The Supreme Court yesterday seemed wary of creating a prescription for the admission of evidence in employment cases, with some justices expressing concern that to do so would create confusion and prolong trials, reports Law.com’s Laurel Newby.
Ellen Mendelsohn was laid off from her job at Sprint in Kansas City, Kan., at age 51, as part of a reduction-in-force initiative. She sued, claiming age discrimination. At trial she tried to call five former employees as witnesses to testify that they, too, had been fired as a result of age discrimination, though they had worked in different department than Mendelsohn and were fired by different supervisors.
The trial judge refused to admit this type of testimony, called “me, too” evidence, and Sprint won. Mendelsohn appealed, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit ruled in her favor, finding that the lower court had erred in refusing to hear the testimony. Sprint then appealed to the Supreme Court.
After listening to arguments from Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker's Paul Cane Jr., who represented Sprint, and Popham Law Firm's Dennis Egan, who represented Mendelsohn, Justice Stephen Breyer said, "I [think] we might do quite a lot of harm by trying to let the court of appeals second-guess trial courts on this kind of thing," he said.
Justice Antonin Scalia appeared to side with Breyer, but Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was concerned about how the high court’s ruling might be interpreted, or misinterpreted, in the lower courts.
“If we just assume in favor of the district court ... we don't know that the district court didn't take it as an absolute rule," Ginsburg said. "[T]his is a point of law that should be clarified for the benefit of district courts. Either there's a categorical bar [to such evidence] or there's not." she said.
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