Opinion ID: 202865
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Admission of the Letters for a Limited Purpose

Text: In their motion in limine, appellees argued that the Letters should be excluded under Federal Rule of Evidence 408, which prohibits the use of statements made in compromise negotiations regarding the claim as evidence of a party's liability for . . . a claim that was disputed as to validity or amount. Fed.R.Evid. 408(a)(2), (a). At a hearing on the motion, the court initially stated: [I]t is my impression that these do not fall under Rule 408. . . . These are the sort of letters that when anything happens regarding personnel, the attorney starts to write the agency to put them on notice. The agency, the municipality in this case, will respond, `We've noted your letter. We are going to look into this.' Then . . . the attorney will say, `Oh, you have done this or you haven't done that.' Although the court seemed inclined to reject defendants' arguments that the Letters were covered by Rule 408, Rodriguez-Garcia's attorney began her arguments against the motion in limine by focusing on an exception to Rule 408 that allows evidence offered for a purpose other than showing liability. Specifically, she argued that [t]he letters [were] being introduced into evidence for the limited purpose of proving that defendants in fact knew that Ms. Rodriguez[-Garcia] did not want the transfer and that they were aware that she did not want the transfer. Despite this inauspicious beginning, Rodriguez-Garcia's attorney's arguments developed over the course of the hearing on the motion. By the end, she clearly contested the relevance of Rule 408 to the Letters. Indeed, just before the court announced that it would recess to deliberate, her attorney urged the court to examine the four Letters together: You cannot look at each letter individually. . . . You see, Mr. Cartagena directed a letter to the mayor. And the mayor, and very wisely by his counsel, is trying to take himself out of the picture saying it has nothing to do with me, I didn't exercise any action, I didn't do anything, I didn't sign the letter, I didn't send the letter. But you read [the letter from Human Resources], the first thing that it says is, `The Honorable William Miranda Marin, Mayor, has referred to us your letter dated March 8, 2000, concerning the transfer of Ms. Rodriguez.' This is evidence of liability against the mayor. (Emphasis added). Defense counsel responded: That's why [Rule] 408 does not permit the letter to come into evidence. Rodriguez-Garcia's attorney countered: This letter is not an admission. . . . It is not a compromise. Read it. Thus, by the end of the hearing, the court was on notice that Rodriguez-Garcia intended to use the Letters as proof of the mayor's liability and not merely as evidence that she did not request her transfer. Nonetheless, in a written ruling after the recess, the court [a]ssume[d] that the communications at issue [were] indeed compromise related and it admitted the Letters for the limited purpose of negating defendants' contention that plaintiff herself requested a transfer. This limitation, erroneous as a matter of law, was an abuse of discretion. See Charlesbank Equity Fund II v. Blinds To Go, Inc., 370 F.3d 151, 158 (1st Cir.2004) (noting that legal error always constitutes abuse of discretion). The court's initial impression that these letters do not fall under Rule 408 was correct. These Letters cannot reasonably be viewed as statements made in compromise negotiations regarding [a] claim that was in dispute. Fed.R.Evid. 408(a)(2). The March 8 letter from Rodriguez-Garcia's attorney to the mayor's office served the purpose of giving the defendants notice of a claim. Indeed, appellees acknowledged that Rodriguez-Garcia's attorney had to write such a letter to comply with local pre-litigation notice requirements. The March 27 letter from Human Resources, which said that The Hon. William Miranda Marín, Mayor, has referred to us your letter dated March 8, 2000 concerning the transfer of Mrs. [Rodriguez-Garcia], simply acknowledged that notice of the claim had been received and expressed the willingness of Human Resources to grant Rodriguez-Garcia's request for reinstatement. Although Human Resources disputed a factual matter (that Rodriguez-Garcia had not requested a transfer), that disagreement did not affect their willingness to grant to her, without qualification or condition, the reinstatement that she sought. With Rodriguez-Garcia receiving in this letter exactly what she wanted, it could easily be thought there were no compromise negotiations taking place in this exchange of correspondence within the meaning of Rule 408. See, e.g., Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary 984 (10th ed.1998) (defining compromise as a settlement of differences . . . reached by mutual concessions.); see also Sandlin v. Shapiro & Fishman, 919 F.Supp. 1564, 1569 (D.Fla.1996) (finding that letters whose contents offered no concessions did not meet the definition of compromise and thus were outside the scope of the state analog to Rule 408). Relatedly, the statement at issue here (The Hon. William Miranda Marin, Mayor, has referred to us your letter dated March 8, 2000, concerning the transfer of Mrs. Rodriguez) is not the kind of statement that one would be reluctant to make to a potential adversary in an effort to reach an agreement about a dispute without the protection of Rule 408. Indeed, if a stand-alone letter of acknowledgment had been written confirming receipt and noting that the mayor's office had referred the claim to Human Resources, there is no question that the letter would have been admissible as evidence of notice to the mayor of Rodriguez-Garcia's claim. Thus, admitting this evidence complies with both the letter and spirit of Rule 408. The second letter from Rodriguez-Garcia's attorney to the mayor, dated April 10, simply reiterated the request for the transfer. When no reinstatement was forthcoming, her attorney sent a third letter dated May 31, 2000 announcing his intention to file a lawsuit. These letters too are outside the ambit of Rule 408. Therefore, Rodriguez-Garcia should have been permitted to use the Letters as evidence that the mayor personally had notice of her claims, an indispensable element of her theory of liability, rather than simply as evidence that she had not requested a transfer from Public Works.