Ramos-Pena v. New Puerto Rico Marine Management, Inc.

[NOT FOR PUBLICATION–NOT TO BE CITED AS PRECEDENT]
United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 00-1228
JORGE W. RAMOS-PENA, ET AL.,
Plaintiffs, Appellants,
v.
NEW PUERTO RICO MARINE MANAGEMENT, INC.,
d/b/a NPR, INC., ET AL.,
Defendants, Appellees.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO
[Hon. Jaime Pieras, Jr., U.S. District Judge]
Before
Selya, Circuit Judge,
Campbell, Senior Circuit Judge,
and Stahl, Circuit Judge.
Jose R. Franco on brief for appellants.
Pedro J. Manzazno-Yates, Luis F. Colon-Conde and Fiddler,
Gonzalez & Rodriguez on brief and Motion for Summary Disposition
for appellees.
February 8, 2001
Per Curiam. Plaintiffs-appellants appeal from the
denial of their motion for reconsideration. That motion
asked the court to reconsider its denial of plaintiffs’
motion for an extension of time to submit their opposition
to defendants’ motion for summary judgment in this
employment discrimination case. The district court granted
the motion for summary judgment without considering
plaintiffs’ opposition and denied plaintiffs’ two motions
for reconsideration. This appeal is from the denial of
plaintiffs’ second motion for reconsideration.
I. Background
Plaintiffs-appellants are five former employees of
defendant, New Puerto Rico Marine Management, Inc., d/b/a
NPR, Inc. (“NPR”). All five were discharged from employment
with NPR as part of a reduction in force which defendants
maintain was required by a necessary restructuring of the
company following its transfer from public to private
ownership. Plaintiffs’ amended complaint included claims
that they had been discriminated against based on their age,
ethnicity and (in two cases) gender, in violation of the Age
Discrimination in Employment Act (“ADEA”) and Title VII of
the Equal Employment Opportunities Act, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e,
et seq. (“Title VII”).
On August 20, 1999, defendants served their motion
for summary judgment upon plaintiffs. Before the ten-day
deadline for opposing the motion had arrived, plaintiffs
filed a motion asking the court to hold “in abeyance” the
deadline for responding, to allow them time to obtain
previously-requested documents from defendants.
Interpreting the motion as pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(f),
the district court denied it, but set a new deadline of
October 15, 1999, for plaintiffs to file a response to the
summary judgment motion. In its order, the court found that
the documents that plaintiffs had been waiting for had been
produced by the date of the order (October 1, 1999). The
court stated that if plaintiffs failed to meet the October
15, 1999 deadline, “the Court will not consider his response
to Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment.” On October 15,
1999, plaintiffs filed a second request for an extension of
time, until November 1, 1999, to file their opposition to
the motion for summary judgment. The court denied the
extension and granted defendants’ motion for summary
judgment without considering plaintiffs’ opposition, which
was filed with the court on November 5, 1999.
In their first motion for reconsideration, filed
after the district court’s grant of defendants’ summary
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judgment motion, plaintiffs repeated the arguments they had
included in their opposition to the summary judgment motion.
They argued that the district court had erred in finding
that plaintiffs could not meet their prima facie burden of
proving discrimination in violation of the ADEA and Title
VII. They focused primarily on defendants’ failure to meet
their burden of demonstrating a legitimate, non-
discriminatory reason for the lay-offs. Specifically,
plaintiffs concentrated on the argument that there was no
evidence that NPR was in poor financial condition at the
time of the lay-offs. In its order denying the motion, the
district court did not address the merits of its decision
but, instead, stated that it would not consider plaintiffs’
arguments in opposition to summary judgment because of
plaintiffs’ failure to comply with the October 15, 1999
deadline.
In their second motion for reconsideration,
plaintiffs argued that the district court abused its
discretion in denying its request for an extension of the
October 15, 1999 deadline for filing its opposition to the
summary judgment motion. They argued that the time to
respond to the summary judgment motion was insufficient
because their attorney is a sole practitioner and the case
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is complex. Plaintiffs asked the court to consider the
arguments raised in their opposition to the motion for
summary judgment and in the first motion for
reconsideration. The district court denied the second
motion for reconsideration, without additional comment.
This appeal is from that denial only.
II. Discussion
Pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 6(b), the district court
“for cause shown may at any time in its discretion . . .
order the [time] period [for complying with court-imposed or
other deadlines] enlarged if request therefor is made before
the expiration of the period originally prescribed or as
extended by a previous order.” We “afford[] [district
courts] great leeway in granting or refusing enlargements
[under Rule 6(b)] and its decisions are reviewable only for
abuse of that discretion.” Maldonado-Denis v. Castillo-
Rodriguez, 23 F.3d 576, 584 (1st Cir. 1994). The reasoning
behind our deference is as follows:
This deference is grounded in common
sense. We deem it self-evident that
“appellate courts cannot too readily
agree to meddle in such case-management
decisions lest the trial court’s
authority is undermined and the systems
sputter.”
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Id. (citations omitted). With respect to a district court’s
rulings on pre-trial discovery matters, this court “will
intervene in such matters ‘only upon a clear showing of
manifest injustice, that is, where the lower court’s
discovery order was plainly wrong and resulted in
substantial prejudice to the aggrieved party.’” Rodriguez-
Cuervos v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 181 F.3d 15, 23 (1st Cir.
1999) (citations omitted).
This appeal is not from the order granting
defendant’s summary judgment motion. Instead, plaintiffs
have appealed only from the denial of the second motion for
reconsideration. A district court’s denial of a motion for
reconsideration is also reviewed deferentially.
An appellate court ought not to overturn
a trial court’s denial of a motion for
reconsideration unless a miscarriage of
justice is in prospect or the record
otherwise reveals a manifest abuse of
discretion.
Ruiz Rivera v. Riley, 209 F.3d 24, 27 (1st Cir. 2000).
Applying these deferential standards of review, we
conclude that the district court did not abuse its broad
discretion in denying the second motion for reconsideration.
Underlying that judgment is our determination that the
district court did not abuse its discretion under
Fed.R.Civ.P. 6(b) in denying plaintiffs’ request for a
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further extension of the deadline for filing their
opposition to defendants’ summary judgment motion.
Under Rule 56(c), an adverse party is entitled, at
a minimum, to ten days to respond to a summary judgment
motion. Delgado-Biaggi v. Air Transport Local 501, 112 F.3d
565, 567 (1st Cir. 1997). The plaintiffs had almost two
months to respond. The record reveals that the documents
that were the subject of plaintiffs’ Rule 56(f) motion were
delivered to plaintiffs on September 21, 1999. Therefore,
they still had twenty-four days from the date they received
those documents to prepare and file their opposition.
Notwithstanding that plaintiffs’ attorney is a sole
practitioner, the following principle applies:
“[m]ost attorneys are busy most of the
time and they must organize their work
so as to be able to meet the time
requirements of matters they are
handling or suffer the consequences.”
Mendez v. Banco Popular de Puerto Rico, 900 F.2d 4, 7 & n.3
(1st Cir. 1990)(quoting Pinero Schroeder v. Federal Nat’l
Mortgage Ass’n, 574 F.2d 1117, 1118 (1st Cir. 1978)(per
curiam)). There was no abuse of discretion in the district
court’s decision to enforce its October 15, 1999 deadline.
In determining that there was no abuse of
discretion by the district court, we also note that
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plaintiffs do not appear to have been prejudiced by the
district court’s refusal to consider their opposition.
Under the burden-shifting framework that applies to ADEA and
Title VII claims, the initial burden is on the plaintiff to
make a prima facie showing of discrimination. See Woodman v.
Haemonetics Corp., 51 F.3d 1087, 1091 (1st Cir. 1995). Only
if that initial burden is met by plaintiff does the burden
then shift to defendant to demonstrate a nondiscriminatory
reason for the challenged employment action. See id.Here, the district court granted summary judgment
on the ADEA and Title VII claims on the ground that
plaintiff could not meet its initial burden of making a
prima facie showing of discrimination. Therefore, it did
not reach the question of whether defendant had met its
burden of demonstrating a nondiscriminatory reason for the
lay-offs. In their opposition to summary judgment, however,
plaintiffs did not contest the material facts on which the
court relied in concluding that plaintiffs could not
establish a prima facie case. See United States District
Court for the District of Puerto Rico Local Rule 311(12).
Instead, plaintiffs argued that defendants could not meet
their burden of demonstrating a legitimate, non-
discriminatory reason for the discharge of plaintiffs.
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Because plaintiffs’ opposition argued that defendants had
not met their burden while the district court ruled that the
burden never shifted to defendants, plaintiffs were not
prejudiced by the district court’s denial of their motion
for reconsideration.
The district court’s order dated January 11, 2000,
denying plaintiffs’ Second Motion for Reconsideration, is
affirmed. See Loc. R. 27(c).
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