Judge Cherol J. Nellon, Case Number: 22STCV30914, Date: 2024-10-01 Tentative Ruling

Judge: Cherol J. Nellon, Case: 22STCV30914, Date: 2024-10-01 Tentative Ruling

Case Number: 22STCV30914 Hearing Date: October 1, 2024 Dept: 14

Case Background

This is an action for violations of the FEHA and the Labor Code, breach of contract, wrongful termination, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Plaintiff alleges that while she was employed as a donor processing associate, Plaintiff suffered discrimination, harassment, and retaliation due to her age, race, sexual orientation, and gender.

On September 21, 2022, Plaintiff Myesha Jones filed her Complaint against Defendants Biomat USA, Inc. (Biomat) and Grifols USA, LLC (Grifols).

On June 10, 2024, Defendants filed this motion for summary judgment.

On September 17, 2024, Plaintiff filed an opposition.

Instant Pleading

Defendants move for summary judgment or adjudication.

Decision

The motion for summary judgment filed by Defendants Biomat and Grifols is DENIED.

Discussion

Over the past several years, various courts have noticed certain problematic uses of separate statements. The Court of Appeal has recently urged trial courts to take a more active approach in policing separate statements. (See Beltran v. Hard Rock Hotel Licensing, Inc. (2023) 97 Cal.App.5^th 865, 874-876.) And because the separate statement enables the court to focus its deliberations, proper preparation of the separate statement is critical to court function.

Both parties’ separate statements do not comply with Cal. Rules of Court, Rule 3.1350. Rule 3.1350. Subdivision (d) of that Rule contemplates that a party moving for summary judgment will identify every material fact supporting the motion in numerical sequence. Instead, Defendants used both the format prescribed for summary judgment and summary adjudication, one after the other. Although the summary judgment section numbers each fact in sequence from one through 43, it was not in a two-column format. The summary adjudication format begins directly after with Issue No. 1, which is supported by Fact No. 3. The next twelve issues are also supported by Fact No. 3 because issues 2-12 are all the same issue: whether Grifols employed Plaintiff. The facts then leap to Facts 21-31 for Issue numbers 14 and 15. The remainder of the separate statement follows a similar pattern.

The numbers in the opening separate statement should have proceeded in sequence all the way through the statement; if one fact applied to multiple issues, it should have been set forth once, then incorporated by reference under the heading of any subsequent issue. Although the facts referenced in the summary adjudication portion of the separate statement are identical to the facts in the summary judgment section, the one-column format in the summary judgment section caused Plaintiff to only respond to the summary adjudication section of the separate statement, leaving the summary judgment section without responses. Because the same facts are repeated over and over again in the opening separate statement, Plaintiff provided identical responses to the facts for 32 issues, leaving the Court with a 58-page response separate statement that is unusable because the Court cannot easily locate the evidence referenced in a particular fact without searching first for the issue containing that fact.

Both separate statements also contain legal conclusions which do not belong in a separate statement. For example, Fact No. 3 states that Grifols never employed Plaintiff. The fact is supported by paragraph 12 of the Trask Declaration, which merely repeats that Grifols never employed Plaintiff. However, both the fact stated in the separate statement and the supporting evidence are legal conclusions. Plaintiff in response makes a legal argument that Grifols was a joint employer. Rather than cite any supporting evidence, Plaintiff argues that the Laird factors support a finding that Grifols was a joint employer. Argument and legal conclusions do not belong in a separate statement.

The Court also notes that Plaintiff submitted three volumes of evidence, each consisting of hundreds of pages, totaling 1,314 pages of evidence. The evidence consists largely of deposition transcripts which were submitted in their entirety. The Court may ignore evidence not disclosed in the separate statement and cannot be expected to address every piece of evidence contained in a voluminous record which the party has not relied on or directed the Court to consider. (See Eddins v. Redstone (2005) 134 Cal.App.4th 290, 318.)

Here, Plaintiff’s separate statement only cites the same handful of deposition excerpts and exhibits. Thus, about 1,000 pages of evidence were not pertinent to Plaintiff’s opposition because the evidence was not referenced in the separate statement. Each volume of evidence begins with the same table of contents, which does not state which volume contains which exhibits or which page numbers the exhibits begin on. Plaintiff’s separate statement, although it cites to lines and paragraphs of depositions and declarations, does not contain page numbers. The evidence is unusable and would require the Court to sift through a voluminous record to consider all the evidence as it is required to do under Code Civ. Proc., section 437c(c).

The Court is not obliged to reconstitute the separate statements itself, or to go diving in the other papers looking for ways to reach a ruling. (See San Diego Watercrafts, Inc. v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. (2002) 102 Cal.App.4^th 308, 313-316.)

Here, both parties have failed to supply the court with separate statements it can properly use. Therefore, the motion for summary judgment is DENIED.

Conclusion

The motion for summary judgment filed by Defendants Biomat and Grifols is DENIED.