Santos-Santos v. Torres-Centeno , 842 F.3d 163 ( 2016 )

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 15-1782
WILMARY SANTOS-SANTOS,
Plaintiff, Appellant,
v.
REYNALDO TORRES-CENTENO, ET AL.,
Defendants, Appellees.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO
[Hon. Pedro A. Delgado-Hernández, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Lynch, Selya, and Lipez,
Circuit Judges.
Eric C. Marion, with whom Law Office of Eric Marion was on
brief, for appellant.
Michelle Camacho-Nieves, Assistant Solicitor General of
Puerto Rico, with whom Margarita L. Mercado-Echegaray, Solicitor
General of Puerto Rico, was on brief, for appellee.
November 23, 2016
LIPEZ, Circuit Judge. Appellant Wilmary Santos-Santos
("Santos"), an officer with the Puerto Rico Police Department
("PRPD"), filed this employment discrimination case against the
Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the PRPD, and a number of her
coworkers under various federal and Puerto Rico statutes. Santos
alleges that she was transferred against her wishes to a different
department within the PRPD after she co-signed a sexual harassment
complaint against a coworker, acted as a witness in a separate
investigation of that coworker, and filed an unrelated complaint
regarding the misuse of police property by her superiors. Santos
sought compensatory and punitive damages, as well as an injunction
barring the PRPD from further discrimination.
The district court granted summary judgment for the
defendants on all of Santos's claims in two rulings in August 2012
and November 2014. On appeal, Santos attempts to challenge both
entries of summary judgment. Because Santos failed to adhere to
procedural requirements relating to the dispositions of a
magistrate judge as set forth by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure
72(b) and Puerto Rico Local Rule 72(d), we affirm the district
court's decisions without reaching the merits of Santos's claims.
I.
We recount in detail the complicated procedural history
of this case because it is determinative of the appeal. Santos
filed this action in January 2011. While several discovery motions
- 2 -
were pending before the district court, the defendants moved for
summary judgment. Instead of filing a standard opposition to the
defendants' summary judgment motion, Santos, citing Rule 56(d) of
the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, filed a response asserting
that she still required certain documents that were among her
discovery requests to effectively counter the defendants' motion.
In August 2012 the district court granted summary judgment in favor
of defendants on nearly all of Santos's claims,1 finding that her
attempted reliance on pending discovery related only to her First
Amendment claim -- which the court dismissed for failing to state
a claim upon which relief could be granted under Garcetti v.
Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410 (2006).2 Only Santos's retaliation claims
under Title VII and Law 115 survived, and the court instructed
Santos to file her opposition to the summary judgment motion on
these issues.
1 Santos's principal claims alleged violations of her free
speech rights under the First Amendment, retaliation under Title
VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e-2000e-17,
and retaliation under Act No. 115 of December 20, 1990, P.R. Laws
Ann. tit. 29, §§ 194-194b ("Law 115"). She also alleged a
conspiracy among her employer and coworkers to interfere with her
civil rights under 42 U.S.C. § 1985, along with a number of other
violations of federal and Puerto Rico laws.
2 The court found that Santos failed to demonstrate that any
of her comments for which she alleged retaliation in violation of
the First Amendment were made while speaking in her capacity as a
private citizen, which Garcetti requires. See 547 U.S. at 418.
- 3 -
After Santos filed her opposition memorandum, the
district court dismissed her Title VII retaliation claims against
individual defendants Gregorio Merced-Vázquez, Reynaldo Torres-
Centeno, William Ruiz-Borrás, and Miguel Santiago-Rivera, and her
Law 115 claim against William Ruiz-Borrás. At that point, the
surviving claims consisted of Santos's Title VII claims against
the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and the PRPD and her Law 115 claims
against the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the PRPD, Merced-Vázquez,
Torres-Centeno, and Santiago-Rivera.
Defendants next filed a motion for reconsideration,
asking the court to dismiss the case in its entirety, which the
court denied. While the defendants' motion for reconsideration
was pending, Santos sought interlocutory review in this court of
the order dismissing her other claims. We concluded that we did
not have jurisdiction to hear her appeal at that time, dismissed
the interlocutory appeal without prejudice, and returned the case
to the district court.
Discovery thus proceeded as the case moved toward trial.
In June 2014, however, defendants filed a second motion for summary
judgment on the remaining claims in light of the Supreme Court's
decision in University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center v.
Nassar, 133 S. Ct. 2517 (2013).3 Santos filed her opposition, and
3 Nassar held that Title VII retaliation claims require the
more stringent "but-for" causation standard of proof rather than
- 4 -
the court referred the matter to a magistrate judge, who
recommended that the motion be granted. Santos did not file an
objection to the magistrate judge's report and recommendation
within the fourteen-day deadline prescribed by Federal Rule of
Civil Procedure 72(b) and Puerto Rico Local Rule 72(d). On
November 20, 2014, the district judge adopted the magistrate
judge's report and recommendation in full and entered final
judgment dismissing Santos's claims with prejudice. In its
dismissal order the court noted that "[a]bsent objection . . . [a]
district court ha[s] a right to assume that [the affected party]
agree[s] with the magistrate judge's recommendation" and that the
court "needs only [to] satisfy itself by ascertaining that there
is no 'plain error' on the face of the record." Santos-Santos v.
P. R. Police Dep't., 63 F. Supp. 3d 181, 184 (D.P.R. 2014) (quoting
Lopez-Mulero v. Velez-Colon, 490 F. Supp. 2d 214, 217-18 (D.P.R.
2007)).
On the same day that final judgment was entered, Santos
responded by filing a "Motion to Reconsider and Set Aside
Memorandum and Order as Well as Judgment." Santos complained that
her lawyer was out of the jurisdiction when the magistrate judge
posted his report and recommendation and, hence, did not see that
the more lenient "mixed-motive" causation standard permitted in
Title VII discrimination claims grounded in race, color, religion,
sex, or national origin. See 133 S. Ct. at 2534.
- 5 -
it had been issued until final judgment was entered. She also
asserted that because there was no docket entry informing parties
of the motion's referral, her lawyer was never aware that it had
been assigned to a magistrate judge. Santos asked the court to
set aside its judgment dismissing her case and requested that she
be given an opportunity to object to the report and recommendation.
The district court chose to view Santos's motion as a
"request for reconsideration," but it responded by cautioning
Santos as follows in an electronic docket order entered the
following day:
[T]he fact that a formal referral was not
entered in this case is immaterial, since the
record confirms that (i) the Report and
Recommendation was notified to [Santos's
attorney's] email address of record; (ii) it
included a warning that failure to file
specific objections within fourteen days would
constitute a waiver of the right to appellate
review . . . and (iii) as per [Santos's
attorney's] admission, the lack of referral
was not the reason behind his untimely request
to "closely review, analyze and object" [to]
the Report and Recommendation. . . . To the
contrary, [Santos's attorney] admits that, due
to numerous professional commitments,
yesterday, for the first time, he saw the
Report and Recommendation because he "never
checked the docket until today when the CM/ECF
e-mails [were] received." . . . This
contention cannot serve as [the] basis for
reconsideration of the order. See[] Santiago-
Diaz v. Laboratorio Clinico y de Referencia
del Este and Sara L[ó]pez MD, 456 F.3d 272,
276 n.3 (1st Cir. 2006) (A party is "fully
chargeable with knowledge of what the docket
disclosed."). The Court, however, will
consider the memorandum of law in support of
- 6 -
her request for reconsideration it has
authorized to be filed before making a final
determination in this case.
Santos subsequently filed her memorandum in support of
her motion for reconsideration on December 16, 2014, attaching an
additional motion asking the district court to extend the original
period for filing objections to the magistrate judge's report and
recommendation.4 She argued that reconsideration was appropriate
due to the excusable neglect of her attorney -- claiming for the
first time that notification of the magistrate judge's issuance of
the report and recommendation had ended up in her attorney's email
"spam folder."
The court accepted Santos's memorandum of law and
permitted her to file the additional motion on December 17, 2014,
but it advised her in an electronic docket order that it would
treat the additional motion as part of her original motion for
reconsideration. Defendants opposed Santos's motion, asserting
that it was improper because it did not "seek[] to correct manifest
errors of law, present newly discovered evidence, or [assert] an
intervening change in law" -- the recognized bases for a motion to
alter or amend a judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure
4 Santos also submitted her proposed objections. In her
proposed objections she challenged the magistrate judge's findings
on the but-for causation standard of proof required for her Title
VII retaliation claims, but she also attempted to relitigate the
claims that the court had dismissed two years earlier in its first
summary judgment order.
- 7 -
59(e).5 See, e.g., Prescott v. Higgins, 538 F.3d 32, 45 (1st Cir.
2008). In a reply memorandum, Santos argued that her proposed
objections to the magistrate judge's report and recommendation --
describing an alleged manifest error of law or fact in the court's
adoption of the magistrate judge's report and recommendation --
and the excusable neglect of her attorney were sufficient to unwind
the judgment. Defendants filed a final "Informative Motion," again
urging the district court to reject Santos's argument on the ground
that she failed to meet the standard for a motion to reconsider.
On June 10, 2015, the district court entered an
electronic order denying Santos's motion for reconsideration:
The Court has carefully re-examined the
arguments raised by plaintiff in support of
her motion for reconsideration at Docket No.
160 and finds no reason to deviate from its
prior ruling, after adopting the Report and
Recommendation. In her motion, plaintiff does
not direct to any newly discovered evidence or
an intervening change in the law; and has not
shown that the Court's order was clearly
unjust or based on a manifest error of law.
Rather, she insists and elaborates upon her
previous arguments and even asks the court to
reconsider an order entered more than two (2)
years ago. The court declines plaintiff's
invitation. As such, and absent a valid
5 Santos's motion to reconsider did not reference any Federal
Rule of Civil Procedure, but it appears that defendants assumed
Santos's motion was a Rule 59(e) motion to amend or alter a
judgment. Santos, herself, adopted this framework in her reply to
the defendants' response. However, Santos was not asking the court
to amend or alter its judgment, but in fact to vacate the judgment
based on her attorney's excusable neglect. Hence, as we explain
below, the motion is properly characterized as a Rule 60(b) motion
for relief from a judgment or order.
- 8 -
ground for reconsidering the previous
disposition, plaintiff's motion for
reconsideration at Docket No. 160 is DENIED.
Santos then timely filed a notice of appeal, asking this court to
review "the Judgment entered November 20, 2014, tolled by her
Motion filed December 17, 2014 which was denied on June 10, 2015."6
On appeal, Santos contends that the district court erred
when it granted summary judgment for defendants on her First
Amendment claims in its August 2012 order and when it granted
summary judgment for defendants on her Title VII and Law 115 claims
in November 2014.
II.
Summary judgment is proper when "there is no genuine
dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to
judgment as a matter of law." Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a); Conjugal
P'ship Acevedo-Principe v. United States, 768 F.3d 51, 54 (1st
Cir. 2014). In a typical appeal from a district court's grant of
6 Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(a)(1)(A) typically
requires that a notice of appeal be filed in the district court
within 30 days after the entry of the judgment which the party
wishes to appeal. However, as we note below, Santos's motion for
reconsideration constituted a Rule 60(b) motion for relief from a
judgment. When a party files any Rule 60 motion within 28 days of
the entry of judgment -- as Santos did in this case -- the time to
file an appeal runs from the entry of the order disposing of the
Rule 60 motion. See Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(4)(A)(vi). (Because
Santos's December 17, 2014 motion was filed within 28 days of entry
of final judgment, we need not decide whether the appropriate date
to ascribe to her motion for reconsideration for purposes of
Appellate Rule 4(a)(4)(A)(vi) was the date of her initial November
20, 2014 motion or her December 17, 2014 follow-up motion.)
- 9 -
summary judgment, our review is de novo, and we view the facts in
the light most favorable to the non-moving party -- in this case
Santos. Del Valle-Santana v. Servicios Legales de P.R. Inc., 804
F.3d 127, 129 (1st Cir. 2015).
But this is not a typical appeal. Our review is
contingent on a party's compliance with procedural rules that
prescribe how issues may be preserved for appeal. Under Federal
Rule of Civil Procedure 72(b) and Puerto Rico Local Rule 72(d), a
party who wishes to challenge a magistrate judge's report and
recommendation must file written objections within fourteen days.
Likewise, it has long been the rule in this circuit that under the
provisions of the Federal Magistrates Act, 28 U.S.C. § 636(b),
parties who fail to file objections to a magistrate judge's report
and recommendation lose their right to appellate review. Park
Motor Mart, Inc. v. Ford Motor Co., 616 F.2d 603, 605 (1st Cir.
1980) ("We conclude that a party 'may' file objections within [the
statutorily prescribed number of] days or he may not, as he
chooses, but he 'shall' do so if he wishes further
consideration."); see also Sch. Union No. 37 v. United Nat'l Ins.
Co., 617 F.3d 554, 564 (1st Cir. 2010) ("[O]nly those issues fairly
raised by the objections to the magistrate's report are subject to
review in the district court and those not preserved by such
- 10 -
objection are precluded on appeal." (quoting Keating v. Sec'y of
Health & Human Servs., 848 F.2d 271, 275 (1st Cir. 1988))).7
As noted above, Santos failed to object to the magistrate
judge's report and recommendation. The magistrate judge warned
her that "[f]ailure to comply with [Puerto Rico Local Rule 72(d)]
precludes further appellate review." Santos's failure to comply
with this rule bars us from examining the merits of her appeal.
After entry of final judgment, Santos filed a motion for
reconsideration, asking the district court to reopen the suit and
providing the objections that she would have lodged to the
magistrate's report and recommendation if she had not missed the
deadline set forth by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 72(b) and
Puerto Rico Local Rule 72(d). Santos's motion stated that she
would not have missed the deadline but for her attorney's excusable
neglect in failing to realize that the report and recommendation
had been issued. "Excusable neglect" is listed as one of the
specific bases for "grounds for relief from a final judgment,
order, or proceeding" under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure
7 The Supreme Court has upheld the application of this rule.
See Thomas v. Arn, 474 U.S. 140, 155 (1985) ("[A] court of appeals
may adopt a rule conditioning appeal, when taken from a district
court judgment that adopts a magistrate's recommendation, upon the
filing of objections with the district court identifying those
issues on which further review is desired. Such a rule, at least
when it incorporates clear notice to the litigants and an
opportunity to seek an extension of time for filing objections is
a valid exercise of the supervisory power that does not violate
either the Federal Magistrates Act or the Constitution.").
- 11 -
60(b)(1). Although Santos never cited the rule in her motion to
reconsider, her motion is properly characterized as a Rule 60(b)
motion for relief from the judgment.8 Cf. United States v. $23,000
in United States Currency, 356 F.3d 157, 165 & n.9 (1st Cir. 2004)
(distinguishing a Rule 59(e) motion to modify a judgment from a
Rule 60(b) motion to vacate a judgment). Demonstrating excusable
neglect is a "demanding standard." Id. at 164. The trial judge
"has wide discretion" in this arena, and "we will not meddle unless
we are persuaded that some exceptional justification exists." Id.
at 164-65. Such an "exceptional justification" must be something
more than an attorney's failure to monitor the court's electronic
docket. "Unfortunately for [Santos,] routine carelessness by
counsel leading to a late filing is not enough to constitute
excusable neglect." Negron v. Celebrity Cruises, Inc., 316 F.3d
60, 62 (1st Cir. 2003). The district court acted within its
discretion when it denied Santos's motion for reconsideration.
III.
In her brief Santos urges us to consider her First
Amendment claim that was dismissed by the district court in August
8 In its denial of Santos's motion for reconsideration, the
district court employed the framework of a Rule 59(e) motion, which
was introduced by defendants in their opposition to Santos's motion
and adopted by Santos, herself, in her reply. But as we have
noted, vacating a judgment on the ground of excusable neglect by
one party's attorney is governed by Rule 60(b), not Rule 59(e).
Hence, we analyze whether the district court's denial of Santos's
motion for reconsideration was proper under Rule (60)(b).
- 12 -
2012. Her notice of appeal, however, refers only to the district
court's November 2014 decision to accept the magistrate judge's
report and recommendation on her remaining Title VII and Law 115
claims and its denial of her motion to reconsider the entry of
final judgment. "Even though notices of appeal are to be liberally
construed, if the appellant 'chooses to designate specific
determinations in [her] notice of appeal -- rather than simply
appealing from the entire judgment -- only the specified issues
may be raised on the appeal.'" Brooks v. AIG SunAmerica Life
Assurance Co., 438 F.3d 579, 585 (1st Cir. 2007) (quoting
Constructora Andrade Gutiérrez, S.A. v. Am. Int'l. Ins. Co. of
P.R., 467 F.3d 38, 43 (1st Cir. 2006)). By expressly asking us to
review specific decisions of the district court to the exclusion
of all other district court decisions, Santos gave neither this
court nor appellees proper notice that she intended to dispute the
earlier ruling on her First Amendment claim, leaving us without
jurisdiction to review it. See Constructora Andrade Gutiérrez,
467 F.3d at 44. "[D]esignating a completely separate and
independent order loudly proclaims [a] plaintiff's intention not
to appeal from the former order. . . . As an ancient maxim teaches,
'expressio unius est exclusio alterius.'" Kotler v. Am. Tobacco
Co., 981 F.2d 7, 11 (1st Cir. 1992) (citation omitted).
Affirmed.
- 13 -