Thomas v. Concerned Care Home Health, Inc.
Filing
47
ORDER & REASONS: ORDERED that 45 Motion for New Trial is DENIED under the standards of Fed. R. Civ. P. 59 for the reasons assigned within document. Signed by Magistrate Judge Karen Wells Roby. (cml)
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF LOUISIANA
CHARLOTTE L. THOMAS
CIVIL ACTION
VERSUS
NO. 13-5912
CONCERNED CARE HOME
HEALTH, INC.
UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE
JUDGE KAREN WELLS ROBY
ORDER AND REASONS
Before the Court is the plaintiff Charlotte L. Thomas’s Motion for New Trial (Rec. Doc.
No. 45) seeking a new trial to correct manifest error, consider new evidence, and to prevent manifest
injustice.
The defendant, Concerned Care Home Health, Inc. (“Concerned Care”) filed a
Memorandum in Opposition (Rec. Doc. No. 46) asserting that Thomas has failed to present any
reason for a new trial in this case.
I.
Procedural Background
Thomas filed this suit pursuant to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e
seeking to recover damages as a result of her alleged wrongful termination from the employ of
Concerned Care.1 Thomas claimed that she was discharged from her employment after Concerned
Care learned that she had filed a race discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) against her former employer, Synergy Home Health
(“Synergy”), claiming to have been paid less than similarly situated Caucasian employees.
1
Rec. Doc. No. 1.
This matter was brought before the Court upon consent of the parties for a non-jury trial on
January 26, 2015.2 After thorough consideration of the testimony and the evidence, the Court
resolved that Thomas failed to demonstrate that disclosure or knowledge of her prior EEOC claim
against Synergy was the cause for her termination from Concerned Care. The Court concluded that
the cause for her discharge was the record of Thomas’s poor job performance and, even if Jody
Martin, as owner of Concerned Care, knew of the prior complaint, a fact not proven by plaintiff,
Thomas still would have been terminated based on her poor performance and her inability to
perform the job for which she was hired.
II.
Proper Standard of Review
As briefly discussed by the defendant, the plaintiff fails to identify the statutory basis for this
motion for new trial and wholly fails to address the proper standard for such motions following a
non-jury trial. As the defendant notes, the proper basis for a motion for new trial following a nonjury trial is that provided under Fed. R. Civ. 59(a)(1)(B).
Rule 59(a)(1)(B) specifies that following a non-jury trial, a motion for new trial may be
advanced “for any reason for which a rehearing has heretofore been granted in a suit in equity in
federal court.” Id. “A motion for new trial in a non-jury case or a petition for rehearing should be
based upon manifest error of law or mistake of fact; a judgment should not be set aside except for
substantial reasons.” (citation omitted) Genova v. Town of Independence, No. 97-726, 1998 WL
337891, at * 1 (E.D. La. June 22, 1998); see, Simon v. United States, 891 F.2d 1154, 1159 (5th Cir.
1990) (a motion for new trial must “clearly establish a manifest error of law or fact or must present
2
Rec. Doc. No. 10, 41.
2
newly discovered evidence.”); see also, Pechon v. La. Dep’t of Health & Hosps., No. 08-0664, 2009
WL 2046766, at *3 (E.D. La. July 14, 2009). A “manifest error” is one that “is plain and
indisputable, and that amounts to a complete disregard of the controlling law.” Bank One, Texas,
N.A. v. FDIC, 16 F. Supp. 2d 698, 713 (N.D. Tex.1998) (“a manifest error is an obvious mistake or
departure from the truth”) (internal quotation omitted). On these grounds, the United States Fifth
Circuit Court of Appeals has recognized that a new trial may be warranted when “the verdict is
against the weight of the evidence, the damages awarded are excessive, the trial was unfair, or
prejudicial error was committed in its course.” Smith v. Transworld Drilling Co., 773 F.2d 610, 613
(5th Cir. 1985) (citations omitted); see also, McFadden v. Wal-Mart Stores, No. 04-2547, 2006 WL
30871464, at *2 (E.D. La. October 27, 2006).
Thus, “[c]ourts do not grant new trials unless it is reasonably clear that prejudicial error has
crept into the record or that substantial justice has not been done, and the burden of showing harmful
error rests on the party seeking new trial.” Sibley v. Lemaire, 184 F.3d 481, 487 (5th Cir. 1999),
cert. denied, 529 U.S. 1019 (2000). The decision whether to grant a new trial under Rule 59(a) is
left to the sound discretion of the trial judge, and the court’s authority is large. In re Omega Protein,
Inc., No. 04CV2071, 2007 WL 1974309, *2 (W.D. La. July 2, 2007) (citing Gasperini v. Center for
Humanities, Inc., 518 U.S. 415. 433 (1996)).
III.
Analysis
Thomas contends that the Court erred in resolving the conflicting evidence in favor of the
defendant. She also asserts that the Court erred in failing to impute Sandy Hogan’s knowledge of
the EEOC complaint to Concerned Care, or to Jody Martin in particular, and in failing to allow her
3
counsel to cross-examine Martin a second time. To succeed, Thomas must prove a manifest error
of law or fact, identify new evidence that would alter the judgment, or show that a manifest injustice
will occur or has occurred. Having reviewed the plaintiff’s motion, the Court can not find that a new
trial is warranted under the foregoing considerations.
Considering Thomas’s arguments before the Court, it is clear that she seeks a reassessment
of the evidence which has already been dutifully considered by the Court. The plaintiff is reminded
of the burden of proof that was required at trial and must not oversimplify the evidence and
testimony of the defense witnesses for purposes of this motion. Thomas had the burden of proving
the “but-for” causal connection between her protected activity, i.e. the EEOC claim filed against
Synergy, and her termination from Concerned Care. See Univ. of Tex. Southwest Med. Ctr. v.
Nassar, __ U.S. __, 133 S. Ct. 2517, 2524 (2103); Hernandez v. Crawford Bldg. Material Co., 321
F.3d 528, 531 (5th Cir. 2003). As discussed in the Court’s Order and Reasons following trial,
Thomas failed to prove that her prior EEOC filing against Synergy was the “but-for” cause of her
termination, the only adverse employment action at issue.
As the credible evidence showed at trial, at least three individuals at Concerned Care, Sandy
Hogan, Jody Martin, and Sheri Johnston, independently identified and recognized persistent errors
in Thomas’s work. While none of them exchanged this information with the others before Thomas’s
termination, they each recognized that Thomas’s work did not improve over the term of her
employment in spite of her training, and at least at first, each of them, especially Hogan and
Johnston, gave Thomas the benefit of the doubt based on her short tenure and the novelty of the
computer program. Still, nothing improved in Thomas’s careless audits of the nursing reports
leading into the insurance audits in which Martin was involved.
4
The cumulative effect of Thomas’s failure to improve and properly audit the reports resulted
in Martin’s action to terminate her. At the time, the credible evidence proved that Martin did not
know that Thomas had filed an EEOC complaint against her prior employer. Martin only knew that
Thomas had prior disagreements with Adrienne Lacour during a prior employment. As she
conceded at trial, however, Thomas had no problems with Lacour and only one work-related
interaction with Lacour while at Concerned Care.
The trial evidence showed that neither the EEOC complaint nor Lacour’s presence were the
impetus behind Martin’s actions. Thomas has not presented any basis for this Court to reconsider
the evidence or alter its factual and legal conclusions presented in the Order and Reasons after trial.
Furthermore, contrary to Thomas’s assertions, Martin’s testimony was not inconsistent with
the other information adduced about Concerned Care’s operations. Specifically, Martin and the
other evidence established that the nurse’s reports were supposed to be approved before going to
payroll for the nurses’ pay to be released. However, as Martin stated at trial, as an alternative, a
supervisor could authorize a paycheck to be issued without forwarding a defective report that
required additional correction. This alternative means of making payroll further demonstrated that
Thomas could have pursued corrected reports without preventing a salary payout to the nurses.
Again, this stands as evidence that Thomas was not knowledgeable about her duties and obligations
at Concerned Care and was lacking in her performance, which was the true cause of her termination.
With regard to the other contentions raised in the motion, the Court finds that Thomas has
not met her burden of presenting new evidence or proving manifest error or injustice. Thomas has
by no means pointed to any new evidence that would impact the Court’s judgment. Her arguments
5
only address documentary evidence that was either presented at trial or discoverable by plaintiff
before trial, such as the sworn affidavits from the EEOC proceeding and the work records from
Thomas’s tenure at Concerned Care, and how these documents allegedly conflicted with testimony
from the various defense witnesses. The time to question the witnesses about any potential
conflicting information was at trial, not as an afterthought on how known and available information
and evidence could have been better utilized by the plaintiff at trial. Thomas did not use the sworn
EEOC statements from the Concerned Care employees to challenge their testimony and brought
forth no evidence of her own to challenge the dates of the reports relied on by the defendant to show
her poor work product.
The Court finds, nevertheless, that nothing asserted by Thomas in this motion actually
warrants reconsideration of the credit given to the relevant trial testimony and evidence. The Court
diligently scrutinized the documentary evidence and the testimony in reaching its verdict. Without
any new evidence, Thomas has failed on this point.
As a claim of manifest error, Thomas also asserts that the Court erred in failing to impute
Hogan’s knowledge of the EEOC complaint to Concerned Care, or to Jody Martin, as a basis for her
discharge. The law does not require that the Court do so. Under Title VII, knowledge is imputed
to an employer only when a fact is known to “higher management” or to someone who has the
power to take action to remedy a discriminatory problem. Sharp v. City of Houston, 164 F.3d 923,
929 (5th Cir. 1999). For an employee to qualify as someone with sufficient remedial power to
impute actual knowledge to the employer, the employee must generally possess the power to either
“fire the offending employee” or take corrective action. Id.
6
Thomas failed to present any evidence at trial that Hogan had this type of authority at
Concerned Care. There was no legal basis to impute Hogan’s knowledge of the EEOC complaint
to Martin or Concerned Care. This is consistent with the doctrine outlined in Faragher v. City of
Boca Raton, 524 U.S. 775 (1998), cited by plaintiff, which stands for the proposition that an
employer is vicariously liable for discrimination caused by a supervisor only when the supervisor
makes a tangible, adverse employment action against the injured employee. Thomas has failed to
prove legal error.
Thomas has also failed to prove any error in the limits placed on her second effort to crossexamine Martin, who was first called on cross-examination during her case-in-chief. Thomas had
no cognizable right to unlimited cross-examination opportunities. The proscribed right to confront
witnesses is governed by the Sixth Amendment which “is limited by its very terms to criminal
prosecutions.” Little v. City of N. Miami, 805 F.2d 962, 968 (11th Cir. 1986). Nevertheless, this
Court did not limit the scope of Thomas’s cross-examination and questioning of Martin when
Thomas chose to call Martin out of the normal order of court proceedings. The Court had no cause,
and Thomas showed no good reason, to allow a second round of extensive cross-examination when
Martin later testified for the defendant. See Fed. R. Ev. 611(a); accord Akouri v. Fla. Dep’t of
Transp., 408 F.3d 1338, 1346 (11th Cir. 2005) (finding no error in trial court’s time limits placed
on questioning of witnesses). Thomas exercised a strategic choice to call Martin on crossexamination during her case-in-chief. Thomas did not offer any reason why her counsel was entitled
to another opportunity during the defendant’s case.
Even now, Thomas provides no legitimate reason to have allowed additional crossexamination. She asserts only that this Court was confused by Martin’s testimony which could have
7
been clarified with additional cross-examination. The Court was not confused. Thomas has shown
no legal error or abuse of this Court’s discretion.
IV.
Conclusion
Accordingly,
IT IS ORDERED that Thomas’s Motion for New Trial (Rec. Doc. No. 45) is DENIED
under the standards of Fed. R. Civ. P. 59 for the reasons assigned above.
New Orleans, Louisiana this 10th day of March, 2016.
__________________________________________
KAREN WELLS ROBY
UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE
8
Disclaimer: Justia Dockets & Filings provides public litigation records from the federal appellate and district courts. These filings and docket sheets should not be considered findings of fact or liability, nor do they necessarily reflect the view of Justia.
Why Is My Information Online?