Opinion ID: 1201216
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Summary Judgment Record on Review

Text: As always, we review the district court's grant of summary judgment de novo, Cabán Hernández v. Philip Morris USA, Inc., 486 F.3d 1, 8 (1st Cir.2007), and construe the record in the light most favorable to the non-movant. Calvi v. Knox County, 470 F.3d 422, 426 (1st Cir.2006). At the threshold, we must deal with a procedural decision of some import rendered by the district court. In deciding the appellee's motion to dismiss and/or for summary judgment, the district court deemed admitted the appellee's statement of undisputed facts because Ríos-Jiménez's opposing statement of facts did not comply with the local rules. Those rules require a party opposing a motion for summary judgment to admit, deny, or qualify each entry in the movant's statement of material facts paragraph by paragraph and to support any denials, qualifications, or assertions of new facts by particularized citations to the record. See D.P.R.R. 56(c). Ríos-Jiménez argues that the district court's rejection of her opposing statement of facts was error. [4] The district court properly excluded Ríos-Jiménez's opposing statement of facts and deemed admitted the appellee's version. Ríos-Jiménez failed to admit, deny, or qualify the appellee's proffered facts, choosing instead to assert that she was both denying and/or qualifying the vast majority. As the district court noted, in at least two instances Ríos-Jiménez admitted a fact, without qualification, only to subsequently deny and/or qualify that same fact. To make matters more difficult for the district court, Ríos-Jiménez failed to use a separate paragraph to address each fact proffered by the appellee, as required by the local rule, and instead denied and/or qualified several facts at once. Ríos-Jiménez also denied and/or qualified several of the appellee's facts across several different paragraphs, i.e. the same fact may have been denied and/or qualified in more than one paragraph. Lastly, and importantly, she failed to include particularized citations to the record, and instead offered meandering fragments of evidence copied directly into her opposing statement. Ríos-Jiménez thus ignored the requirement of the local rule that [a]n assertion of fact . . . shall be followed by a citation to the specific page or paragraph of identified record material supporting the assertion. D.P.R.R. 56(e) (emphasis added). Recently, in Cabán Hernández, we reiterated the importance of local rules similar to Local Rule 56, explaining that [s]uch rules were inaugurated in response to this court's abiding concern that, without them, summary judgment practice could too easily become a game of cat-and-mouse. Ruiz Rivera v. Riley, 209 F.3d 24, 28 (1st Cir.2000). Such rules are designed to function as a means of focusing a district court's attention on what is  and what is not  genuinely controverted. Calvi v. Knox County, 470 F.3d 422, 427 (1st Cir.2006). When complied with, they serve to dispel the smokescreen behind which litigants with marginal or unwinnable cases often seek to hide [and] greatly reduce the possibility that the district court will fall victim to an ambush. Id. Given the vital purpose that such rules serve, litigants ignore them at their peril. In the event that a party opposing summary judgment fails to act in accordance with the rigors that such a rule imposes, a district court is free, in the exercise of its sound discretion, to accept the moving party's facts as stated. See Cosme-Rosado v. Serrano-Rodriguez, 360 F.3d 42, 45 (1st Cir. 2004); Ruiz Rivera, 209 F.3d at 28. 486 F.3d at 7. We can hardly add to this admonishment but, at the risk of being redundant, we say again that parties are required to straightforwardly comply with the dictates of local rules such as Local Rule 56, and to state clearly and concisely the facts claimed to be undisputed or disputed, or qualified, and the record evidence supporting those claims. The rule does not leave room for the kind of internal contradictions, the dodging and weaving, and the double-talk that characterizes Ríos-Jiménez's filing. Local Rule 56 is intended to prevent parties from shifting to the district court the burden of sifting through the inevitable mountain of information generated by discovery in search of relevant material. Ríos-Jiménez's substantial noncompliance, if allowed, would do just that. Should the Court excuse this blatant non-compliance, the district court would be forced to grope unaided for factual needles in a documentary haystack. Cabán Hernández, 486 F.3d at 8. Consequently, we find that the district court did not abuse its discretion in deeming the appellee's statement of undisputed facts admitted. Since our review is confined to the record that was properly before the district court when it made its decision, Mandel v. Boston Phoenix, Inc., 456 F.3d 198, 204 (1st Cir.2006), the question for us is whether the district court appropriately granted summary judgment based on the facts set forth in the appellee's moving papers, as well as Ríos-Jiménez's separate statement of additional facts. [5]