Opinion ID: 778407
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: JMOL in Favor of BHA and Craig on the Due Process Claim

Text: 53 The district court may properly grant judgment as a matter of law in a case tried to a jury if a party has been fully heard on [a dispositive] issue and there is no legally sufficient evidentiary basis for a reasonable jury to find for that party on that issue. Fed.R.Civ.P. 50(a)(1). In reviewing the record to determine whether a motion for JMOL should be granted, the court must draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the nonmoving party, and it may not make credibility determinations or weigh the evidence.... `Credibility determinations, the weighing of the evidence, and the drawing of legitimate inferences from the facts are jury functions, not those of a judge.' Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Products, Inc., 530 U.S. 133, 150, 120 S.Ct. 2097, 147 L.Ed.2d 105 (2000) (quoting Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 255, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986)). JMOL is thus proper only if `the evidence is such that, without weighing the credibility of the witnesses or otherwise considering the weight of the evidence, there can be but one conclusion as to the verdict that reasonable men could have reached.' Fiacco v. City of Rensselaer, 783 F.2d 319, 329 (2d Cir.1986) (quoting Simblest v. Maynard, 427 F.2d 1, 4 (2d Cir.1970)), cert. denied, 480 U.S. 922, 107 S.Ct. 1384, 94 L.Ed.2d 698 (1987). And in making that determination, the court must disregard all evidence favorable to the moving party that the jury is not required to believe. Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Products, Inc., 530 U.S. at 151, 120 S.Ct. 2097. 54 A public employee who has a right not to be fired without just cause — and there is no dispute that Otero is such an employee — has a property interest in h[er] employment that qualifie[s] for the protections of procedural due process. Moffitt v. Town of Brookfield, 950 F.2d 880, 885 (2d Cir.1991); see also Cleveland Board of Education v. Loudermill, 470 U.S. 532, 538-41, 105 S.Ct. 1487, 84 L.Ed.2d 494 (1985) ( Loudermill ). The pretermination process need not be elaborate or approach the level of a full adversarial evidentiary hearing, id. at 545, 105 S.Ct. 1487, but due process does require that before being terminated such an employee [be given] oral or written notice of the charges against h[er], an explanation of the employer's evidence, and an opportunity to present h[er] side of the story, id. at 546, 105 S.Ct. 1487 (emphasis added); see also Munafo v. Metropolitan Transportation Authority, 285 F.3d 201, 212 (2d Cir.2002). 55 The district court in the present case did not properly apply these principles in granting JMOL against Otero after the trial of her due process claim. First, rather than noting that Otero was entitled to an explanation of [BHA's] evidence, Loudermill, 470 U.S. at 546, 105 S.Ct. 1487, the district court stated only that she must be provided with some semblance of the evidence, JMOL Ruling at 10. Merely presenting some semblance of the evidence, however, does not necessarily afford the accused an adequate opportunity to present her side of the story. In this case, for example, a significant part of the evidence on which Mellow relied for his conclusion that the toilet had been taken to a private home where [it was] installed (Mellow Memorandum at 3) was Colon's statement to him that the toilet was installed at Otero's home on Kossuth Street. Had Otero been shown that statement, she might have been able to refute it simply by showing that the toilet in fact was not installed at her house on Kossuth Street. 56 Further, according to the statements Mellow obtained from Wells, Boyd, and Colon, Colon himself gave three inconsistent accounts of his own July 23 handling of the toilet. He told Wells he had installed it in a Greene Homes apartment; he told Boyd he had taken it to Otero's house on Hallett Street; and he told Mellow he had deposited it in Otero's car at a repair shop. The fact that Colon had told three contradictory stories in the statements collected by Mellow could easily have provided a plausible alternative for the proposition that the toilet had been stolen by Otero. Had Otero been shown this evidence, she could have pointed out to Craig the rather obvious inconsistencies in the statements underlying his accusation — statements that he had not read before accusing her. 57 In addition, the district court appears to have equated explanation of the employer's evidence simply with notice of the charge[], for the court repeatedly returned to its observation that Otero knew she was being charged with theft of a toilet. For example, the court inferred that because Otero testified that after the September 11 meeting she talked to Wells, Boyd, and Colon in search of the toilet, from her own testimony ... plaintiff knew that she was charged with misappropriation of a toilet and knew the source of the evidence against her. JMOL Ruling at 11. Mere notice of the charge, however, is not an explanation of the evidence and does not necessarily suffice to provide due process. Cf. United States v. Seltzer, 227 F.3d 36, 43 (2d Cir.2000) (noting that an attorney is entitled to due process before sanctions are imposed, and remanding where, inter alia, district court based its decision to sanction [the attorney], in part, on unidentified information communicated by the clerk to the judge about his conversation with [the attorney. As the attorney] was not told what the clerk had said, she had no opportunity to dispute, rebut, or explain it.... We therefore must remand for further development of the record to provide [the attorney] with proper notice and an opportunity to be heard.). 58 Moreover, in inferring that Otero knew the source and substance of the BHA's evidence to support the theft charge simply because she sought out Colon and Boyd, the court failed to draw available inferences in Otero's favor, ignoring her testimony as to her only involvement with the toilet. According to Otero, Boyd was the person who had asked her to requisition the toilet, saying he needed it for an emergency; Colon was present at that conversation; after Otero and Colon picked up the toilet, Otero, summoned by Wells to solve another problem, left the toilet in the sole custody of Colon; and the next day, Boyd indicated to Otero that the toilet had been used to resolve his emergency. The jury was entitled to credit Otero's testimony. And given her version of the July 23 events, it is difficult to imagine where Otero would have begun her inquiries if not with Boyd and Colon. 59 We note also the following passage in the district court's JMOL Ruling: 60 when proof of the claim is based on the plaintiff's having said no, is a jury question presented when she has also said yes, particularly when the only evidence supportive of her claim is her testimony? May the court decide the question based on the fact that all the evidence, other than plaintiff's testimony, contradicts her no and supports her yes? 61 JMOL Ruling at 10. This framing of the question too may indicate that the court equated notice of the charge with disclosure of the evidence, for we see no relevant testimonial yes by Otero other than her acknowledgment that she had been informed that the charge was that she had stolen a toilet. Otero unvaryingly testified that she had not, prior to commencing the present action, been shown or informed of the statements relied on to support that charge. To the extent that the issue was whether she was given an explanation of the evidence, Otero never testified to a yes. 62 Although the district court's opinion suggests the contrary when it states (a) that plaintiff testified that Boyd and Colon were called to Craig's office on September 11, and (b) that that testimony both confirm[ed] the testimony of Boyd, Colon, Craig, Mellow, and Carrafiello that Boyd and Colon reiterated their statements in plaintiff's presence at the September 11 meeting,  and contradict[ed] Otero's testimony that she was provided with no information as to the evidence against her, JMOL Ruling at 11 (emphasis added), the court's description of Otero's testimony in this regard is materially incomplete. Otero's testimony was that on September 11, she, Colon, and Boyd were working in an apartment. While they were there, Boyd was summoned by Wells-apparently to go to Craig's office. While Otero was still in the apartment, Boyd returned. Upon returning, Boyd told Colon to go to the office; Colon went, and he too returned while Otero was still in the apartment. Only sometime after Boyd and Colon had gone to Craig's office, and had returned, was Otero summoned to Craig's office. ( See Dec. 13 Tr. at 385-87.) So far as we have been able to determine from the record, Otero never testified that Boyd or Colon attended any part of the September 11 meeting in Craig's office while Otero was there. To the contrary, she repeatedly testified that no one attended her meeting with Craig except Mellow and Carrafiello. ( See, e.g., Dec. 13 Tr. at 84, 85, 122; Dec. 14 Tr. at 14, 79, 80; Dec. 18 Tr. at 2, 3.) The testimony indicating that Colon and Boyd had met with Craig in Otero's absence provided no support for the court's inference that they were called into that office in her presence or that on September 11 she was shown their statements. 63 Nor could the district court properly rely on  [t]he testimony of others at the meeting, i.e., Craig, Mellow, Carrafiello,... that plaintiff was informed of the evidence that she had misappropriated a toilet. JMOL Ruling at 11 (emphasis added); see also id. at 4, 5 ([p]laintiff's story was substantially contradicted by Mr. Craig, Mr. Mellow, and Mr. Carrafiello). There is no question that the testimony of the two sides conflicted. But the assessment of the credibility of the respective witnesses was solely within the province of the jury. The jury was not, of course, required to believe Otero. But neither was it required to believe the witnesses whom the district court chose to credit instead. Craig and Mellow were not merely witnesses; they were defendants in the lawsuit, and the jury plainly was not required to believe their self-serving testimony. Nor was the jury required to believe the vague and conclusory testimony of Carrafiello — even assuming that it interpreted that testimony to mean that Otero had heard or been shown BHA's evidence prior to being fired. Given that the jury was not required to believe the testimony of Craig, Mellow, and Carrafiello that Colon and Boyd had been present at the September 11 meeting with Otero and that the evidence gathered by Mellow had been disclosed to her at that meeting, the court was required to disregard their testimony in ruling on defendants' motion for JMOL. 64 Nor could the court properly grant JMOL against Otero on the basis that her due process claim was vitiated because she was not terminated by BHA but rather resigned. JMOL Ruling at 13. BHA did not suggest that it had obtained any release from Otero, and there appears to be no doubt that Otero's resignation occurred on September 26, by which time she had, in the words of Craig himself, already been terminated (Dec. 18 Tr. at 92). 65 In sum, crediting Otero's testimony, as the jury appears to have done, the jury could have found that Otero, summoned and accused at 4 p.m. on September 11, and instructed to report back with proof that she had not stolen the toilet at 10 a.m. on September 13, was given little more than a day to prove a negative, and to do so without being informed of BHA's evidence of the affirmative. We see no basis on which the court could properly grant BHA and Craig judgment dismissing Otero's due process claim as a matter of law. Accordingly, we reverse the grant of JMOL in favor of those two defendants.