Opinion ID: 1486808
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Red Cross Blood-Collection Procedures.

Text: Dr. Sandler, who arranged the contracting of the hospital's blood-collection services to the Red Cross, was called by Ms. Knight in her case in chief and asked about a consent decree which mandated changes in the way the Red Cross collected and processed blood. Dr. Sandler acknowledged that he was aware of a consent decree, but before Ms. Knight could ask specific questions about it counsel for the defendants objected and, at a bench conference, requested a proffer of relevance. Ms. Knight represented that the consent decree arose from litigation over the quality and safety of the Red Cross's Washington-area blood-collection procedures, and maintained that this information was relevant to the hospital's explanation that transferring her unit's responsibilities to the Red Cross would improve the efficiency and quality of patient care. The trial court precluded questioning on the consent decree as remote and vastly outweighed by the distraction and the road down which we have to go to find out all about Red Cross blood collection procedures as compared with ... Georgetown's procedures. [6] The trial court similarly sustained an objection to Ms. Knight's question about Red Cross compliance with safety regulations when cross-examining Dr. Sandler during the defendants' case in chief. We cannot say that the trial court abused its discretion in ruling that the quality of Red Cross blood-collection procedures was too collateral to the central issue and that this employment-discrimination case might degenerate into a trial of the Red Cross's safety record. Indeed, in Smith v. Executive Club, Ltd., 458 A.2d 32, 42 (D.C. 1983), we reversed a trial court for failing to limit cross-examination sufficiently so as to prevent a trial within a trial on collateral issues. Although a plaintiff alleging racial discrimination in the workplace must be given a full and fair opportunity to prove that the employer's stated nondiscriminatory reasons are pretextual, the trial court is not deprived of its discretion over the manner in which the plaintiff proves his or her case. See Walker v. NationsBank of Fla. N.A., 53 F.3d 1548, 1553, 1554-55 (11th Cir.1995) (upholding trial court's exclusion, as more prejudicial than probative, of EEOC determination letter which was offered to show that employer's stated nondiscriminatory reason was pretextual). This particular stated reasonthat transferring the Transfusion Service Unit's responsibilities to the Red Cross would improve quality and efficiencycould reasonably be deemed a collateral issue under the circumstances and the trial court could restrict the scope of inquiry. Insofar as relevant to the claim of race discrimination, the ultimate discharge here was not so much the hospital's reorganization of its blood services and transfer of responsibilities to the Red Cross, but rather its subsequent alleged failure to provide Ms. Knight with comparable employment in another department, as the hospital managed to do for the two white nurses in the unit. Ms. Knight's complaint maintained that Georgetown discriminated not by closing the unit in the first place but by failing or refusing to employ [her] in a comparable position at GU Hospital after the reorganization and termination of the Transfusion Services as it did for the white nurses on the staff . . . . Thus, the fact finder would be most unlikely to conclude that Georgetown University discriminated against her on the basis of her race because it decided to contract with the Red Cross in the first place notwithstanding any safety concerns; the focus would be on the alleged discrimination that occurred in failing to place her in a supervisory nursing position elsewhere in the hospital after responsibility for her unit's services were assumed by other entities. [7]