Opinion ID: 2722688
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Ms. Tabor’s Disparate Treatment Claim

Text: Regarding her disparate treatment claim, Ms. Tabor argues that the district court erred in excluding her statistical analysis evidence from the pretrial order, and in denying her motion to amend the pretrial order to include that evidence. Both at the pretrial conference, and in response to Ms. Tabor’s motion to amend the pretrial order, the district court emphasized its decision, at her request, to try separately her disparate impact and disparate treatment claims. It noted its bifurcation decision was 3 Because Ms. Tabor has not shown error in the district court’s dispositive ruling that her statistical analysis failed to demonstrate that the GDCP had a disparate impact on the protected group, we need not address her alternative argument that the district court erred in concluding that she was not personally affected by the GDCP. - 16 - based, in part, on avoiding jury confusion regarding the statistical evidence. We find no abuse of discretion in the district court’s rulings. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 16(c) “authorizes the district courts to hold pretrial conferences designed to aid in the disposition of cases, and enter orders subsequent thereto which control the subsequent course of the action, unless modified at trial to prevent manifest injustice.” Smith v. Ford Motor Co., 626 F.2d 784, 795 (10th Cir. 1980) (internal quotation marks and ellipsis omitted). The pretrial order “insure[s] the economical and efficient trial of every case on its merits without chance or surprise,” and “measures the dimensions of the lawsuit, both in the trial court and on appeal.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). Rule 16 lists the matters to be considered at the pretrial conference, including “formulating and simplifying the issues,” “avoiding unnecessary proof and cumulative evidence,” “determining the form and content of the pretrial order,” and “ordering a separate trial under [Fed. R. Civ. P.] 42(b) of a claim.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 16(c)(2)(A), (D), (J) & (M). Rule 42(b) provides that, “[f]or convenience, to avoid prejudice, or to expedite and economize, the court may order a separate trial of one or more separate . . . claims.”
“District courts have broad discretion in deciding whether to sever issues for trial . . . .” F.D.I.C. v. Everett A. Holseth & Co., 36 F.3d 1004, 1008 (10th Cir. 1994) (internal quotation mark omitted). Here, the district court’s initial inclination was to - 17 - proceed with one trial addressing both of Ms. Tabor’s discrimination claims. See Aplt. App., Vol. I at 190 (directing parties to address how the disparate impact claim would be tried and suggesting “[o]ne alternative might be to try the [disparate treatment claim] to the jury, and to present any additional evidence to the court on the disparate impact claim during jury deliberations”). The court indicated that, under its suggested approach, Ms. Tabor could present her disparate impact evidence to the court in written form. Id. at 212. Ms. Tabor responded that she would prefer to try the disparate impact claim first and thereby avoid “confusing the jury with it.” Id. at 213. The court preliminarily agreed with this proposal, likewise expressing a concern about the jury being confused by the statistical data to be presented on the disparate impact claim. See id. at 213-14. Ms. Tabor then commented that “part of the reason the disparate impact claim is viewed as equitable . . . is that there’s judicial expertise in dealing with difficult statistical information like that.” Id. at 214. The district court ultimately decided to grant Ms. Tabor’s request to try her disparate impact claim to the court first, followed by a separate jury trial on her disparate treatment claim. 2. The District Court did not Abuse its Discretion by Excluding the Statistical Evidence from the Pretrial Order in Ms. Tabor’s Disparate Treatment Case At the pretrial conference for Ms. Tabor’s disparate treatment claim, the court heard argument on whether her statistical evidence should be included in the pretrial order. The court initially observed: - 18 - It seems to the court that we bifurcated this matter at plaintiff’s request and tried the disparate impact case first at plaintiff’s request. Disparate impact evidence has no bearing in terms of statistics and the like in a disparate treatment case so . . . that evidence is simply not going to come in again in the disparate treatment [trial]. Id., Vol. V at 1590-91. The court noted further that the disparate treatment trial would focus on comments related to Ms. Tabor’s gender allegedly made by a Hilti Division Manager during her interview for the Account Manager positions, not on whether the GDCP caused a disparate impact on female employees. Ms. Tabor did not disagree, but argued nonetheless that the statistical analysis was evidence that a jury could consider in a disparate treatment trial. The court then reviewed its rationale for bifurcating the claims and trying them separately, stating that “part of the rationale given for trying disparate impact first to the court was so as not to confuse the jury with statistics. . . . And frankly, I am very reluctant to go that direction.” Id. at 1603. The court stated further: [W]e’ve already spent four days in trial on this case, and one of the reasons for doing that was for judicial economy as well as to try to save money for the clients for both sides. And now you’re saying the same evidence that came in before me can come in before the jury. Now, I really have a little problem with that because basically we’re doing the same thing twice. Had you persuaded me of that beforehand, we would have tried it all [at] once and I would have decided the equitable side and the jury would have decided the legal side. And, in fact, that’s how I went into our first series of final pretrial conferences, of wanting to do that, and you took the position that it was necessary to bifurcate and persuaded me of that. Id. at 1604-05. - 19 - Ms. Tabor countered that the reason for bifurcating the claims was to prevent the jury from deciding the disparate impact claim. She maintained that jury confusion could be avoided and judicial economy could be served by admitting only the transcript of the expert’s testimony in the disparate treatment trial. The district court was not persuaded and concluded as follows: I don’t think that testimony which focuses on the alleged disparate impact of the GDCP process is proper before a jury particularly after I was persuaded to bifurcate so as to avoid confusing the jury with it. And in terms of regression analyses, frankly it’s hard enough for us as lawyers and judges to wrap our heads around that as opposed to a jury. That’s what the focus of the expert testimony was. . . . . So based upon what I’ve been presented here, we’ll keep the statistical evidence separate, and that is firmly within the bosom of the court, believe me. Id. at 1606-07 (emphasis added). In making this ruling, the court carried through its previous reasoning in bifurcating the claims. “A trial court necessarily possesses considerable discretion in determining the conduct of a trial, including the orderly presentation of evidence. Even evidence which is relevant may be excluded in order to promote the administration of the judicial process . . . .” Thweatt v. Ontko, 814 F.2d 1466, 1470 (10th Cir. 1987) (citation omitted). As noted, Ms. Tabor requested the separate trials and expressed agreement with the court’s primary basis for doing so. She has not shown that the district court abused its discretion in excluding her statistical evidence from the pretrial order for her disparate treatment jury trial. - 20 - 3. The District Court did not Abuse its Discretion in Denying Ms. Tabor’s Motion to Amend the Pretrial Order On the first day of the jury trial, Ms. Tabor moved the district court to amend the pretrial order to include her statistical evidence. She argued the amendment was necessary to prevent manifest injustice because the evidence was relevant to her disparate treatment claim, and without it she would not be able to fully and fairly litigate her claim; that Hilti would not be prejudiced, or any prejudice could be cured; and that she was not proceeding in bad faith by seeking an amendment. After further argument by the parties, the district court denied Ms. Tabor’s motion to amend. While acknowledging “that evidence of pretext may include prior treatment of plaintiff, [and] the employer’s policy and practice regarding minority employment, including statistical data,” Aplt. App., Vol. V at 1754 (internal quotation marks omitted), the court nonetheless concluded: Given where we are – and I think I need to put this in context – the plaintiff[] had convinced me before we tried the disparate impact case to bifurcate and to try the disparate impact case first. One of the convincing arguments or the convincing considerations at that time – and the record will reflect – that by doing that we wouldn’t have to present to a jury in the disparate treatment portion of the case the statistical evidence here. .... . . . [H]aving bifurcated the case in part to consider the statistical data in connection with the disparate impact claim . . . . . . . I believe it would, No. 1, be extremely prejudicial to the defense given that here just minutes before trial we have a motion to amend to admit the statistical evidence and it would severely prejudice the defendant insofar as the defendant would then have to marshal facts - 21 - to defend against that statistical evidence in the disparate treatment case. .... I think now it would be extremely prejudicial to do an about-face, particularly an about-face with regard to plaintiff’s procedural position that we would present the statistical evidence to me in the disparate impact case, and had it been clear to me that the plaintiff wished to present statistical evidence in the disparate treatment case, we would have tried this once and I would simply have made the decision on the disparate impact claim separately and apart from the jury. So with due respect, the last-minute motion to amend the pretrial order . . . will be denied. Id. at 1753-55. “We review the denial of a motion to amend a pretrial order for an abuse of discretion.” Davey v. Lockheed Martin Corp., 301 F.3d 1204, 1208 (10th Cir. 2002). A pretrial order will only be amended “to prevent manifest injustice.” Id. (internal quotation mark omitted). We consider the following factors in a challenge to a district court’s denial of a motion to amend the pretrial order and resulting exclusion of an issue: (1) prejudice or surprise to the party opposing trial of the issue; (2) the ability of that party to cure any prejudice; (3) disruption by inclusion of the new issue; and (4) bad faith by the party seeking to modify the order. We also take into consideration the timeliness of the movant’s motion to amend the order. Id. at 1210 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). The district court did not abuse its discretion in applying these factors. It reiterated that one of the considerations in bifurcating the disparate impact claim and trying it first was to avoid confusing the jury with the statistical evidence. The court referred to Ms. Tabor’s “about-face” with regard to that procedural position, to which - 22 - she had previously acquiesced. Aplt. App., Vol. V at 1755. It stated it would have tried both claims together had she made clear her intent to present the statistical evidence in her disparate treatment case. The court concluded that Hilti would be prejudiced by having to marshal facts to defend against that evidence in the disparate treatment jury trial. And it referred to Ms. Tabor’s “last-minute motion to amend the pretrial order.” Id. Ms. Tabor first asserts that her statistical evidence was relevant to her disparate treatment claim, but the district court did not hold otherwise. She contends that she did not intend, by bifurcating her claims, that she would later be precluded from introducing relevant evidence to the jury in her disparate treatment case. But this argument ignores her agreement during the pretrial conference preceding the bench trial that separate trials would avoid jury confusion regarding the statistical evidence. Finally, Ms. Tabor contends that Hilti would not have been prejudiced or surprised. But she ignores that Hilti had proceeded since the court’s decision to bifurcate her claims on the assumption that it would not be defending against the statistical evidence in the jury trial on her disparate treatment claim. It was within the district court’s discretion to consider the impact of Ms. Tabor’s last-minute motion to amend the pretrial order on Hilti’s prepared defense. Finding no abuse of discretion in the district court’s determinations regarding the pretrial order for Ms. Tabor’s disparate treatment trial, we affirm the judgment in favor of Hilti on that claim. - 23 -