Court Opinion

ID: 9499708
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:55:55.157177+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:40.957607
License: Public Domain

GRUENDER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Because I do not agree that the district court overruled a rule of law established in a previous panel opinion, I would affirm the grant of summary judgment for the reasons stated by the district court. Therefore, I respectfully dissent.
*1139“The doctrine of the law of the case ... is a doctrine of discretion and provides that when a court decides a rule of law, that decision should govern the same issues in subsequent stages in the same case.” UniGroup, Inc. v. Winokur, 45 F.3d 1208, 1211 (8th Cir.1995). The doctrine “prevents the relitigation of settled issues in an action, thus protecting the expectations of the parties, ensuring uniformity of decisions and promoting judicial efficiency.” Id. As the Court notes, because this case follows a decision of a prior panel, the prior panel rule applies to like effect. See Mosby, 101 F.3d at 1279 n. 3.
The rule of law established in the first appeal and allegedly overruled by the district court is that, on the record before the district court on the first motion for summary judgment, genuine issues of material fact precluded summary judgment on same-decision grounds. The factual record at the time of the first summary judgment motion was developed completely around the issue of potential racial or military-service animus underlying Cintas’s actions, rather than a USERRA same-decision defense. Cintas’s arguments in the first appeal for the same-decision alternative were just that — arguments by counsel, drawing some inferential factual support from Lewis’s deposition testimony about the motivation for his decisions regarding Maxfield’s transfer and termination. However, there was no evidence in the record at that time tying Lewis’s statements to the particular circumstances, if any, that would have led Cintas to make the same decision absent Maxfield’s military service.
On remand after the first appeal, the district court reopened discovery and set a deadline for new dispositive motions. The district court did not limit the new round of discovery and dispositive motions to new theories or to evidence that could not previously have been discovered. There is no suggestion in the record that Maxfield objected to this procedure in district court, and he does not challenge it on appeal. From the state of the record at that time, one might infer that both parties felt the record needed development on the same-decision issue before the case could proceed further. Accompanying Cintas’s second summary judgment motion, the Lewis affidavit introduced into the record for the first time a sworn statement from a decision-maker that Cintas would have made the same decision regardless of any potential military-service animus, as well as what the particular basis for that decision would have been. While the affidavit closely paralleled arguments advanced by Cintas in the first appeal, as recited at length by the Court ante, arguments made by counsel on appeal are not part of the factual record. In my view, the Lewis affidavit provides an evidentiary link between the events surrounding Maxfield’s transfer and termination and Cintas’s decision-making practices that was not present in the first summary judgment record. Certainly neither Maxfield nor the district court noticed any conflicts with the law of the ease established by the prior panel decision. At the very least, therefore, it appears that “the expectations of the parties” were not upset. UniGroup, 45 F.3d at 1211.
In summary, the mandate of the prior panel did not preclude, and neither party objected to, the district court’s order for another round of discovery and dispositive motions. Following the district court’s order, Cintas presented a sworn statement from a decision-maker (which was not rebutted by Maxfield) explaining precisely why it would have made the same decisions to transfer and terminate Maxfield regardless of potential military-service animus. At that point, the rule of law established in the first appeal no longer controlled the district court’s consideration of *1140a summary judgment motion on the same-decision issue. Therefore, I respectfully dissent from the Court’s application of the doctrines of law of the case and the prior panel rule to this case, and I would affirm the judgment of the district court.