Mayes v. Potter

FILED
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
February 6, 2008
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
Elisabeth A. Shumaker
Clerk of Court
FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT
THOMAS S. MAYES,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v. No. 07-1256
(D.C. No. 03-cv-386-BNB-PAC)
JOHN E. POTTER, U.S. Postal (D. Colo.)
Service,
Defendant-Appellee.
ORDER AND JUDGMENT *
Before KELLY, McKAY, and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges.
Mr. Thomas Mayes proceeds pro se and in forma pauperis in this court as
he did in the district court. He appeals from the district court’s entry of judgment
on a jury verdict in favor of Mr. John E. Potter, Postmaster of the United States
Postal Service (hereafter referred to as “defendant” or the “Postal Service”), on
*
After examining the briefs and appellate record, this panel has determined
unanimously that oral argument would not materially assist the determination of
this appeal. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2); 10th Cir. R. 34.1(G). The case is
therefore ordered submitted without oral argument. This order and judgment is
not binding precedent, except under the doctrines of law of the case, res judicata,
and collateral estoppel. It may be cited, however, for its persuasive value
consistent with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 and 10th Cir. R. 32.1.
Mr. Mayes’s claim of disability discrimination under the Rehabilitation Act of
1973, 29 U.S.C. §§ 791, 794. We affirm.
I. Factual Background
Mr. Mayes began working for the Postal Service in 1985, primarily as a
mail handler on the day shift at the General Mail Facility in Denver, Colorado.
At the time relevant to this case, he had a temporary position as an acting
supervisor in the Business Mail Entry Unit. On January 3, 2002, he met with his
supervisor, Ms. Mona Tebeau, who criticized his performance as a supervisor.
Mr. Mayes then took voluntary leave from January 5 to May 31, 2002, allegedly
due to stress he experienced as a result of the meeting with Ms. Tebeau. When
Mr. Mayes returned to work on May 31, his temporary supervisory position had
ended, and he was assigned to work repairing damaged mail on the overnight
shift. He eventually resigned on June 21, 2002, allegedly due to continued
harassment by Ms. Tebeau.
While he was on leave, Mr. Mayes met with a counselor in the Postal
Service’s Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) office and filed a complaint of
employment discrimination with the Postal Service. The complaint’s sole
allegation concerned the January 3 meeting with Ms. Tebeau. Mr. Mayes wrote:
“I was threatened, intimidated, belittled and treated with no dignity or respect. I
am the only black male, religiously active, disabled supervisor (acting) working
for Ms. Tebeau and the only one treated in this manner.” R., Vol. I, Doc. 49,
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Ex. 1 of Ex. A-3. The EEO dismissed the complaint on July 17, 2002, for failure
to state a claim, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s Office of
Federal Operations affirmed the dismissal.
II. Procedural History
Mr. Mayes filed this lawsuit on March 5, 2003. The parties consented to
the jurisdiction of a magistrate judge, who construed Mr. Mayes’s amended
complaint as asserting four substantive claims: (1) discrimination based on sex
and disability (tarsal tunnel syndrome, carpal tunnel syndrome, and a rotator cuff
injury) arising from the January 3 “verbal assault,” R., Vol. I, Doc. 19,
unnumbered third page; (2) harassment via United States mail in the form of
threatening correspondence while Mr. Mayes was in treatment for depression and
anxiety allegedly caused by the January 3 meeting; (3) continued harassment via
(a) false statements to the United States Department of Labor to prevent worker
compensation payments to him and (b) reassignment to Ms. Tebeau, who then
changed his shift and continued her harassment; and (4) constructive discharge
because Mr. Mayes had resigned in order “to maintain [his] mental stability when
no action was taken and the harassment continued,” id., unnumbered fourth page.
The parties filed a series of summary judgment motions. The district court
granted summary judgment to defendant on the first claim, concluding that to the
extent the claim concerned gender discrimination under Title VII, there was no
evidence of an adverse employment action resulting from the January 3 meeting.
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The court also construed the first claim as one of disability discrimination under
the Rehabilitation Act and denied summary judgment to both parties. As to the
second, third, and fourth claims, the district court concluded that it lacked subject
matter jurisdiction because Mr. Mayes had failed to exhaust his administrative
remedies; his single administrative claim concerned only the January 3 meeting,
not any of the later allegations of discrimination.
Mr. Mayes filed a motion for reconsideration of the order granting
summary judgment to defendant on the second, third, and fourth claims, arguing
that he had exhausted his administrative remedies because the later instances of
discrimination and harassment were not separate and discrete acts but were
reasonably related to the alleged conduct complained of in his administrative
charge. The court treated the motion as one filed under Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b) and
denied it on the ground that Mr. Mayes could have presented his argument at the
time he filed his summary-judgment response but failed to do so.
The case proceeded to a jury trial solely on the Rehabilitation Act claim,
and the jury returned a verdict in favor of defendant. The court entered a
judgment on May 18, 2007, listing its earlier rulings on two of defendant’s
summary judgment motions separately from its recitation of the jury’s verdict,
which was quoted directly from the Verdict Form.
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III. Appellate Jurisdiction
Mr. Mayes filed a timely notice of appeal on June 15, 2007, in which he
specified that he was appealing from the “Jury Verdict of ‘No’, Plaintiff did not
prove he was discriminated against because of his Disability.” R., Vol. II,
Doc. 103. In his appellate brief, he raised two issues, that the district court erred
by (1) denying his Rule 60(b) motion with respect to the grant of summary
judgment to the Postal Service on his false-statement claim (claim three) and his
constructive discharge claim (claim four), and (2) denying the jury’s request to
see a transcript of an audio recording of the January 3 meeting and refusing to
give a jury instruction, regarding transcripts generally, that Mr. Mayes allegedly
proposed.
Defendant first maintains that because the timely notice of appeal identifies
only the jury’s verdict as the subject of the appeal, and because Mr. Mayes’s brief
was filed beyond the time permitted for filing a notice of appeal, this court lacks
jurisdiction to consider Mr. Mayes’s first claim of error concerning his
Rule 60(b) motion. We agree.
“Although we liberally construe pro se pleadings” and other papers,
Mr. Mayes’s “pro se status does not relieve him of the obligation to comply with
procedural rules.” Murray v. City of Tahlequah, 312 F.3d 1196, 1199 n.3
(10th Cir. 2002). Rule 3(c)(1)(B) of the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure
requires a notice of appeal to “designate the judgment, order, or part thereof
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being appealed.” “Rule 3’s dictates are jurisdictional in nature, and their
satisfaction is a prerequisite to appellate review.” Smith v. Barry, 502 U.S. 244,
248 (1992). It is true that “a notice of appeal that names the final judgment is
sufficient to support review of all earlier orders that merge in the final judgment.”
Cole v. Ruidoso Mun. Sch., 43 F.3d 1373, 1383 n.7 (10th Cir. 1994) (quotation
omitted). But in his notice of appeal, Mr. Mayes did not name the final
judgment. Instead, he designated only the jury’s verdict, which was a discrete
component of the final judgment, and he did not designate the court’s
interlocutory ruling on his Rule 60(b) motion. Thus, the notice of appeal does
not meet Rule 3(c)(1)(B)’s requirements as to the district court’s order denying
the Rule 60(b) motion.
A formal notice of appeal, however, is not the only document that can
confer appellate jurisdiction; a document such as a motion to proceed on appeal
without prepayment of fees (IFP motion), see Fleming v. Evans, 481 F.3d 1249,
1253-54 (10th Cir. 2007), or an appellate brief, see Smith, 502 U.S. at 249, can
serve as the functional equivalent of a notice of appeal if it is “filed within the
time specified by Rule 4 [of the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure and] gives
the notice required by Rule 3,” Smith, 502 U.S. at 248-49. Mr. Mayes filed both
an IFP motion and an opening brief, but his IFP motion identified only the
transcript-and-jury-instruction issue, and his brief was filed on August 24, 2007,
more than sixty days after the district court’s May 18 judgment and thus untimely
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if treated as a notice of appeal. See Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(1)(B) (establishing
sixty-day deadline for filing of notice of appeal when an officer of the United
States is a party). Thus, neither document can serve as a notice of appeal from
the district court’s interlocutory order denying Mr. Mayes’s Rule 60(b) motion.
Our jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, therefore, extends only to Mr. Mayes’s
appeal from the district court’s entry of judgment on the jury’s verdict.
IV. Merits
As to the sole issue over which we have jurisdiction, Mr. Mayes argues
only that “[d]efendant presented no argument as to the authenticity of the
recording and therefore had no grounds for withholding the transcript of the
recording in that the transcript was not presented as evidence. Jury should have
been provided with the requested transcript along with the instruction[.]” Aplt.
Br. at 3. 1
1
According to Mr. Mayes, he proposed the following jury instruction:
You will be given a transcript to use as a guide to help you follow as
you listen to the recording. The transcript is not evidence of what
was actually said or who said it. It is up to you to decide whether
the transcript correctly reflect[s] what was said and who said it. If
you notice any difference between what you heard on the recordings
and what you read in the transcript, you must rely on what you
heard, not what you read. And if after careful listening, you cannot
hear or understand certain parts of the recording, you must ignore the
transcript as far as those parts are concerned.
Aplt. Br. at 3.
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In response, defendant argues that the record is insufficient for our review
because there is no indication that a transcript of the audio recording ever existed
and no documentation of Mr. Mayes’s proposed jury instruction. We agree with
the latter point, 2 but the record contains what appears to be a transcript of the
recording attached to Mr. Mayes’s response to defendant’s first summary
judgment motion, see R., Vol. I, Doc. 34, seventh unlabeled attach. It is unclear
whether this transcript is authentic, accurate, or otherwise admissible under the
Federal Rules of Evidence. But as we explain, we need not resolve these matters.
Whether to admit a transcript of a recorded conversation lies within the
sound discretion of the trial court. See United States v. Devous, 764 F.2d 1349,
1354 (10th Cir. 1985). It appears from the courtroom minutes that the district
court orally denied the jury’s request to see a transcript of the audio recording.
See R., Vol. II, Doc. 97 at 1. Thus, a trial transcript containing the district
court’s oral ruling is necessary for appellate review of the court’s discretionary
decision. In its order granting Mr. Mayes leave to proceed in forma pauperis
(IFP) on appeal, the district court specifically ordered the court reporter to
“prepare for inclusion in the record on appeal an original and one copy of the
reporter’s transcript of the record of proceedings, if ordered by plaintiff,” and that
2
The record contains Defendant’s Objections to Plaintiff’s Proposed Jury
Instructions, R., Vol. II, Doc. 90, but not the proposed instructions, and our
review of the district court’s docket sheet shows no entry for Mr. Mayes’s
proposed instructions such that we might take judicial notice of them.
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the fee would be paid by the United States. R., Vol. II, Doc. 110 (emphasis
added); see also 28 U.S.C. § 753(f) (obligating United States to pay for transcript
furnished to appellant proceeding IFP on appeal). Mr. Mayes never ordered a
transcript, as is his duty as the appellant. See Fed. R. App. P. 10(b)(1); see also
10th Cir. R. 10.1(A)(1) (“The appellant must provide all portions of the transcript
necessary to give the court a complete and accurate record of the proceedings
related to the issues on appeal.”).
“An appellant’s failure to provide a necessary transcript entails more than
mere noncompliance with some useful but nonessential procedural admonition; it
raises an effective barrier to informed, substantive appellate review.” Morrison
Knudsen Corp. v. Fireman’s Fund Ins. Co., 175 F.3d 1221, 1238 (10th Cir. 1999)
(quotations omitted). Thus, we have held “on a number of occasions and in a
variety of settings that the lack of a required transcript leaves us with no
alternative but to affirm.” Id. (quotation omitted). Because Mr. Mayes failed to
provide the necessary trial transcript, we affirm the district court’s denial of the
jury’s request to see the transcript of the audio recording of the January 3
meeting due to an inadequate record.3 Consequently, whether or not the court
3
Even if we could overlook Mr. Mayes’s procedural missteps regarding the
trial transcript, his substantive argument regarding the transcript of the audio
recording appears to focus on the fact that the defendant did not introduce a
transcript of that recording into evidence. Even if a proper transcript existed, he
has not suggested a reason why the court should have granted the jury’s request
(continued...)
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erred in failing to give the jury instruction that Mr. Mayes allegedly proposed is
moot.
V.
The judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.
Entered for the Court
Monroe G. McKay
Circuit Judge
3
(...continued)
to see that transcript. Accordingly, we conclude in the alternative that
Mr. Mayes’s argument is inadequate and therefore the issue is waived. See Adler
v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 144 F.3d 664, 679 (10th Cir. 1998).
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