Opinion ID: 1043390
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Peoplemark’s Document Production After the

Text: Hearing on the Second Motion to Amend: 8/11- 9/17/2009 On August 11, 13, 14, 17, 18-21, 25, and September 17, 2009, the EEOC received discs containing full paper application information. The EEOC made forensic copies of the information and overnight mailed the discs to its document processor. Thus, for the first time in the litigation, the EEOC had in its hands the data it needed to compile its statistical analysis, prepare its experts reports, and ascertain with a significant degree of certainty those persons who would be class members. Despite this fact, the agency found itself between the Scylla of the work it needed to do an Charybdis of the court’s inflexible view towards its deadline. The court refused to acknowledge the fact of the long-delayed, but essential document production. Moreover, No. 11-2582 E.E.O.C. v. Peoplemark Page 34 the court assumed, based on its subjective speculation that the agency was exaggerating the time needed for its experts to do their work. The volume of the disclosure, as finally received, was far more extensive than the EEOC had anticipated: namely, 178,000 pieces of paper, rather than the approximately 50,000 pages the agency had expected to receive – an increase of more than 250%. The fact that Peoplemark produced 250% more documents than the EEOC had originally anticipated added considerably to the amount of time the EEOC’s data processor needed to pull information from the applications and enter the information into a standardized format. Quite simply, more applications required more processing time. The EEOC’s document processor stated in its affidavit in support of the third renewed motion to extend that each additional 1,000 pages would likely require an additional one business day to process. The EEOC’s document processor also informed the court that there had been a noticeable deterioration in data CDs Peoplemark produced. At first, Peoplemark provided the EEOC with neatly labeled documents, with images and corresponding text, which was presented in a logical, well-named hierarchical folder schema. As time went on, Peoplemark no longer organized or labeled the documents according to any ascertainable presentation schema. Peoplemark failed to put the electronic documents in folders. Peoplemark’s reduced organization forced the document processor to have to wade through non-critical documents such as I-9 forms and drug test consent forms to find the relevant applicant information that it needed to complete an e- database for the EEOC’s experts. 4. Third Motion to Amend: Request to Extend Deadline for Dr. Madden’s Statistical Report: 9/24/2009 On September 24, 2009, the Commission filed its final motion to amend the case management order. It requested an extension for filing Dr. Madden’s statistical analysis report. The EEOC stated that it would produce Dr. Devah Pager’s report under the No. 11-2582 E.E.O.C. v. Peoplemark Page 35 previously established deadlines with the caveat that it be allowed to supplement that report once the information database was complete. Dr. Pager’s report detailed the disparate conviction rates between blacks and whites in society generally and in the communities where Peoplemark has offices. The EEOC was able to produce Dr. Pager’s report because it did not necessarily require an analysis of Peoplemark’s employment records. In its third motion the EEOC again requested that the court give the agency until February 2010 to produce Dr. Madden’s report. The EEOC outlined its efforts to ship all discs to its document processor and its document processor’s efforts to enter the information from the raw application materials into a uniform e-database that the EEOC’s experts could code, analyze, and report. The EEOC attached affidavits from both its document processor and Dr. Madden. The document processor outlined its progress thus far, and stated that in its professional opinion, the e-database could not be provided to Dr. Madden’s team for coding and analysis before November 4, 2009, (thirty business days from the filing of the motion). Dr. Madden stated in her affidavit that after receiving the e-database her team would need at least three months to code, analyze, and report on the data from the 45,000 applicants the document producer identified. Her affidavit in support of the motion explained in detail why she needed that much time to provide a report: Once the electronic or computerized data have been provided to me, a database which is currently being prepared by a litigation support vendor . . . , I must code the data into formats that a computer and a statistical program will recognize . . . I must review the data entered by the vendor for education . . . prior work experience, criminal records, shift desired, etc. This process of assigning a common, computer readable value for each characteristic for each of 45,000 applicants requires at least eight weeks. No. 11-2582 E.E.O.C. v. Peoplemark Page 36 Once these vast arrays of data are coded into a standard format . . . I apply widely accepted statistical formulas to calculate whether there are differentials in the likelihood of hire for those with criminal records . . . The application of these programs to the coded data requires at least three weeks. Finally, when the statistical results are available, I prepare a written report summarizing the approaches taken and the findings. The writing of the report requires my unassisted time, although the extensive checking of the report against the computer programs is performed by assistants . . . The writing of the report requires about two weeks, one of which must occur after the computer work has been completed. The EEOC has advised me that the completed electronic database will be delivered on November 4, 2009. Therefore, I believe that my expert report can be completed 12 weeks thereafter, or by February 11, 2009 (given Econsult’s longstanding policy of closing during Christmas week). On September 30, 2009, the EEOC timely produced Dr. Pager’s report. On October 16, 2006, the Magistrate Judge declared that the EEOC’s third motion, including Dr. Madden’s affidavit, failed to make clear “how plaintiff expects to use Dr. Madden’s report to prove liability.” The court expressed concern that “Dr. Madden is not routinely coding in an applicant’s race for purposes of her analysis.” Further, the court stated: If the report is simply being used to prove that statistically people with felony convictions are less likely to be hired than people without felony convictions, defendants may not even dispute this point. . . The issue in this case . . . is whether the defendant categorically denies hire to any individual with a criminal record . . . If [it was true that Madden only seeks to show that people with convictions are hired less frequently], a continuance based on the need for Dr. Madden’s report would not be necessary. Instead of denying outright the EEOC’s request as it had done previously, the court asked for a supplemental report providing further explanation of why Dr. Madden’s report was absolutely essential to proving liability and why she needed all the fields of information to write her report. No. 11-2582 E.E.O.C. v. Peoplemark Page 37 5. EEOC’s Supplemental Brief in Support of Extending the Deadline to Produce Dr. Madden’s Report On October 23, 2009, the EEOC filed its supplemental memorandum, which included a second, more detailed affidavit from Dr. Madden. The EEOC stated that Dr. Madden’s statistical analysis was absolutely necessary to prove the causal element of its prima facie case. First, the EEOC explained that, although its pleadings asserted that Peoplemark maintained a categorical no-felon policy existed at Peoplemark, discovery had showed that Peoplemark had, in fact, placed a small number of applicants with prior felony convictions. Accordingly, the EEOC told the court that it did not plan to allege a categorical policy as the first element of it prima facie case. Instead, the EEOC planned to allege a policy of considering felony convictions in the pre-application and application processes used at Peoplemark’s offices. The EEOC also attempted to explain the substantiative employment discrimination law to the court. It told the court that it was not required to assert the same “categorical” policy alleged in its pleadings in its prima facie case. The EEOC stated to the court that it could prevail on its disparate impact claim as long as it showed Peoplemark had a policy that disparately impacted African Americans. Second, the EEOC stated that Dr. Madden needed to review the “applicant flow data and current work force data” in order “to determine whether the manner in which convictions are used at each facility has a disparate impact on African American applicants for those positions.” Dr. Madden provided an extremely thorough explanation of the expert analysis process. The most crucial excerpts from her second affidavit stated: [T]wo different analyses of the application and personnel information provided by Peoplemark are required: a. An analysis of whether applicants who report conviction records on their applications were less likely to be hired than those who did not report criminal convictions. No. 11-2582 E.E.O.C. v. Peoplemark Page 38 b. An analysis of whether African American applicants were more likely to report criminal convictions than were applicants from other ethnic racial groups. For [the first analysis] . . . I must take the information that applicants hand wrote on their applications, which includes the dates of any convictions and a description of the criminal charges, and code the information into a machine readable format. While the coding of dates into years is straightforward, the coding of charges is more complicated . . . I will use [the electronic database provided by the document processor], but I must first sort and group these entries in order to characterize convictions by their severity (felony vs. misdemeanor) and type (i.e., drugs, violent, theft, financial, etc.). In order to be sure that any differences in hiring between those with convictions and those with no convictions are associated with the convictions . . . it is necessary to analyze the likelihood of hire among . . . applicants with otherwise equivalent education and job histories . . . I must sort and group [education and job history information collected by Peoplemark in various ways] in order to characterize them in a way that a computer program can analyze. For education, I must determine the level. Applicants entered their education on the application in a variety of ways. Some wrote the name of the school and “yes” in the area where they were asked to enter grade level or degree completed. Others entered a degree and no school . . . Others only entered a school name . . . If convicts were less likely to have completed high school or attended college then an analysis that failed to consider the effects of education would inaccurately attribute a hiring differential to convictions. For work experience, I must determine the type and the amount. Applicants identify their last three employers, including the dates of employment, the company name, and the duties. Some enter complete dates, other seasons and years, others only years . . . It is important to categorize these descriptions into a consistent set of occupations to characterize the types of experience of candidates. This work requires the judgment of a labor economist who is trained to categorize jobs. My analysis relies on mathematical imputations to estimate the proportion of applicants who are African American, because Peoplemark’s application forms and related data do not ask individuals seeking employment to identify their race or ethnicity. People mark has provided the racial identity of persons hired, leaving the racial identity of rejected applicants unknown. Therefore, I must estimate the African American representation among applicants in order to compare the racial composition of applicants to the racial composition of hires. No. 11-2582 E.E.O.C. v. Peoplemark Page 39 . . . By weighing African American representation in each occupation and location pool according to the number of applicants in the pool and summing over all the pools for any hiring location, I can estimate African American representation in the pool. I then use standard statistical methodology to evaluate whether there is a difference between the racial compositions of the applicant pool and of those who are hired. The analysis of whether African American applicants were more likely to report criminal convictions than were applicants from other ethnic and racial groups requires that I compare the proportion of African Americans among all other applicants . . . . . . The writing of the report requires about two weeks, one of which must occur after the computer work has been completed. Although the court requested the supplemental briefing on the necessity of additional time for producing Dr. Madden’s report, it essentially disregarded Dr. Madden’s detailed recitation of the steps she needed to take and the time she would need to accomplish those tasks. See section F infra. On November 6, 2009, Valora timely produced the e-database to Dr. Madden’s team. E. December-January 2009: Depositions of Managers, Former Employees, and Chief Counsel From December 15, 2009, to January 12, 2010, the EEOC deposed managers from all of Peoplemark’s locations, former employees, and Peoplemark’s Chief Counsel, Osten. Peoplemark’s managers revealed that much of the felony-screening is driven by client preferences, and as a result, some offices hire felons while others do not. Peoplemark’s Tennessee manager stated that she received verbal instructions not to place ex-felons, she follows those instructions in the Memphis office, and she has no clients that accept ex-felons. Peoplemark’s Michigan manager stated that his office denies ex-felon applicants because it does not have clients willing to accept these applicants. No. 11-2582 E.E.O.C. v. Peoplemark Page 40 Peoplemark’s Kentucky manager stated that his office occasionally places applicants without first conducting background checks. If a later background check reveals a felony, Peoplemark informs the employer and allows it to decide whether to continue to employ the individual. However, if after an employee is placed Peoplemark finds a violent felony conviction or multiple convictions, then Peoplemark will terminate the employee itself. Peoplemark’s Florida manager disclosed the most liberal policy for placing exfelons. According to the manager, the Florida office accepts applications from ex-felons and engages in a client driven screening process on a case by case basis in deciding whether to place the individual. On December 17, 2009, the EEOC deposed two former Peoplemark employees. Both of the individuals stated that Peoplemark placed them even though they had felony records and informed Peoplemark of their prior convictions. Finally, on December 16, 2009, the EEOC deposed Osten. The EEOC asked Osten why, during the administrative investigation, he repeatedly stated that Peoplemark had a blanket no-felon policy. Osten replied that he did not remember if he had asked someone else within the company before making the statements. His recollection was that it was “pretty generally well-known” that Peoplemark did not hire convicted felons and that clients did not want to hire convicted felons for various reasons. F. Court’s Partial Grant of Motion to Extend Deadline to Produce Dr. Madden’s Report Following depositions, on December 21, 2009, the Magistrate Judge agreed to give the EEOC until December 31, 2009, to produce Dr. Madden’s statistical analysis. This extension gave the EEOC’s expert a little over a month and a half to code, analyze, and write a report detailing the information contained in 45,000 applications. Although Dr. Madden had repeatedly informed the court that she needed three months from the time the document processor produced a uniform information database to complete her statistical analysis, the court gave her approximately half that amount of time. No. 11-2582 E.E.O.C. v. Peoplemark Page 41 In determining what it believed to be an appropriate extension, the court relied on the EEOC’s statement in its second motion to extend that it would be able to process Peoplemark’s application documents and produce an expert report in three months time. The court relied on this timeframe even though the EEOC explicitly stated in that motion that its time estimate was based on Peoplemark producing 50,000 papers.12 The court reasoned: Since all of the defendant’s documents were provided to the EEOC by August 24, 2009 (with the minimal exception of 600 pages found later in September), one could reasonably expect plaintiff to have produced its expert report by November 24, 2009, based on the opinion of its own inhouse expert. In its earlier renewed motion to extend deadlines filed July 23, 2009, plaintiff stated it could provide its experts’ reports by February 12, 2010 . . . of course, five months was considerably more than [the EEOC] estimated . . . and even with five months to complete the expert report, it would be done by December 31.13 [It is] readily apparent that a substantial portion of the delay in this case has been the plaintiff’s lack of diligence in bringing the initial vendor up to speed. Finally, the court speculated that the EEOC’s failure to send Peoplemark’s e- records to its document processor substantially delayed processing.14 12 In my view, the Magistrate Judge’s failure to acknowledge the more than 250% increase in the volume of material that the agency and Dr. Madden had to work through constituted plain error. 13 It is unclear how the court concluded that December 31, 2009, was five months from August 24, 2009. A date of January 24, 2010, would have been five months from August 24, 2009. The February 11, 2010 date finally requested by the EEOC was extended slightly in order to accomodate the Christmas holiday. 14 It is true that the EEOC received CDs of Peoplemark’s e-records prior to receiving CDs of scanned copies of Peoplemark’s paper records. However, it is highly unlikely that sending the e-records to the document processor prior to August would have saved any time. Peoplemark’s expert relied on the company’s electronic application materials. The limited nature of his expert report shows the extremely scant data actually contained in Peoplemark’s e-records. For example, the report does not analyze felony convictions, suggesting the e-records did not contain felony information. Furthermore, the database contained zero placement information for either the Kentucky office or the Tennessee office. For the Grand Rapids, Livonia, and Orlando offices, the database contained only 13,079 “employee applications.” Thus, although, as the court stated, the e-database “represents the bulk of the personnel information electronically stored on CD’s that Peoplemark had,” it did not represent the bulk of personnel information held by Peoplemark generally. No. 11-2582 E.E.O.C. v. Peoplemark Page 42 The court went on to state an alternative hypothesis for the delay in producing expert reports: On one hand, it would appear [the document processor] should have had the overwhelming bulk of the data its [sic] hands no later than the end of August 2009, and that the EEOC was simply not being diligent in transferring it to [the document processor]. There is a more probable explanation for the latest delay, however . . . [O]n July 31, 2009, the two experts identified by plaintiff had “not yet been retained” by the EEOC . . . Since Dr. Madden would not even have begun developing her protocol for [the document processor] to use until she was under contract, and she was not under contract until September 2009, [the document processor] could not have begun its keypunching operation until sometime in September. Had plaintiff been diligent and hired its experts as soon as it decided to litigate the case (well over a year ago) or even in the initial months of the lawsuit (a year ago), or even during the first several months of 2009, [the document processor] could have started key coding the documents for the database as soon as discovery permitted (perhaps even beginning with the 18,500 documents plaintiff obtained during its administrative investigation). And had plaintiff been ready in the first half of 2009 to process documents it knew it would be receiving, it might have been more diligent in pursuing the discovery of those documents as soon as the case management order was in place. In light of all that plaintiff’s counsel have been told by the court in this case, one would have assumed that counsel would have hand-carried the necessary paperwork around the EEOC bureaucracy to get Dr. Madden hired immediately upon her being identified. That this did not happen only reinforces the conclusion that the EEOC is continuing what is tantamount to a “too big to fail” strategy. The EEOC has undertaken a major case which it is going to investigate and litigate at its own pace regardless of whatever discretion the court might attempt to exercise. Having not obtained the pretrial schedule it proposed at the Rule 16 conference, plaintiff has, by continually dragging its feet through discovery, and more particularly by failing to obtain crucial expert assistance in any kind of timely manner, sought to achieve the same result by presenting the court with a fait accompli. Had plaintiff made a serious attempt during the past year to adhere to the case management order, or had it made a more reasonable request for an extension of the expert deadlines, its position might be more tenable.. But No. 11-2582 E.E.O.C. v. Peoplemark Page 43 it has simply been in denial of its obligations, apparently believing that where the EEOC is concerned the usual rules do not apply. (emphasis added). According to the court, it was reasonable to give Dr. Madden’s team only a month and a half (after receiving the uniform application information from the document processor on November 6), instead of the three months she stated was needed.15 The EEOC disagreed. On December 30, 2009, the EEOC filed notice that it was appealing the Magistrate Judge’s order. The District Judge affirmed the order on January 29, 2010. Following that affirmance, which precluded the EEOC from being able to timely produce Dr. Madden’s report, she and her team stopped working on February 2, 2010. At that time, the team was on pace to have their expert report completed and filed with the court on February 12, 2010. After the district court affirmed the Magistrate Judge’s final case management order, the EEOC realized that it would be unable to survive summary judgement because it could not prove the casual element of its prima facie case.16 Without Dr. Madden’s statistical analysis of the percentage of African American’s within the applicant pool that were placed, it was impossible to show that considering felonies caused Peoplemark to hire a reduced number of African Americans from the applicant pool. 15 There is no indication in the record that Peoplemark contended that Dr. Madden declaration of the time she needed for her work was exaggerated or otherwise misstated. In other words, the court sua sponte, and without a basis other than its subjective view, rejected Dr. Madden’s unequivocal, uncontested, and detailed representations. 16 At the outset, in its initial pleading, the EEOC was only required to raise an inference of discrimination. Serrano v. Cintas Corp.,699 F.3d 884, 898 (6th Cir. 2012). A plaintiff in an employment discrimination case is not required to state facts sufficient to establish a prima facie case in its pleading. Swierkiewicz v. Sorema N.A., 534 U.S. 506, 508 (2002). See supra discussion of merits. However, to survive a motion for summary judgement the EEOC needed to be able to prove a prima facie case of discrimination. In a disparate impact case, a plaintiff must show: 1) a specific employment practice; 2) statistical proof that the practice adversely affects a protected group; and 3) a causal link between the disparate impact and the challenged employment practice. Johnson v. U.S. Dep’t of Health & Human Servs., 30 F.3d 45, 48 (6th Cir. 1994); Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio, 490 U.S. 642, 655-58 (1989). No. 11-2582 E.E.O.C. v. Peoplemark Page 44 G. Peoplemark’s Motion for Summary Judgment, Production of Expert Report, and Settlement Negotiations On February 25, 2010, Peoplemark moved for summary judgment. On the same day, the EEOC approached Peoplemark about a settlement agreement. The EEOC proposed that both parties agree to pay their own fees and expenses. The EEOC confirmed its oral proposal in writing the next day. Discussions continued into March. On March 8, 2010, the EEOC requested that Peoplemark provide a response by the close of business the following day. On March 11, 2010, Peoplemark countered with a request that the EEOC pay $500,000 of Peoplemark’s fees. The EEOC rejected the counter proposal the same day and emailed a proposed stipulation and order of dismissal to Peoplemark. On March 24, 2010, the parties jointly moved to dismiss the case with prejudice.17 The proposed dismissal provided that Peoplemark would be treated as the prevailing party for the purposes of determining fees. 1. Peoplemark’s Expert Report (Provided with Summary Judgment Motion) Peoplemark produced its expert report from Dr. Malcom Cohen in conjunction with its motion for summary judgment in February 2010. Peoplemark's expert performed two tasks: 1) he responded to Dr. Pager's sociology study and 2) he analyzed the limited data contained in Peoplemark's electronic database. Dr. Cohen did not code or analyze the paper applicant data for the 45,000 applicants the EEOC identified during discovery. Instead, Dr. Cohen analyzed only the limited applicant data in Peoplemark’s e-records and two months of paper data from the Tennessee office. 17 The EEOC was not idle from March 11- March 24. During this time, in addition to trying to negotiate a settlement, the EEOC was appealing the court’s grant of Peoplemark’s motion to compel items contained in its privilege log. No. 11-2582 E.E.O.C. v. Peoplemark Page 45 According to Dr. Cohen, the e-records included applicant names, customers, and placements for the Grand Rapids, Orlando, and Livonia offices, but for Memphis and Owensboro offices, the database included only applicant names. Although he had only a fraction of Peoplemark’s applicant information for the relevant time period and no felony data, Dr. Cohen “found no evidence that African Americans are hired at a lower rate than their representation in the labor force in the relevant occupational groups and geographic areas.” He also concluded that, “when a comparison is made of the percent of African American placements to the available labor pool, there is no evidence of disparity.” To analyze the Memphis office, which was not included in the e-database, Dr. Cohen requested the race of applicant placements made in two random months. He had no information concerning felony convictions for the applicants. Based on this data alone, Dr. Cohen concluded that Peoplemark’s placements met or substantially exceeded the percentage of African Americans in the relevant labor market. Similarly, the e-records did not contain information on the Kentucky office. For an unknown reason, Dr. Cohen did not request the same race placement information from the manager in the Kentucky office. Instead, he did not provide any indication of whether Peoplemark met the benchmark hiring requirement for the relevant labor market in Kentucky. Although Dr. Cohen had database information for the remaining three offices, there is zero indication that he had any information concerning felony convictions of applicants. Furthermore, Dr. Cohen stated that because of the way that he coded jobs, some workers were counted multiple times, once for each unique EEO code that he assigned to a job. Dr. Cohen had database information for the Livonia, Michigan office from 2004 to May 2006, when the office closed. Based on 747 employee applications and 937 placements, Dr. Cohen concluded that this office exceeded the benchmarks for the relevant labor market by between twenty to thirty percent. No. 11-2582 E.E.O.C. v. Peoplemark Page 46 For Grand Rapids, Michigan, Dr. Cohen analyzed 5,782 employee applications and 5,379 assignments. He concluded that Peoplemark’s hiring exceeded the relevant benchmarks by between nineteen and twenty-six percent in the relevant Michigan labor markets. Dr. Cohen analyzed 6,563 applications and 8,239 assignments from the Orlando, Florida office. Based on this information he concluded that Peoplemark’s hiring exceed the relevant benchmarks by between twenty- two and twenty-nine percent. Dr. Cohen did not consider the impact of felony convictions on Peoplemark’s placement rate for African American applicants. Moreover, the application materials he did review covered only a small fraction of the company’s total applicants. H. Peoplemark’s Motion for Attorney’s Fees and Costs Peoplemark moved for attorney’s fees, expert witness fees, sanctions, and costs in excess of $1,300,000. On March 31, 2011, the Magistrate Judge awarded Peoplemark $751,942.48. The Judge awarded attorney’s fees from October 1, 2009, onward and all expert fees incurred from the outset of litigation. In explaining his fee award, the Magistrate Judge stated that an award of fees was justified in this case because the EEOC’s claim was meritless from the beginning and the EEOC conducted itself unreasonably during the course of pre-trial litigation. Specifically, the judge noted, inter alia: This is one of those cases where the complaint turned out to be without foundation from the beginning. Once the EEOC became aware that its assertion that Peoplemark categorically refused to hire any person with a criminal record was not true, or once the EEOC should have known that, it was unreasonable for the EEOC to continue to litigate on the basis of that claim. . . . The report of Peoplemark’s expert shows that 22% of the 286 so-called victims of defendant’s purported policy had in fact been hired despite having felony records. Assuming this to be true, it means that the EEOC’s ‘blanket rejection of all felons’ claim upon which it chose to premise its disparate impact lawsuit was not well grounded. The No. 11-2582 E.E.O.C. v. Peoplemark Page 47 question here is when the EEOC should have realized its claim of a blanket policy by Peoplemark had no foundation . . . It appears the EEOC was basing its whole case on some early statements made by an officer of the company coupled with the fact that Sherri Smith [sic] had not been hired, and did little independent followup. The court is left with the impression that plaintiff’s counsel were content to simply place the matter in the hands of their experts and let them run with it. There is no indication the EEOC conducted any investigation of the specific allegations of the 286 people it belatedly named as victims in this matter nor issued a reasonable cause determination as to those allegations prior to filing its complaint. However, the present case was litigated on other grounds. Had this case been dismissed on the basis that it was not properly investigated before it was brought, the attorney’s fees would be far greater. [T]he EEOC also tries to play down the significance of its claim in this lawsuit . . . the EEOC argues that the very gravamen of its claim (that Peoplemark had a blanket policy) is irrelevant . . . Obviously, whether Peoplemark had a blanket policy was not only relevant to the EEOC’s argument, it was crucial, and the EEOC never amended its complaint to assert otherwise. A good investigation would probably have shown that the EEOC could not make this case even prior to the filing of the lawsuit, but that certainly became evident when all of the evidence submitted by the other side was available even if the EEOC had not conducted its own independent investigation. [R]egardless of the merits, it was unreasonable for the EEOC to continue to litigate (and drive up defendant’s costs) once it knew it could not produce an expert and thus could not prove its case. On this basis, plaintiff should have folded its tent no later than the end of 2009 when it was foreclosed from using its expert because she had not provided a timely report . . . [T]he EEOC failed to adequately manage the prosecution of this case from the beginning. Notwithstanding that the EEOC knew from the time of its administrative investigation that it would need expert testimony to make its disparate impact case, . . . it did not hire its expert until September 2009 . . . Thereafter, having already received several continuances, the EEOC sought a further continuance of over one-third of a year to provide the expert’s report. (emphasis added). No. 11-2582 E.E.O.C. v. Peoplemark Page 48 The District Judge affirmed the Magistrate Judge’s order granting fees in toto. The District Judge stated, inter alia: [T]he EEOC unequivocally based its case on Peoplemark’s alleged categorical prohibition against the “hiring of any person with a criminal record.” . . . Had the EEOC conducted a reasonable investigation in the years leading up to filing its lawsuit, or had it reviewed the evidence provided to it throughout the course of discovery, it would have quickly realized its theory of liability as pled was untenable . . . the magistrate judge . . . correctly concluded that the EEOC should have been aware of the fatal flaw in its case no later than October 1, 2009. See . . . EEOC v. CRST Van Expedited, Inc., No. 07-cv-95, 2010 WL 5250564 (N.D. Iowa, Feb. 9, 2010) (holding EEOC lacked foundation to proceed based on failure to reasonably investigate . . .); EEOC v. Cintas Corp., Nos. 0440132, 06-12311, 2011 WL 3359622 (E.D. Mich. Aug. 4, 2011) (holding failure to timely identify aggrieved parties and reasonably investigate such claims warranted attorney fee award against the EEOC . . .). [A]s the magistrate judge aptly noted, “regardless of the merits, it was unreasonable for the EEOC to continue to litigate (and drive up defendant’s costs) once it knew it could not produce an expert and thus could not prove its case.” [T]he EEOC filed a motion to extend [the case management deadlines] the day before it was required to name its experts. Unsatisfied with [the court’s relief], the EEOC renewed its motion to extend deadlines . . . [T]he EEOC indicated it had yet to identify or hire any expert, despite having litigated the case for ten months, investigated the case for several years, and knowing that it would need an expert from day one . . . its expert never prepared a report, even though the court provided yet another deadline extension. (Emphasis added).