Medina-Rivera v. MVM, Inc. , 713 F.3d 132 ( 2013 )

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 11-2419
ESTRELLA MEDINA-RIVERA; OMAR CAJIGAS-QUIÑONES;
CONJUGAL PARTNERSHIP CAJIGAS-MEDINA
Plaintiffs, Appellants,
v.
MVM, INC.,
Defendant, Appellee.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO
[Hon. Daniel R. Domínguez, U.S. District Judge]
[Hon. Marcos E. López, U.S. Magistrate Judge]
Before
Torruella, Lipez, and Thompson,
Circuit Judges.
Eugenio W.A. Géigel-Simounet, with whom Géigel-Simounet Law
Offices C.S.P. was on brief, for appellants.
Shiara L. Diloné Fernández, with whom Anabel Rodríguez-Alonso
and Schuster Aguiló LLP were on brief, for appellee.
April 10, 2013
THOMPSON, Circuit Judge.
Setting the Stage
Estrella Medina-Rivera (Medina) appeals from a summary
judgment dismissing her Title VII case against MVM, Inc. Medina's
husband Omar Cajigas-Quiñones (Cajigas) and their conjugal
partnership also appear as plaintiffs and appellants. Their
rights, however, derive from hers, so we can ignore them for now
and treat her as if she were the only plaintiff-appellant – though
our decision is binding on all parties, naturally. Medina offers
a number of reasons why the summary-judgment ruling cannot stand.
Exercising de novo review, Soto-Padró v. Pub. Bldgs. Auth., 675
F.3d 1, 5 (1st Cir. 2012), we conclude that none persuades. But
before getting into all that, we summarize the key facts as
favorably to Medina as the record will allow, id. at 2, keenly
aware that we cannot accept "conclusory allegations, improbable
inferences, and unsupported speculation," Medina-Muñoz v. R.J.
Reynolds Tobacco Co., 896 F.2d 5, 8 (1st Cir. 1990); accord Ahern
v. Shinseki, 629 F.3d 49, 54 (1st Cir. 2010).
In January 2008 Medina took a job as a part-time, on-call
detention officer with MVM, a private firm that provides security
services (e.g., unarmed guards and other personnel) on a contract
basis to the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),
among others. Having no set schedule, Medina worked when and as
needed (mornings, afternoons, or evenings), filling in for full-
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time detention officers who could not make their shifts. Sometimes
she worked only one day a week, probably because MVM used a
seniority system for doling out work to part-time detention
officers, and she was near the bottom of the seniority list –
roughly 16 out of the 20 or so persons in her position had more
seniority than she. Also affecting her work hours was the fact
that she started taking afternoon classes at the University of
Puerto Rico in August 2008.
Medina and her MVM colleagues worked with ICE agents, but
she and her MVM co-workers were supervised by MVM, not by ICE.
Anyway, sometime before late October 2008 (oddly, the record does
not say exactly when), Medina told one of her supervisors, Rubén
Velázquez Ferrer (Velázquez), that an ICE agent – she did not say
who – had gotten her phone number off a list posted at an ICE
control room and was "bothering" her with calls. "Bothering," that
is the word she used in her deposition, though she later used
"harassing" in her post-deposition affidavit. Hoping to end the
calls, Medina asked Velázquez to take her number off the list.
Velázquez said that he could not do that ("I can't take that out,"
Medina quoted Velázquez as saying) because MVM and ICE rules
required that detention officers' phone numbers be kept in that
room. But "don't worry," he added, because he would run this by
one of his bosses, Elba Navarro Calderón (Navarro). MVM insists
that no such conversation occurred between the two. But we must
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resolve any genuinely disputed facts in Medina's favor. See
Galloza v. Foy, 389 F.3d 26, 28 (1st Cir. 2004).
Fast forward to October 23, 2008. Medina and detention
officer Isabel Orengo Muñiz (Orengo) were guarding a female
detainee and her daughter at a hotel. ICE agent Ramón Ortiz showed
up, tasked with taking the mother and daughter to a hospital for x-
rays. Becoming visibly nervous, Medina turned to Orengo and asked
"why him?" Orengo then escorted the mother and daughter to the
transport van, at Ortiz's request. Alone with Medina in the hotel
room, Ortiz grabbed her and started kissing her against her will.
He touched her all over. She tried to push him off her but could
not. He stopped when Orengo got back.
The next day, Medina told Navarro about her frightening
encounter with Ortiz. She also revealed for the first time that
before this incident Ortiz would sometimes move very close to her,
tell her she "smelled good," and try to hug her. This, apparently,
had been going on for months. Navarro spoke up, saying that when
Velázquez had talked to her about the harassing-phone-call
situation, she suspected that Ortiz might have been the caller.
Navarro denies saying this, we are told. Again, though, at this
stage of the lawsuit all reasonable doubts must be resolved against
MVM. See id.Springing into action, Navarro passed Medina's complaints
through MVM's administrative channels that very day. Word came
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back that Ortiz was to keep away from Medina. On October 27,
Medina told an MVM manager that she was afraid to return to work,
particularly since Ortiz was a gun-carrying ICE agent. Medina then
took a three-day "bereavement leave." A little later (by October
31), Ortiz was gone, transferred to a different office in a
different city.
As part of the contract between MVM and ICE, all
detention officers had to complete a 40-hour refresher training
course, one part of which involved a training seminar on sexual
harassment. MVM's Julio Pizarro Andino (Pizarro) ran the program.
During a seminar in December 2008, Pizarro zeroed in on Medina and
asked her to define sexual harassment. A nervous and embarrassed
Medina did not want to answer. But Pizarro kept at her, demanding
to know her definition. Sensing her anxiety, a co-worker tried to
answer for her. "Is your name Estrella Medina?" Pizarro asked him
sarcastically. When Medina started to cry, another colleague
attempted to define the term. "Is your name Estrella Medina?"
Pizarro shot back. Finally Medina exclaimed, "sexual harassment
was when one person forces another to sexually humiliate another
against her will," like Pizarro had "just done."
After exhausting her administrative remedies, Medina,
together with her husband and their conjugal partnership, sued MVM
under Title VII, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq., alleging sex
discrimination in the form of hostile-work-environment harassment,
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plus retaliation for challenging the harassment.1 MVM eventually
moved for summary judgment on all claims, and a magistrate judge
recommended that the motion be granted. Over Medina's objections,
a district judge accepted the recommendation and entered judgment
accordingly. And it is this judgment that Medina now appeals to
us.
A Summary-Judgment Primer
Because plenty of cases spell out the summary-judgment
standard in splendid detail, see, e.g., Rockwood v. SKF USA Inc.,
687 F.3d 1, 9 (1st Cir. 2012), we just hit the highlights
(repeating some of what we said above). Giving a fresh look to the
judge's ruling, we resolve doubts and draw reasonable inferences in
Medina's favor. See, e.g., Stop & Shop Supermarket Co. v. Blue
Cross & Blue Shield of R.I., 373 F.3d 57, 61 (1st Cir. 2004); Casas
Office Machs., Inc. v. Mita Copystar Am., Inc., 42 F.3d 668, 684
(1st Cir. 1994). But Medina cannot rely on speculation to avoid
summary judgment. See Ahern, 629 F.3d at 58; Medina-Muñoz, 896
F.2d at 8. And we need not accept her version of events if it is
"blatantly contradicted" by the evidence. See Scott v. Harris, 550
U.S. 372, 380 (2007); accord Statchen v. Palmer, 623 F.3d 15, 18
(1st Cir. 2010) (emphasizing that "incredible assertions" by the
nonmoving party "need not be accepted"). In the end, we will
1
Medina sued other defendants too but later voluntarily
dismissed her claims against them.
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affirm the grant of summary judgment if (but only if) the record
evidence (depositions, sworn statements, admissions, etc.) reveals
"that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact" and that
MVM "is entitled to judgment as a matter of law," see Fed. R. Civ.
P. 56(a), (c) – which is a fancy way of saying that no reasonable
jury could find for Medina, see Farmers Ins. Exch. v. RNK, Inc.,
632 F.3d 777, 784 (1st Cir. 2011).
With this backdrop in place, we turn to the particulars
of this case, laying out more facts as needed.
Analyzing the Issues
This appeal turns principally on issues of federal
employment-discrimination law, which is a complex and evolving
area. See Rodríguez-Machado v. Shinseki, 700 F.3d 48, 49 (1st Cir.
2012) (per curiam). We can, however, simplify things a bit by
focusing only on what is necessary to decide this dispute. And
that is what we will do.
(a)
Sex Discrimination
Title VII prohibits, among other things, sex-based
discrimination that changes the terms or conditions of employment.
See 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(1). And sexual harassment is a form of
sex discrimination, the Supreme Court tells us – by committing or
tolerating sexual harassment against an employee, an employer has
effectively altered the terms or conditions of the victim's job.
See, e.g., Burlington Indus., Inc. v. Ellerth, 524 U.S. 742, 751-54
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(1998). One type of sexual harassment – the kind Medina alleges –
involves "bothersome attentions or sexual remarks" so "severe or
pervasive" that they create a "hostile work environment."2 Id. at
751. Accused-harasser Ortiz was not an MVM employee like Medina.
But because, as we have just said, employers must provide their
personnel with a harassment-free workplace, they may be on the hook
for a nonemployee's sexually-harassing behavior under certain
conditions – one of which being that they knew or should have known
about the harassment and yet failed to take prompt steps to stop
it. See, e.g., Rodríguez-Hernández v. Miranda-Vélez, 132 F.3d 848,
854-55 (1st Cir. 1998); see also Lockard v. Pizza Hut, Inc., 162
F.3d 1062, 1072-74 (10th Cir. 1998) (collecting cases, including
Rodríguez-Hernández); 3 Lex K. Larson, Employment Discrimination §
46.07[4] (2d ed. 2011) (discussing, among other things, 29 C.F.R.
§ 1604.11(e), an EEOC guideline dealing with the known-or-should-
have-known standard).
Medina's argument is straightforward enough. She does
not fault MVM's response after she complained about Ortiz's assault
2
Generally, the key elements of a hostile-work-environment
claim are these: (1) the plaintiff belongs to a protected group;
(2) she was subject to unwelcome sexual harassment; (3) the
harassment was based on her sex; (4) the harassment was
sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of
employment and create a discriminatorily-abusive work environment;
(5) the complained-of conduct was both objectively and subjectively
offensive; and (6) there is a basis for employer liability. See,
e.g., Gerald v. Univ. of P.R., 707 F.3d 7, ___ (1st Cir. 2013);
Pérez-Cordero v. Wal-Mart P.R., Inc., 656 F.3d 19, 27 (1st Cir.
2011).
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– after all, Ortiz was gone within days of the incident. Rather
she protests the way MVM handled things after she mentioned the
harassing calls. Distilled to its essence, her argument goes
something like this. Before the assault, she had clued in MVM's
Velázquez on how some unnamed ICE agent was "bothering" or
"harassing" her over the phone.3 That agent, she tells us, called
her a hundred times or so, which, she intimates, satisfies the
severity-or-pervasiveness requirement. Yet MVM did nothing about
that, even though MVM's Navarro admitted after the assault that she
suspected Ortiz was the harasser, and MVM's do-nothing approach
following her conversation with Velázquez led to Ortiz's sexually
assaulting her at the hotel and Pizarro's humiliating her at the
seminar. Or so her argument concludes.
Actually, though, a scan of the record shows that Medina
did not tell Velázquez about a hundred-plus calls. She came up
with that number after the assault. And even then she basically
admitted that she only knew for sure that he had called her two
times. Here is how that came about. Answering the first call and
hearing Ortiz identify himself, Medina told him "don't ever call me
again," and then she hung up on him. Cajigas, her husband,
3
MVM has a written policy that prohibits sex-based
harassment, "encourage[s]" workers to tell their supervisors or the
human resources director if they have experienced this type of
harassment or "have witnessed such behavior," and explains how MVM
"determines how allegations are investigated . . . ." Medina
received a copy of the policy.
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answered the second call. "Yes, good day, is Estrella in?" Ortiz
asked. "Look she's not in," Cajigas said. "Oh, well," Ortiz
responded, "[t]ell her that agent Ortiz called her." "Okay,"
Cajigas replied. And then Ortiz hung up. Neither Medina nor
Cajigas answered the other calls. But her caller ID showed that
the calls came from the same number. It turns out that that number
is an ICE work number, not Ortiz's personal number. Yet she
suggests that every call was from Ortiz, even though someone could
have been calling her on that line for work-related reasons –
remember, Medina was an on-call employee who worked when called.
Her suggestion is nothing more than the sheerest speculation, which
is entitled to no weight in the summary-judgment analysis. See,
e.g., Ahern, 629 F.3d at 54; Medina-Muñoz, 896 F.2d at 8; see also
Nat'l Amusements, Inc. v. Town of Dedham, 43 F.3d 731, 743 (1st
Cir. 1995) (noting that "[w]hile the summary judgment mantra
requires us to draw every reasonable inference in favor of the
nonmoving party, inferences, to qualify, must flow rationally from
the underlying facts," i.e., "a suggested inference must ascend to
what common sense and human experience indicates is an acceptable
level of probability").
Even putting that flaw aside, the difficulty for Medina
is that Title VII does not ban harassment alone, no matter how
severe or pervasive – no, as relevant here, that statute bans
sexual harassment. See Higgins v. New Balance Athletic Shoe, Inc.,
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194 F.3d 252, 258 (1st Cir. 1999). "Harassing" and "harassment"
have different meanings in different contexts, broadly covering
situations involving words and actions "that, being directed at a
specific person, annoy[], alarm[], or cause[] substantial emotional
distress in that person and serve[] no legitimate purpose" – like
when a "creditor uses threatening or abusive tactics to collect a
debt." Black's Law Dictionary 784 (9th ed. 2009). Yet nothing
Medina said during her initial meeting with Velázquez indicated
that an ICE agent was harassing her sexually.4 Of course we are
not suggesting that she had to throw around buzzwords like "sex" or
"sexual" harassment. We say only that she had to say something to
put MVM on notice that the complained-of harassment was sex-based.
For example, this might be a different case if, in addition to
mentioning the "harassing" calls, Medina also told Velázquez about
her other complaints – i.e., how for months that same agent would
get up close to her, tell her she "smelled good," and try to hug
her. But again, she did not do that. The first time that she
brought that stuff up was in her post-assault meeting with Navarro.
As for why, she says that she stayed quiet until then because she
feared being fired, though she presents nothing indicating that her
4
Just so there is no confusion, we repeat previous reminders
to the bar and bench that the harassing action need not be inspired
"by sexual desire" to be redressable under Title VII – the only
requirement is that the action must be because of the victim's sex.
Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Servs., Inc., 523 U.S. 75, 80 (1998);
accord Pérez-Cordero, 656 F.3d at 28; O'Rourke v. City of
Providence, 235 F.3d 713, 729 (1st Cir. 2001).
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fear was credible. See generally Reed v. MBNA Mktg. Sys., Inc.,
333 F.3d 27, 35-36 (1st Cir. 2003) (holding that a vague fear of
adverse consequences is not a sufficient basis for keeping quiet).
And while we are talking about Navarro, Medina makes much
of Navarro's guessing that Ortiz was the phone-call harasser – a
guess that should have caused Navarro to investigate the situation,
which, the theory goes, would have prevented the assault. But
there is nothing suggesting Navarro knew that Ortiz was harassing
Medina over the phone because of her sex. Recall how after Medina
told Velázquez about the harassing calls (a conversation that took
place before the assault), Velázquez shared this information with
Navarro, who was his higher-up in the MVM chain of command. Well,
again, nothing Medina said indicated that the phone-call harassment
was gender-based. Also, Medina directs us to nothing suggesting
that Navarro knew, say, that Ortiz had a history of sexual
harassment, which might have triggered a duty to investigate here.
Consequently, this argument does not help her position.
The upshot is that Medina paints an ugly picture of what
Ortiz did to her during her MVM tenure. Yet even assuming she has
sketched events accurately, "hard as our sympathies may pull us,
our duty to maintain the integrity of the substantive law pulls
harder." Turner v. Atl. Coast Line R.R. Co., 292 F.2d 586, 589
(5th Cir. 1961) (Wisdom, J.). And ultimately, she has no sex-
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discrimination claim against MVM, so we affirm the summary judgment
on that claim.
(b)
Retaliation
Whether or not MVM discriminated against her on the basis
of sex, Medina insists that it infracted Title VII by retaliating
against her for alleging that it did. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-3(a)
(Title VII's anti-retaliation provision). To succeed on a
retaliation claim, a plaintiff must first prove these elements:
One, she undertook protected conduct. See, e.g., Ahern, 629 F.3d
at 55. Two, her employer took a material adverse action against
her – i.e., action that could deter a "'reasonable'" employee from
complaining about the discrimination. Id. (quoting Burlington N.
& Santa Fe Ry. Co. v. White, 548 U.S. 53, 57 (2006)). Requiring
that level of adversity helps "to separate significant from trivial
harms," with "petty slights, minor annoyances, and simple lack of
good manners" falling in the "trivial" category. Burlington N.,
548 U.S. at 68. And finally, three, a causal nexus exists between
elements one and two. Ahern, 629 F.3d at 55. Obviously too, the
employee must show that the retaliator knew about her protected
activity – after all, one cannot have been motivated to retaliate
by something he was unaware of. See Lewis v. Gillette, Co., 22
F.3d 22, 24-25 (1st Cir. 1994) (per curiam) (indicating that
awareness may be shown by circumstantial evidence); see also
Alvarado v. Donahoe, 687 F.3d 453, 458-59 (1st Cir. 2012) (similar,
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and discussing too the burden-shifting process that begins once
plaintiff proves a prima-facie case).
Neither side disputes that Medina engaged in protected
conduct when she told MVM about how Ortiz had sexually assaulted
her. So we now determine whether the evidence, viewed through the
standard summary-judgment prism, can support a finding that she
suffered a materially adverse action causally connected to her
protected activity. She thinks it does, making a number of
arguments that boil down to this: After she named Ortiz as her
assaulter, MVM, she says, (a) suspended her almost immediately,
from October 24 (the day she told Navarro about the terrifying
hotel incident) until November 15;5 then (b) "severely" cut her
work hours; and later (c) humiliated her during the sexual-
harassment seminar. We discuss these points one by one.
As support for her suspension charge, Medina relies on
her say-so, basically. Take, for example, her deposition, where
she flatly denied working during the alleged suspension term. "Not
even one hour?" counsel asked. "Nothing," she said. She also
relies on her MVM earning statements, which, she intimates, show a
gap reflecting the alleged suspension period. A couple of things
make her argument a nonstarter, however. For openers, she later
5
For simplicity's sake, we sometimes refer to this as the
alleged or supposed suspension period or term.
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admitted in her opposing statement of material facts6 that she had
indeed "worked during the three weeks following the incident with
Ortiz" – i.e., during the supposed suspension term. On top of
that, earning statements provided by MVM show that, yes, she had
worked during that period – something that she also admitted in her
opposing statement of material facts. And as we just said a moment
ago, we cannot accept a party's version of the facts when it is
"blatantly contradicted by the record, so that no reasonable jury
could believe it," see Scott, 550 U.S. at 380, which is exactly our
situation. Clearly, then, Medina has not met the materially-
adverse action requirement here.
Nor does she do any better in arguing that MVM slashed
her work hours after she accused Ortiz of sexual assault. What
trips her up here is that she does not support her rhetoric with
hard proof. Looking to defeat summary judgment, she told the court
below that one cannot tell from MVM's records "how many hours [she]
worked before she reported the sexual assault" – meaning (her
argument continued) that "the hours she worked before the assault
cannot be compared [with] the hours she worked after she reported
the assault." And she says nothing different here. We do not
understand how she can take that tack, however. The summary-
6
See D.P.R. Civ. R. 56(c) (directing a party opposing summary
judgment to submit with her opposition papers "a separate, short,
and concise statement of material facts" admitting, denying, or
qualifying the material facts highlighted by the moving party).
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judgment record clearly shows the hours she worked before and after
the assault. The record also shows how she had no set hours to
begin with (she worked on an as-needed basis), and her hours
fluctuated because of her lack of seniority and her class schedule.
Anyway, her severe-work-reduction charge amounts to no more than
conclusory speculation, which cannot block summary judgment. See,
e.g., Ahern, 629 F.3d at 54; Medina-Muñoz, 896 F.2d at 8. In other
words, this argument like the first fails.
Medina's third argument – that Pizarro badgered her into
defining what sexual harassment means as payback for her
complaining to MVM over a month earlier about Ortiz's sexual
assault on her – falters too, for a simple reason. Let's assume
without deciding that Pizarro's bullying words were more than just
"petty slights, minor annoyances," or a "simple lack of good
manners," but actually rose to the level of material adversity
required by the caselaw. See Burlington N., 548 U.S. at 68. That
would take her only so far. She still must show that Pizarro knew
about her protected activity. See, e.g., Alvarado, 687 F.3d at
458-59; Lewis, 22 F.3d at 24-25. This she has not done. Pizarro
said in his affidavit that he "had absolutely no knowledge about
the sexual harassment claim" that Medina had lodged against Ortiz.
Also, Medina conceded below that she had "no personal knowledge" of
what information Pizarro had regarding the sexual-harassment charge
she had leveled against Ortiz. And she points us to no evidence
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from which we can infer that Pizarro had any clue as to what she
had told MVM concerning her horrifying run-in with Ortiz back at
the hotel. She "imagine[s]" that Pizarro had to have known about
this, given that "he is an MVM employee." But she cannot deflect
summary judgment with pure speculation like that. See, e.g.,
Ahern, 629 F.3d at 54; Medina-Muñoz, 896 F.2d at 8.
The bottom line is that Medina cannot dodge summary
judgment on her retaliation claim. And so we move on.
(c)
Cajigas's Claims
Medina and her husband Cajigas criticize the judge for
dismissing his claims. To their way of thinking, Cajigas's claims
were not, as the judge believed, entirely derivative of hers. But
their argument is not fully developed, lacking any citation to
supporting authority (or even a persuasive explanation of what the
law should be, assuming they found no authority). And "developing
a sustained argument out of . . . legal precedents" is appellant's
job, not ours. Town of Norwood v. Fed. Energy Regulatory Comm'n,
202 F.3d 392, 405 (1st Cir. 2000). The issue is waived. See id.;
see also Muñiz v. Rovira, 373 F.3d 1, 8 (1st Cir. 2004) (holding as
waived an argument presented "to us in skeletal form, without
citation to any pertinent authority").
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(d)
A Parting Shot
One last thing. Discussing Puerto Rico Rule of Civil
Procedure 36, Medina tells us that Commonwealth courts can only
grant summary judgment in clear-cut cases – a policy, she insists,
that federal courts must follow too. And building to the ultimate
crescendo, she faults the judge for not doing that here. We are
unpersuaded.
For starters, Medina offers us no assurance that she
properly preserved this policy point below. And nowhere in her
papers opposing summary judgment or objecting to the magistrate
judge's report does she float this policy theory – actually, she
cited caselaw applying the federal summary-judgment standard. This
is no small matter, since theories not squarely presented below
typically cannot be advanced here. See Brown v. Colegio de
Abogados de P.R., 613 F.3d 44, 50 (1st Cir. 2010); Teamsters,
Chauffeurs, Warehousemen & Helpers Union, Local No. 59 v. Superline
Transp. Co., 953 F.2d 17, 21 (1st Cir. 1992).
But even ignoring that problem, her thesis runs headlong
into precedent. "Whether or not a case rests on diversity
jurisdiction," we wrote 20 years ago, "the summary judgment
standard is a matter of federal law, for it is settled that,
broadly speaking, in a federal court federal law determines the
respective roles of trial judge, jury, and reviewing court."
Villarini-García v. Hosp. del Maestro, Inc., 8 F.3d 81, 86 (1st
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Cir. 1993). Villarini-García cited a number of cases, including
McEwen v. Delta Air Lines, Inc., which stressed that "[f]ederal
courts may grant summary judgment under Rule 56 on concluding that
no reasonable jury could return a verdict" for the nonmoving party,
"even if" state law "would require the judge to submit an identical
case to the jury." 919 F.2d 58, 60 (7th Cir. 1990); see also Fid.
Nat'l Title Ins. Co. of N.Y. v. Intercounty Nat'l Title Ins. Co.,
412 F.3d 745, 750 (7th Cir. 2005) (Posner, J.) (declaring that
"[t]he Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, not state procedural
rules, govern in . . . federal-question" suits "in federal district
courts," just as they do in diversity suits); Hayes v. Equitable
Energy Res. Co., 266 F.3d 560, 566 (6th Cir. 2001) (same); 12 James
Wm. Moore et al., Moore's Federal Practice § 59.03, at 59-9 (3d ed.
2012) (ditto).
Any way we look at it, then, Medina's claim that the
judge was "bound" by Puerto Rico's summary-judgment policy is not
a winning one. And that is that.
Final Words
Our work over, we affirm the judgment below in all
respects. Also, we think it fitting that the parties bear their
own costs on appeal.
So Ordered.
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