Benuzzi v. Board of Education

119 F. Supp. 3d 917, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 106176, 2015 WL 4764225
CourtDistrict Court, N.D. Illinois
DecidedAugust 12, 2015
DocketCase No. 09 C 3510
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 119 F. Supp. 3d 917 (Benuzzi v. Board of Education) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, N.D. Illinois primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Benuzzi v. Board of Education, 119 F. Supp. 3d 917, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 106176, 2015 WL 4764225 (N.D. Ill. 2015).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

Joan B. Gottschall, United States District Judge

Plaintiff Jessica Benuzzi, who is a white female and is now retired, was one of the first female custodians hired by the Chicago Public Schools in the early 1980s. After Benuzzi was selected to be the building engineer-in-charge at the then newly opened John J. Pershing Magnet School in Chicago, Benuzzi and her African-American supervisor, principal Cheryl Watkins, clashed. Numerous EEOC charges and this retaliation and discrimination lawsuit against the Board of Education of the City of Chicago followed.

The judge previously assigned to this case granted the Board’s motion for summary judgment in its entirety. The Seventh Circuit reversed in part and remanded Benuzzi’s retaliation claim for trial. After the case was reassigned to this court, Benuzzi amended her complaint to add additional instances of alleged retaliation, the parties pursued discovery regarding those allegations, and after the close of this second wave of discovery, the Board filed a motion for summary judgment directed at all instances of purported retaliation — both those considered by the Seventh Circuit and the new allegations. For the following reasons, the Board’s second motion for summary judgment is denied.

. I. Procecural Posture

In 2009, Benuzzi filed suit alleging retaliation and gender, race, age, and disability discrimination claims against the Board. Judge Conlon, who previously presided over this ease, granted summary judgment in favor of the Board on all of Benuzzi’s claims based on, in part, what she believed were Benuzzi’s flagrant violations of Local Rule 56.1. Benuzzi appealed the. grant of summary judgment as to her gender discrimination and retaliation claims. The Seventh Circuit affirmed the grant of summary judgment on the gender discrimination claim but reversed the ruling on Benuzzi’s retaliation claim and remanded that claim for trial. See Benuzzi v. Bd. of Educ. of City of Chicago, 647 F.3d 652 (7th Cir.2011): Following the remand, the case was reassigned to this court.

Benuzzi requested leave to file an amended complaint to conform her allegations to the Seventh Circuit’s decision and to add new allegations about retaliation that purportedly had occurred while the case was on appeal. The Board, moved to dismiss, but before the court could rule, Benuzzi sought leave to file a second amended complaint based on her receipt of a right to sue letter relating to an April 2011 EEOC charge of discrimination. The court allowed Benuzzi to file a second amended complaint. The Board again moved to dismiss, arguing that Benuzzi improperly added additional claims of retaliation that were outside the scope of the remand. According to the Board, the Seventh Circuit’s remand order was limited to holding a trial to determine if a memorandum limiting Benuzzi’s hours of access to the school-and the notice of pre-discipline hearing given to Benuzzi immediately after her deposition in this case were retaliatory.

The court rejected this argument and found that the remand order resolved everything except Benuzzi’s retaliation claim. Benuzzi v. Bd. of Educ. of City of Chicago, No. 09 C 3510, 2013 WL 80368, at *1 (N.D.Ill. Jan. 4, 2013). As the court explained, .“The Seventh Circuit’s opinion in this case. concludes as follows: ‘there are genuine issues of material fact as to the adverse nature of the actions the defendants took against Benuzzi in the wake of her .deposition, and whether those actions [920]*920were causally linked to Benuzzi’s participation in this case. We therefore vacate the district court’s grant of summary judgment on Benuzzi’s retaliation claim and remand for trial.’ ” Id. (quoting Benuzzi, 647 F.3d at 666). The court found that this language “set[] aside the district court’s grant of summary judgment on the entire retaliation claim and remand[ed] that entire claim [based on both the direct and indirect methods] for trial.” Id.

Nevertheless, the court did not set a trial date as it determined that the second amended complaint was fatally flawed. Specifically, the court stated that:

.. .there is no question that the Second Amended Complaint is so full of immaterial information that it is close to useless as a guide to the allegations that will be tried in this case. Despite Judge Con-Ion’s obvious impatience with plaintiffs prolix materials, plaintiff persists in pleading detailed facts, apparently hoping her opponent and the court will do the work of separating the wheat from the chaff or, even worse, that the jury will become confused at what is at issue and the confusion will benefit plaintiff. This court will not subject itself, the defendant or the jury to such a potentially prejudicial and misleading mess. Just as an example, starting with paragraph 13, plaintiff describes in detail the charge of discrimination she filed with the EEOC. This is inappropriate for so many reasons it is hard to know where to start. For one thing, plaintiffs discrimination charge is not relevant to this litigation at this point, since Judge Con-Ion granted summary judgment to defendant on this claim and the Seventh Circuit affirmed. Why should' this complaint describe EEOC claims that are no longer part of this case? Second, plaintiff, in the guise of describing her irrelevant EEOC claims, manages to lard her complaint with all kinds of hearsay as to what she thought defendant did wrong. None of this material would be admissible, even if plaintiffs 'discrimination charge were at issue, so why it belongs in the complaint is an utter mystery. The detailed fact pleading, completely inappropriate in a notice pleading system, allows plaintiff to describe in detail everything that happened to her, whether she claims it was retaliatory or not and whether she claims it amounted to an adverse action or not. With such a pleading mess, the court cannot fulfill its responsibility of ensuring that the jury hear only evidence relevant to plaintiffs claim. The complaint is therefore stricken. Plaintiff may, by January 23, 2013, file a Third Amended Complaint which makes clear the adverse actions which form the gravamen of plaintiffs retaliation claim and which eliminates all extraneous factual allegations.

Id. at *2.

In response to this order, Benuzzi filed a third amended complaint (Dkt.162) containing a Title VII retaliation claim based on her gender and race (Count I) and a claim entitled “Section 1983, 42 U.S.C. § 1983: Retaliation” (Count II). The Board moved to dismiss Count II. Benuzzi did not object so the court dismissed Count II. This left Benuzzi’s retaliation claim, which includes a list of allegedly retaliatory acts. (Dkt. 162 at ¶¶ 10-38.)

Following the filing of the third amended complaint, the parties proceeded with discovery relating to the new allegations of retaliation that allegedly occurred starting when the case was on appeal. At the close of discovery, the Board filed a renewed motion for summary judgment directed at all of the instances of alleged retaliation asserted by Benuzzi (both the allegations that the Seventh Circuit found merited a trial and the new allegations based on events that occurred after Benuzzi appeal[921]*921ed Judge Conlon’s summary judgment ruling in August 2010).

II.Background

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119 F. Supp. 3d 917, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 106176, 2015 WL 4764225, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/benuzzi-v-board-of-education-ilnd-2015.