Opinion ID: 153863
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: York’s Motions In Limine

Text: In her motions in limine, York requested that the district court exclude evidence relating to: (1) medical treatment she received prior to 1992, specifically her hospitalization in a psychiatric facility in 1988; (2) bankruptcy proceedings she commenced in 1985; and (3) divorce proceedings involving her first husband, which began in 1968 and concluded in 1976, as well as her sexual conduct. The court rejected these motions and allowed the defendants to inquire into and offer evidence concerning all of these matters, with the exception of York’s sexual conduct. York then asked the court to bifurcate the proceedings and try the liability issue first, allowing the challenged evidence only to come in when the parties litigated her claims for damages for emotional distress. The court declined to bifurcate the proceedings. York contends that the court erred, both in refusing to exclude the evidence and in refusing to bifurcate the trial. We review a district court’s decision to admit or exclude evidence for abuse of discretion, disturbing its ruling only if the ruling was based on a clearly erroneous finding of fact, an erroneous conclusion of law, or an error of judgment. Cartier v. Jackson, 59 F.3d 1046, 1048 (10th Cir. 1995). As for York’s alternate motion to bifurcate the proceedings, a district court possesses “broad discretion in deciding whether to sever issues for trial and the exercise of that discretion will be set aside only if clearly abused.” Easton v. City of Boulder, 776 F.2d 1441, 1447 (10th Cir. 1985), - 18 - cert. denied, 479 U.S. 816 (1986). In this case, the district court did not abuse its discretion by admitting the evidence. York sought damages for emotional distress allegedly suffered as a result of not obtaining the positions that she sought. She contended that she had become emotionally strained and had lost her self-esteem and enjoyment of life. The defendants maintained that much, if not all, of York’s emotional distress was rooted in her past, stemming from events that occurred well before her unsuccessful bid for the Operating Engineer position in 1992. In particular, they note that her hospitalization in a psychiatric facility in 1988 was necessitated by various sources of stress in her life. Because York chose to raise a claim of emotional distress, it was entirely appropriate for the court to allow the defendants to introduce evidence of alternate or multiple causes of such distress. The jury must be permitted to consider such relevant evidence of causation where damages are claimed for emotional distress. Moreover, it would be inequitable to allow the plaintiff to introduce selected evidence on the matter but to disallow the defendants to present evidence supporting their theories of causation. See Hoppe v. G.D. Searle & Co., 779 F. Supp. 1413, 1419 (S.D.N.Y. 1991). For these reasons, the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying York’s motions in limine regarding the evidence of alternate causes of emotional distress. Nor did the court abuse its wide discretion in denying York’s motion to - 19 - bifurcate the trial. Such decisions must be made with regard to judicial efficiency, judicial resources, and the likelihood that a single proceeding will unduly prejudice either party or confuse the jury. York has not shown that she was significantly prejudiced by the admission of such evidence or that the evidence should have been removed from the jury’s consideration in determining the defendants’ liability. V. Judicial Notice of the Disparate Impact of the Experience Requirement At trial, York requested that the court take judicial notice that “few if any women in the Oklahoma City area would be able to satisfy a two-year experience requirement.” The court declined to do so. We review a district court’s refusal to take judicial notice for abuse of discretion. Klein v. Zavaras, 80 F.3d 432, 435 n.5 (10th Cir. 1996). Judicial notice is an adjudicative device that alleviates the parties’ evidentiary duties at trial, serving as “a substitute for the conventional method of taking evidence to establish facts.” Grand Opera Co. v. Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp., 235 F.2d 303, 307 (7th Cir. 1956). In this instance, before asking the court to take judicial notice, York had already presented evidence in support of her contention that few women in the Oklahoma City area would be able to satisfy the experience requirement. For the court to have taken judicial notice after the - 20 - presentation of evidence on the issue would have been redundant. Moreover, judicial notice was not suitable for this factual assertion. Judicial notice is appropriate where a matter is “verifiable with certainty.” St. Louis Baptist Temple, Inc. v. FDIC, 605 F.2d 1169, 1172 (10th Cir. 1979). It replaces the evidentiary procedure that would otherwise be necessary to establish “adjudicative fact[s]” that are generally known or “capable of accurate and ready determination” by resort to reliable sources. Fed. R. Evid. 201(b). The number of women in the Oklahoma City area that are able to satisfy AT&T’s Operating Engineer experience requirement is not generally known; and although it is determinable, it is not readily so. For this reason as well, we conclude that the court did not abuse its discretion by refusing to take judicial notice. VI. The District Court’s Refusal to Grant a New Trial York moved for a new trial on her claim that the two year experience requirement had a disparate impact on the promotion of women to the Operating Engineer position. The district court declined to grant York’s motion. We review a district court’s ruling on a motion for a new trial for abuse of discretion. Sheets v. Salt Lake County, 45 F.3d 1383, 1390 (10th Cir.), cert. denied, 116 S. Ct. 74 (1995). A district court’s discretion in this area is particularly broad, and its decision to grant or refuse a motion for a new trial will not be reversed absent a - 21 - gross abuse of discretion. Holmes v. Wack, 464 F.2d 86, 89 (10th Cir. 1972). Where a party moves for a new trial on the ground that the jury verdict is not supported by the evidence, the verdict must stand unless it is “clearly, decidedly or overwhelmingly against the weight of the evidence.” Black v. Hieb’s Enters., Inc., 805 F.2d 360, 363 (10th Cir. 1986). York contends that her statistical evidence, showing that just over six percent of stationary engineers in Oklahoma and just over ten percent in the Oklahoma City area are female, established with certainty that AT&T’s two-year experience requirement produced a disparate impact against women. York also contends that because AT&T used supervisors without prior experience to operate the powerhouse on two prior occasions during strikes, AT&T’s asserted business necessity for the experience requirement was pretextual. In response, the defendants produced evidence concerning, among other things, the risks associated with powerhouse operation and the fact that York’s vocational courses did not provide adequate training in the repair of powerhouse equipment. This evidence is sufficient to support the jury’s conclusion that AT&T’s experience requirement was not pretextual. We cannot say that the jury’s verdict was clearly, overwhelmingly, or decidedly against the weight of the evidence. To do so would be to supplant the jury’s consideration of competing facts with our own, a course upon which district courts and courts of appeals must not embark. The district - 22 - court was therefore correct in denying York’s motion for a new trial. VII. The Grant of Summary Judgment Regarding York’s Public Policy Claim The district court granted summary judgment to the defendants on York’s claim that AT&T’s failure to promote her fell within the public policy tort exception to Oklahoma’s termination-at-will doctrine. York premised her claim upon the public policy theory articulated in Tate v. Browning-Ferris, Inc., 833 P.2d 1218 (Okla. 1992). In that case, the court held that where an employer discharges an employee in violation of a public policy that is clearly articulated in constitutional, statutory, or decisional law, the employer may be held liable for a tortious breach of contractual obligations. Id. at 1225. However, in Sanchez v. Phillip Morris, Inc., 992 F.2d 244 (10th Cir. 1993), we held that Oklahoma’s public policy exception to the termination-at-will doctrine was narrowly constructed and not intended to apply to all Title VII cases. The exception was limited to wrongful terminations and did not extend to the failure-to-hire context. Id. at 249. The same analysis applies here in the failure-to-promote context. Thus, on this claim, as on all of the claims discussed above, the decision of the district court is AFFIRMED. - 23 -