Opinion ID: 718191
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: A Fishing Expedition?

Text: 29 The district court determined not only that the risks and costs of further discovery were substantial, but also that Fennell had not demonstrated a particularized likelihood of discovering appropriate information. We agree. In our view, Fennell did not sufficiently set forth a plausible basis for believing that specified facts, susceptible of collection within a reasonable time frame, probably exist. Id. (party seeking discovery must show that it will not be an exercise in futility). 30 As to susceptibility of collection, all Fennell was able to say was that there may be a way. Fennell submitted the affidavit of her expert, proposing that the original date of creation or date of any earlier modification of the October 25 memo could be determined by a review of the memo file as it resided on First Step's hard drive, rather than on the diskette originally provided by First Step. First Step submitted a reply to Fennell's expert affidavit, which argued that Fennell's expert's statements were conclusory, without foundation, and that Fennell's speculation and conjecture did not warrant additional discovery. The district court then held a hearing on the discovery issue, at which the following was stated: 31 [The Court:] It's my understanding that based upon telephone communications as recently as today, that [Fennell] is informed by the [computer experts who were to analyze the mirrored hard drive] that they cannot reach a conclusion from the disk that has been provided, but instead, that the only way they can reach any kind of conclusion is by access to the hard drive on [First Step's] premises. That at this time, they cannot guarantee that there they can reach a conclusive result, but that it's their position there may be a way. Is that essentially correct? 32 [Counsel for Fennell:] That's correct, Your Honor. 33 The lack of detail in Fennell's protocol cast even more doubt on the soundness of the technical basis for the discovery venture. The district court had good reason to be skeptical, based on Fennell's inadequate showing that the proposed analysis could determine the memo's creation date. 34 As to whether specified facts ... probably exist, Fennell presented precious little that suggested that fabrication had occurred. The autodating that occurred on August 7, 1995, could not have indicated that the document was fabricated on that day, as it had been submitted more than a year earlier in the state proceedings. The autodating could indicate an intentional conspiracy to cover up the document's fabrication by obliterating the actual creation date, but that is mere speculation. 35 The five suspicious facts, enumerated earlier, are equally speculative. We fail to see how the inclusion of an employee who had already left the company on the list of employees to be retained makes fabrication more likely. Fennell argues that the mistake indicates that the memo was prepared at a later point in time, when Tucker's memory of who was employed would have faded. That inference is, at best, extremely attenuated. 36 The fact that the October 25 memo was retained while other similar memos are no longer extant is also virtually non-probative. It would be natural for an employer to take care to retain a memo pertaining to an employee, soon to be laid off, who had lodged a sexual harassment complaint. Moreover, Fennell filed a state human rights charge within ninety days of her complaint, thus the desirability of saving any documents relating to her termination became obvious soon after the memo was written. Nothing in the record suggests any similar reasons for saving the earlier memos. 37 The fact that Tucker had made positive comments about Fennell's performance and job security and First Step's future shortly before she was placed on the layoff list is not necessarily probative of fabrication, either. First Step does not assert that Fennell was let go for poor performance, but rather that her termination was part of a reorganization dictated by financial concerns unrelated to her performance. The need for her services until the end of the Christmas rush could have been one reason Tucker spoke as she did. 38 Fennell claims that First Step managers inconsistently described the nature of and the reasons for the job action, but our review of all the statements shows no sinister inconsistency. It appears that the term layoff was used loosely, and was not necessarily indicative of a temporary, rather than a permanent, action. And the various statements about why she was let go, while worded in different ways, all relate to First Step's business objective of improving the economic efficiency of its warehouse operation. We see nothing out-of-the-ordinary or suspicious about the statements. 39 Finally, the fact that some employees slated for layoff in the memo were ultimately not laid off might say something about the finality of the layoff list as a general matter, but we fail to see how it suggests fabrication. It is true that only two of the five individuals slated for Christmas week layoffs were actually laid off as scheduled, but the record indicates non-suspicious reasons for the changes in First Step's plans. Two of the three who survived the axe stayed on in telemarketing because two other telemarketers requested layoffs. The other employee was out with an injury collecting worker's compensation during Christmas week; at the urging of First Step's insurer, she was called back to light duty after the New Year and then laid off shortly thereafter. And, even ignoring the apparently legitimate reasons why some of the slated layoffs did not occur, the changes in First Step's staffing plans do not suggest fabrication. Why would a fabricated layoff list be more likely to name employees eventually retained than a real layoff list? Wouldn't a fabricated list, written after the fact, have the benefit of hindsight and thus be more accurate? We see little probative value in this, or any of the other five suspicious facts.