Opinion ID: 1434460
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Denial of Surgery

Text: Lewis also challenges the decision to exclude evidence related to the City's denial of her request for neck surgery, which she hoped to offer in support of her retaliation claim. The problem is that there was no evidence connecting Williams to the denial of surgery or showing that the decision-makers within the City's medical section had any knowledge of Lewis's Title VII complaint. Lewis conceded the point at trial when  during an offer of proof  she acknowledged that there was no evidence that the medical section had any knowledge of the EEOC charge. See Tr. at 234-35. So the district court, using its discretion under Rule 403, excluded the evidence. The judge found that, in the absence of evidence that the people who denied the surgery knew that she filed a complaint of discrimination, such evidence had very little probative value. On the other side of the scale was concern that allowing Lewis and a host of medical witnesses to testify about the difficulty she was having in getting surgery might run the risk of the jury deciding the case based on sympathy for Lewis. Lewis, 563 F.Supp.2d at 919. The district court's decision to exclude the testimony was not an abuse of discretion.