Sweet People Apparel, Inc. v. Phoenix Fibers, Inc. ( 2019 )

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS JAN 11 2019
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
SWEET PEOPLE APPAREL, INC., DBA No. 18-55036
Miss Me, a California corporation and
RCRV, INC., DBA Rock Revival, a D.C. No.
California corporation, 2:16-cv-00940-TJH-JC
Plaintiffs-Appellants,
MEMORANDUM*
v.
PHOENIX FIBERS, INC., an Arizona
corporation; et al.,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Central District of California
Terry J. Hatter, District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted December 7, 2018
Pasadena, California
Before: WARDLAW and OWENS, Circuit Judges, and DORSEY,** District
Judge.
Sweet People Apparel, Inc. and RCRV, Inc. (“Sweet People”) appeals the
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
**
The Honorable Jennifer A. Dorsey, United States District Judge for
the District of Nevada, sitting by designation.
district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of Phoenix Fibers, Inc.
(“Phoenix Fibers”) in its breach of contract, unfair competition, and trademark
infringement action. We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291. We
affirm.
1. The district court properly granted summary judgment in favor of
Phoenix Fibers because Sweet People failed to establish, with admissible evidence,
its prima facie case. See Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 322–23 (1986).
After Phoenix Fibers lodged objections to the evidence that Sweet People filed
with its opposition to summary judgment, Sweet People bore the burden “to show
that the material is admissible as presented or to explain the admissible form that is
anticipated.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56 advisory committee’s note to 2010 amendment
(explaining Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c)(2)). But Sweet People failed to respond to
Phoenix Fibers’ objections.
Because Sweet People failed to demonstrate or explain the admissibility of
its proffered evidence, the district court did not abuse its discretion in excluding
Sweet People’s unauthenticated deposition transcripts and emails, see Las Vegas
Sands, LLC v. Nehme, 632 F.3d 526, 532–33 (9th Cir. 2011), as well as the
inadmissible portions of its declarations, see, e.g., Fed. R. Evid. 602, 801, from its
consideration of Phoenix Fibers’ motion for summary judgment. See Hooper v.
Lockheed Martin Corp., 688 F.3d 1037, 1051–52 (9th Cir. 2012). The district
court bore no burden to “comb through the voluminous record searching for
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evidentiary bases to introduce the evidence at issue” without Sweet People’s
guidance. In re Oracle Corp. Sec. Litig., 627 F.3d 376, 386 (9th Cir. 2010).
Therefore, the district court did not err in concluding that Phoenix Fibers “is
‘entitled to a judgment as a matter of law’ because [Sweet People] has failed to
make a sufficient showing on an essential element of [its] case with respect to
which [it] has the burden of proof.” Celotex Corp., 477 U.S. at 323 (quoting Fed.
R. Civ. P. 56(a)).
2. Sweet People waived its right to challenge the district court’s evidentiary
rulings. “It is well established that an appellate court will not reverse a district
court on the basis of a theory that was not raised below.” Alaska Airlines, Inc. v.
United Airlines, Inc., 948 F.2d 536, 546 n.15 (9th Cir. 1991). For the first time on
appeal, Sweet People attempts to respond to Phoenix Fibers’ evidentiary objections
and argues that the district court erroneously excluded its proffered evidence. But
Sweet People “did not raise these arguments before the district court in [its]
opposition to summary judgment, so they [are] waived.” Loomis v. Cornish, 836
F.3d 991, 997 (9th Cir. 2016); see also Coomes v. Edmonds Sch. Dist. No. 15, 816
F.3d 1255, 1261 n.4 (9th Cir. 2016) (“We decline to address new evidence cited
for the first time on appeal to seek reversal of a lower court’s summary judgment
determination.”).
AFFIRMED.
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FILED
Sweet People Apparel, Inc. v. Phoenix Fibers, Inc., No. 18-55036
JAN 11 2019
Dorsey, District Judge, dissenting: MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
I would reverse the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of
Phoenix Fibers for two independent reasons.
1. The district court concluded that Sweet People failed to establish a prima
facie case only because it precluded much of the evidence that Sweet People
proffered in opposition to Phoenix Fibers’s motion. In excluding this evidence, the
court applied the outdated standard that only evidence that is authenticated and
admissible in its present form may be considered at the summary-judgment stage.
See Orr v. Bank of America, 285 F.3d 764, 773 (9th Cir. 2002). But the 2010
amendment to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56 “eliminate[d] th[is] unequivocal
requirement” and mandates only that the substance of the proffered evidence
would be admissible at trial. Romero v. Nev. Dep’t of Corr., 673 F. App’x 641,
644 (9th Cir. 2016); see also Fed. R. Civ. P. 56 advisory comm. note to 2010
amendment; Lee v. Offshore Logistical & Transp., L.L.C., 859 F.3d 353, 355 (5th
Cir. 2017); Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge 1 v. City of Camden, 842 F.3d 231,
238 (3d Cir. 2016); Humphreys & Partners Architects, L.P. v. Lessard Design,
Inc., 790 F.3d 532, 538 (4th Cir. 2015); Jones v. UPS Ground Freight, 683 F.3d
1283, 1293–94 (11th Cir. 2012).
As in Orr, the district court here excluded Sweet People’s deposition
transcripts because they lacked a reporter’s certification. See Orr, 285 F.3d at 774.
Because the court applied an incorrect legal standard, it abused its discretion. See
Cooter & Gell v. Hartmarx Corp., 496 U.S. 384, 405 (1990). And although Sweet
People had the burden of demonstrating that its evidence could be presented in an
admissible form, the deposed witnesses were all listed on the parties’ joint trial
witness list, so it should have been apparent that the evidence’s substance—the
witnesses’ intended trial testimony—would not have required authentication. See
Lee, 859 F.3d at 355 (holding that the district court erred in dismissing a “report
solely because it was not sworn [and] without considering [the appellant’s]
argument that” the report’s author “would testify to those opinions at trial”);
Fraser v. Goodale, 342 F.3d 1032, 1036 (9th Cir. 2003) (“[W]e need not decide
whether the diary itself is admissible. It would be sufficient if the contents of the
diary are admissible at trial, even if the diary itself may be inadmissible.”). This
case is thus distinguishable from In re Oracle Corporation Securities Litigation, in
which the district court would have had to proactively conceive of permissible,
non-hearsay applications of the proffered evidence in a record that consisted of
“over 134 deposition days, countless discovery requests and answers, and over 2.1
million pages of documents.” 627 F.3d 376, 385 (9th Cir. 2010) (“As the
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experienced district judge quipped, the word ‘voluminous’ does not do justice to
the record in this case.”).
Instead of addressing the district court’s application of an incorrect legal
standard, the majority concludes that Sweet People waived its challenges to the
evidentiary rulings by failing to respond to Phoenix Fibers’s objections. But this
court “will not deem [an] issue waived if the district court actually considered it.”
Cmty. House, Inc. v. City of Boise, 490 F.3d 1041, 1054 (9th Cir. 2007). Here, the
court below considered Phoenix Fibers’s evidentiary objections on their merits
rather than deeming Sweet People’s non-response as consent to sustaining them.
And “even if the precise issue we face has been raised for the first time on appeal,
the waiver rule is not one of jurisdiction, but discretion. We can exercise that
discretion to consider a purely legal question when the record relevant to the matter
is fully developed.” United States v. Northrop Corp., 59 F.3d 953, 958 n.2 (9th
Cir. 1995). The question of whether the court below applied the correct legal
standard is purely legal, and district courts in this circuit (and the litigants who
practice before them) would be well served by guidance on the continued viability
of Orr after the 2010 amendment to Rule 56.
2. Even if the district court had correctly excluded the three categories of
evidence it addressed, I would still reverse its grant of summary judgment. Unlike
the depositions and emails, which were excluded in full, the district court excluded
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unspecified portions of the two declarations Sweet People proffered. The court
then granted Phoenix Fibers summary judgment in a single concluding sentence:
“After disregarding the portions of the two declarations that contained inadmissible
evidence, the remaining portions were insufficient to satisfy Plaintiffs’ burden of
establishing a prima facie case for any of its’ [sic] claims.” But it is unclear what
portions of those declarations the court deemed admissible. Additionally, Sweet
People submitted evidence with its opposition beyond the depositions, emails, and
declarations, such as discovery responses and invoices stemming from Phoenix
Fibers’s resale of its products. Phoenix Fibers objected to only some of this
evidence, but the district court limited its analysis to the three categories of
evidence it excluded. We therefore have no means of discerning what evidence the
district court considered, so we cannot adequately review whether Sweet People
presented sufficient evidence to survive summary judgment.
For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.
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