Opinion ID: 2977529
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The district court’s summary judgment orders

Text: Attorneys Merrie Frost and Timothy Ita independently filed, on behalf of their respective clients, a total of three separate lawsuits in state court against the CCJC. These cases were each removed to federal court on the basis of federal subject-matter jurisdiction and later consolidated. The consolidated federal complaint listed 14 plaintiff-employees and included the following counts: “termination in violation of Ohio’s public policy,” “employment discrimination in violation of Ohio Revised Code § 4112,” “an equal protection violation brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983,” “malicious conduct warranting a punitive damages award,” and “intentional infliction of emotional distress, unlawful retaliatory discharge and discipline, civil conspiracy, and civil aiding and abetting.” Garner, 194 F. App’x at 280. The employees requested, among other things, compensatory and punitive damages in excess of $10 million. This court has previously described the motion practice that followed: In July of 2003, CCJC filed a motion for partial judgment on the pleadings against Bellamy, Moore, and Washington, arguing that the federal claims raised by these three employees were barred by the statute of limitations because they had not been employed by CCJC within two years preceding the action. While this motion was pending, the discovery deadline was set for July 31, 2003. In September of 2003, CCJC filed a motion requesting that the district court increase the page limit for dispositive motions from 30 pages to 50 pages, which the court denied. Also in September of 2003—two months after the discovery deadline had passed—the plaintiffs requested leave to take an additional deposition, which the court also denied. CCJC soon thereafter filed 11 motions for summary judgment, pertaining to all the employees other than Bellamy, Moore, and Washington. The employees filed an opposing memorandum accompanied by affidavits and exhibits. At a pretrial conference following the filing of the summary judgment motions and the response, the district court, on its own initiative, No. 07-3602 Garner et al. v. Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court et al. Page 4 permitted the employees to file an additional memorandum in opposition to CCJC’s summary judgment motions. They did so in December of 2003. Also in December of 2003, CCJC sought a continuance of the trial date, originally set for January of 2004, in part due to the pendency of the dispositive motions. The district court agreed to set aside the January trial date. On December 31, 2003, the employees filed a motion to “update affidavits and exhibits” in response to CCJC’s motions for summary judgment. The district court denied the employees’ motion, reasoning that the deadline had long passed. By March of 2005, the district court had granted summary judgment in favor of CCJC with respect to all of the employees, including Bellamy, Moore, and Washington. Id. at 280-81. Individual summary judgment orders, including more than 250 pages of discussion, were issued by the district court. All of the orders granted summary judgment in favor of the CCJC. This court affirmed the various orders on appeal, explaining as follows: The district court held that Bellamy, Brown, Dennis, Garner, Isom, Lilly, Moore, Richardson, and Washington had failed to present any evidence to support their state and federal claims of racially motivated employment discrimination and retaliation. It further held that Colwell, Jenkins, McNear, McCollough, and Prather had failed to present sufficient evidence to support their claims. Aside from the differences between the failure to present any evidence and the failure to present sufficient evidence, the district court’s summary judgment orders contain remarkably similar legal analysis. Although the employees argue that the district court ignored or “changed” important evidence of racial discrimination on the part of CCJC, this contention is unsupported by the record. The district court engaged in a careful analysis of the facts as they pertained to each employee’s claims, and it determined that the allegations of racial discrimination and other unlawful behavior were unfounded. In their brief, the employees continue to proffer the same assertions raised below, failing in almost all instances to cite to the record. Not only do the employees fail to base their allegations on facts in the record, they also fail to offer any relevant criticism of the district court’s legal analysis. Because the reasoning that supports summary judgment for CCJC has been clearly articulated by the district court in its thorough and well-written opinions, and because we are unpersuaded by the employees’ argument that the court displayed favoritism and bias in rendering its procedural orders, the issuance by us of a detailed written opinion would be unduly duplicative. Id. at 283-84 (emphases in original). No. 07-3602 Garner et al. v. Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court et al. Page 5 2. Imposition and calculation of costs and attorney fees on the employees The CCJC subsequently sought to recoup the expenses associated with defending itself against the employees’ claims in light of its successful summary judgment motions. It filed motions requesting an award of costs pursuant to Rule 54(d) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and sought attorney fees under 42 U.S.C. § 1988. The district court granted the CCJC’s motion for costs under Rule 54(d) in August 2005. In a separate order issued in March 2007, the court held 13 of the employees jointly and severally liable for those costs in the amount of $69,345.28. Those 13 employees are Bellamy, Brown, Dennis, Garner, Isom, Jenkins, Lilly, McCollough, McNear, Moore, Prather, Richardson and Washington. Because Colwell had filed for bankruptcy, she was excluded from this judgment. The employees have waived arguments relating to this award of costs. See Part II.C. below. In an earlier order issued in October 2005, the district court had imposed attorney fees on 10 of the employees, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1988(b), for filing claims that were “frivolous, unreasonable, and without foundation,” and because “these employees should have dismissed their claims after discovery had shown that they were without factual support.” The court reached this conclusion despite being “very aware that awarding attorney’s fees to the defendants under § 1988 in a case such as this may have a chilling effect on potentially meritorious civil rights employees,” and after acknowledging that it was an “extreme sanction.” The court concluded that the defendants are entitled to attorney’s fees for the preparation of motions for summary judgment pertaining to all of the employees’ claims except those of employees Jenkins, McCollough, Prather and Wesley [who was voluntarily dismissed] and the following claims of employees Washington, Bellamy, and Moore [which were dismissed by stipulation]: “(1) Count III, claims brought under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983; (2) Count V, Retaliation; (3) Count VI, Respondeat Superior; (4) Count VII, Civil Conspiracy; and, (5) Count VIII, Civil Aiding-Abetting. (Brackets added.) Those employees ultimately held jointly and severally liable to satisfy the award imposed under § 1988 were Bellamy, Brown, Dennis, Garner, Isom, Lilly, McNear, Moore, Richardson, and Washington. In other words, with the exception of Jenkins, McCollough, No. 07-3602 Garner et al. v. Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court et al. Page 6 and Prather, every employee who was held liable for costs under Rule 54(d) was also held jointly and severally liable for attorney fees. The latter three employees were excluded from the attorney-fee award because the court determined that some of their claims were not frivolous. As previously noted, Colwell was excluded from this group because she filed for bankruptcy, and Wesley was excluded from both the awards of costs and attorney fees because he had already been voluntarily dismissed as a party. To support its finding that the employees’ claims were frivolous, the district court addressed the evidentiary basis—or lack thereof—with respect to each count of the consolidated complaint. Reproducing that discussion in full would unnecessarily duplicate the district court’s lengthy opinion. We will highlight, nonetheless, some of the district court’s findings to provide context for the analysis that is set forth in Part II. below. Virtually all the employees claimed that the CCJC discriminated against them on the basis of their race, retaliated against them for engaging in “protected activity” in violation of Ohio Revised Code 4112.02(I), wrongfully discharged them “in violation of public policy” (which is a cause of action available to at-will employees only), and/or intentionally subjected them to emotional distress. In general, the court found that “most of the claims of employees” Bellamy, Brown, Dennis, Garner, Isom, Lilly, McNear, Moore, Richardson, and Washington were “frivolous, unreasonable, and without foundation.” Despite finding that most of the employees’ claims were frivolous, the district court did not think that all of them were. The court distinguished between two categories of employees: (1) those who “failed to provide any evidence” in support of their claims, and (2) those who “failed to provide sufficient evidence.” (Emphases in original.) Labeling the first category as those who “failed to provide any evidence” is potentially misleading, however. The court did not likely mean that the employees in this group failed to proffer evidence to satisfy any of the elements of their claims. Some of the employees, for example, easily satisfied an essential element of their wrongful-termination claims by establishing that they had in fact been terminated. Instead, the court seemingly intended the no-evidence category to include those employees who failed to satisfy a basic element of their claims even “after discovery had shown that they were without evidentiary support.” The court placed the following employees in the no-evidence group: Bellamy, Brown, Dennis, Garner, No. 07-3602 Garner et al. v. Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court et al. Page 7 Isom, Jenkins, Lilly, Moore, Richardson, and Washington. Except for Jenkins, everyone in this group was ultimately held jointly and severally liable for attorney fees under 42 U.S.C. § 1988. The insufficient-evidence group included Colwell, McCollough, McNear, and Prather. Jenkins was also put in this group, although the district court failed to explain why it placed him in both categories. In any event, the insufficient-evidence group appears to reflect the district court’s acknowledgment that “[s]ome of the claims of the employees . . . were not frivolous.” The district court addressed the claims of Jenkins, McCollough, and Prather in particular. These employees lost on summary judgment just like the members of the no-evidence group. Nevertheless, the district court found that their claims were not wholly frivolous because they were able to establish a prima facie case of racial discrimination, even though they were unable to show that the CCJC’s proffered legitimate reasons for the alleged adverse actions against them were simply pretexts to mask discrimination. Ultimately, neither Jenkins, McCollough, nor Prather were held jointly and severally liable for attorney fees under 42 U.S.C. § 1988. The district court did not indicate why it included Colwell in the insufficientevidence group. Colwell was presumably included because she provided at least a scintilla of evidence to support her discrimination claims. Specifically, Colwell alleged that one of her supervisors referred to another employee as a “white boy,” referred to lead-detention officers as “his people,” and said that “you people don’t understand, you’re not the same grade.” As with Jenkins, McCollough, and Prather, the district court did not hold Colwell jointly and severally liable for the attorney fees, and she is not involved in this appeal due to her filing for bankruptcy. McNear was also placed in the insufficient-evidence category, although the record is again not clear as to why. The court reiterated its conclusion, first expressed at the summary judgment stage of the case, that because McNear did not suffer a materially adverse employment action, she had failed to establish a prima facie claim of retaliation under Ohio Revised Code § 4112.02(I). McNear is nonetheless the only employee in the insufficient-evidence group that the district court held jointly and severally liable for the attorney fees. No. 07-3602 Garner et al. v. Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court et al. Page 8 Other employees alleged retaliation claims under Ohio law that were in some ways similar to McNear’s claim. Brown, Colwell, Isom, and McCollough each stated that the CCJC subjected them to adverse employment actions as a result of participating in “protected activity,” including this litigation. For example, Isom claimed that, by forcing her to use vacation time to attend to her duties as a plaintiff, the CCJC retaliated against her for filing suit against it. But the district court noted that they failed “to establish a causal connection between the filing of the case at bar and the CCJC’s requirement that they use personal time to attend to matters related to the case at bar.” The preceding examples are highlights of the reasoning behind the district court’s determinations that the employees filed frivolous claims. Having found the employees liable for costs and attorney fees, however, the court still had to determine how much the CCJC was entitled to receive. The CCJC requested $663,804.88 in attorney fees, which it computed by adding “litigation fees” that were presumably fees attributable to discovery ($401,405.20), fees attributable to defending against the claims brought by Garner, Richardson, Brown, Dennis, Isom, and McNear ($75,487.56), fees attributable to defending against the claims brought by Moore, Bellamy, and Washington ($48,534.50), trial preparation fees ($98,437.75), and the expense of trying to recover attorney fees and costs from the employees ($39,939.87). In a March 2007 order, the district court found that the documentation that the CCJC submitted supporting these figures was adequate. Pursuant to the district court’s October 2005 order, the CCJC’s request of $663,804.88 did not include any time spent defending against the claims of Jenkins, McCollough, and Prather. The court also refused to permit the CCJC to recover fees for preparing a motion to compel discovery because the pleading violated a local discovery rule obligating the parties to contact the court by phone before filing certain discovery motions. Approximately $3,700 was therefore subtracted from the CCJC’s request. That left $660,103.49 that the CCJC was allowed to recover from the employees for filing frivolous suits. No. 07-3602 Garner et al. v. Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court et al. Page 9 3. Imposition and calculation of sanctions against the employees’ attorneys In addition to the CCJC asking the district court to award it costs under Rule 54 and attorney fees under 42 U.S.C. § 1988, the CCJC asked the court to impose sanctions against the employees’ attorneys under 28 U.S.C. § 1927, Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Ohio Revised Code § 2323.51, and the court’s inherent authority. The court granted that request pursuant to § 1927, but denied the request to the extent that it was based on Rule 11, Ohio law, or the court’s inherent authority. In reviewing the request, the court observed “[t]here is indeed little, if any, evidentiary support for any of those claims in this record, and no reasonably prudent attorney, having performed an ongoing investigation, would have filed or continued prosecuting those claims.” The district court explained its decision to impose sanctions as follows: Attorneys Frost and Ita engaged in conduct proscribed by 28 U.S.C. § 1927 which multiplied the litigation unreasonably or vexatiously. The conduct also caused “excess costs.” Because the Court believes that employees’ counsel intentionally pursued meritless claims, the Court will award the defendants fees under § 1927 for the hours related to the preparation of the summary judgment motions and some of the discovery conducted by the parties. The Court recognizes that the extensive discovery requested and responded to by the defendants in order to prevail on summary judgment does not constitute vexatious conduct on behalf of employees’ counsel. However, the employees’ claims in the case at bar were shown to be patently without merit in their responses to written discovery. Defendants issued each plaintiff detailed interrogatories, requests for admissions, and requests for documents, asking the employees to identify each and every instance in which they had been personally subjected to acts of discrimination, acts of harassment, treated differently based on their race, retaliated against, or been subject to a hostile environment as a result of each individual defendant’s actions. Moreover, the Court had to resolve the discovery issues that remained between the parties at a conference conducted on May 21, 2003. Having decided that sanctions against Attorneys Frost and Ita were appropriate, the district court still had to determine the appropriate amount. Before the court issued its final judgment setting the amount of the total awards under Rule 54, 42 U.S.C. § 1988, and 28 U.S.C. § 1927, however, Attorney Ita filed a motion that requested permission to withdraw retroactively (nunc pro tunc) and to be excused from paying the sanctions. No. 07-3602 Garner et al. v. Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court et al. Page 10 In an affidavit and explanatory memorandum, Ita noted that Frost had left his law firm on October 3, 2003. He claimed that he was not involved in this litigation after that date. Ita asserted, moreover, that none of his pre-October 3 behavior in this case could reasonably be characterized as vexatious. He nevertheless acknowledged that he should have filed a motion to withdraw at an earlier date. In early February 2006, the district court granted Ita’s motion to withdraw nunc pro tunc and excused him from paying the attorney fees, noting that although the employees had “some disagreement about the factual allegations in attorney Ita’s affidavit,” they otherwise had “no other response.” This left Frost as the only remaining attorney subject to sanctions. Having previously determined that Frost was subject to sanctions under § 1927, the district court held that the appropriate sanction was to make her jointly and severally liable for the $660,103.49 attorney-fee award previously imposed on the employees. The district court did not explain why this amount was an appropriate sanction under § 1927. 4. This appeal A month after the district court’s final order determining the amount of costs and attorney fees owed, eight of the employees who were held jointly and severally liable filed a timely notice of appeal. The notice specifically states that the appellants are appealing the order “granting the defendants sanctions in the amount of $660,103.49.” Brown and Lilly were not named in the notice of appeal even though they were among those held jointly and severally liable. But Colwell, Jenkins, McCollough, and Prather are named in the notice even though they were not ordered to pay the attorney-fee award. In sum, the remaining employee-appellants are Bellamy, Colwell, Dennis, Garner, Isom, Jenkins, McCollough, McNear, Moore, Prather, Richardson, and Washington. Finally, in October 2008, we granted a motion filed by the National Employment Lawyers Association (NELA) requesting permission to file a brief as amicus curiae on behalf of the appellants.