Witt v. Department of the Air Force et al

Filing 178

RESPONSE, by Defendants Department of the Air Force, Donald H Rumsfeld, Mary L Walker, Michael W Wynne, to 176 MOTION FOR BILL OF COSTS. (Attachments: # 1 Exhibit)(Buckingham, Stephen)

Witt v. Department of the Air Force et al

Doc. 178 Att. 1

Exhibit A
Witt v. U.S. Dept. of the Air Force, No. C06-5195 RBL Defendants' Opposition to Plaintiff's Motion for Costs

Dockets.Justia.com

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ROUGH DRAFT ONLY -- NOT A CERTIFIED COPY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Court Reporter:

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT WESTERN DISTRICT OF WASHINGTON AT TACOMA

MAJOR MARGARET WITT,

) ) Plaintiff, ) ) vs. ) ) UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE ) AIR FORCE; DONALD H. RUMSFELD, ) Secretary of Defense; MICHAEL W.) WYNNE, Secreatary of the ) Department of Air Force; and ) COLONEL MARY L. WALKER, ) Commander, 446th Aeromedical ) Evacuation Squadron, McChord ) AFB, ) ) Defendants. ) )

Docket No. C06-5195RBL Tacoma, Washington September 14, 2010

VOLUME 2

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TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS BEFORE THE HONORABLE RONALD B. LEIGHTON UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT JUDGE APPEARANCES: For the Plaintiff: JAMES E. LOBSENZ Carney Badley Spellman 701 Fifth Avenue, Ste 3600 Seattle, Washington 98104-7010 SARAH DUNNE SHER KUNG American Civil Liberties Unions of Washington 901 Fifth Avenue, Ste 630 Seattle, Washington 98164 Teri Hendrix Union Station Courthouse, Rm 3130 1717 Pacific Avenue Tacoma, Washington 98402 [phone]

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Heidi Schmidt are all members of the 446th.

And finishing

reading this and the video deposition of Anthony Loverde. That should take up tomorrow. THE COURT: You can put this activity, anywhere. Yes.

MR. LOBSENZ: THE COURT:

It's not necessary -- what I want to do,

I want to be as considerate of the witnesses as we can be, and then use this as filler. this at all. MR. LOBSENZ: We made the same arrangements to To be sure, you don't need to do

General Stenner as a hard set for Tuesday the follow week, I think that takes care of all the traveling witnesses we've tried to get all the traveling witnesses in an out. THE COURT: MR. PHIPPS: THE COURT: Mr. Phipps? Nothing from our side. I will see you tomorrow morning, I will

have a sentencing but it should not interfere with the start time. Court will be in recess. MR. DIEDERICH: With respect to the DVD we would make

the same offer, we don't need to have it played, submit it on paper, if that's helpful to the arrangement. (Proceedings concluded at 4:31 p.m..)

9/20/2010 8:07:45 PM
1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT WESTERN DISTRICT OF WASHINGTON AT TACOMA 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 REALTIME UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT IN THE MATTER OF WITT v. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE 3

MAJOR MARGARET WITT, ) Docket No. C06-5195RBL ) Plaintiff, ) Tacoma, Washington ) vs. ) September 20, 2010 ) UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE ) AIR FORCE; DONALD H. RUMSFELD, ) Secretary of Defense; MICHAEL W.) WYNNE, Secretary of the ) Department of Air Force; and ) COLONEL MARY L. WALKER, ) VOLUME 5 Commander, 446th Aeromedical ) Evacuation Squadron, McChord ) AFB, ) ) ROUGH DRAFT Defendants. ) )

A transcript of proceedings in the above-entitled matter is being delivered UNEDITED and UNCERTIFIED by the official court reporter at the request of counsel. The purchaser agrees not to disclose this realtime unedited transcript in any form, written or electronic, to anyone who has no connection to this case. This is an unofficial transcript which should NOT be relied upon for purposes of verbatim citation of testimony, nor shall it be cited or used in any way or at any time to rebut or contradict the official record or certified transcript of the proceedings. The purchaser agrees to use this realtime draft only for the purpose of augmenting counsel's notes and NOT to quote from or cite it in any court proceeding. This transcript has not been checked, proofread, or corrected. It is a draft transcript, NOT a certified transcript. As such it may contain computer-generated mistranslations of Stenotype code or electronic transmission errors, resulting in inaccurate or nonsensical word combinations or untranslated Stenotype or nonsensical word combinations or untranslated Stenotype symbols which cannot be deciphered by non-Stenotypists. Corrections will be made during the preparation of a certified transcript, resulting in differences in content, page and line numbers, punctuation, and formatting. This realtime unedited draft contains no index or certification. ************************************************************* *************************************************************

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS BEFORE THE HONORABLE RONALD B. LEIGHTON UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT JUDGE APPEARANCES: For the Plaintiff: JAMES E. LOBSENZ Carney Badley Spellman 701 Fifth Avenue, Ste 3600 Seattle, Washington 98104-7010 SARAH DUNNE SHER KUNG American Civil Liberties Unions of Washington 901 Fifth Avenue, Ste 630 Seattle, Washington 98164 Court Reporter: Teri Hendrix Union Station Courthouse, Rm 3130 1717 Pacific Avenue Tacoma, Washington 98402 [phone]

2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 APPEARANCES- CONTINUED 1 2 3 For the Defendants: PETER J. PHIPPS BRYAN R. DIEDERICH STEPHEN J. BUCKINGHAM U.S. Department of Justice Civil Division Federal Programs 20 Massachusetts Ave., NW P.O. Box 883 Washington, D.C. 20044 Also Present: LT. COLONEL TODI CARNES United States Air Force 1777 N. Kent St., Suite 11400 Rosslyn, VA 22209 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Court Reporter: Teri Hendrix Union Station Courthouse, Rm 3130 1717 Pacific Avenue Tacoma, Washington 98402 [phone] 21 22 23 24 Proceedings recorded by mechanical stenography, transcript produced by Reporter on computer. 25 THE COURT: Please be seated at the witness stand immediately to my left. Please keep the volume of your voice up so the people in the courtroom can hear you. Speak slowly enough so the Court Reporter can keep up with you. DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR. LOBSENZ: Q. Good morning. A. Good morning. Q. Would you state your name for the record? A. Margaret Helen Witt. * * * MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2010 - 9:30 A.M. * *

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THE COURT: Please be seated. Good morning. All right, anything we need to take up before resuming with testimony? MR. LOBSENZ: No, Your Honor. MR. PHIPPS: New York Your Honor. THE COURT: Okay. Mr. Lobsenz? Call your next witness. We would call major Margaret Witt. THE COURT: You've heard my admonition ad nauseam come to the lectern and be sworn. Major Margaret Witt. Major Witt, called as a witness, duly sworn.

Witt Witt v. USAF

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177 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 BY THE COURT: Q. One, you talked about the increase in social cohesion might actually result in lower task cohesion because friends might be reluctant to criticize hurt feels and so forth. Is that dynamic in a unit, a, could bit a possible reason for persons who might otherwise be opposed to open service of gays and lesbians, keeping quiet, not registering their disapproval because of the highly socialized cohesion of the particular unit that they are in? A. Could you rephrase it. I am sorry I didn't understand. Q. I think you specifically referred to a reluctant to criticize and a reluctant to hurt feels as an example of how a unit with high social cohesion might actually result in a lower task cohesion or performance? A. Performance, yes. Q. And the question is, is it possible that that dynamic could work in the case of the issue before us, open service of gays and lesbians, on those folks within the unit who might otherwise be opposed did you but do not want to hurt somebody else's feelings? A. So that they wouldn't say that -Q. They wouldn't say -- they wouldn't come for and say they were opposed, they wouldn't, they perhaps wouldn't like it, they would be opposed to it for whatever reason based on their 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Honor. THE COURT: Do we really need to read these, do the video -- professor you may leave. MR. LOBSENZ: The video I confidencely say no we don't need to do that. THE COURT: Because I have read both depositions. Mr. Phipps you want to say something. MR. PHIPPS: Not preempting Mr. Lobsenz's trial plans, but in anticipation that we might have a little gap, we have opined about, but the concept of the war your culture was discussed previously. Have you done research on the wore year culture and its continued vitality or whether it is dissipating in the military do you have an understanding of what the war your culture refers to. A. I would assume war your culture refers to the loyalty an aggressiveness and commitment to the task. I have never done research on it to know, no. Q. Thank you very much. Any other questions. MR. BUCKINGHAM: No, Your Honor. MR. LOBSENZ: No, Your Honor. THE COURT: You may be excused. Thank you very much. Do you have. MR. LOBSENZ: We don't have a live witness left Your 179

178 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 experience or upbringing or whatever but they would keep their mouth shut because they are in a highly socialized unit where the culture of that unit, where the view would be 0 -- or their perception of the view would be contrary to their 18? A. Yes, they might be -- they might be unwilling to say I don't support open integration if they thought the general climate in their unit was supportive of gays. When the surveys are done about whether a service members support open integration or not, these are not done in a public forum. Q. Right, I understand that. I am just talking generally about the civil war confederate soldiers, find somebody in a highly socialized -- you've got a Buddy system and you can go off and create a larger group in the social dynamic and we use the term political correctness and whether or not is that its own form of whether it be intolerance or, think mob, mob orientation, we all think -- we all live here and we all think alike on such and such. Those people are bad and indicative and biassed but not us? A. Yes, and this is interesting you say this because this is what a lot of the researchers have found and I didn't talk about this the more socially cohesive groups experience group think, and they do find the higher the social cohesion the more likely the group think, the higher the task cohesion, the less likely the group think, yes. Q. This may be off, it's certainly off the topic that you 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 do have one witness waiting in the wings. THE COURT: I am not looking for a witness, I just want to foe how we are doing for time. My sense was we might be falling a little bit behind and that was one way to catch up a little. It's up to you. MR. LOBSENZ: As long as I can refer to Colonel Hansen's deposition at closing. THE COURT: It's in. MR. LOBSENZ: Then that maybe something I wouldn't usually do in closing, to sort of get into details of testimony that we already heard, but then I guess we don't need to do that. So we don't have any more -THE COURT: I know a well done trial is a certain amount of theatre, and you want that out, but I think that it's not, the bank is not worth the buck right now, you can make those arguments but I have certainly read the deposition. Mr. Phipps? MR. PHIPPS: I just want to say we have no problem to Mr. Lobsenz referring to those deposition. THE COURT: It's in. Now, who would be the witness that you would call? MR. PHIPPS: We've got a witness we don't anticipate to take too much time chief master sergeant Jan Kallinen she's basically going to testify on pretty small points, procedural

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Witt v. USAF

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