Court Opinion

ID: 9489267
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:10:32.778372+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:25.689500
License: Public Domain

ILANA DIAMOND ROVNER, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in the court’s holding as to Turgeon’s sex discrimination claim, and, although I am convinced that the district judge misapprehended an earlier panel’s holding in Reed, 939 F.2d at 484, as barring all retaliation claims by former employees, I, too, see no reason to vacate the grant of summary judgment on Turgeon’s retaliation claim in this particular case. As the majority observes, Turgeon raised the claim in a most cursory fashion, and failed to point to specific facts in the record that would support a finding of retaliation. I therefore agree that Turgeon did not meet her burden of demonstrating the existence of a triable issue that would preclude summary judgment on this claim.
The Rule 11 sanctions are, however, a different matter. Although Turgeon’s brief provides us with an inadequate basis for overturning summary judgment, it is certainly sufficient to alert the court to the impropriety of upholding the Rule 11 sanctions. Turgeon’s failure, moreover, to include a copy of the district judge’s order as required by Cir. Rule 30(a) does not create any impediment to our effective review of the narrow issue of whether her retaliation claim was based on a viable legal theory. Indeed, her presentation was sufficient, as she stated, “to preserve the issue for en banc review.”
Under Rule 11, an attorney is required to certify that to the best of her knowledge, any claim she raises is “warranted by existing law or by a nonfrivolous argument for the extension, modification, or reversal of existing law or the establishment of new law.” Fed.R.Civ.P. 11(b)(2). As this court is well aware, the majority of courts that have considered the issue are in agreement that Title YII protects former (as well as current) employees from acts of retaliation at the hands of their former employers in matters that relate to the employment relationship. See, e.g., Berry v. Stevinson Chevrolet, 74 F.3d 980, 985 (10th Cir.1996); Nelson v. Upsala College, 51 F.3d 383, 386-89 (3d Cir.1995); EEOC v. J.M. Huber Corp., 927 F.2d 1322, 1331 & n. 41 (5th Cir.1991); Bailey v. USX Corp., 850 F.2d 1506, 1509-10 (11th Cir.1988). Indeed, the issue can hardly be regarded as frivolous since the Supreme Court has recently granted certiorari to consider the circuit split created by the Fourth Circuit’s contrary holding in Robinson v. Shell Oil Co., 70 F.3d 325 (4th Cir.1995) (en banc), cert. granted, — U.S.-, 116 S.Ct. 1541, 134 L.Ed.2d 645 (1996). In my view, then, the district judge plainly erred in sanctioning Turgeon for raising- a retaliation claim against Premark. Although Turgeon was no longer Premark’s employee when the alleged retaliation took place, Premark was still in a position to ruin her prospects for obtaining *224new employment in her field and was alleged to have done exactly that. In allowing the sanctions to stand, I fear that we leave the mistaken impression that Turgeon’s retaliation claim was frivolous when it clearly is not. Furthermore, I question the propriety of upholding sanctions in light of McKnight v. General Motors Corp., 511 U.S. 659, 114 S.Ct. 1826, 128 L.Ed.2d 655 (1994) {per curiam), in which the Supreme Court held that sanctioning an appellant for filing a frivolous appeal was improper where the Court had not yet .ruled on the issue the appellant had raised. The Court thus vacated our sanctions in spite of the fact that the appellant’s argument in McKnight, unlike the argument advanced by Turgeon, was directly foreclosed by circuit precedent. Under McKnight, then, there was plainly no basis for Rule 11 sanctions here. I would therefore vacate the sanctions, notwithstanding Turgeon’s technical failure to comply with Cir. Rule 30(a).