Court Opinion

ID: 9485218
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 10:50:22.267175+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:50:54.491689
License: Public Domain

BEA, Circuit Judge,
concurring in the judgment.
I agree with the Memorandum Disposition’s result affirming the district court’s grant of summary judgment to Robert Bromps. I write separately to emphasize that I believe summary judgment was properly granted solely because of the absence of a genuine issue of material fact in this case, a ground accented as additional and secondary by the majority’s disposition.
*608This case is properly resolved solely on the grounds that Burchett relates a statement of Bromps which makes no sense. Bromps’s alleged statement is contrary to common sense and, indeed, counterintuitive, since the purpose of limiting Burchett’s visits were to prevent Burchett from being near children. Since both the Seventh Day Adventist church and the Assembly of God church have children present, the statement does not make sense. Put another way, no reasonable jury could have believed the statement.
The only reasonable basis upon which such a statement would be made is that Bromps disfavored Seventh Day Adventists and favored the Assembly of God. However, there is absolutely no evidence of that attitude and a great deal of evidence showing the absence of any such attitude.
If “genuine” under Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, 477 U.S. 242, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986), is to have any meaning as a limiting concept, it must be to require there be some reasonable explanation supporting that the claimed fact — in this case, Bromps’s statement — existed. Here, there is not only no reasonable explanation why Bromps might have said what Burchett testified to, but every reason to think he would not say that.
Therefore, I concur in the judgment.