PHILADELPHIA – A federal judge has granted a motion to quash six subpoenas in a racial discrimination, employment discrimination and hostile work environment case filed by a Black engineer at Temple University.
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania Judge Chad F. Kenney issued a decision on Feb. 24, granting a motion from plaintiff Stephen Branch to quash the desired subpoenas, in an action he filed against defendants Temple University, Sean Ounan and Sharon Boyle.
Branch, a Roving Engineer employed by Temple University for more than 15 years, says he was unjustly terminated on Jan. 29, 2020, after years of enduring discriminatory and disparate treatment because of his race, by defendant Ounan and other Caucasian engineering supervisors.
Branch filed his complaint in May 2020 and it was responded to the following August, where the defendants claimed that Branch was not making his required building rounds “as evidenced by his not signing log books,” and “defendant has security video footage of plaintiff getting into his car, driving off campus and then returning several hours later, shortly before he clocked out at the end of the shift.”
“Neither party outlined a discovery plan or brought issues to the Court’s attention. It was submitted as a straightforward employment discrimination case,” Kenney said.
“A scheduling order was issued, which closed fact discovery on Dec. 21, 2020 and expert discovery on Feb. 19, and the Court later approved the parties’ stipulation to complete fact discovery up through Feb. 19, on what seemed still to be a basic employment case with a straightforward and very pointed defense – that is, the defendant was walking off the job and then returning to clock in and we have it on film.”
The day before the discovery deadline, defense counsel filed a motion to extend discovery deadlines according to a stipulated schedule, moving the discovery until March 22. The motion represented that no depositions had yet been taken.
“This was a big red flag for a simple case and the other representations in the motion demonstrated to the Court that counsel were exasperated with each other and that the case was off schedule and off track,” Kenney stated.
“The Court denied the motion without prejudice and ordered the parties essentially to meet, try to get the case on track and file a status report that ‘should clearly outline what discovery is outstanding and the dates of any remaining depositions.”
Kenney explained there did not appear much more to do in discovery as the depositions planned for that week appeared to have been taken and the Court, “wanting to be reasonable and to accommodate counsel, essentially granted the request for extension without the need for it to further inquire based on the representations.”
“[Defense firm] Stradley though, instead of following the plan of the joint status report presumably outlining clearly the remaining discovery as required by the court, unilaterally moved the goalposts. For the first time in this litigation, through the subpoenas and the motion to quash, the Court is hearing that Stradley wants to find out if Mr. Branch was working for other employers after he clocked in with Temple,” Kenney said.
“Fair enough, if within a reasonable time frame, and if Stradley had indicated in the joint status report that it was taking this additional luxury of 30 days granted it to wrap up discovery to pursue six subpoenas of six former employers of Mr. Branch going all the way back to 2012.”
Kenney stated that this course of action was” not only overbroad, it is vexatious, harassing and exasperating to the litigants, to the attorneys, to the third parties and to the Court which is again diving back into this record and going over representations, dates, and timelines and now writing an opinion.”
“[Plaintiff counsel] was required to file this motion to quash subpoenas that any intellectually honest review of this record would indicate that are outrageously broad and almost entirely irrelevant from the beginning, and draws into question whether Stradley has decided to take this strident, cumbersome approach on all these employee cases and what is the wisdom in doing so,” Kenney said.
“The motion to quash these six subpoenas is granted. $500 in attorneys’ fees for its efforts in trying to accommodate Stradley on the subpoenaed information and for time in preparing and filing this petition is awarded to the [plaintiff] Karpf firm to be paid by the [defense] Stradley firm within 14 days.”
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania case 2:20-cv-02323
From the Pennsylvania Record: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com