Shervin v. Partners Healthcare System, Inc. ( 2015 )

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 14-1651
NINA SHERVIN, M.D.,
Plaintiff, Appellant,
v.
PARTNERS HEALTHCARE SYSTEM, INC., ET AL.,
Defendants, Appellees.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
[Hon. Denise J. Casper, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Kayatta, Selya and Dyk,*
Circuit Judges.
____________________
Ellen Jane Zucker, with whom Burns & Levinson LLP was on
brief, for appellant.
Nancy Gertner, Emma Quinn-Judge, Zalkind Duncan & Bernstein
LLP, Nina Joan Kimball, Kimball Brousseau LLP, Michaela May, and
Law Office of Michaela C. May on brief for American Civil Liberties
Union of Massachusetts, Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for
Race and Justice, Massachusetts Employment Lawyers Association,
Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, Jewish Alliance for Law and
____________________
* Of the Federal Circuit, sitting by designation.
Social Action, Union of Minority Neighborhoods, and Gay & Lesbian
Advocates & Defenders, amici curiae.
Thomas A. Reed, with whom Herbert L. Holtz, Eugene J. Sullivan
III, and Holtz & Reed, LLP were on brief, for appellees Partners
Healthcare System, Inc. and Massachusetts General Hospital
Physicians Organization.
John Patrick Coakley, with whom Stephen D. Coppolo and Murphy
& Riley, P.C. were on brief, for appellee Harvard Medical School.
Robert E. Burgess, with whom Edward F. Mahoney and Martin,
Magnuson, McCarthy & Kenney were on brief, for appellee Harry E.
Rubash, M.D.
Rebecca J. Wilson, with whom Kiley M. Belliveau and Peabody
& Arnold LLP were on brief, for appellee James H. Herndon, M.D.
October 9, 2015
SELYA, Circuit Judge. Plaintiff-appellant Nina Shervin,
M.D., secured admission to one of the country's most prestigious
orthopedic residency programs. When she was placed on academic
probation, she concluded that her superiors were discriminating
against her based on her gender and thereafter began retaliating
against her because she had dared to challenge the probation
decision. Bent on vindicating these suspicions, Dr. Shervin
repaired to the federal district court and sued a gallimaufry of
defendants, asserting claims under both state and federal law.
The district court whittled down Dr. Shervin's suit
during pretrial proceedings, and a 26-day jury trial ensued. The
jury returned an across-the-board verdict for the defendants. Dr.
Shervin appeals, asseverating that the district court
miscalibrated the statute of limitations, improperly denied
recusal, made several untoward evidentiary rulings, and committed
instructional errors. After careful consideration of her
asseverational array, we find no reversible error and, therefore,
affirm the judgment below.
I. BACKGROUND
We sketch the genesis and travel of the case, reserving
a more exegetic discussion of the facts until our appraisal of the
issues raised on appeal.
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In 2003, Dr. Shervin began her post-graduate training in
the Harvard Combined Orthopedics Residency Program (HCORP or the
program). The program is sponsored by Massachusetts General
Hospital (MGH), and training takes place at four Harvard-
affiliated teaching hospitals: MGH, Brigham and Women's Hospital
(the Brigham), Children's Hospital, and Beth Israel Deaconess
Medical Center (BIDMC). MGH and the Brigham are both under the
corporate umbrella of Partners HealthCare System, Inc. (Partners).
During her five-year residency, Dr. Shervin was nominally an
employee of Partners and worked under an employment contract with
that entity.
HCORP is governed by an executive committee comprised of
its director and the chiefs of the orthopedics departments at the
four participating hospitals. During the times relevant hereto,
Dr. James H. Herndon served as the program's director and Dr. Harry
E. Rubash served as the chief of orthopedics at MGH. Both of these
physicians were employed at MGH through a private, non-profit
corporation, Massachusetts General Hospital Physicians
Organization (MGPO), and held faculty appointments at Harvard
Medical School (Harvard).
Mid-way through the fourth year of her residency, Dr.
Herndon placed Dr. Shervin on academic probation — a decision Dr.
Shervin soon came to regard as motivated by gender bias. She
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asserts that, after she challenged the decision internally, she
was subjected to further discrimination and an onslaught of
retaliation that plagued her throughout her training and followed
her as she pursued job opportunities throughout Massachusetts.
On October 26, 2009, Dr. Shervin filed a charge of
discrimination with the Massachusetts Commission Against
Discrimination (MCAD) against Partners, Harvard, Dr. Herndon, and
Dr. Rubash. The MCAD later dismissed the charge without prejudice
upon receiving Dr. Shervin's notification that she had elected to
pursue her claims in court. See Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 151B, § 9.
In April of 2010, she sued in the federal district court, asserting
state-law claims of unlawful discrimination and retaliation
against Partners, MGPO, Harvard, Dr. Herndon, and Dr. Rubash;
federal-law claims of discrimination and retaliation against
Partners, MGPO, and Harvard; and common-law claims of tortious
interference with advantageous business relations against Partners
and Drs. Herndon and Rubash.
After extensive discovery, the defendants moved for
summary judgment on all of the claims, arguing that many were time-
barred and that the remainder were foreclosed on other grounds.
The district court granted partial summary judgment with respect
to the discrimination and retaliation claims, ruling that (for all
defendants except Harvard) conduct occurring prior to June 5, 2008
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could not serve as a basis for liability or damages. See Shervin
v. Partners Healthcare Sys., Inc., 2 F. Supp. 3d 50, 72 (D. Mass.
2014). The court fixed this date based on the applicable 300-day
statute of limitations under federal and state discrimination
laws, see 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(e)(1); Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 151B,
§ 5, and a tolling agreement establishing a constructive filing
date for Dr. Shervin's suit of April 1, 2009. Harvard was not
bound by the tolling agreement, and the district court fixed its
limitations date at December 30, 2008. See Shervin, 2 F. Supp. 3d
at 72. The court was quick to add, however, that "while the
[d]efendants may not be found liable for conduct outside the
limitations period," the "jury may still be permitted to consider
untimely 'background evidence' in assessing the viability of the
actionable discrimination and retaliation claims." Id. at 71 n.10.
The court denied the summary judgment motions in all other
respects. See id. at 80.
After a lengthy trial, the jury returned a take-nothing
verdict. This timely appeal followed.
In this court, Dr. Shervin musters a plethora of claims
of error. We consider them in roughly the same order as the
underlying events occurred below.
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II. THE SUMMARY JUDGMENT RULING
Dr. Shervin's flagship claim is that the district court
erred in its application of Massachusetts law, leading it to
conclude that certain alleged acts of discrimination and
retaliation were time-barred. We preface our discussion of this
issue with a brief account of the pertinent facts, taking them in
the light most favorable to the non-moving party (here, Dr.
Shervin). See Noviello v. City of Bos., 398 F.3d 76, 84 (1st Cir.
2005).
A.
Dr. Shervin initially did well in her residency and
received positive evaluations from her supervisors. In early 2007,
however, Dr. Herndon received a complaint from an orthopedics
fellow about Dr. Shervin's recent performance in the program. The
fellow raised specific patient care issues and expressed concerns
regarding Dr. Shervin's professionalism and technical competence.
On February 2, 2007, Dr. Herndon met with Dr. Shervin and
communicated these concerns to her. At the end of the meeting, he
placed her on academic probation, telling her that probation could
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have a serious effect on her licensure, her upcoming fellowship,1
and her ability to find a job.
A follow-up letter, dated March 7, outlined the terms of
the probation, including monthly performance evaluations;
increased monitoring; mandatory attendance at all educational
components of the program; and a ban on moonlighting. The letter
warned that if Dr. Shervin's performance continued to deteriorate,
she could be exposed to further discipline, including dismissal
from the program.
Around the same time, Dr. Herndon told Dr. Shervin's
mentor, Dr. Dennis Burke, that the reason he (Dr. Herndon) had
gone directly to probation without first issuing a warning or
undertaking counseling was due to Dr. Shervin's stoic response to
his concerns; he added that, in his 35 years of supervising
residents, he had never before disciplined a woman resident and
not seen her cry. Based largely on this comment, and on her
perception that immediate probation was not standard practice in
HCORP, Dr. Shervin concluded that Dr. Herndon's rush to judgment
had been motivated by gender bias (specifically, his
1In 2006, Dr. Shervin accepted a one-year arthroplasty
fellowship at MGH, to commence shortly after the anticipated
completion of her residency in June of 2008.
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"stereotypical attitude" toward women and her failure to "behave
in the way that Dr. Herndon expected [her] to behave").
Dr. Shervin voiced her concerns to Dr. Rubash in March
of 2007. According to Dr. Shervin, Dr. Rubash expressed surprise
at Dr. Herndon's decision to impose academic probation without
consulting HCORP's executive committee. But he then asked
rhetorically if she wanted to graduate from the program and
admonished her not to think of "ever filing" suit against him, Dr.
Herndon, or the program because doing so would not be beneficial
to her career.
In Dr. Shervin's view, this incident marked the
beginning of a steady stream of retaliatory and discriminatory
acts that clouded the remainder of her residency. These acts
included the zealous solicitation of negative comments about her
by Drs. Herndon and Rubash.
In late March of 2007, Dr. Shervin requested a review of
the probation decision by the executive committee. The committee
upheld the decision in early June. Dr. Shervin contends that the
review process was incomplete, biased, and lacking in basic
procedural safeguards. She also alleges that, shortly after this
review concluded, a member of the executive committee (Dr. Mark
Gebhardt) told Dr. Burke that Dr. Shervin "needs to get her head
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screwed on and realize that she is a woman in a man's specialty"
and "suck it up."
In late June of 2007, Dr. Herndon and the executive
committee extended Dr. Shervin's probation for three more months
based on allegations of poor performance on a rotation at another
hospital. Dr. Shervin says that these allegations were
unsubstantiated. She adds that, throughout the summer of 2007,
the defendants repeatedly tried to find fault with her performance
and solicited negative evaluations of her work. By September, she
felt "threatened[,] unsafe[, and] harassed."
About the time that Dr. Shervin's extended probation
ended in September of 2007, Dr. Herndon was replaced as her
residency program director (though he remained the director of the
overall residency program and a member of HCORP's executive
committee). She nevertheless complains that retaliation persisted
through her graduation from the program in June of 2008.2
2 The claimed retaliation between September 2007 and June 2008
appears to consist primarily of the executive committee's poor
handling of her complaint regarding a pair of obscene e-mails
circulating among HCORP residents and a "walk-out" of her
graduation-day thesis presentation by her fellow residents. As to
the latter event, Dr. Shervin claims that members of the executive
committee were aware that a walk-out was planned and did nothing
to prevent it.
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There was more. Dr. Shervin complains that, from July
of 2007 to April of 2008, officials of both Harvard and Partners
falsely assured her that her probation would not need to be
reported outside the program (such as to state licensing
authorities or prospective employers). These assurances, she
says, discouraged her from immediately pursuing her grievance
rights within the program. Moreover, the assurances were not true;
her probation resulted in both a delay in the issuance of her
license to practice medicine and the issuance of only a limited
license in her fellowship year.3
According to Dr. Shervin, retaliatory acts continued
even after her residency ended. For one thing, she says that the
formal grievance process that she undertook in 2008 and 2009 (which
resulted in an affirmation of the probation decision) was marred
by bias, falsehoods, and insufficient procedures. For another
thing, she says that the defendants deliberately blocked her from
at least three job opportunities in Massachusetts hospitals during
the 2009-2012 time frame.
3 Although the delay in the issuance of her license to
practice medicine resulted in a postponement of the start of her
fellowship, she successfully completed the fellowship in 2009.
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B.
With this factual predicate in mind, we turn to the
merits of the district court's summary judgment ruling. We review
that determination de novo. See Noviello, 398 F.3d at 84. To
avoid "the swing of the summary judgment scythe," Mulvihill v.
Top-Flite Golf Co., 335 F.3d 15, 19 (1st Cir. 2003), the non-
moving party (here, Dr. Shervin) bears the burden of pointing to
admissible evidence showing the existence of a genuine issue of
material fact, see Blackie v. Maine, 75 F.3d 716, 721 (1st Cir.
1996). The non-movant may not rely on "conclusory allegations,
improbable inferences, and unsupported speculation." Medina-Munoz
v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., 896 F.2d 5, 8 (1st Cir. 1990).
In this case, the court below considered full briefing
and heard protracted arguments on the motions for summary judgment.
It concluded that all conduct predating June 5, 2008 (or December
30, 2008 for Harvard) was time-barred as a basis for either finding
liability or awarding damages on the discrimination and
retaliation claims. See Shervin, 2 F. Supp. 3d at 72; see also 42
U.S.C. § 2000e-5(e)(1) (setting forth applicable 300-day statute
of limitations); Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 151B, § 5 (similar). The
court then entered partial summary judgment to this effect, leaving
open Dr. Shervin's other claims. The court's ruling allowed Dr.
Shervin to introduce, as context evidence, proof about how she was
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placed on probation and the time-barred acts of alleged
retaliation. See id. at 71 n.10.
C.
Before us, Dr. Shervin argues that the district court
erred in calibrating the statute of limitations for her
discrimination and retaliation claims. As a threshold matter, she
insists that her claims did not accrue until the probation hindered
her ability to obtain a medical license in the summer of 2008. We
do not agree.
Under both federal and state law, a cause of action for
discrimination or retaliation accrues when it has a crystallized
and tangible effect on the employee and the employee has notice of
both the act and its invidious etiology. See Thomas v. Eastman
Kodak Co., 183 F.3d 38, 50 (1st Cir. 1999); Wheatley v. Am. Tel.
& Tel. Co., 636 N.E.2d 265, 268 (Mass. 1994); Adamczyk v. Augat,
Inc., 755 N.E.2d 824, 829 (Mass. App. Ct. 2001). Here, Dr. Shervin
was convinced from the outset that discrimination and retaliation
were at work. Thus, her thesis boils down to a contention that
the probation decision had no tangible, concrete effect either on
her career or her employment as a medical resident until mid-2008.
This contention is untenable. As no less an authority
than the Supreme Court has stated, "[t]he proper focus" for
determining when a cause of action accrues for limitations purposes
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"is upon the time of the discriminatory acts, not upon the time at
which the consequences of the acts became most painful." Del.
State Coll. v. Ricks, 449 U.S. 250, 258 (1980) (emphasis omitted)
(quoting Abramson v. Univ. of Haw., 594 F.2d 202, 209 (9th Cir.
1979)); accord Sch. Comm. of Brockton v. MCAD, 666 N.E.2d 468, 472
n.8 (Mass. 1996).
It is nose-on-the-face plain that Dr. Shervin had notice
almost immediately after being placed on probation that this
disciplinary action was both tangible and concrete: her probation
was unconditional and instantly resulted in the imposition of a
series of burdensome conditions (such as heightened supervision,
more frequent evaluations, and a ban on any outside work).
Moreover, context is always important — and it is significant that
the probation here occurred in the course of a prestigious and
highly competitive academic medicine residency at a world-famous
group of teaching hospitals. In that milieu, probation was not —
as Dr. Shervin would now have us believe — akin to sending a high
school student to after-class detention. Rather, it was an ugly
blot on an otherwise glittering record of accomplishment — and
something to be taken quite seriously.
Indeed, both Dr. Shervin and her mentor, Dr. Burke,
recognized the gravity of the probation placement immediately.
That was why, from the very outset, Dr. Shervin fought so hard to
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reverse or expunge it. Given the record in this case, it strains
credulity to suggest that probation was something to be taken
lightly.4
Dr. Shervin's self-serving averments regarding
assurances about the innocuous long-term effects of her probation
do not alter our conclusion. During the period of roughly 300
days from the time her probation was imposed until November of
2007, virtually all of the information that Dr. Shervin received
about the reporting of probation pointed unerringly in the opposite
direction. For example, Dr. Herndon informed her from the very
beginning (both orally and in writing) that probation could have
a significant negative impact on her licensure, board
certification, and job prospects. So, too, Dr. Burke — as early
4 In support of her argument that she could not have
successfully challenged her probation before August of 2008, Dr.
Shervin relies heavily on an unpublished district court decision
in which the court concluded that probation imposed on a medical
resident did not amount to a materially adverse employment action.
See Badgaiyan v. Principi, No. 04-12031, 2007 WL 1464604 at *1 (D.
Mass. May 21, 2007). The Badgaiyan decision turns on its own facts
and idiosyncratic posture. For that reason, it cannot support the
weight that Dr. Shervin piles upon it. And in any event, the
decision is of questionable validity. After all, this court has
held that even a strongly worded warning letter placed in a
personnel file, without more, was a sufficiently crystallized form
of harm to start the running of the limitations period. See Miller
v. N.H. Dep't of Corr., 296 F.3d 18, 22 (1st Cir. 2002).
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as April of 2007 — expressed his deep concern about the long-term
effects of probation, writing to HCORP's executive committee that
"probation, if allowed to stand, is such a serious disciplinary
action that it will be required to be reported on every job or
fellowship application and on every state licensure renewal." Dr.
Shervin does not deny that she knew about this letter and its
contents. To round out the picture, the Director of the Office of
Women's Careers at MGH warned Dr. Shervin in July of 2007 that
probation "MAY need to be reported" depending on the specific
questions asked on state or hospital licensing forms.
To be sure, in November of 2007, MGH's chief medical
officer (Dr. Britain Nicholson) asked Dr. Burke to advise Dr.
Shervin that she should just "accept the probation" since it was
an internal matter that did not need to be reported externally.
He emphasized that her probation ought not to be the focus of
future references. But that opinion, standing alone, did not erase
the very real effects that probation already had wrought on the
terms and conditions of Dr. Shervin's residency. See, e.g., Miller
v. N.H. Dep't of Corr., 296 F.3d 18, 22 (1st Cir. 2002). Nor was
there a reasonable basis for believing that persons who might
subsequently be tasked with writing references would see the matter
the same way; there were simply too many contrary indications.
Under these circumstances, the evidence about what was said to Dr.
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Burke in November of 2007 was not significantly probative as to
whether the alleged discrimination was likely to cease and,
therefore, could not defeat summary judgment. See Anderson v.
Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 249 (1986).
The short of it is that Dr. Shervin's knowledge of the
probation and its immediate, tangible effects, together with her
loudly bruited belief that the probation decision was a form of
disparate discipline motivated by gender discrimination, is all
that was needed for her cause of action to accrue and the
limitations clock to begin to tick. See Miller, 296 F.3d at 22;
Wheatley, 636 N.E.2d at 268; Adamczyk, 755 N.E.2d at 829.
D.
Dr. Shervin next contends that the district court should
have applied an exception to the statute of limitations known as
the continuing violation doctrine. See 804 Mass. Code Regs.
1.10(2) (stating that "the 300 day requirement shall not be a bar
to filing in those instances where facts are alleged which indicate
that the unlawful conduct complained of is of a continuing
nature"). Under Massachusetts law, the continuing violation
doctrine serves as an exception to the statute of limitations only
if three prerequisites are satisfied. A plaintiff who seeks to
derive the benefit of the continuing violation doctrine bears the
burden of establishing all three of its elements. See Cuddyer v.
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Stop & Shop Supermkt. Co., 750 N.E.2d 928, 941-42 (Mass. 2001);
Ocean Spray Crans., Inc. v. MCAD, 808 N.E.2d 257, 266-67 (Mass.
2004).
First, the claim must be one that arises from "a series
of related events that have to be viewed in their totality in order
to assess adequately their discriminatory nature and impact."
Cuddyer, 750 N.E.2d at 936. Second, the claim must be "anchored"
by at least one incident of discrimination or retaliation
transpiring within the limitations period. Noviello, 398 F.3d at
86; see Cuddyer, 750 N.E.2d at 938. This anchoring event must be
"substantially relate[d]" to earlier instances of discrimination
or retaliation and must contribute to the continuation of the
pattern of conduct that forms the basis of the claim. Cuddyer,
750 N.E.2d at 938; see Noviello, 398 F.3d at 86. Third, the
plaintiff must show that a reasonable person in her circumstances
would have refrained from filing a complaint within the limitations
period. See Cuddyer, 750 N.E.2d at 942. On this final element,
the inquiry becomes whether the plaintiff knew or reasonably should
have known within the limitations period both that her work
environment was discriminatory and that the problems she
attributed to that discriminatory environment were unlikely to
cease. See id.; see also Ocean Spray, 808 N.E.2d at 269
(explaining that the limitations period begins when "the employee
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knew or reasonably should have been aware that the employer was
unlikely to afford him a reasonable accommodation"). As to the
likelihood vel non of improvement, the question is whether the
plaintiff's "delay in initiating the lawsuit, considered under an
objective standard, was unreasonable," and summary judgment may be
appropriate on this element "where a pattern of harassment,
considered from the viewpoint of a reasonable person in the
plaintiff's position, is so sufficiently known, pervasive, and
uncorrectable" that it would be unreasonable to delay filing suit.
Cuddyer, 750 N.E.2d at 941-42.
In this instance, we can proceed directly to the third
step of the continuing violation inquiry. Even if the time-barred
acts alleged by Dr. Shervin satisfy the first two elements — a
matter on which we take no view — her claim falters at the third
step.5
5 In reaching this conclusion, we need not address Dr.
Shervin's remonstrance that the district court misapplied
Massachusetts law in concluding that her claim was not of the sort
to which the continuing violation doctrine may apply. Our review
is de novo, and we may affirm the entry of summary judgment on any
basis made manifest by the record. See Gillen v. Fallon Ambul.
Serv., Inc., 283 F.3d 11, 28 (1st Cir. 2002).
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Dr. Shervin does not dispute — nor could she — that she
knew of the alleged incidents of retaliation and discrimination
and regarded them as pervasive. It is undisputed on the summary
judgment record that Dr. Shervin came to believe almost immediately
after the February 2007 meeting that Dr. Herndon had discriminated
against her based on gender and that she was experiencing a
continuing stream of related discriminatory and retaliatory acts.
Her own deposition testimony indicates that she expressed specific
concerns about discrimination to Dr. Rubash as early as March of
2007 and specific concerns about retaliation to the executive
committee the following month.
Of course, under the continuing violation doctrine as
formulated by the Massachusetts courts and the MCAD, a person's
"awareness and duty" to bring suit, Ocean Spray, 808 N.E.2d at
267, arises only when the person has good reason to believe that
her "problems would [not] cease," Cuddyer, 750 N.E.2d at 942.
Here, Dr. Shervin adduced no probative evidence that, during the
300 days following either the February 2007 probation decision or
Dr. Rubash's March 2007 comments, she thought it likely that her
discriminatory treatment would cease. Indeed, Dr. Shervin's
complaint characterized her experience after she challenged the
probation decision as a "witch hunt and a campaign . . . waged
hour to hour, day to day, weeks on end with no resolution in
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sight." She further declared that the "retaliation and
discrimination continued unabated" even after both she and Dr.
Burke reached out to Partners and Harvard for assistance.
These statements make pellucid Dr. Shervin's early
awareness of both her plight and its unrelenting nature. The
record evidence tells the same tale. It convincingly shows, as
early as March of 2007, that Dr. Shervin was keenly aware that
probation entailed immediate negative effects, had potentially
deleterious long-term consequences, and was not likely to be
rescinded. And matters went downhill from there: by June, the
executive committee had ratified the probation decision (using a
process that Dr. Shervin at the time found fundamentally unfair)
and Dr. Herndon — backed by the executive committee — had extended
the probationary period by three months on the basis of complaints
that Dr. Shervin believed were trumped up and inadequately
investigated.
A reasonable person in Dr. Shervin's shoes, knowing the
immediate downside of probation and its potentially detrimental
effects on her future career, could not plausibly have thought
that her discriminatory treatment was likely to abate. This is
especially true since she professed to believe that the
decisionmakers who had the power to furnish a remedy were taking
biased views of her evaluations, searching for fault, and "building
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a case against [her]." Though some modest ameliorations did occur
(such as in September of 2007 when her probation was finally lifted
and Dr. Herndon was replaced as her residency director), those
ameliorations apparently did nothing to relieve Dr. Shervin's
sense that she was under siege. Contemporaneously, Dr. Shervin
complained to HCORP's administration about e-mails sent to the
resident community from the e-mail accounts of other residents —
e-mails that she perceived to be offensive to women. She had
requested confidentiality for her report and, when another
resident accused Dr. Shervin of being the source of the complaint,
she concluded that a leak had occurred as part of the ongoing
campaign of retaliation. Even when she met with Dr. James Kasser
in September of 2007 and learned that she had been taken off
probation, she told him of her continuing feeling of being
threatened, unsafe, and harassed in the program. Those fears were
exacerbated when, according to Dr. Shervin, Dr. Kasser told her
that the executive committee would "continue to probe at residents
to find any fault with [her]" and expressed concerns about her
professional behavior (which she thought made "no sense" in the
context of her efforts while on probation). In the same time
frame, she also was pointedly informed by one of her supervising
physicians that "people were out to get [her]," so that she ought
to "watch [her] back." In Dr. Shervin's own words, "[t]he
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retaliatory atmosphere continued" even after the lifting of her
probation.
An assertion that a situation seemed likely to improve
must be grounded on more than rhetoric. Here, nothing transpired
that would have sufficed to ground an objectively reasonable belief
that what Dr. Shervin regarded as a pattern of discrimination and
retaliation would dissipate.
Nor are the assurances that Dr. Shervin allegedly
received about the long-term effects of her probation adequate to
create a genuine dispute as to the footing for a reasonable belief
that her situation was likely to be "successfully remedied." Id.
at 942. In arguing for a contrary conclusion, Dr. Shervin points
to at least two instances of supposedly equivocal or ultimately
incorrect advice that she received throughout 2007 about the impact
of probation on her medical licensure: the executive committee's
statement in June that many other residents had resolved problems
"without any negative consequences," and assurances from Dr.
Nicholson in the fall that the probation was purely internal and
not reportable to the licensing board.6 These statements, however,
6 What Dr. Shervin suggests are other indications that her
probation might be removed from her record occurred in 2008.
Consequently, they could not have supported a reasonable belief
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are not probative of whether Dr. Shervin reasonably could have
believed that her work environment would improve. Whether or not
her probation was reportable would not affect the duration or
conduct of the campaign of discrimination and retaliation which
Dr. Shervin believed was afoot from and after the moment she was
placed on probation. And in all events, Dr. Shervin does not claim
that these assurances were products of a discriminatory or
retaliatory animus as opposed to confusion, mistake, or subsequent
changes in the licensing board's regulations.
To sum up, Dr. Shervin knew, from the time her probation
was imposed in February of 2007, that probation had materially
adverse ramifications both for the rest of her residency and (at
least potentially) for her future career. She formed an almost
immediate belief, never diluted, that her probation was sparked by
gender bias; and she likewise came to believe, within a matter of
weeks, that this change in her status was merely the beginning of
a pervasive pattern of discriminatory and retaliatory acts. Nor
had she shown any reasonable basis for hoping that the situation
would improve: the executive committee rebuffed her attempt to
that Dr. Shervin's situation would improve within the 300-day
limitations period following the February 2007 probation decision.
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have the probation decision reversed in June of 2007, the term of
her probation was extended shortly thereafter, and acts that she
believed to be discriminatory and retaliatory continued to occur.
The bottom line is that the record, even when taken in
the light most hospitable to Dr. Shervin, does not support a
finding that a reasonable person in Dr. Shervin's circumstances
would have thought her situation apt to improve within the
limitations period. See generally Cuddyer, 750 N.E.2d at 941-42
(setting forth the "guiding principles to be applied by a judge
deciding a motion for summary judgment" with respect to the
continuing violation doctrine). While Dr. Shervin has pointed to
bits and pieces of an extended dialogue that might, if taken in a
vacuum, support her contrary position, we are obliged to view the
summary judgment record as a whole. See, e.g., Mesnick v. Gen.
Elec. Co., 950 F.2d 816, 827 (1st Cir. 1991). So viewed, there is
no "significantly probative" evidence, Anderson, 477 U.S. at 249-
50, to underpin a finding that Dr. Shervin can satisfy the third
element of the Massachusetts continuing violation framework. It
follows inexorably that the district court did not err in holding
that Dr. Shervin's time-barred discrimination and retaliation
- 25 -
claims could not be rescued through the continuing violation
doctrine.7
E.
In an effort to turn the tide, Dr. Shervin strives to
convince us that there are two other grounds on which a jury might
have found that her discrimination and retaliation claims avoided
the limitations bar. We are not persuaded.
Dr. Shervin begins with a suggestion that the statute of
limitations was tolled by her pursuit, starting in March of 2007,
of an internal grievance under her employment contract. We need
not linger long over this suggestion. Massachusetts recognizes an
exception to the statute of limitations when an aggrieved party
enters into grievance proceedings "pursuant to an employment
7 Although Dr. Shervin's briefing lacks crystalline clarity
on this point, she appears to limit her attack on the district
court's construction of the continuing violation doctrine to her
state-law discrimination and retaliation claims. Even so, we note
(for the sake of completeness) that where, as here, a claim
involves a pattern of conduct which includes a discrete act that
may itself be actionable, the continuing violation doctrine is
arguably more accommodating under Massachusetts law than under
federal law. See Tobin v. Liberty Mut. Ins. Co., 553 F.3d 121,
130, 131 n.8 (1st Cir. 2009) (comparing federal and Massachusetts
law with respect to continuing violation doctrine). Accordingly,
any challenge to the court's refusal to apply the continuing
violation doctrine to Dr. Shervin's federal claims would perforce
fail.
- 26 -
contract" within 300 days from the challenged conduct. 804 Mass.
Code Regs. 1.10(2). The district court ruled that this exception
did not apply because the MCAD has interpreted the regulation as
applying only to those grievance proceedings undertaken pursuant
to collective bargaining agreements. See Shervin, 2 F. Supp. 3d
at 62-64; see also Hall v. FMR Corp., 559 F. Supp. 2d 120, 125 (D.
Mass. 2008) (discussing underlying MCAD decision in which agency
formally took this position); Cuddyer, 750 N.E.2d at 938 (noting
Massachusetts courts' consistent deference to MCAD decisions and
policies). Dr. Shervin insists that this is an incorrect reading
of Massachusetts law and that she properly invoked her grievance
rights by a letter to the HCORP executive committee dated March
27, 2007.
We need not delve into the district court's rationale
because Dr. Shervin did not invoke the grievance process in March
of 2007. We divide our explanatory comments into two segments,
consistent with the fact that Dr. Shervin's employment contract
incorporated both an adverse action process and a redress of
grievance process.
The adverse action process pertains only to certain
enumerated adverse actions, not including probation, and Dr.
Shervin was told that probation was not considered an adverse
action. Perhaps more importantly, that process sets out procedural
- 27 -
rules to be followed by the hospital in taking such an action
against a trainee. It does not provide a mechanism through which
a resident or other employee can initiate complaints against her
employer. It is, therefore, impuissant as a means of accessing
the grievance exception.
The redress of grievance process is a different matter.
That process applies to "[g]rievances pertaining to the training
program, faculty, or work environment." Thus, the redress of
grievance process applies on its face to a person in Dr. Shervin's
position.
But there is a rub: under the redress of grievance
process, grievances must "first be directed to the training program
director in writing, and copied to the Service Chief and the
Director of Graduate Medical Education." The program director
then has two weeks to respond. If a response is not forthcoming
or is unsatisfactory, the trainee may then request a hearing.
Dr. Shervin's letter simply did not invoke this process
— and it was never construed as invoking it. The letter, which
was addressed to the chair of HCORP's executive committee, was
copied only to other committee members. The redress of grievance
process was not mentioned. The ad hoc nature of Dr. Shervin's
letter and her failure to initiate the redress of grievance process
- 28 -
were confirmed by her subsequent interactions with Partners' staff
and HCORP.
When Dr. Shervin's letter was received, HCORP undertook
what it described as "an informal[] review." In late April,
Partners' vice president for graduate medical education, Dr. Debra
Weinstein, reminded Dr. Shervin that she could "utilize the
Partners resident grievance process at any time." Dr. Shervin
took no action in response to this reminder; for aught that
appears, she neither sought to avail herself of the grievance
process nor sought to go beyond the informal review that had been
provided.
The executive committee informed Dr. Shervin on June 6
that it had completed its informal review. Thereafter, Dr. Shervin
took no action anent grievance proceedings until the spring of
2008, when she brought concerns about her medical licensure to
officials at Partners. Even at that stage, the record makes
manifest that both she and Partners believed that she had not
activated the redress of grievance process. It was not until late
March of 2008 that Dr. Shervin asked to meet with Partners'
officials to learn about "options . . . for addressing grievances."
She received a reply less than a week later, reminding her of the
redress of grievance process. In May of that year, Dr. Shervin
- 29 -
noted in an e-mail that she had not yet "initiate[d] a formal
grievance process."
In light of the consistent interpretation placed by both
Partners and Dr. Shervin on her March 27 letter and the actions
that ensued, we think it crystal clear that Dr. Shervin did not
invoke the redress of grievance process by means of that letter.
That is game, set, and match. Even if we assume that
the redress of grievance process, if properly invoked, would engage
the gears of the grievance exception, Dr. Shervin cannot benefit
from that exception.8
Finally, we agree with the district court that there is
no cognizable basis for equitable tolling here. In Massachusetts,
such an extraordinary remedy is applied "sparingly in employment
discrimination cases." Adamczyk, 755 N.E.2d at 830. Invoking
such a palliative is permitted when, say, "the plaintiff is
excusably ignorant about the . . . statutory filing period, or
where the defendant or the MCAD has affirmatively misled the
plaintiff." Andrews v. Arkwright Mut. Ins. Co., 673 N.E.2d 40, 41
8 To be sure, Dr. Shervin did trigger the redress of grievance
process by letter dated August 7, 2008. She has not relied on
that letter; and in all events, any tolling effect attributable to
that letter would come too late to sweep in Dr. Shervin's time-
barred allegations.
- 30 -
(Mass. 1996) (citation omitted). So, too, the doctrine can be
employed where "the potential defendant encourages or cajoles the
potential plaintiff into inaction." Cherella v. Phoenix Techs.
Ltd., 586 N.E.2d 29, 31 (Mass. App. Ct. 1992). None of these
scenarios is present in this case — and as we explain below,
nothing of comparable magnitude transpired here.
To begin, Dr. Shervin does not plead ignorance about the
filing period. Second, though Dr. Shervin maintains that she was
misled about the impact of her probation on her future licensure,
she does not suggest that she relied on any such misrepresentations
in considering whether or when to file her complaint. The mere
fact that Dr. Shervin may have relied on some misrepresentations
by the defendants for other purposes does not establish the
necessary linkage between those misrepresentations and her delay
in bringing her complaint. See English v. Pabst Brewing Co., 828
F.2d 1047, 1049 (4th Cir. 1987) ("To invoke equitable tolling, the
plaintiff must therefore show that the defendant attempted to
mislead him and that the plaintiff reasonably relied on the
misrepresentation by neglecting to file a timely charge."). Given
this record, we discern no plausible basis for a claim of equitable
tolling. See, e.g., Rivera-Díaz v. Humana Ins. of P.R., Inc., 748
F.3d 387, 390 (1st Cir. 2014).
- 31 -
F.
That ends this aspect of the matter. Because all the
broadsides that Dr. Shervin aims at the district court's entry of
partial summary judgment miss the mark, we uphold the district
court's calibration of the limitations period and, thus, its
summary judgment ruling.
III. RECUSAL
Dr. Shervin argues that a new trial is necessary because
the district judge failed to recuse herself when an appearance of
partiality arose. See 28 U.S.C. § 455(a). This argument is doubly
waived.
A.
We set the stage. Dr. George Dyer was a resident in
orthopedics at MGH during Dr. Shervin's residency (one year ahead
of her) and, in early 2007, reported to Dr. Herndon concerns about
Dr. Shervin's performance. In ruling on a motion to quash
discovery subpoenas, the district judge noticed that documents
relating to Dr. Dyer were included among the requests. The
district judge promptly disclosed that Dr. Dyer is her first
cousin. She added that she did not consider this relationship to
be a basis for recusal, but she nonetheless invited the parties to
register any concerns that they might have with the court. Dr.
Shervin did not voice any objections, nor did she urge the judge's
- 32 -
recusal at any point. She likewise remained silent when Dr. Dyer
was identified to the jury as a fact witness in the opening
statements of two of the defendants (Partners and Dr. Herndon),
which were delivered before the first witness was sworn.
Near the end of her case in chief, Dr. Shervin called
Dr. Dyer as a hostile witness. During direct examination, the
district judge sustained defense objections to several questions
aimed at developing an ostensible inconsistency in Dr. Herndon's
testimony — an inconsistency that purportedly arose because Dr.
Herndon testified that Dr. Dyer reported his concerns in a meeting
where another resident was present, while Dr. Dyer said in his
deposition that he and Dr. Herndon had met alone.
After declining to undertake redirect examination and
releasing the witness, Dr. Shervin's counsel requested a sidebar
conference. At sidebar, she stated that she was "concerned about
the way in which this witness was handled by the court" and asked
the judge to inform the jury of her relationship with the witness
and/or to read Dr. Dyer's deposition testimony into the record.
She did not, however, ask the judge to recuse herself.
When defense counsel pointed out that the judge had
previously disclosed her relationship to Dr. Dyer and no objection
had been forthcoming, Dr. Shervin's counsel responded: "I withdraw
my request," presumably referring to both of her curative requests.
- 33 -
To dispel any further doubt on this issue, the district judge
formally denied the remedies sought by Dr. Shervin's counsel,
noting for the record the "nature of the examination" of Dr. Dyer
and her "prior disclosure on the record" of her relationship to
Dr. Dyer. The judge added that she had sustained the defendants'
objections because the questions were improper in form, and the
statements sought to be introduced as prior inconsistent
statements did not appear to be inconsistent with Dr. Dyer's
deposition testimony.
B.
Against this backdrop, Dr. Shervin argues that the
judge's obligation to recuse herself blossomed when counsel
pointed out that the judge, knowing that Dr. Dyer's deposition
testimony was inconsistent with his testimony on the stand,
foreclosed "efforts to impeach Dyer with his prior deposition
testimony and did not permit explanation of counsel's concerns
until the witness was excused." This argument stumbles at the
starting gate.
In this case, the judge forthrightly disclosed her
relationship to the witness prior to trial and provided ample
opportunity for the parties to move for recusal. Dr. Shervin did
not seek the judge's disqualification but, rather, by her silence
acquiesced in the judge's continued participation. That was a
- 34 -
waiver, pure and simple. See, e.g., In re Cargill, Inc., 66 F.3d
1256, 1261 (1st Cir. 1995) ("[W]aivers based on silence are
standard fare."). Where, as here, the putative ground for recusal
involves only an asserted appearance of partiality and thus rests
solely on 28 U.S.C. § 455(a), a judge is permitted to accept a
party's waiver as long as that waiver is preceded by a full
disclosure of the alleged basis for disqualification. See 28
U.S.C. § 455(e); see also Cargill, 66 F.3d at 1261; El Fenix de
P.R. v. M/Y JOHANNY, 36 F.3d 136, 141 (1st Cir. 1994). It follows
that Dr. Shervin cannot now be heard to complain that the judge
should have recused herself despite the parties' informed
willingness to have her preside.
Nor did subsequent developments in the trial mandate the
judge's recusal. To begin, Dr. Shervin's counsel never asked the
judge to step down, even when she expressed her concerns about the
judge's handling of Dr. Dyer. And with respect to the relief that
she did request, there was a second waiver. At the sidebar
conference following Dr. Dyer's direct examination — which
occurred near the end of trial — Dr. Shervin's counsel was reminded
of her earlier acquiescence, and she then withdrew her request for
any curative action. That, too, was a waiver — an intentional
relinquishment of a known right. See, e.g., United States v.
Rodriguez, 311 F.3d 435, 437 (1st Cir. 2002) (explaining that "[a]
- 35 -
party who identifies an issue, and then explicitly withdraws it,
has waived the issue").
We need not tarry. The district judge performed
admirably in managing a highly contentious trial. There is no
claim of any actual bias on her part — and the record reveals no
footing for any such claim. As a general rule, a party is not
entitled to relief on appeal that she did not seek below. See,
e.g., Cahoon v. Shelton, 647 F.3d 18, 29 (1st Cir. 2011); Beaulieu
v. IRS, 865 F.2d 1351, 1352 (1st Cir. 1989). This case falls
comfortably within this general rule, not within the long-odds
exception to it. We find, without serious question, that the
district judge did not err by failing to recuse herself sua sponte
despite the parties' tacit agreement that she continue to preside.
IV. EVIDENTIARY RULINGS
Dr. Shervin takes issue with a host of evidentiary
rulings that she says deprived her of the ability to present
critical evidence of discrimination and retaliation. We review
rulings admitting or excluding evidence for abuse of discretion.
See Torres-Arroyo v. Rullán, 436 F.3d 1, 7 (1st Cir. 2006); Gomez
v. Rivera Rodríguez, 344 F.3d 103, 114 (1st Cir. 2003). Here, we
have examined all of Dr. Shervin's claims with care. Many relate
to rulings limiting evidence of the experiences of other
individuals who had allegedly faced gender-based discrimination or
- 36 -
retaliation at the hands of one or more of the defendants. Others
relate to the exclusion of evidence that Dr. Shervin hoped would
show differential treatment in disciplinary or hiring contexts or,
alternatively, would provide additional background information on
the culture at MGH and its department of orthopedics.
It would serve no useful purpose to plow through all of
these claimed bevues one by one. Here, it suffices for the most
part to say that after perscrutation of the record and the parties'
arguments, we are satisfied that the district court did not abuse
its discretion in excluding this evidence, particularly since much
of it was either cumulative, attenuated from the issues underlying
the litigated claims, peripheral, overly conducive to creating
juror confusion, or unfairly prejudicial to one or more of the
defendants.
This omnibus ruling reflects our awareness that trial
courts enjoy a superior "coign of vantage" in undertaking the
"delicate balancing" required to make these kinds of evidentiary
determinations. Fitzgerald v. Expressway Sewerage Constr., Inc.,
177 F.3d 71, 75 (1st Cir. 1999). Given the district court's
evident solicitude for policing the bounds of relevancy and keeping
the jury focused on the issues in the case, we are unwilling to
disturb the district court's first-hand assessment of much of the
proffered evidence.
- 37 -
There are, however, three evidentiary rulings that —
though supportable — deserve more exegetic treatment. Each of
these three rulings excluded an out-of-court statement offered by
Dr. Shervin as evidence of retaliatory animus. She asserts that
these statements qualify as non-hearsay under various exceptions
to the hearsay rule, and that the court's exclusionary rulings
were so uniquely important and so egregiously wrong that they
eroded the foundation of her case.
Before turning to these three challenges, we summarize
a few first principles. Out-of-court statements, not made under
oath, are generally regarded as hearsay evidence and, thus, are
presumptively inadmissible to prove the truth of the matter
asserted. See Fed. R. Evid. 801(c), 802. There are several
circumstances, however, in which such statements can shed their
hearsay character and become eligible for admission into evidence
to prove the truth of the matter asserted. See id. 801(d). Yet
even then, out-of-court statements — like other pieces of evidence
— must pass through further screens: they may be excluded on, say,
relevancy grounds, see id. 401, or on grounds of undue prejudice,
waste of time, potential for jury confusion, and the like, see id.
403. It is against this backdrop that we approach the task at
hand.
- 38 -
A.
Dr. Shervin sought to elicit through the testimony of
Partners' former board chair that MGH's CEO, Dr. Peter Slavin, had
once told him that "there's not a court in the land that could
force me to hire Dr. Shervin back." Dr. Shervin sought to admit
this hearsay statement to show bias against her in the upper
echelons of MGH and to explain Partners' interference with a
potential job at Cooley Dickinson Hospital (Cooley).
The relevant facts are as follows. Cooley — a hospital
not then affiliated with Partners — offered Dr. Shervin a position
in the spring of 2012. The offer was withdrawn, however, before
she could accept it. In the same time frame, Cooley was in merger
talks with MGH. Building on this foundation, Dr. Shervin contends
that Dr. Slavin's comment could have supported an inference that
he (or others following his orders) used the relationship with
Cooley officials to stifle her job offer. This led to Dr.
Shervin's attempt to introduce evidence of Dr. Slavin's hearsay
statement, but when defense counsel objected to the questioning of
the board chair about this statement, the district court sustained
the objection.
Although the challenged statement, if viewed in
isolation, may seem to boost Dr. Shervin's theory of the case, the
evidence as it unfolded at trial tells a more nuanced tale. Dr.
- 39 -
Shervin did not establish through either evidence or proffer when
the statement was alleged to have been made by Dr. Slavin, nor did
she connect this statement in any way to Cooley's withdrawal of
the job offer. What is more, Dr. Shervin did not adduce a shred
of evidence showing that Dr. Slavin was himself a decisionmaker
with regard to the Cooley job offer or that he in any way influenced
or attempted to influence Cooley's decision not to hire Dr.
Shervin. Indeed, there is no evidence that Dr. Slavin ever spoke
to or otherwise communicated with anyone at Cooley.
In excluding the challenged statement, the district
court relied on Federal Rule of Evidence 403. That rule requires
a court to balance the probative value of particular evidence
against the unfairly prejudicial effect of that evidence. See
United States v. Mehanna, 735 F.3d 32, 59 (1st Cir. 2013), cert.
denied, 135 S. Ct. 49 (2014). Without more meat on the bones, this
lone remark was hardly probative of any actual influence by the
defendants on the withdrawal of the job offer from Cooley. See,
e.g., Lewis v. City of Chi. Police Dep't, 590 F.3d 427, 441-43
(7th Cir. 2009) (noting, in employment discrimination case, that
comments of non-decisionmakers had little probative value as to
the intent or mindset of the decisionmakers).
To be sure, we explained in Travers v. Flight Services
& Systems, Inc., 737 F.3d 144 (1st Cir. 2013), that even without
- 40 -
direct evidence of causation a jury may reasonably infer that the
wishes of a "king" often will be carried out by his "courtiers"
when other evidence shows that retaliatory animus resides at the
"apex of the organizational hierarchy." Id. at 147. But Travers
is distinguishable in many respects. First, the excluded statement
here was much more like the (nonprobative) "stray," "stale," or
"ambiguous" comments contrasted by the Travers court with the
(probative) "strongly held," "repeatedly voiced," and precise
directives of the CEO. Id. It is only the latter that Travers
said may permit an inference that animus was communicated
throughout the organization. Second, Dr. Slavin's comment was not
made to an underling who might have been inclined to curry favor
by carrying out his directives. See id. Last — but far from least
— Dr. Slavin did not occupy the apex of Cooley's organizational
hierarchy (indeed, he was not part of that hierarchy). And
although one can speculate that the pendency of merger negotiations
may have accorded Dr. Slavin's views some weight if made known to
the prospective merger partner, there is nothing in the record
that suggests he ever communicated those views to Cooley's
decisionmakers (or, for that matter, to anyone associated with
Cooley).
When, as in this instance, highly charged evidence is of
doubtful probative value, it may be excluded. See, e.g., Williams
- 41 -
v. Drake, 146 F.3d 44, 48-49 (1st Cir. 1998). The case for
exclusion is stronger, of course, "where, as here, the evidence
has a high potential for unfair prejudice." Downey v. Bob's Disc.
Furniture Holdings, Inc., 633 F.3d 1, 9 (1st Cir. 2011). These
tenets are controlling. Given that the challenged statement was
both incendiary in nature and offered without any supporting
evidence that would have tethered it to the situation that played
out at Cooley, we cannot say that the court below abused its
discretion in striking the Rule 403 balance in favor of exclusion.
After all, "[o]nly rarely — and in extraordinarily compelling
circumstances — will we, from the vista of a cold appellate record,
reverse a district court's on-the-spot judgment concerning the
relative weighing of probative value and unfair effect." Freeman
v. Package Mach. Co., 865 F.2d 1331, 1340 (1st Cir. 1988).
B.
Dr. Shervin attempted to introduce evidence, through the
testimony of the former CEO of Milton Hospital (Milton), that Dr.
Gebhardt, the chief of the orthopedics department at BIDMC, blocked
Dr. Shervin's hiring at Milton (a BIDMC affiliate) in the summer
of 2012. This evidence comprised out-of-court statements that Dr.
Gebhardt would "find it difficult" to work with "a person who was
suing him" and that if Dr. Shervin was permitted to work at the
new orthopedics center at Milton, he would withdraw BIDMC's
- 42 -
involvement there. Dr. Shervin sought to admit Dr. Gebhardt's
statements in support of her retaliation claims against Harvard
and Partners, insisting that the statements were non-hearsay under
Federal Rule of Evidence 801(d)(2)(D), which covers admissions of
a party-opponent.
Prior to trial, Partners and other defendants (but not
Harvard) moved in limine to exclude Dr. Gebhardt's statements,
arguing that they were made while Dr. Gebhardt was acting under
the authority of a non-party, namely, Harvard Medical Faculty
Physicians, a non-profit corporation consisting of physicians
employed at BIDMC. Dr. Shervin opposed this motion, postulating
that Dr. Gebhardt's statements were made in his capacity as a
member of HCORP's executive committee and that Partners was
ultimately responsible for HCORP. The district court granted the
motion in limine, concluding that the challenged statements
concerned an "independent decision" by Dr. Gebhardt, which broke
the causal chain needed to establish a connection to Partners.
See Mole v. Univ. of Mass., 814 N.E.2d 329, 343 (Mass. 2004). Dr.
Shervin provides no justification for second-guessing this
determination.
During the trial, the district court carefully sifted
through evidence involving statements of Dr. Gebhardt that Dr.
Shervin was attempting to attribute to Partners. The court
- 43 -
admitted some statements that were made within the scope of Dr.
Gebhardt's executive committee position (such as his statement to
Dr. Burke that Dr. Shervin needed to get her head "screwed on"
because she was "a woman in a man's specialty"). However, the
court excluded other statements. We discern no abuse of
discretion: given the evidence that Dr. Gebhardt's statements
regarding Dr. Shervin's potential employment at Milton were not
within the scope of his role on HCORP's executive committee, the
court had sufficient reason to exclude those statements.
Alternatively, Dr. Shervin theorizes that the excluded
statements were imputable to Harvard by virtue of Dr. Gebhardt's
faculty appointment and his seat on HCORP's executive committee.
The district court rejected this proffer, concluding that these
hearsay statements were not admissible against Harvard and that
any probative value was substantially outweighed by the risk of
unfair prejudice.
Once again, we find no abuse of discretion. Rule
801(d)(2)(D) exempts from the definition of hearsay statements
"offered against an opposing party and . . . made by the party's
agent or employee on a matter within the scope of that relationship
and while it existed." Here, though, Dr. Shervin utterly failed
to lay a foundation for showing that the challenged statements,
any of the staffing decisions at Milton, or any purported threat
- 44 -
to withdraw BIDMC's medical faculty support fell within the scope
of Dr. Gebhardt's Harvard faculty appointment. Thus, the excluded
statements did not qualify as a party opponent's statements within
the purview of Rule 801(d)(2)(D). See, e.g., Vazquez v. Lopez-
Rosario, 134 F.3d 28, 34-35 (1st Cir. 1998).
Dr. Shervin has a fallback position with respect to the
admissibility of these statements. She suggests that the
statements should have been admitted as to Harvard for the limited
purpose of impeaching Dr. Gebhardt's denial that he ever said he
would not support the new center if Dr. Shervin were brought on
board. See Fed. R. Evid. 613(b). But as the district court noted,
the probative value of this impeachment evidence was greatly
overshadowed by the fact that Dr. Shervin failed to introduce any
competent evidence to prove retaliation by Harvard with respect to
the position at Milton. Indeed, Dr. Shervin failed to dredge up
even a scintilla of evidence showing Harvard's involvement in the
selection process for this position.9 Because there was too great
9 The strongest evidence that Dr. Shervin has on this point
is a posting for the position that recites that the successful
applicant will receive a clinical appointment to the Harvard
medical faculty and notes that Harvard is an equal opportunity
employer. This evidence standing alone does not take Dr. Shervin
very far.
- 45 -
a risk under the circumstances that the jury would consider the
challenged evidence as substantive evidence against Harvard, the
district court acted well within the encincture of its discretion
in sustaining Harvard's objection to this evidence. See United
States v. Hudson, 970 F.2d 948, 956 n.2 (1st Cir. 1992) (upholding
exclusion of evidence under Rule 403 even though evidence
admissible under Rule 613(b)); see also Faigin v. Kelly, 184 F.3d
67, 80 (1st Cir. 1999) ("We are extremely reluctant to second-
guess the district court's battlefield determination that the
scenario at hand presented a worrisome potential for [unfair
prejudice].")
C.
The next bone of contention involves an out-of-court
statement made to Dr. Burke by Dr. Joseph McCarthy, a vice-chair
in the MGH orthopedics department and the director of the center
for joint reconstruction at Newton-Wellesley Hospital (NWH), a
Partners affiliate. This statement was contained in an April 2009
e-mail exchange between the two doctors about the possibility of
finding Dr. Shervin a position at NWH upon the completion of her
fellowship. In relevant part, Dr. Burke wrote "I am glad that you
are on board with [Dr. Shervin's] NWH/MGH staff position," and Dr.
McCarthy responded, "I'm glad we're on the same page with this.
I'll do my part out here." Dr. Shervin proffered this evidence,
- 46 -
too, as non-hearsay under Rule 801(d)(2)(D). Its purpose, she
asserts, was to refute claims that she had not been hired at NWH
either because she had not formally applied for such a position or
because no positions were available.
The district court excluded the statement, and Dr.
Shervin assails the court's exclusionary ruling. Some further
facts are needed to put her assignment of error in perspective.
Prior to trial, Harvard moved in limine to bar the
introduction of this evidence, arguing that Dr. McCarthy's
statement was hearsay and that it was not admissible as a vicarious
admission since Dr. McCarthy held only a clinical associate
position at Harvard and, thus, Dr. Shervin could not show that any
statements Dr. McCarthy made regarding hiring at MGH or NWH were
within the scope of his Harvard faculty appointment. The district
court granted Harvard's motion. When Dr. Shervin brought the issue
up again at trial, the district court sustained the defendants'
objections.
With respect to Harvard, there was no hint of abuse of
discretion in excluding Dr. McCarthy's statement as inadmissible
hearsay. The record is bereft of any evidence that the statements
fell within the scope of Dr. McCarthy's Harvard faculty
appointment. See, e.g., Lopez-Rosario, 134 F.3d at 34-35.
- 47 -
Switching gears, Dr. Shervin suggests that Dr.
McCarthy's statement was admissible against Partners. But even if
this were so — a matter on which we take no view — the statement
demonstrated at most that an individual in a leadership role in
orthopedics at MGH and NWH was "on the same page" as Dr. Burke
about a "staff position" for Dr. Shervin.10 What that means is
amorphous. What is clear, however, is that the statement does not
show that Dr. Shervin had a firm offer at NWH. Nor does it directly
contradict Dr. Rubash's testimony that there were no open positions
at NWH at that time.
Seen in this light, the exclusion of Dr. McCarthy's
statement plainly did not have "a substantial or injurious effect
on the jury's verdict." Gomez, 344 F.3d at 118. Any error in
this regard was, therefore, harmless.
At the expense of carting coal to Newcastle, we add that
the harmlessness of any error was ensured by the district court's
10While this evidence also may have tended to bolster Dr.
Shervin's contention that informal applications were routinely
accepted at MGH even when no positions were posted, that point was
made by other evidence introduced by Dr. Shervin. The exclusion
of cumulative evidence is ordinarily harmless. See U.S. ex rel.
Ondis v. City of Woonsocket, 587 F.3d 49, 60 (1st Cir. 2009). So
it is here.
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prophylactic actions. When the court refused to allow Dr. Burke
to testify about Dr. McCarthy's statement on the twentieth day of
trial, it gave Dr. Shervin explicit permission to call Dr. McCarthy
as a witness even though final witness lists (which did not name
Dr. McCarthy) had long since been submitted. Yet Dr. Shervin
elected not to call Dr. McCarthy before she rested on the twenty-
third trial day. This was a strategic litigation choice — and a
party normally is bound by such choices. Cf. Paul Revere Var.
Annuity Ins. Co. v. Zang, 248 F.3d 1, 6 (1st Cir. 2001) (stating,
in different context, that "[w]here a party makes a considered
choice, though it may involve some calculated risk, he 'cannot be
relieved of such a choice'" even if in hindsight the decision might
have been improvident (quoting Ackermann v. United States, 340
U.S. 193, 198 (1950))).
D.
The short of it is that the challenged evidentiary
rulings, whether taken singly or in the aggregate, furnish no
founded basis for setting aside the jury verdict.
V. JURY INSTRUCTIONS
Dr. Shervin serves up a smorgasbord of claimed
instructional errors — five related to instructions actually given
and one related to a forgone instruction. All six of these claims
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are adequately preserved. We preface our discussion of them with
a précis of the applicable standards of review.
A.
The standard governing an appellate court's review of a
preserved claim of instructional error varies depending on the
nature of the asserted error. We review de novo questions about
whether a given instruction is, in substance, legally correct.
See DeCaro v. Hasbro, Inc., 580 F.3d 55, 61 (1st Cir. 2009). We
review for abuse of discretion the particular wording chosen to
convey a concept to the jury. See Testa v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.,
144 F.3d 173, 175 (1st Cir. 1998). That inquiry focuses on whether
the instruction "adequately illuminate[d] the law applicable to
the controverted issues in the case without unduly complicating
matters or misleading the jury." Id.; see Davis v. Rennie, 264
F.3d 86, 108 (1st Cir. 2001).
When a party assigns error not to the substance of a
jury instruction but to the court's decision to give a requested
instruction at all, our review is de novo. See Butynski v.
Springfield Term. Ry. Co., 592 F.3d 272, 276 (1st Cir. 2010). The
ultimate inquiry is "whether the evidence, viewed in the light
most favorable to the proponent of the instruction, justifies jury
consideration of the underlying issue." Id. When, however, a
party assigns error to the failure to give a requested instruction,
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the threshold inquiry is whether the requested instruction was
correct as a matter of law. See Elliott v. S.D. Warren Co., 134
F.3d 1, 6 (1st Cir. 1998). If the answer to that threshold inquiry
is in the negative, appellate review is at an end. See United
States v. DeStefano, 59 F.3d 1, 2 (1st Cir. 1995). But if the
answer is in the affirmative, we will normally find reversible
error if the omitted instruction is integral to an important part
of the case and its content is not otherwise substantially covered
by the instructions as given. See Elliott, 134 F.3d at 6;
DeStefano, 59 F.3d at 2.
In mounting all of these inquiries, we examine the
court's instructions as a whole, rather than reviewing fragments
in isolation. See Testa, 144 F.3d at 175.
B.
Dr. Shervin complains bitterly that the district court's
statute of limitations instruction confused and misled the jury by
overstating the effect of the limitations bar on her timely claims.
This plaint is easily dispatched.
Mid-trial jury instructions can be a useful tool in a
trial court's effort to acquaint the jury with the governing law.
See, e.g., United States v. Mare, 668 F.3d 35, 40 (1st Cir. 2012).
Of particular pertinence here, the district court instructed the
jury on the third day of trial that:
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In this case, certain conduct is time barred
as a matter of law from being the basis of any
liability . . . . the plaintiff, Dr. Shervin,
is still allowed to introduce evidence of
certain conduct that occurred prior to those
dates. She may do so as background evidence
to support her timely discrimination and
retaliation claims.
In its end-of-case charge, the court reiterated this
instruction and expanded on it, stating:
While the [d]efendants cannot be liable to Dr.
Shervin for any such alleged conduct before
the respective dates I have just mentioned as
to the discrimination and retaliation claims,
you may, if you choose, consider such alleged
conduct for the limited purpose of background
evidence (i.e. as it may, for example, bear
upon motive, intent or context) as to her
timely discrimination and retaliation claims
. . . .
These instructions were free from error. In light of
the district court's accurate calibration of the statute of
limitations at summary judgment, see supra Part II, these
instructions were proper as a matter of both federal and state
law. See Nat'l R.R. Pass. Corp. v. Morgan, 536 U.S. 101, 113
(2002); Cuddyer, 750 N.E.2d at 935 n.10, 943. Moreover, there was
no abuse of discretion in the district court's word choices: trial
courts must be accorded substantial latitude about how to distill
complicated legal concepts into language that jurors will
understand.
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Contrary to Dr. Shervin's importunings, the court's
instructions made it sufficiently clear that the jury could take
the time-barred evidence into account for such purposes as
evaluating motive, intent, or context.
The instructions also precluded the jury from taking
that evidence into account for the improper purpose of assessing
liability or damages. That was an accurate reflection of the law.
See, e.g., Tobin v. Liberty Mut. Ins. Co., 553 F.3d 121, 142 (1st
Cir. 2009); Cuddyer, 750 N.E.2d at 943. The fact that the
limitations instructions did not go as far as Dr. Shervin would
have liked is of no consequence: a district court is not obliged
to parrot the precise turn of phrase requested by a litigant. See,
e.g., Zimmerman v. Direct Fed. Credit Union, 262 F.3d 70, 79 (1st
Cir. 2001). The court here adroitly threaded the needle, selecting
language that did not run the risk of misleading the jury into
overlooking the limitations period while still leaving open the
consideration of time-barred evidence as context for Dr. Shervin's
timely claims. No more was exigible.11 See Morgan, 536 U.S. at
11 Relatedly, Dr. Shervin suggests that the court's
instructions on the statute of limitations and the aiding and
abetting and interference theories of liability under
Massachusetts law, together with the verdict form, somehow removed
from the jury's consideration the 2009 grievance process as a
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113; Cuddyer, 750 N.E.2d at 935 n.10, 943; see also Elliott, 134
F.3d at 7.
C.
Dr. Shervin calumnizes the district court's instruction
on "material adverse action" in the discrimination context. She
maintains that this instruction was both incorrect and apt to
mislead the jury into disregarding the time-barred background
evidence entirely. She specifically targets the portion of the
instruction stating that "an 'adverse employment action' is one
that, standing alone, actually causes damage, tangible or
intangible, to an employee," positing that the phrase "standing
alone" foreclosed the jury from considering the totality of the
circumstances (including time-barred evidence) in evaluating
whether an adverse action took place.
After careful scrutiny of the challenged instruction and
the charge as a whole, we decline Dr. Shervin's invitation to hold
potential basis for liability. We see no basis in the record for
this suggestion. The district court properly instructed the jury
on both aiding and abetting and interference under Massachusetts
law. See Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 151B, § 4(4A), (5); Lopez v.
Commonwealth, 978 N.E.2d 67, 78-79, 82 (Mass. 2012); Melnychenko
v. 84 Lumber Co., 676 N.E.2d 45, 51 & n.8 (Mass. 1997). These
instructions in no way conflicted with the limitations
instructions.
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that the instruction was incorrect as a matter of law. The
district court did not use the phrase "standing alone" in
connection with the limitations instruction but, rather, in
explaining what may or may not amount to an adverse employment
action. After explaining that an adverse action is one that
"standing alone, actually causes damage," the court went on to
distinguish between acts that might rise to the level of an adverse
action (such as a decision to discharge or materially disadvantage
an employee) and those acts that merely cause "subjective feelings
of disappointment or disillusionment." This is a correct statement
of the applicable law. See, e.g., Blackie, 75 F.3d at 725 ("Work
places are rarely idyllic retreats, and the mere fact that an
employee is displeased by an employer's act or omission does not
elevate that act or omission to the level of a materially adverse
employment action."). And since Dr. Shervin's discrimination
claims were not tried on a hostile work environment theory, there
was no error in instructing the jury that an adverse action is one
that "standing alone" causes harm. See, e.g., Johnson v. Univ. of
P.R., 714 F.3d 48, 53 (1st Cir. 2013) (discussing distinction
between hostile work environment and discrete act claims).
We add that this instruction in no way diluted the force
of the statute of limitations instruction. The discrimination
instruction followed the court's limitations instruction, which
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had informed the jury that it was allowed to consider time-barred
evidence for such purposes as motive, intent, and context. In
later describing the prima facie elements of a discrimination claim
and what constitutes proof of pretext, the court placed no temporal
restrictions on the evidence that could or could not inform this
evaluation. In sum, the discrimination instruction was legally
correct, and the court's use of the phrase "standing alone" in
defining a materially adverse employment action was not an abuse
of discretion.
D.
Dr. Shervin asserts that the district court's definition
of "adverse action" in its instruction on retaliation was
misleading because it failed to convey to the jury that the
standard for adverse action in the retaliation context is broader
than in the discrimination context. But that assertion is belied
by the text of the district court's instructions. The court
defined "adverse action" more broadly in the retaliation
instruction than in the discrimination instruction.
The discrimination instruction stated, inter alia, "[a]n
employer takes an adverse action against an employee if it takes
something of consequence away from the employee or fails to give
the employee something that is a customary benefit of the
employment relationship." The court went on to explain that "[a]n
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adverse action may include a decision to terminate or discharge an
employee or materially disadvantage her in respect to her salary,
grade or other terms, conditions or privileges of employment." By
contrast, the retaliation instruction explained that an adverse
action in the retaliation context must be "materially adverse such
that it could deter a reasonable person from complaining about
discrimination." The court then stated, "[i]n the context of a
retaliation claim, the [p]laintiff must show that she was subject
to an employment action that materially disadvantaged her" and
added that "an employer can retaliate against an employee by taking
actions not directly related to her employment or by causing her
harm outside the workplace."
These contrasting instructions were not only legally
sound but also adequately articulated. See, e.g., Burlington N.
& Santa Fe Ry. Co. v. White, 548 U.S. 53, 64 (2006) (holding under
Title VII that "the antiretaliation provision, unlike the
substantive provision, is not limited to discriminatory actions
that affect the terms and conditions of employment"); Psy-Ed Corp.
v. Klein, 947 N.E.2d 520, 530 n.25 (Mass. 2011) (similar, under
Massachusetts law). The court made pellucid that "adverse action"
in the retaliation context is more expansive than in the
discrimination context, stating that a retaliatory adverse action
includes conduct that "could deter a reasonable person from
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complaining about discrimination" and could encompass conduct
entirely unrelated to the workplace. While the court elected not
to provide certain specific examples of retaliation that Dr.
Shervin had requested, this refusal was well within the ambit of
its discretion. See, e.g., DeCaro, 580 F.3d at 62 ("[A] trial
court is not obliged either to embellish legally correct statements
or to cover every factual permutation."); see also Elliott, 134
F.3d at 6; DeStefano, 59 F.3d at 2. What counts is that the court
crafted instructions that adequately conveyed these distinct
concepts to the jury.
E.
Dr. Shervin reproves the district court's "vacant
position" instruction, which stated: "[t]o establish a failure to
hire as an 'adverse employment action' for the purposes of a
retaliation claim, [Dr. Shervin] must show by a preponderance of
the evidence that: 1) she applied for a discrete, identifiable
position; 2) the position was vacant; and 3) she was qualified for
the position." She submits that this instruction was both
incorrect as a matter of law and unwarranted on the facts. In
support, she cites our decision in Velez v. Janssen Ortho, LLC,
467 F.3d 802 (1st Cir. 2006), in which we mapped out a three-part
showing for claims of retaliatory failure to hire. See id. at
807; see also Pina v. Children's Place, 740 F.3d 785, 800-01 (1st
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Cir. 2014) (applying same standard to ch. 151B retaliation claim).
Dr. Shervin's point is that, in her view, her case is more akin to
the exception to this standard that Velez acknowledged in dictum.
See Velez, 467 F.3d at 808 n.6 (suggesting that "if, as a matter
of standard procedure, a company never advertises specific
[vacant] positions" it may be inappropriate to require plaintiff
to show that she applied for a specific, posted position).
Viewing the evidence in this case in the light most
favorable to the defendants as the proponents of the instruction,
see Butynski, 592 F.3d at 276, it cannot be said that this case
presented an exception to the Velez prescription. The defendants
adduced ample evidence that vacant positions at MGH and NWH were
formally advertised in medical journals. Because there was no
evidence that MGH and NWH had a standard procedure of never
formally posting employment vacancies, a Velez instruction was
permissible. See Butynski, 592 F.3d at 276; see also Brown v.
Coach Stores, Inc., 163 F.3d 706, 710 (2d Cir. 1998) (requiring
plaintiff to show that she applied for particular, open positions
even though employer posted such positions "infrequently").
F.
Dr. Shervin complains about the district court's refusal
to instruct the jury in accordance with Travers (discussed in Part
IV(A.) supra). In an effort to avail herself of the Travers
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court's suggestion that a claim of retaliation might survive
summary judgment even without "direct evidence linking the person
expressing animus to the allegedly retaliatory act" so long as the
animus flowed from the "apex of the organizational hierarchy" such
that the person displaying the animus was "a source with the formal
authority to enforce compliance," Travers, 737 F.3d at 147, she
requested the following instruction:
[Y]ou may assess whether any retaliatory or
biased animus harbored and voiced by those at
the top of the organization could have made
its way through the organization and informed
the decisions at issue here. You may consider
whether the decision made reflects a
reluctance to frustrate the objectives of
those high up in the organization. . . . even
if there is no direct or admitted evidence, no
testimony or communication or no chronicling
of communications between those at the apex of
the organization and those who made the
decisions at issue.
The district court denied this request, citing the "state of the
evidence."
In considering whether the failure to give a requested
instruction is error, we must first determine whether the omitted
instruction was correct as a matter of law. See DeStefano, 59
F.3d at 2. Here, however, there is no evidence from which the
jury reasonably could have concluded that the Travers criteria
were met: the record is simply devoid of admitted evidence
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sufficient to ground a finding of animus in the higher reaches of
the Partners organization.
In all events, the jury was thoroughly instructed that
it could consider circumstantial evidence, that it could draw
reasonable inferences in light of common sense and personal
experience, and that discriminatory or retaliatory animus could be
established if a decisionmaker was shown either to have been
influenced by, or to have ratified, another's animus. Taken in
the ensemble, these various instructions covered the waterfront
and addressed in substance the heart of Dr. Shervin's requested
instruction. See, e.g., Zimmerman, 262 F.3d at 79-80 (concluding
that omitted instruction was substantially covered where charge as
a whole "sufficiently addressed the core concern" of proposed
instruction); United States v. McGill, 953 F.2d 10, 13 (1st Cir.
1992) (similar). Consequently, the omission of the requested
instruction did not constitute an abuse of discretion.
G.
Last, Dr. Shervin assigns error to a statute of frauds
instruction given in relation to her state-law claims of tortious
interference with advantageous business relations against
Partners, Dr. Rubash, and Dr. Herndon. The defendants sought such
an instruction with respect to Dr. Shervin's charge that Dr. Rubash
had promised her a position at MGH in 2005 but withdrew that
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commitment in 2009 (allegedly as a result of Dr. Shervin's pursuit
of an internal grievance and this lawsuit).
Under Massachusetts common law regarding claims of
tortious interference with advantageous business relations, one
way in which a plaintiff can establish the existence of an
advantageous relation is to prove the existence of an enforceable
contract. See Blackstone v. Cashman, 860 N.E.2d 7, 12 (Mass.
2007); Powers v. Leno, 509 N.E.2d 46, 49 (Mass. App. Ct. 1987).
But the Massachusetts statute of frauds bars the enforcement of an
oral contract that cannot be performed within one year from the
date of its making. See Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 259, § 1. This
stricture extends to employment agreements. See Irving v.
Goodimate Co., 70 N.E.2d 414, 416 (Mass. 1946). As Dr. Shervin
claimed that Dr. Rubash had offered her a position at MGH in 2005
to commence after the conclusion of her residency in 2008 (and
which, therefore, was not to be performed within one year from the
date of its making), this purported oral contract would have been
unenforceable as a matter of law and could not serve as a basis
for a claim of tortious interference with an advantageous
relationship in the nature of a contract.
Dr. Shervin objected to the requested instruction on the
ground that no defendant had pleaded the statute of frauds as an
affirmative defense. The district court, citing Conjugal
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Partnership Comprised by Jones & Jones v. Conjugal Partnership
Comprised of Pineda & Pineda (Jones), 22 F.3d 391, 400 (1st Cir.
1994), overruled this objection; exercised its equitable power to
bypass the raise-or-waive rule, see FDIC v. Ramirez-Rivera, 869
F.2d 624, 626 (1st Cir. 1989); and instructed the jury on the
effect of the statute of frauds.
As a general matter, unpleaded affirmative defenses are
deemed waived. See id. But even though the defendants never
pleaded the statute of frauds as an affirmative defense, the
district court did not abuse its discretion in giving the
challenged instruction. We explain briefly.
A district court may relax the raise-or-waive rule when
equity so dictates and there is no unfair prejudice to any opposing
party. See Jones, 22 F.3d at 400. In this case, Dr. Shervin did
not assert any breach of contract claims and, thus, the defendants'
duty to plead an affirmative defense based on the statute of frauds
was arguable at best. See Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 259, § 1 (applying
statute of frauds to actions in the nature of contract). In such
a situation, principles of fundamental fairness counsel in favor
of giving the trial court broad discretion as to whether to allow
the defense. See, e.g., Pane v. RCA Corp., 868 F.2d 631, 637 (3d
Cir. 1989) (concluding that when unpleaded issue was not an
affirmative defense but a standard of liability under applicable
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statute, duty to plead not triggered and relaxation of raise-or-
waive rule warranted).
By the same token, there was no unfair surprise: Dr.
Shervin had ample notice prior to trial that the defendants
envisioned the statute of frauds as an issue in the case. For one
thing, Dr. Rubash's summary judgment motion referenced the
applicability of the statute of frauds in the context of the
tortious interference claims. For another thing, the defendants'
proposed jury instructions, filed prior to the start of trial,
included the very type of instruction at issue here. Hence, the
district court did not abuse its discretion in sanctioning the
statute of frauds defense. See, e.g., Agri-mark, Inc. v. Niro,
Inc., 214 F. Supp. 2d 33, 43 (D. Mass. 2002).
Dr. Shervin's further argument is equally unavailing.
Taking the evidence in the light most favorable to the proponents
of the instruction (here, the defendants), see Butynski, 592 F.3d
at 276, we see no substantive error in the challenged instruction.
To the extent that Dr. Shervin sought to prove that she
and Dr. Rubash had entered into an agreement in 2005 that she would
work at MGH after the completion of her residency in 2008, the
court was entitled to tell the jury that such an employment
contract would be unenforceable if not in writing. See, e.g.,
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Powers v. Bos. Cooper Corp., 926 F.2d 109, 110 (1st Cir. 1991)
(applying Massachusetts law); Goodimate, 70 N.E.2d at 416.
We add, moreover, that insofar as Dr. Shervin sought to
prove not a contractual relationship but a different species of
advantageous business relationship, see, e.g., Leno, 509 N.E.2d at
49, any risk that the statute of frauds instruction would mislead
the jury was minimal. The court obviated such a risk by its
further instruction that "[a] plaintiff need not show an
advantageous business relationship was a contractual
relationship," but, rather, an advantageous business relationship
may include a "probable prospective business relationship with a
third party" from which she had "a reasonable expectation of future
economic benefit."
In this instance, all roads lead to Rome. Taking into
account the state of the evidence, the charge as a whole, and the
applicable standards of review, we conclude that the court below
did not abuse its discretion in giving the challenged instruction.
VI. CONCLUSION
As this case illustrates, there is a certain rough-and-
tumble quality to the high-stakes world of academic medicine.
Here, however, the jury heard a welter of conflicting evidence
presented by able lawyers and determined, after a fundamentally
fair trial, that the defendants' conduct — though perhaps
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insensitive in some respects — did not cross the border into the
forbidden realms of discrimination and retaliation. In the absence
of prejudicial error (and we have found none here), we have no
license to substitute our judgment for that of the jurors.12
We need go no further. For the reasons elucidated above,
we affirm the judgment entered in the district court.
Affirmed.
12For the sake of completeness, we note that Dr. Shervin also
has raised a claim of cumulative error. Because we have found no
reversible error, this claim necessarily fizzles. See Williams,
146 F.3d at 49 ("Absent any particularized error, there can be no
cumulative error.").
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