Court Opinion

ID: 9477245
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:18:20.241968+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:46.568482
License: Public Domain

LIVELY, Chief Judge,
concurring.
I concur fully in Judge Guy’s opinion for the court and write separately merely to emphasize the fact that this court will treat defenses of laches in Title VII actions on a case-by-case basis. As this court and others have noted in requiring a liberal construction of Title VII, actions under this statute are often “filed by lay complainants who are unfamiliar with the niceties of pleading and are acting without assistance of counsel.” Tipler v. E.I. duPont deNemours & Co., 443 F.2d 125, 131 (6th Cir.1971). However, that is not the situation in this case. Here the plaintiff is a union, thoroughly conversant with the requirements of Title VII and represented by highly qualified counsel. Moreover, the Guild has stated to this court that it delayed filing suit in this action because it was monitoring a parallel action against another newspaper. It apparently viewed the complaint against the Cleveland Press as presenting a stronger case of a violation and hoped for a favorable precedent to control or at least influence the decision in this case. Thus, we are not confronted with a situation in which an alleged discri-minatee assumed that having filed a charge with the EEOC, he was required to await further action by the EEOC before seeking judicial relief.
We review application of the equitable doctrine of laches under an abuse of discretion standard, Jeffries v. Chicago Transit Authority, 770 F.2d 676, 681 (7th Cir.1985), and I find no abuse of discretion in the district court’s application of the doctrine in dismissing the present action.