Opinion
No. 95 C 5425
August 5, 2003
ORDER
Plaintiff Sally Naeem sued her former employer McKesson Drug Company ("McKesson"), as well as two individual defendants, alleging that she was harassed and discriminated against by the company after she rejected her supervisor's sexual advances. In Count I, she alleged that McKesson violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e, et seq., by denying her a promotion in retaliation for rejecting the advances of her supervisor, Gerald Moultry, and for complaining about those advances. In Count II, she brought another Title VII claim, alleging that McKesson terminated her in retaliation for filing an EEOC charge regarding the earlier promotion denial. In Count III, she raised a claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress arising from McKesson's treatment of her and eventual termination. The court granted summary judgment in favor of McKesson on Count II, but Naeem proceeded to trial on Counts I and III. At trial, Naeem prevailed on her intentional infliction of emotional distress claim against McKesson and one of the individual defendants, but lost on her claim that she was denied the promotion in retaliation for complaining about sexual harassment. After trial, Naeem filed a motion asking the court to reconsider its order granting summary judgment against her on Count II, her termination claim, in light of the Seventh Circuit's decision in Stone v. Indianapolis Public Utilities Division, 281 F.3d 640 (7th Cir. 2002). The court granted the motion for reconsideration, finding that Stone "create[d] a new rule for the adjudication of retaliation cases . . . ." 281 F.3d at 644. McKesson then filed a renewed motion for summary judgment regarding the termination claim, arguing that Naeem cannot meet her burden of proof under Stone. As explained below, the court denies McKesson's renewed motion for summary judgment on the termination claim.
To the extent Naeem claimed in Count I that the promotion denial was part of a pattern of discrimination against women at McKesson, the court granted summary judgment in favor of McKesson because that portion of Count I exceeded the scope of Naeem's EEOC charges. Naeem v. McKesson Drug Co., Inc., No. 95 C 5425, 2000 WL 1720965, at *2 (N.D. Ill. Nov. 16, 2000), reconsideration granted on other grounds by Naeem v. McKesson Drug Co., Inc., No. 95 C 5425, 2002 WL 975318 (N.D. Ill. May 1, 2002).
Summary judgment is appropriate only if "the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law." Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c). The moving party, McKesson in this case, has the initial burden of proving that no genuine issue of material fact exists. Matsushita Elec. Indust. Co., Ltd. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574, 586 (1986). Here, McKesson has failed to meet its initial burden by failing to file a properly supported motion for summary judgment.
Local Rule 56.1(a) requires the movant to file a statement of uncontested material facts which support the movant's position that he is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. N.D. Ill. L.R. 56.1(a)(3). "This requirement significantly benefits the court, whose role in ruling on a motion for summary judgment `is not to sift through the evidence.' Further, this requirement serves the purpose of "alert[ing] the court to precisely what factual questions are in dispute and point[ing] the court to the specific evidence in the record that supports a party's position on each of the questions.'" Atkins v. Potter, No. 01 C 4029, 2002 WL 1803755, at *1 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 2, 2002) (quoting Waldridge v. Am. Hoechst Corp., 24 F.3d 918, 920, 923 (7th Cir. 1994)).
McKesson opted to incorporate by reference the Local Rule 56.1(a) statement it filed in support of its original motion for summary judgment. The problem with that choice is that the facts McKesson relies on in support of its current motion are not facts from its original Local Rule 56.1(a) statement, but rather facts that were elicited at trial. Specifically, McKesson argues that based on the "undisputed evidence," Naeem cannot prove that she received less favorable treatment than a similarly situated employee who did not engage in protected activity, and thus cannot set forth a prima facie case of retaliation. The so-called undisputed evidence is evidence relating to Don Gonzalez, evidently the only person similariy situated to Naeem. There are no facts relating to Gonzalez in McKesson's original Local Rule 56.1(a) statement, however. Rather, every factual citation in McKesson's brief is a citation to trial transcripts. Had McKesson filed a supplemental statement of material facts (to which Naeem would have the opportunity to respond), it would have been proper to support the statement of facts with citations to the trial record. In other words, McKesson's reliance on evidence elicited at trial is not the problem — it is McKesson's failure to submit a Local Rule 56.1(a) statement that includes all the facts on which McKesson's motion for summary judgment relies. "Failure to submit such a statement constitutes grounds for denial of the motion." ND. Ill. L.R. 56.1(a); Makula v. Vill. of Schiller Park, No. 95 C 2400, 1997 WL 285546, at *3-4 (N.D. Ill. May 20, 1997) (denying summary judgment for failure to file L.R. 12(m) statement, now known as a L.R. 56.1 statement). McKesson's renewed motion for summary judgment is therefore denied for failure to submit a Local Rule 56.1(a) statement that includes the facts on which the motion relies.