Opinion ID: 199137
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Limitations Period and Sufficiency of the Evidence

Text: 45 Defendant's first sufficiency-of-the-evidence challenge is another incarnation of its prior argument that the jury was prejudiced by the presentation of evidence of conduct for which Pueblo cannot, as a matter of law, be held liable. Pueblo claims that many of the discriminatory acts alleged by plaintiff occurred more than 300 days before plaintiff first filed her complaint with the Anti-Discrimination Unit of the Puerto Rico Department of Labor and was thus time-barred. Without this evidence, defendant argues, the jury's verdict is unsupported by the record. We disagree. 46 Although defendant recognizes that the alleged acts might avoid the 300-day time limitation for filing a discrimination charge under the continuing violation theory, it argues that that theory is not applicable in this case. In particular, defendant points us to our decision in Lawton v. State Mutual Life Assurance Co., 101 F.3d 218 (1st Cir. 1996), for the proposition that a plaintiff must show a series of violations, at least one of which falls within the limitations period; defendant argues that Marcano failed to make such a showing here. However, Lawton held that the failures to promote alleged by plaintiff in that case were not similar enough to her alleged termination to constitute serial violations, and also that the termination in that case had not been shown to be discriminatory. See id. at 221-22. Here, by contrast, the various incidents in the alleged series of discrimination are all similar in nature. Each episode alleged to have occurred outside the limitations period was a failure to accommodate comparable in nature 6 to the discriminatory accommodation failures occurring within the limitations period, up to plaintiff's termination. Contrary to defendant's arguments, these failures to accommodate are plainly similar enough to constitute serial violations. Furthermore, unlike in Lawton, the conduct falling within the limitations in period in this case was indeed established to be discriminatory. We therefore conclude that the continuing violation theory is applicable in this case, and we reject this aspect of defendant's challenge to the jury's verdict. 47