Opinion ID: 4533284
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Exclusion Of Shanahan’s December 2012 Email

Text: Pearson contended at trial that Shanahan was the decisionmaker and there was evidence he knew about her EEOC claim before he fired her. The defendants contended that Mike Blanchard, who became human resources director after Shanahan, was the actual decisionmaker, and that Pearson submitted no evidence that Blanchard knew about her EEOC claim before he fired her. The district court denied Pearson’s motion to admit an email from Shanahan to a City human resources employee. She contends that email would have shown that Shanahan, not Blanchard, was the decisionmaker. Pearson offered the email 25 Case: 17-15275 Date Filed: 05/11/2020 Page: 26 of 33 as a business record under Federal Rule of Evidence 803(6) during the testimony of Starina Styles, who was the human resources employee who allegedly received the email, but Styles did not recognize it. The defendants objected to the admission of the email due to lack of foundation, and the trial court sustained the objection. “The touchstone of admissibility under the business records exception to the hearsay rule is reliability, and a trial judge has broad discretion to determine the admissibility of such evidence.” United States v. Bueno-Sierra, 99 F.3d 375, 378 (11th Cir. 1996). A document is admissible as a business record under Rule 803(6) if it was “made at or near the time by — or from information transmitted by — someone with knowledge[,] . . . [and] kept in the course of a regularly conducted activity of a business,” and if it was the “regular practice” of the business to make that record. Fed. R. Evid. 803(6)(A)–(C). The party submitting the evidence must lay the foundation that those elements have been met, which requires “the testimony of the custodian or another qualified witness.” Id.; accord City of Tuscaloosa v. Harcros Chems., 158 F.3d 548, 559 n.12 (11th Cir. 1998). The only person Pearson called for that purpose was Styles. Because she did not remember or recognize the email, Styles was not a sufficient “custodian” or other “qualified witness” under Rule 803(6). Pearson failed to lay the proper foundation for 26 Case: 17-15275 Date Filed: 05/11/2020 Page: 27 of 33 admission of the email, so the district court did not abuse its discretion in sustaining the defendants’ objection to it. Pearson contends that even though she didn’t lay the proper foundation, the email should have been admitted. She points to a pretrial order saying that “[i]tems not objected to will be admitted when tendered at trial,” notes that the email was listed in that order, and notes that the defendants did not object to it being included in the order. 10 Based on that, Pearson argues that the defendants should not have been able to object to the admission of the email at trial. Pearson provides no authority for the proposition that boilerplate language in a pretrial order relieves her of the burden of laying a foundation for evidence as required by Rule 803(6). The only authority that she cites for the proposition that the evidence should have been admitted is a not-entirely-on-point, unpublished district court opinion from the Southern District of Indiana. That decision, of course, is utterly non-binding on us. See United States v. Johnson, 921 F.3d 991, 999 (11th Cir. 2019) (“Nor can we overlook that the opinion of a district court is not precedential.”). We are not convinced that the language in the pretrial order compelled the trial court to accept into evidence everything that was listed, 10 Pearson also claims that Styles should have been able to refresh her recollection before answering whether she recognized the email. But Styles was holding and reading the email when she stated that she did not recognize it. It is unclear what more could have been done to refresh Styles’ recollection. 27 Case: 17-15275 Date Filed: 05/11/2020 Page: 28 of 33 regardless of the Federal Rules of Evidence. 11 Again, the court did not abuse its discretion. 12