Court Opinion

ID: 9491135
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:04:41.623365+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:32.057829
License: Public Domain

SENTELLE, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I join in my colleagues’ judgment reversing the judgment of the district court and remanding for a new trial, but I do so with the utmost reluctance. When we review the evidentiary rulings of a trial judge, we should be ever mindful of the express and stringent standards set forth in Rule 103 of the Federal Rules of Evidence that “[e]rror may not be predicated upon a ruling which admits or excludes evidence unless a substantial right of the party is affected----” In applying that rule we have held, as have all other circuits, that district judges enjoy broad discretion in their evidentiary rulings, and that we will reverse such rulings “only if [they] are an abuse of discretion.” Carey Canada, Inc. v. Columbia Cas. Co., 940 F.2d 1548, 1559 (D.C.Cir.1991). On the record before us, taken as a whole, that abuse of discretion is not apparent.
The evidence excluded by the district court went to the bias of a subordinate and not the decision maker. As the majority recognizes:
[W]hen the causal relationship between the subordinate’s illicit motive and the employer’s ultimate decision is broken, and the ultimate decision is clearly made on an independent and legally permissive [sic] basis, the bias of the subordinate is not relevant.
Willis v. Marion County Auditor’s Office, 118 F.3d 542, 547 (7th Cir.1997). The record before us is at least consistent with, if not compellingly supportive of, a conclusion that Evans, the ultimate decision maker, made the decision to terminate appellant based on an objective test administered with the participation of her union representative. This testing alone would seem enough to break any causal relationship between Doyle’s alleged bias and that decision. While appellant is able to tease out of the record tenuous support for the proposition that the causal connection was unbroken, I find that to be a thin reed upon which to rest a reversal of a final judgment based on an evidentiary ruling subject to an abuse of discretion standard. It is most difficult to see this ruling as affecting a “substantial right” of appellant.
In the end, I join the reversal solely because of the theory advanced in Part IIB of my colleagues’ opinion. That is, appellee “opened the door” to matters excluded by its own motion in limine. See United States v. Baird, 29 F.3d 647, 654 (D.C.Cir.1994). Under that theory — advanced, I might add, more articulately by my colleagues than by appellant — I agree that the trial judge’s exercise of discretion crossed the boundary of abuse, and I therefore join in the reversal.