Fontanillas-Lopez v. Morell Bauzá Cartagena & Dapena, LLC

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 15-1326
LOURDES DEL ROSARIO FONTANILLAS-LOPEZ,
Plaintiff, Appellant,
MILDRED M. LOPEZ-MARTINEZ; LUIS A. FONTANILLAS-PINO,
Plaintiffs,
v.
MORELL BAUZÁ CARTAGENA & DAPENA, LLC; PEDRO A. MORELL-LOSADA;
ANTONIO BAUZÁ SANTOS; EDGARDO CARTAGENA-SANTIAGO; RAMÓN E.
DAPENA-GUERRERO; LOURDES M. VÁZQUEZ,
Defendants, Appellees.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO
[Hon. Juan M. Pérez-Giménez, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Kayatta and Barron, Circuit Judges,
and McAuliffe,* District Judge.
Roberto Márquez-Sánchez on brief for appellant.
Rosangela Sanfilippo-Resumil on brief for appellees.
* Of the District of New Hampshire, sitting by designation.
August 5, 2016
KAYATTA, Circuit Judge. In March 2012, Lourdes del
Rosario Fontanillas-Lopez ("Fontanillas") filed sex discrimination
claims under federal and Puerto Rico law against her former
employer, Morell Bauzá Cartagena & Dapena, LLC ("MBCD"), and
several individual defendants. Following discovery, the district
court granted summary judgment in favor of MBCD on Fontanillas's
federal claims and, having dismissed all of Fontanillas's other
claims, later awarded attorneys' fees to the defendants.
Fontanillas moved for relief from the summary judgment order and
for reconsideration of the fees award. The district court denied
both motions. On appeal, Fontanillas challenges the denial of
both motions, as well as the denial of her request to exceed the
normal page limits in filing those motions. She also directly
challenges the award of attorneys' fees to the defendants. For
the following reasons, we affirm.
I. Background
Fontanillas began working as an attorney in MBCD's Tax
Department in January 2009.1 Fontanillas-Lopez v. Morel Bauza
Cartagena & Dapena LLC ("Fontanillas I"), 995 F. Supp. 2d 21, 28
(D.P.R. 2014). Fontanillas's supervisor soon grew concerned with
Fontanillas's poor relationships with her female co-workers,
1 At that time, MBCD was operating under a different name.
Fontanillas-Lopez v. Morel Bauza Cartagena & Dapena LLC, 995
F. Supp. 2d 21, 28 (D.P.R. 2014). For simplicity, we refer to
Fontanillas's former employer as MBCD throughout.
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substandard work performance, and failure to comply with MBCD
rules. Id. at 40. On the supervisor's recommendation, MBCD's
capital partners decided in August 2011 to terminate Fontanillas.
Id. Several months later, Fontanillas filed a complaint against
MBCD and its co-owners and administrator in federal district
court.2 Fontanillas's complaint raised sexual harassment, gender
discrimination, and retaliation claims under Puerto Rico law and
Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C.
§§ 2000e et seq., as well as claims sounding in Puerto Rico
employment and tort law.
Almost a year into the proceedings, during the course of
discovery, the individual defendants moved to dismiss the federal
claims against them. The district court granted this motion over
Fontanillas's opposition, leaving MBCD as the lone remaining
defendant on Fontanillas's federal claims. Several months
thereafter, the defendants moved for summary judgment on all
remaining claims. In a thorough written opinion, the district
court granted summary judgment in favor of MBCD on Fontanillas's
federal claims and dismissed Fontanillas's supplemental claims
under Puerto Rico law without prejudice. Fontanillas I, 995 F.
Supp. 2d at 53.
2
Fontanillas's parents were also initially plaintiffs in this
suit. However, at the parents' request, the district court
dismissed all their claims with prejudice.
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Following entry of judgment on February 7, 2014, the
defendants moved for attorneys' fees. The district court, in a
November 18, 2014, written opinion, accepted the defendants'
argument that Fontanillas had continued to litigate even after she
had been "duly apprised" during the course of discovery that "her
claims were devoid of any merit." Fontanillas-Lopez v. Morel Bauza
Cartagena & Dapena LLC ("Fontanillas II"), 59 F. Supp. 3d 420, 425
(D.P.R. 2014). In consequence, the district court found
Fontanillas liable to the defendants for the $53,662.50 in
attorneys' fees they had accrued following the point at which, in
the district court's estimation, Fontanillas should have been
aware that she held a losing hand. Id. at 427.
On December 16, 2014, Fontanillas filed a 40-page motion
for reconsideration of the attorneys' fees award under Federal
Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e)3 ("the Rule 59(e) motion") and a
motion for relief from the underlying summary judgment order under
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b) ("the Rule 60(b) motion"),
the latter of which was accompanied by a 39-page memorandum.4
3 Fontanillas characterized this motion as a motion pursuant
to "Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59 and/or 60." We construe
the motion to be a motion to alter or amend the judgment pursuant
to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e). See Marie v. Allied
Home Mortg. Corp., 402 F.3d 1, 7 (1st Cir. 2005).
4 MBCD observes that certain exhibits were in fact filed on
December 17, 2014, which fell outside the 28-day period following
the attorneys' fees award that constituted the only window within
which a Rule 59(e) motion as to that award could be filed. See
Fed. R. Civ. P. 59(e). But these exhibits were filed in connection
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Because these filings exceeded the 25-page limit applicable to
certain motions and memoranda under the district court's local
rules, see D.P.R. Civ. R. 7(d), Fontanillas filed a contemporaneous
motion for leave to submit filings in excess of the allowed pages.
On January 23, 2015, the district court denied Fontanillas leave
to exceed the page limits and so struck her Rule 59(e) motion and
her Rule 60(b) motion, with its accompanying memorandum, from the
record. The order denying leave invited Fontanillas to re-file
compliant motions, which she did six days later, on January 29,
2015.5
While awaiting decision on these motions, Fontanillas
filed on February 23, 2015, a notice of appeal as to the
November 18, 2014, award of attorneys' fees and the January 23,
2015, denial of leave to file in excess of the local page limits.
with Fontanillas's Rule 60(b) motion, which was not constrained by
the same filing deadline. See id. 60(c). Accordingly, we need
not address the consequence, if any, of a tardy exhibit filed
appurtenant to a timely motion.
5 Fontanillas does not explain her assumption that her filings
were subject to the 25-page limit applicable under the local rules
to "motions to dismiss, for judgment on the pleadings, requesting
summary judgment, for injunctive relief, or appeals from a decision
by a magistrate judge," and not to the 15-page limit applicable to
"[n]on-dispositive motions and memoranda or oppositions to those
motions." D.P.R. Civ. R. 7(d). Neither the defendants nor the
district court intimated below that Fontanillas's newly filed Rule
59(e) motion and memorandum in support of the Rule 60(b) motion,
which were twenty-five and twenty pages, respectively, were
overlength, so we, like Fontanillas, assume that her January 29,
2015, filings were compliant.
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Just after the initial appellate briefing schedule had been set,
the district court issued an opinion and order on September 30,
2015, denying Fontanillas's Rule 59(e) and 60(b) motions.
Fontanillas-Lopez v. Morel Bauza Cartagena & Dapena LLC
("Fontanillas III"), 136 F. Supp. 3d 152, 160 (D.P.R. 2015).
Fontanillas then timely amended her notice of appeal to include
challenges to these denials. In all, Fontanillas asks us to review
four of the district court's rulings: (1) the denial of leave to
submit filings in excess of the local page limits; (2) the award
of attorneys' fees to the defendants; (3) the denial of her Rule
59(e) motion to reconsider that award; and (4) the denial of her
Rule 60(b) motion for relief from the underlying summary judgment
order. We consider these rulings in turn.
II. Analysis
A. Leave to Exceed Local Page Limits
Fontanillas's first claim of error is that the district
court abused its discretion in declining to allow her Rule 59(e)
motion and the memorandum in support of her Rule 60(b) motion to
exceed the page limits established by the district court's local
rules. Fontanillas recognizes that district courts' "broad
latitude in administering local rules" entitles those courts "to
demand adherence to specific mandates contained in th[ose] rules."
Air Line Pilots Ass'n v. Precision Valley Aviation, Inc., 26 F.3d
220, 224 (1st Cir. 1994). But Fontanillas seeks to turn this broad
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discretion to her advantage, arguing that because the District of
Puerto Rico's local rules permit a district court to waive the
applicable page limits "by prior leave," D.P.R. Civ. R. 7(d), the
district court here had "ample latitude" to allow her overlength
filings.
Fontanillas's argument flips abuse-of-discretion review
on its head by suggesting that we may reverse the district court
merely because it could have exercised its "ample latitude"
differently. This is not the prerogative of an appellate court.
Cf. NEPSK, Inc. v. Town of Houlton, 283 F.3d 1, 7 (1st Cir. 2002)
(finding it "within the district court's discretion" to enforce
local rules where "the result does not clearly offend equity").
Fontanillas did not offer the district court any reason to grant
an exception to the usual page restrictions beyond the bare
assertion that her arguments required her to "address numerous
issues of fact and quote extensively from the evidence in the
case." Nor does Fontanillas provide a more robust explanation on
appeal as to why she required the extra pages she sought. Instead,
she observes that the district court had previously granted the
defendants' motion to file an overlength motion for summary
judgment and suggests that "[w]hat's good for the goose, is good
for the gander." The district court, though, was within its
discretion to find that the defendants, having the burden of
persuasion in trying to prove a negative (i.e., that there are no
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disputed issues of material fact supportive of a discrimination
claim) and the need to anticipate arguments that might or might
not be made in response, presented a more persuasive case for an
exception to the usual page limits than did Fontanillas. Under
these circumstances, the district court did not abuse its wide
discretion in holding Fontanillas to the default standards the
local rules establish as appropriate for the typical litigant.
B. Attorneys' Fees
1. Jurisdiction
Fontanillas next appeals both the award of attorneys'
fees to the defendants and the district court's denial of her
Rule 59(e) motion for reconsideration of that award. The
defendants accept that this court has jurisdiction over the latter
appeal but argue that we do not have jurisdiction over the former.
This distinction could matter: on appeal from the denial of a
Rule 59(e) motion, it is not fully settled to what extent the
reviewing court may revisit the underlying judgment, see McKenna
v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., 693 F.3d 207, 213–14 & n.5 (1st Cir.
2012), and, in any event, "Rule 59(e) relief is granted sparingly,
and only when 'the original judgment evidenced a manifest error of
law, if there is newly discovered evidence, or in certain other
narrow situations,'" Biltcliffe v. CitiMortgage, Inc., 772 F.3d
925, 930 (1st Cir. 2014) (quoting Global Naps, Inc. v. Verizon New
Eng., Inc., 489 F.3d 13, 25 (1st Cir. 2007)); see also Ira Green,
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Inc. v. Military Sales & Serv. Co., 775 F.3d 12, 28 (1st Cir. 2014)
("[R]evising a final judgment [pursuant to Rule 59(e)] is an
extraordinary remedy . . . .").
Whether we have jurisdiction to entertain the merits of
Fontanillas's challenge to the attorneys' fees award turns on
whether the notice of appeal seeking review of that award was
timely. A civil appellant must typically file a notice of appeal
"within 30 days after entry of the judgment or order appealed
from." Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(1)(A). The district court entered
its order granting attorneys' fees to the defendants on
November 18, 2014, and Fontanillas filed her notice of appeal as
to that order on February 23, 2015--well outside the usual 30-day
window. Without more, this timeline would defeat our jurisdiction
over the appeal. See McKenna, 693 F.3d at 213 ("[I]t is settled
that a civil appeal filed out of time is barred, [and] that the
error in timing cannot be waived . . . .").
There is a relevant exception, however. When a litigant
files a timely Rule 59(e) motion asking the district court to
reconsider a judgment, "the time to file an appeal" of the
underlying judgment "runs . . . from the entry of the order
disposing of" the Rule 59(e) motion. Fed. R. App. P.
4(a)(4)(A)(iv). Here, Fontanillas filed a Rule 59(e) motion within
the requisite 28 days, see Fed. R. Civ. P. 59(e), after entry of
the fees award. The district court then "dispos[ed] of," Fed. R.
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App. P. 4(a)(4)(A)(iv), that timely motion on January 23, 2015, by
rejecting it as overlength, and Fontanillas filed her notice of
appeal of the underlying fees award within 30 days of that
disposition. It would seem, then, that Fontanillas has
appropriately availed herself of an exception to the normal
jurisdictional window for appeal.
The defendants nonetheless respond that when the
district court rejected Fontanillas's timely filed Rule 59(e)
motion as overlength, it struck that motion from the record
entirely. By taking this step, the defendants argue, the district
court created a record that treated Fontanillas's Rule 59(e) motion
as though it had never been filed and, in so doing, rendered
Fontanillas's submission of that timely but noncompliant motion
incapable of having delayed, or "tolled," the beginning of the 30-
day appeal window triggered by the November 18, 2014, fees award.
Because we have already upheld the district court's decision to
restrict Fontanillas's timely but noncompliant Rule 59(e) motion
to the ordinarily applicable page limits, and because Fontanillas
raises no challenge to the district court's act of striking that
motion as the specific means of enforcing its decision, the
determinative question is whether, as defendants urge, the order
striking Fontanillas's timely motion from the record vitiated the
tolling effect that the motion would have had if the district court
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had simply denied it, whether on the merits or for noncompliance
with the local rules, without striking it.
At first glance, our decision in Air Line Pilots Ass'n
v. Precision Valley Aviation, Inc., 26 F.3d 220 (1st Cir. 1994),
would seem to suggest so. In Air Line Pilots, the appellant had
filed a timely Rule 59(e) motion in the district court, seeking
reconsideration of a summary judgment order. Id. at 222. The
motion, however, failed to comply with an applicable local rule.
Id. The clerk of court refused to accept the noncompliant motion
for filing, and the district court endorsed the clerk of court's
exclusion of the motion from the record. Id. Although the
appellant then submitted a compliant Rule 59(e) motion, the
statutory window for filing original Rule 59(e) motions had closed
in the interim, and the district court rejected the compliant
motion as untimely. Id. at 222–23.
The appellant filed a notice of appeal as to the
underlying summary judgment order within 30 days of the order
rejecting the compliant but untimely Rule 59(e) motion (though not
within 30 days of the summary judgment order itself nor of the
district court's endorsement of the clerk's exclusion of the
noncompliant filing from the record). Id. at 223. We held that
we lacked jurisdiction over the appeal. Id. at 226. An untimely
Rule 59(e) motion does not toll the 30-day window for filing an
appeal, id. at 223–24, and we held that the untimely Rule 59(e)
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motion could not relate back to the filing date of the timely but
noncompliant Rule 59(e) motion because--critically--that earlier
motion, having never become part of the record, was "a nullity,"
id. at 225.
The defendants seize upon this characterization of a
motion that never became part of the record and seek to extend it
to a motion that was filed and then later struck. But central to
the reasoning in Air Lines Pilots was a critical factor altogether
absent here. Specifically, the New Hampshire Local Rules at issue
in Air Line Pilots expressly stated that "[t]he Clerk shall not
accept any motions not in compliance with procedures outlined in
these Rules." Id. at 224 n.5 (alteration in original) (quoting
D.N.H. Civ. R. 11(a)(1) (1994)). That provision, we found, both
confirmed that "the local rules do not accord a noncompliant motion
any force or effect," id. at 225, and provided an "explicit[]
warn[ing]" or "red flag[]" for litigants as to the inevitable
consequence of noncompliance, id. at 224. Eliminating any
"lingering doubt" as to the local rules' treatment of noncompliant
motions was the district court's statement in its order refusing
the noncompliant motion "that the old motion was dead and that a
new motion, having a new filing date, would be required." Id. at
225.
Here, in contrast, there is nothing in Puerto Rico's
local rules warning a litigant that an overlength motion or, for
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that matter, an otherwise noncompliant motion, such as a motion
that lacks page numbers or a motion that is not "stapled or
otherwise attached," D.P.R. Civ. R. 7(d), is to be given no tolling
effect whatsoever, even if initially accepted for filing. Nor did
the district court construe the local rules to require as much.
The district court's order striking Fontanillas's noncompliant
Rule 59(e) motion reads:
ORDER denying . . . Motion for Leave to File
motion in excess of pages allowed by local
rule [7(d)]. [Fontanillas's Rule 59(e)
motion, as well as her Rule 60(b) motion and
accompanying memorandum] are hereby stricken
from the record. Should the plaintiff wish to
re-file these motions, they must comply with
the local rules' page limit.
Nothing in this order implies that the motion was wholly without
effect during the period it sat, as in fact filed, under the
district court's consideration.
That said, Air Line Pilots did suggest in dicta that New
Hampshire's local rules may not have been dispositive to that
case's outcome. The Air Line Pilots court observed that the local
rule directing the clerk of court to refuse any noncompliant
filings was in tension with a then-current provision of the Federal
Rules of Civil Procedure--substantially identical to today's
Rule 5(d)(4)--which provided that "[t]he clerk shall not refuse to
accept for filing any paper presented for that purpose solely
because it is not presented in proper form as required by [the
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Federal Rules of Civil Procedure] or any local rules or practices."
Air Line Pilots, 26 F.3d at 227 n.7 (alteration in original)
(quoting Fed. R. Civ. P. 5(e) (1994)). Observing that the
appellant had waived any reliance on the federal rule, the court
nevertheless opined in dicta that this waiver was likely harmless
because the district court's endorsement of the clerk's refusal to
file the noncompliant motion "le[ft] the record in essentially the
same posture as though the motion had been received and then
stricken." Id. The court thus implied that, even had the
appellant successfully challenged New Hampshire's local rule, the
district court would have had authority to nullify the noncompliant
Rule 59(e) motion and that striking the motion from the record
would have been equivalent to doing so.
Whatever the force of this dicta, it was issued in the
context of a different jurisdictional question than the one we
face here. In Air Line Pilots, the appellant had not filed a
notice of appeal within 30 days of the district court's endorsement
of the clerk's refusal to file the noncompliant Rule 59(e) motion.
It was therefore immaterial whether that endorsement was itself an
"order disposing of," Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(4)(A), a Rule 59(e)
motion: even had we found it to be such an order, such that it--
rather than the underlying summary judgment order--triggered the
onset of the 30-day window for appeal, the appellant's notice of
appeal would have been untimely regardless. Accordingly, the
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appellant in Air Line Pilots relied instead on the argument that
a later-filed compliant motion could relate back to the date of a
timely but noncompliant motion that had not become part of the
record, and it was this argument that Air Line Pilots rejected.
We need not determine, then, whether Air Line Pilots'
rejection of that argument controls where, as here, there is no
local rule providing that a noncompliant motion is a nullity or
indeed where the district court specifically invites re-filing
after striking a noncompliant motion. Cf. Lexon Ins. Co. v. Naser,
781 F.3d 335, 339–40 (6th Cir. 2015) (an invited revision of a
timely but noncompliant Rule 59(e) motion related back to the
filing date of the original, noncompliant motion, even though that
original motion had been stricken from the record). Even assuming
that it does, the district court's order rejecting Fontanillas's
Rule 59(e) motion for its noncompliance with the local rules was
an "order disposing of" that motion, Fed. R. App. P.
4(a)(4)(A)(iv), notwithstanding the fact that the order
"dispos[ed] of" the Rule 59(e) motion by, in particular, striking
it from the record. Interpreting the order not as a disposition
of a botched motion but rather as some sort of incantation that
not only voided the noncompliant Rule 59(e) motion's future effects
but also conclusively established that the motion had never existed
in the first place would render the order striking that nonexistent
motion a logical incongruity and, more importantly, would allow
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metaphysical niceties to deprive the parties of a resolution on
the merits. See Krupski v. Costa Crociere S. p. A., 560 U.S. 538,
550 (2010) (describing "the preference expressed in the Federal
Rules of Civil Procedure in general . . . for resolving disputes
on their merits").6
We therefore hold that, at least barring any sort of
contrary contextual indicators in the local rules or in the
district court's interpretation of those rules, a district court's
order striking a Rule 59(e) motion from the record for
noncompliance with local rules is an order disposing of that
motion, such that the order's entry represents the beginning of
the 30-day window for appealing the judgment that forms the
underlying subject of the Rule 59(e) motion. Therefore,
Fontanillas's noncompliant Rule 59(e) motion of December 16, 2014,
tolled the onset of the 30-day window for appeal of the attorneys'
fees award until the district court disposed of that motion by
striking it from the record on January 23, 2015. As a result,
6
We recognize that the Sixth Circuit's opinion in Lexon
Insurance Co. v. Naser, 781 F.3d 335 (6th Cir. 2015), declined to
treat a district court's order striking a noncompliant Rule 59(e)
motion as an order "disposing of" that motion where the order
invited re-filing and so "lacked the requirements of finality
integral to an order 'disposing of' a motion," id. at 339. Lexon,
however, rejected the proposition that we here assume to be true
--that even an expressly invited revision of a timely but
noncompliant motion that has been struck from the record does not
relate back to the date of the original, timely motion, see id. at
339–40--so that case's persuasive force is correspondingly
attenuated.
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Fontanillas's February 23, 2015, notice of appeal as to the fees
award was timely filed, and, our jurisdiction assured, we may now
turn to the merits of that appeal.
2. Merits
The default rule in American litigation is that all
litigants must pay their own attorneys' fees. See Christiansburg
Garment Co. v. EEOC, 434 U.S. 412, 415 (1978). Title VII, however,
overrides the default by expressly providing that "[i]n any action
or proceeding under [Title VII] the court, in its discretion, may
allow the prevailing party . . . a reasonable attorney's fee
(including expert fees) as part of the costs." 42 U.S.C.
§ 2000e-5(k). Fontanillas does not dispute that the defendants
were the "prevailing part[ies]," id., in her discrimination suit.
Therefore, in line with the text of Title VII, we ask whether the
district court acted within its discretion in awarding attorneys'
fees to the prevailing defendants. See EEOC v. Caribe Hilton
Int'l, 821 F.2d 74, 76 (1st Cir. 1987) (per curiam).
The Supreme Court has provided specific guidance as to
"what standard should inform a district court's discretion in
deciding whether to award attorney's fees to a successful defendant
in a Title VII action." Christiansburg Garment Co., 434 U.S. at
417 (emphasis omitted). Because excessive generosity toward
prevailing defendants would "substantially add to the risks
inhering in most litigation and would undercut the efforts of
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Congress to promote the vigorous enforcement of the provisions of
Title VII" by discouraging private plaintiffs, "a plaintiff should
not be assessed his opponent's attorney's fees unless a court finds
that his claim was frivolous, unreasonable, or groundless, or that
the plaintiff continued to litigate after it clearly became so."
Id. at 422. Thus, "an award of fees in favor of a prevailing
plaintiff in a civil rights suit is 'the rule, whereas fee-shifting
in favor of a prevailing defendant is the exception.'" Lamboy-
Ortiz v. Ortiz-Vélez, 630 F.3d 228, 236 (1st Cir. 2010) (quoting
Casa Marie Hogar Geriatrico, Inc. v. Rivera-Santos, 38 F.3d 615,
618 (1st Cir. 1994)).
In finding that this case was such an exception, the
district court did not express the view that Fontanillas's suit
was frivolous when filed. See Fontanillas II, 59 F. Supp. 3d at
423. Rather, it determined that this case was among the "rare
occasions," Lamboy-Ortiz, 630 F.3d at 241, in which litigation
that was not necessarily frivolous at the outset continued past
the moment at which it became clear that the claims asserted were
"frivolous and without foundation," Fontanillas II, 59 F. Supp. 3d
at 425. That revelatory moment, according to the district court,
was the taking of Fontanillas's deposition testimony.7 Id.
7
Although Fontanillas's deposition on October 3 and 4, 2012,
was the point beyond which the district court found continued
litigation to be frivolous, the defendants requested fees only for
work done after December 17, 2012, the date of a letter they sent
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With the arguable exception of several beside-the-point
and underdeveloped assertions made in appealing the denial of her
Rule 60(b) motion, Fontanillas offers no challenge to the district
court on this point. Making no merits-based argument against the
district court's finding that her deposition testimony revealed
her suit to be frivolous, she simply warns against "the
understandable temptation to engage in post hoc reasoning by
concluding that, because a plaintiff did not ultimately prevail,
his action must have been unreasonable or without foundation."
Christiansburg Garment Co., 434 U.S. at 421–22. But Fontanillas
gives us no reason to think that the district court engaged in
such ex post thinking, as she does not even attempt to explain
why, viewed ex ante, her case appeared sufficiently well founded
to merit continued litigation following her deposition.
Certainly, Fontanillas contends generally that her case might have
prevailed had it not foundered on the district court's "harsh
application of a Local Rule that excluded [her] otherwise valid
evidence to controvert MBCD's allegedly uncontested facts," but
her appellate brief does not specifically reference a single piece
Fontanillas's counsel to point out the implications of
Fontanillas's deposition. The district court, then, used the date
of the letter rather than the dates of the deposition in
calculating the fees award. See Fontanillas II, 59 F. Supp. 3d at
426.
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of excluded evidence that would have strengthened her case, and we
have found none.
Instead, Fontanillas seems to argue that the district
court abused its discretion by impermissibly basing its fees award
in part on her conduct during discovery and not on the frivolity
of her claims or, alternatively, by using fee-shifting as a
substitute for sanctions. See Indep. Fed'n of Flight Attendants
v. Zipes, 491 U.S. 754, 761 (1989) ("[U]nless the plaintiff's
action is frivolous a district court cannot award fees to the
prevailing Title VII defendant."); Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(c)(5)(A)
(court may not impose monetary sanctions on a represented party
for advancing claims that are unwarranted by existing law). But
although the district court made passing reference to
Fontanillas's litigation conduct and other factors, such as her
refusal to voluntarily dismiss her federal claims against the
individual defendants, it is clear from the district court's
opinion that the basis for the fees award was its view that
"Fontanillas was duly apprised that her claims were devoid of any
merit" following her deposition and that she nonetheless
"continued to vexatiously and unreasonably litigate a claim that,
after the taking of her deposition, had clearly become frivolous
and without foundation." Fontanillas II, 59 F. Supp. 3d at 425.
Again eschewing any argument as to the non-frivolity of
her discrimination claims, Fontanillas next contests the notion
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that she sought to continue litigating, pointing to a voluntary
motion to dismiss with prejudice she submitted on October 7, 2013,
after the district court, having made a "perfunctory review" of
the defendants' summary judgment motion, had "forewarned [her] of
the possibility that her claims be summarily dismissed and that
attorney fees be awarded to the Defendants upon dismissal" if the
district court determined that those claims were frivolous. Id.
at 424. Fontanillas concedes that the district court acted within
its discretion in denying her motion to dismiss at that late stage,
but she argues that, in light of her willingness to accept a
dismissal with prejudice, it was an abuse of discretion to
determine that she acted inappropriately in continuing to litigate
the case after the district court had essentially refused to allow
her to surrender.
Assuming that we would ordinarily agree that a plaintiff
may not be saddled with her opponents' attorneys' fees for
continuing to litigate after her unconditional motion to
voluntarily dismiss with prejudice is denied, the problem for
Fontanillas is that she did not simply move to dismiss with
prejudice. Rather, she moved to dismiss "with prejudice and
without the imposition of costs, expenses or attorney's fees."
(Emphasis supplied.) In essence, Fontanillas told the district
court, "I will continue to litigate these frivolous claims unless
the defendants surrender any argument that my litigation of the
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claims to date has been frivolous." Cf. Fid. Guar. Mortg. Corp.
v. Reben, 809 F.2d 931, 937 (1st Cir. 1987) (plaintiff's "decision
to terminate an ill conceived and wrongly prosecuted law suit
cannot serve to limit the consequences of a course of action [she]
initiated and persistently followed"). The district court did not
abuse its discretion in finding that Fontanillas's conspicuously
conditional offer to discontinue litigation of claims it found to
be "frivolous, unreasonable, or groundless" was tantamount to
"continu[ing] to litigate" those claims. Christiansburg Garment
Co., 434 U.S. at 422.
Having thus failed to demonstrate any abuse of
discretion, Fontanillas mounts an alternative attack on the fees
award, arguing that at least a portion of the award in MBCD's favor
is barred as a matter of law by the Supreme Court's decision in
Kay v. Ehrler, 499 U.S. 432 (1991), which held that pro se
litigants, including attorneys who represent themselves, cannot
seek attorneys' fees under the Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Awards
Act of 1976, see id. at 437–38. Because one of the two attorneys
representing MBCD in this litigation, Rosangela Sanfilippo-Resumil
("Sanfilippo"), was "a salaried associate of . . . MBCD,"
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Fontanillas argues, "MBCD was representing itself" through
Sanfilippo and so has no claim to compensation for her work.8
This argument fails. Sanfilippo was not among the
individual named MBCD defendants, and as for Fontanillas's
argument that Sanfilippo's status as an MBCD employee rendered
MBCD a pro se litigant in this case, Kay itself provides that "an
organization is not comparable to a pro se [individual] litigant
because the organization is always represented by counsel, whether
in-house or pro bono, and thus, there is always an attorney-client
relationship." Id. at 436 n.7. Accordingly, every circuit we
know to have considered the issue has determined that Kay does not
prohibit the award of fees to an attorney who represents his or
her own law firm. See Treasurer, Trs. of Drury Indus., Inc. Health
Care Plan & Tr. v. Goding, 692 F.3d 888, 897–98 (8th Cir. 2012)
(fees under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act); Baker &
Hostetler LLP v. U.S. Dep't of Commerce, 473 F.3d 312, 315 (D.C.
Cir. 2006) (fees under the Freedom of Information Act); Bond v.
Blum, 317 F.3d 385, 398–400 (4th Cir. 2003) (fees under the
Copyright Act), abrogated on other grounds by Kirtsaeng v. John
Wiley & Sons, Inc., 136 S. Ct. 1979, 1983 (2016); cf. also Gold,
Weems, Bruser, Sues & Rundell v. Metal Sales Mfg. Corp., 236 F.3d
8 Of the $53,662.50 in attorneys' fees awarded to the
defendants, $49,500.00 was attributable to Sanfilippo's work.
Fontanillas II, 59 F. Supp. 3d at 427.
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214, 218–19 (5th Cir. 2000) (relying on Kay to find that a law
firm litigant may collect attorneys' fees for its employees' work
under a Louisiana state statute). We agree with our sister
circuits' straightforward reading of Kay and see no reason,
moreover, not to apply Kay's generally applicable reasoning in the
Title VII context. We therefore hold that MBCD was not prohibited
as a matter of law from seeking attorneys' fees for the work
Sanfilippo contributed to this litigation.
Having considered and rejected all of Fontanillas's
arguments to the contrary, we hold that the district court acted
within its discretion in awarding attorneys' fees to the prevailing
defendants.9 And in light of that determination, we further hold
that the district court acted within its discretion in declining
to overturn that fees award in response to Fontanillas's Rule 59(e)
motion for consideration. Despite our ruling here, however, we
sound a reminder that "decisions to grant defendants their fees"
9 Aside from her categorical challenge to the portion of the
fees award corresponding to Sanfilippo's work--a challenge we have
now rejected--Fontanillas does not appear to challenge the
district court's calculation of the amount owed. She does vaguely
insinuate that Sanfilippo "never billed the firm nor was paid by
them" and that the fees award therefore does not accurately
represent the defendants' legal expenses. Beyond the patent
incredibility of Fontanillas's unsupported suggestion that
Sanfilippo was not being compensated for her work on behalf of
MBCD, Fontanillas offers no developed argument as to why the
district court erred in coming to the opposite conclusion. She
has therefore waived any argument to that effect. See United
States v. Zannino, 895 F.2d 1, 17 (1st Cir. 1990).
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in the Title VII context "are, and should be, rare." Tang v. State
of R.I., Dep't of Elderly Affairs, 163 F.3d 7, 13 (1st Cir. 1998).
While "one relevant factor" in determining whether a prevailing
defendant is entitled to attorneys' fees is whether the plaintiff
has managed to put forward a prima facie case of discrimination,
Foster v. Mydas Assocs., Inc., 943 F.2d 139, 144 (1st Cir. 1991),
the mere fact that a plaintiff fails to do so on summary judgment
does not imply that the plaintiff's decision to continue litigation
up to the summary judgment stage has been "frivolous, unreasonable,
or groundless," Christiansburg Garment Co., 434 U.S. at 422.
Indeed, this court on occasion reverses grants of summary judgment
to defendants in discrimination cases. See, e.g., Burns v.
Johnson, No. 15-1982, 2016 WL 3675157, at *1 (1st Cir. July 11,
2016); Reyes-Orta v. P.R. Highway & Transp. Auth., 811 F.3d 67, 70
(1st Cir. 2016); Soto-Feliciano v. Villa Cofresí Hotels, Inc., 779
F.3d 19, 22 (1st Cir. 2015); García-González v. Puig-Morales, 761
F.3d 81, 84 (1st Cir. 2014); Acevedo-Parrilla v. Novartis Ex-Lax,
Inc., 696 F.3d 128, 131 (1st Cir. 2012). In this particular case,
the district court expressly acknowledged the need for "[g]reat
caution" in making awards of this type. Fontanillas II, 59 F.
Supp. 3d at 423 (alteration in original) (quoting Lamboy-Ortiz,
630 F.3d at 241). And, as we have noted, Fontanillas does not
offer any substantive challenge to the district court's
determination that her deposition testimony revealed her claims to
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be frivolous. We can therefore affirm the award as within the
district court's discretion without in any way implying that the
standard for making such awards is at all loosened.
C. Denial of Relief from Summary Judgment
Finally, Fontanillas contends that the district court
erred in declining to grant her Rule 60(b) motion for relief from
the summary judgment order issued in the defendants' favor.10 This
claim, argued in cursory fashion, is meritless. "[R]elief under
Rule 60(b) is extraordinary in nature and . . . motions invoking
that rule should be granted sparingly." Rivera-Velázquez v.
Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection & Ins. Co., 750 F.3d 1, 3 (1st
Cir. 2014) (quoting Karak v. Bursaw Oil Corp., 288 F.3d 15, 19
(1st Cir. 2002)). Moreover, we review a district court's decision
10
The district court ruled on Fontanillas's Rule 60(b) motion
after she had already filed a notice of appeal in this court.
Typically, "[t]he filing of a notice of appeal is an event of
jurisdictional significance--it confers jurisdiction on the court
of appeals and divests the district court of its control over those
aspects of the case involved in the appeal." Griggs v. Provident
Consumer Disc. Co., 459 U.S. 56, 58 (1982) (per curiam). Under
the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, however, a notice of
appeal filed while a Rule 60(b) motion is outstanding in the
district court "becomes effective" only once that motion is
resolved. Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(4)(B)(i); see also Fed. R. App. P.
4(a)(4) advisory committee's note to 1993 amendment ("A notice [of
appeal] filed . . . after the filing of a motion [such as a Rule
60(b) motion] but before disposition of the motion is, in effect,
suspended until the motion is disposed of . . . ."). The district
court therefore acted within its jurisdiction in denying
Fontanillas's Rule 60(b) motion and, consequently, we have
jurisdiction over Fontanillas's properly noticed, see Fed. R. App.
P. 4(a)(4)(B)(ii), appeal of that denial.
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to grant or withhold such exceptional relief for abuse of
discretion, see id. at 4, "revers[ing] only if it plainly appears
that the court below committed a meaningful error of judgment,"
West v. Bell Helicopter Textron, Inc., 803 F.3d 56, 66 (1st Cir.
2015) (quoting Anderson v. Cryovac, Inc., 862 F.2d 910, 923 (1st
Cir. 1988)).
Rule 60(b) allows a court to "relieve a party . . . from
a final judgment, order, or proceeding" for a number of specified
reasons. Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b). Among those reasons are
"fraud . . . , misrepresentation, or misconduct by an opposing
party," id. 60(b)(3), and "mistake," id. 60(b)(1). Fontanillas
argues that such circumstances arose in her case. The district
court disagreed, see Fontanillas III, 136 F. Supp. 3d at 157–60,
and we see no error, meaningful or otherwise, in its judgment.
As for fraud, misrepresentation, or misconduct under
Rule 60(b)(3), Fontanillas pointed below to a number of supposedly
bad-faith factual denials and supposedly perjured statements made
by the defendants during the course of litigation. The district
court found that, even if Fontanillas had successfully adduced the
requisite clear and convincing evidence of her opponents'
misconduct, see Anderson, 862 F.2d at 926, she had not shown how
any such misconduct had substantially inhibited her from "fully
and fairly preparing her case," Fontanillas III, 136 F. Supp. 3d
at 158; see also Karak, 288 F.3d at 21–22 ("When a party is capable
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of fully and fairly preparing and presenting his case
notwithstanding the adverse party's arguable misconduct, the trial
court is free to deny relief under Rule 60(b)(3)."). She makes no
effort at such a showing on appeal, and so she has waived the
opportunity to do so. See Karak, 288 F.3d at 21 (burden is on
movant to demonstrate that alleged misconduct substantially
interfered with the movant's ability to prepare the case).11
As for mistake under Rule 60(b)(1), Fontanillas pointed
to a laundry list of alleged errors the district court made in its
admission and consideration of certain evidence and in its
application of certain legal principles.12 The district court,
however, understood Fontanillas simply to be "rehash[ing]
11Fontanillas also briefly suggests that relief is warranted
under Rule 60(d)(3), which permits a court to "set aside a judgment
for fraud on the court." Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(d)(3). Assuming that
Fontanillas has not waived this claim for lack of development, she
has failed to make any demonstration that Rule 60(d)(3)'s
requirement of "an unconscionable scheme or the most egregious
conduct designed to corrupt the judicial process" has been
satisfied here. Irving v. Town of Camden, No. 12-1850, 2013 WL
7137518, at *1 (1st Cir. Apr. 17, 2013) (quoting Roger Edwards,
LLC v. Fiddes & Son Ltd., 427 F.3d 129, 133 (1st Cir. 2005)).
12Before the district court, Fontanillas suggested that her
claims of judicial mistake also provided grounds for relief under
Rule 60(d)(1), which permits a court to "entertain an independent
action to relieve a party from a judgment, order, or proceeding."
Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(d)(1). She does not cite this provision on
appeal, and it would be unavailing in any event, as she has not
sufficiently argued the sort of "grave miscarriage of justice"
that would justify a Rule 60(d) action. LinkCo, Inc. v. Naoyuki
Akikusa, 367 F. App'x 180, 182 (2d Cir. 2010) (unpublished opinion)
(quoting United States v. Beggerly, 524 U.S. 38, 47 (1998)).
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arguments from her opposition to the motion for summary judgment,
and alternatively, advanc[ing] theories that could have been set
forth for the court's consideration a[t] that procedural
juncture." Fontanillas III, 136 F. Supp. 3d at 159. While that
observation alone provided valid grounds for the district court to
deny extraordinary relief under Rule 60(b), we further observe
that this circuit does not understand Rule 60(b)(1)'s reference to
"mistake" to include a district court's mistaken ruling on a point
of law. See Hoult v. Hoult, 57 F.3d 1, 5 (1st Cir. 1995); Silk v.
Sandoval, 435 F.2d 1266, 1268 (1st Cir. 1971) (rejecting an
interpretation of Rule 60(b)(1) that would cause it to overlap
with a movant's ability to correct legal error through a Rule 59(e)
motion for reconsideration).
Finding no merit in any of Fontanillas's underdeveloped
claims under Rule 60,13 we affirm the district court's rejection
of those claims.
III. Conclusion
Finding that Fontanillas has failed to show that the
district court abused its discretion in holding her to the local
rules' ordinary page limits, in awarding attorneys' fees to the
prevailing defendants, or in rejecting her motions to set aside
13 Fontanillas makes no argument that the district court
improperly rejected her additional request for relief under the
catch-all provision of Rule 60(b)(6), see Fontanillas III, 136 F.
Supp. 3d at 159–60, so we deem that request abandoned.
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the summary judgment order and the fees award, we affirm. Costs
to defendants.
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