to conduct [additional] discovery and supplement the record with Mr. Baird’s
testimony.” Id. at 10.
The Court interprets this argument as an assertion that “newly discovered
evidence” requires reconsideration. Evidence is only newly discovery if it was in fact
previously unavailable⸺i.e. the party asserting the evidence, acting with reasonable
diligence, could not have previously discovered the evidence. See Zimmerman v. City of
Oakland, 255 F.3d 734, 740 (9th Cir. 2001). That is not the case here. Plaintiff’s theory
all along has been that Baird’s discriminatory animus was the real impetus of his
termination. And yet, Plaintiff never asked the City for Baird’s contact information or
independently sought him out. Plaintiff made assumptions about Baird’s employment
status and testimony without conducting any steps to verify those assumptions.
Presumably, the City did not include Baird on its list of initial disclosures because its
position is that Baird played no role in Plaintiff’s termination.2 Moreover, if Plaintiff
thought the failure to disclose Baird’s contact information was a violation of the
discovery rules, Plaintiff had many opportunities to bring this failure to the Court’s
attention before this point. Plaintiff could have raised this issue during discovery, during
oral argument on the Motion for Summary Judgment, or even in a supplement brief after
oral argument. Plaintiff’s failure to raise this issue earlier or remedy it himself indicates
Plaintiff did not act with reasonable diligence in seeking out this evidence. The evidence

2

The City did not explain in its response brief why it did not include Baird in its initial
disclosures.
MEMORANDUM DECISION AND ORDER –6

is thus not “newly discovered” and is not a sufficient reason for the Court to reconsider
its earlier ruling.3
Third, Plaintiff argues the Court committed plain error in its ruling on pretext.
More specifically, Plaintiff argues the Court misapplied Villiarimo v. Aloha Island Air,
Inc., 281 F.3d 1054 (9th Cir. 2002). Plaintiff appears to argue that any evidence that an
employer’s proffered reason for terminating an employee is false entitles the employee to
a trial. The Court fully addressed this argument in its previous decision. Even if the
allegations that Plaintiff committed sexual harassment were false, there is no evidence
that the City did not honestly believe the allegations. This lack of evidence extinguishes
Plaintiff’s allegations of pretext. See 281 F.3d 1054, 1063 (9th Cir. 2002). Employers are
required to take accusations of sexual harassment seriously and, if they find them
credible, take appropriate action to protect their employees and protect themselves from
future liability. A scintilla of evidence that the accusations may actually be fabricated
does not make the employer liable for discrimination. A contrary ruling would put the
employer between a rock and a hard place. Thus, without evidence that the City
disbelieved the accusations of sexual harassment, there is nothing upon which “a
reasonable juror drawing all inferences in favor of the respondent could return a verdict
in [his or her] favor.” Zetwick v. Cty. of Yolo, 850 F.3d 436, 441 (9th Cir. 2017).

3

The Court notes that Plaintiff has not actually presented new evidence, but rather a source of
evidence he would like to investigate. The Court also notes Plaintiff has failed to prove or even
address the “good cause” required by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 16 to reopen discovery.
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Finally, Plaintiff argues that the temporal proximity between his last complaint
and his termination, alone, is sufficient evidence of pretext for both his discrimination
claim and his retaliation claims. It is true that “[i]n some cases, temporal proximity can
by itself constitute sufficient circumstantial evidence of retaliation for purposes of both
the prima facie case and the showing of pretext.” Dawson v. Entek Int’l, 630 F.3d 928,
937 (9th Cir. 2011). However, “[t]he cases that accept mere temporal proximity between
an employer’s knowledge of protected activity and an adverse employment action as
sufficient evidence of causality . . . uniformly hold that the temporal proximity must be
‘very close.’” Clark Cty. Sch. Dist. v. Breeden, 532 U.S. 268, 273–74 (2001) (quoting
O’Neal v. Ferguson Constr. Co., 237 F.3d 1248, 1253 (10th Cir. 2001); also citing
Richmond v. ONEOK, Inc., 120 F.3d 205, 209 (10th Cir. 1997) (3–month period
insufficient); Hughes v. Derwinski, 967 F.2d 1168, 1174–1175 (7th Cir. 1992) (4–month
period insufficient)). The Court finds the temporal proximity between Plaintiff’s alleged
last complaint and his termination is insufficient to establish pretext. If Plaintiff had
complained just once, or even a few times, shortly before being terminated, Plaintiff’s
case might have survived summary judgment. But in this case, Plaintiff reported Baird’s
racist comments and improper handling of vaults at the cemetery to Brent Martin
repeatedly over the course of several years. In light of this history of complaining, with
little else to support a finding of pretext, the Court, again, finds a reasonable juror could
not find in favor of Plaintiff. At the very least, there is nothing in this argument to
convince the Court that this is one of the exceptional cases in which reconsideration is
warranted.
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V. ORDER
THE COURT HEREBY ORDERS
1. Plaintiff’s Motion for Reconsideration (Dkt. 37) is DENIED.

DATED: March 1, 2018
_________________________
David C. Nye
U.S. District Court Judge

MEMORANDUM DECISION AND ORDER –9