Williams, Jr. v. Raheel Foods, Inc.
Filing
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MEMORANDUM Opinion and Order Signed by the Honorable Milton I. Shadur on 11/1/2011:Mailed notice(srn, )
IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS
EASTERN DIVISION
TORIANO WILLIAMS JR.,
Plaintiff,
v.
RAHEEL FOODS INC. d/b/a KFC,
Defendant.
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No.
11 C 4965
MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER
After several false starts in which a nonlawyer principal in
defendant Raheel Foods, Inc. (“Raheel”) had tried to respond on
its behalf to a Complaint by its ex-employee Toriano Williams,
Jr. (“Williams”) charging both employment discrimination and
retaliation, Raheel retained counsel to represent it here.
In
turn the retained counsel proceeded to generate not one but two
unsatisfactory responsive pleadings (each of them captioned
“Answer”).
In an effort to set Raheel’s counsel on the proper path,
this Court issued an October 18, 2011 memorandum opinion and
order (“Opinion”) that explained in substantial detail the
problematic aspects of the second Answer.1
Now counsel have come
forward with an Amended Answer that, to be perfectly blunt, is an
even less acceptable piece of work than its lawyer-generated
1
As Opinion at 3 stated, both of counsel’s filings “betray
a serious lack of knowledge and understanding of the operative
standards established both by the Rules and this District Court’s
LRs.”
predecessors.
For example, the second Answer contained two paragraphs that
revealed counsel’s failure to have read and understood Fed. R.
Civ. P. (“Rule”) 8(b)(5), as to which Opinion at 4 stated:
Next, Raheel’s efforts to invoke the Rule 8(b)(5)
disclaimer to obtain the benefit of deemed denials
(Answer ¶¶4 and 34) depart fatally from the plain path
marked out by that Rule. Moreover, even if the Rule’s
route had been followed faithfully, counsel’s coupling
of a disclaimer with a denial of the corresponding
Complaint allegations is oxymoronic--how can a party
that asserts (presumably in good faith) that it lacks
knowledge (or, as Rule 8(b)(5) requires, even enough
information to form a belief) as to the truth of an
allegation then proceed to deny it in accordance with
Rule 11(b)?
Astonishingly, this time not just two but fully 21 paragraphs
(Amended Answer ¶¶4, 12-21 and 25-34), though eliminating the
Answer’s oxymoronic denial of disclaimed allegations in the
Complaint, display counsel’s continued failure to read that Rule
and to engage in the simple task of following its crystal-clear
directive.2
Something needs to be said as well as to the nine
affirmative defenses (“ADs”) that are still included in the
2
Given counsel’s disclaimer of “knowledge” alone, while
being totally silent as to the other essential ingredients
regarding “information” and “belief,” it is impossible for this
Court or Williams’ counsel to know which of the Complaint’s
allegations can be disclaimed by Raheel in the subjective and
objective good faith demanded by Rule 11. When Raheel’s counsel
returns once more to the task of seeking to produce a proper
responsive pleading, this Court expects every allegation of the
Complaint to be examined with care to see which can and which
cannot be the subject of a Rule 8(b)(5) disclaimer.
2
current filing (it appears that Raheel’s counsel has simply
eliminated the blunderbuss assertions formerly contained in what
had been the Second Affirmative Defense, simply moving up what
had been ADs 3 through 10 to become ADs 2 through 9 in the new
pleading.
Even then counsel’s work has been impermissibly
sloppy, failing to change the numbering in the text of each AD to
conform to the new AD numbers themselves (thus new AD 2 begins
“As for its third affirmative defense...,” with the same error
being repeated throughout).
As before, this Court will leave it to Williams’ counsel to
address any ADs that she may find flawed.
This opinion will
instead single out just a few that are patently problematic:
1.
AD 1, which as before is the equivalent of a
Rule 12(b)(6) motion, betrays either a lack of understanding
of, or a failure to follow, basic principles of employment
discrimination law.
According to the Complaint, Williams’
subjection to discipline and ultimate termination were the
direct outcome of sexual harassment by his immediate
supervisor Dianne Danzey (“Danzey”), the General Manager at
his place of employment.
Raheel’s Title VII liability stems
from Danzey’s poisoning of the decisional well, even if that
may have fallen short of the now-discredited “cat’s paw”
concept.
2.
AD 6 (formerly AD 7) was expressly singled out in
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Opinion at 5 n.5 as “demonstrat[ing] a total lack of
understanding of the law of employment discrimination.”
That continues to be the case, and AD 6 is stricken without
leave to refile.
3.
AD 7 (formerly AD 8) misses the boat in the same
way as explained earlier regarding AD 1.
It too is stricken
without leave to replead.
4.
AD 9 simply repeats what had been AD 10, even
though Opinion at 6 had said the latter “makes no sense at
all.”
That too is rejected without leave to replead.
In another instance of total disregard of this Court’s
constructive curative efforts, Raheel’s counsel has again
attached a verification that is not only out of sync with federal
practice but also refers to a provision of the Illinois state
courts’ Code of Civil Procedure--and that even though Opinion at
6 n.6 had specifically brought the shortcomings to counsel’s
attention.
In light of counsel’s obvious flouting of this Court’s
efforts at guidance (something that really demonstrates a lack of
respect for this Court), something more than simply striking the
new pleading and ordering its replacement is in order.
In the
latter respect, though, a Second Amended Answer must be filed on
or before November 15, 2011, and the directive contained in the
penultimate paragraph of the Opinion must again be followed.
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In
addition, this time this Court concludes that an appropriate
sanction under Rule 11(c)(3) should be considered, and Raheel’s
counsel is ordered on or before that same November 15 date to
show cause why the conduct described here has not violated Rule
11(b).
________________________________________
Milton I. Shadur
Senior United States District Judge
Date:
November 1, 2011
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