Opinion ID: 197455
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Grievance Report3

Text: 19 Central to almost every substantive ground in Pilgrim's appeal is a report (the Report) issued by the Committee on March 27, 1991. When Pilgrim attempted to submit it as part of his summary judgment motion, the court found it inadmissible as a collection of multi-level hearsay statements. We understand Pilgrim's distress at this ruling, the Report being his only hope of withstanding Tufts' motion for summary judgment. On appeal, as he did below, Pilgrim contends that the Report was not hearsay, but instead qualifies, inter alia, as an admission of a party opponent under Fed.R.Evid. 801(d)(2)(B), as an adoptive admission. 20 Rule 801(d)(2)(B) provides that [a] statement is not hearsay if ... [the] statement is offered against a party and is ... a statement of which the party has manifested an adoption or belief in its truth.... The burden of showing the manifestation is on the party offering the evidence. Cf. Ricciardi v. Children's Hosp. Medical Ctr., 811 F.2d 18, 24 (1st Cir.1987). We have identified the correct approach where documents are concerned as asking whether the surrounding circumstances tie the possessor and the document together in some meaningful way. United States v. Paulino, 13 F.3d 20, 24 (1st Cir.1994). We believe that Pilgrim has carried his burden, at least to an extent. The question is to what extent? The answer is: to the extent that the adoptive party accepted and acted upon the evidence. 21 Adoption or acquiescence may be manifested in any appropriate manner. Fed. Rules of Evid., Advisory Committee Notes. The Committee was convened under Tufts' established grievance procedures, and its recommendations given to Mayer. The major ones were that Fischer be relieved from all supervisory responsibilities, that Pilgrim, instead, report to Moomaw, and that an independent overseer outside of CEM be appointed to monitor the new reporting relationship. 22 Tufts does not dispute that Mayer implemented all three of these recommendations. In particular, removing Fischer from all supervisory duties was a serious enough action that we cannot but think that Mayer would not have carried this out unless he accepted the Report's conclusions as the truth. As such, his acceptance of the contents of the Report and his implementation of its recommendations, without disclaimer, served as an adoption of the Report for the purposes of Rule 801(D)(2)(B). We note, however, that while the Report was generated during the limitations period, most of its contents detail conduct that occurred prior to that period, and hence barred from consideration. We will, nevertheless, discuss it. 23 In essence, the Committee concluded that Fischer had failed to give Pilgrim a fair and impartial review and that he had exaggerated complaints about Pilgrim's performance in order to justify an apparent desire ... to terminate [him]. It also stated a finding that Pilgrim appears to have been singled out for certain types of disciplinary actions. On the question of racial and national origin discrimination it stated: 24 [N]o substantive evidence that Mr. Fischer intended to discriminate against Mr. Pilgrim on the basis of race, color, [or] national origin ... although Mr. Fischer could have been motivated by prejudices against Mr. Pilgrim. It is plausible to the Committee that Mr. Fischer's actions were motivated by other factors, such as personality conflicts. However, the Committee could not fully evaluate this component of the grievance, as performance reviews of other CEM personnel supervised by Fischer could not be obtained. Therefore, the Committee could not compare Mr. Fischer's decisions with respect to performance ratings and salary increases. Nonetheless, the Committee finds that several of Mr. Fischer's actions ... did result in the perception of discrimination by Mr. Pilgrim. Such restrictions could have had discriminatory impacts to the extent that Mr. Pilgrim was in several instances treated differently from other professional staff at CEM. 25 Having determined that this finding, along with party opponent admissions from Pilgrim's affidavit, compose all of Pilgrim's evidence, we turn next to the court's grant of summary judgment to Tufts.