Pro se discrimination plaintiff wins trial against management law firm

This employment discrimination case went to trial in the Southern District of New York. No surprise there. The jury ruled in the plaintiff's favor on the retaliation case, awarding him $50,000 in compensatory damages. Again, no surprise. What makes this case remarkable is that the plaintiff represented himself pro se against an experienced law firm. He persuaded the jury that his former employer had retaliated against him in violation of Title VII. Still, he appealed from the verdict that denied him disparate treatment claim. The Court of Appeals affirms that portion of the discrimination case.

The case is Sanderson v. Leg Apparel, LLC, a summary order issued on July 8. So the retaliation verdict stands, but the discrimination verdict -- in management's favor -- also stands. Plaintiff represented himself on appeal, as well. His arguments on appeal focused on evidentiary issues. Lawyers know that trial courts have broad discretion in ruling on evidentiary matters at trial. The thinking is that the trial judges know the case better than the appellate judges, who only know the matter from a cold record. The trial judge has lived with the case for a few years. We don't see too many verdicts overturned based on evidentiary rulings.

Before we get to this, the summary judgment ruling in the case indicates plaintiff claimed his former employer made derogatory comments about his perceived sexual orientation and his coworkers made negative comments about Black people. Plaintiff alleges he was given a heavy workload because of his race. He suffered retaliation after he complained about a supervisor's discriminatory comments. These issues proceeded to trial. As I noted, the jury ruled in plaintiff's favor on the retaliation claim, and post-trial, the judge awarded plaintiff economic damages in the amount of $24,327.77. Notably, the trial court tolled plaintiff's back pay entitlement after a period of time because plaintiff found work at a different employer but was terminated from that position for cause. That termination, the trial judge finds, means that plaintiff did not properly mitigate his back pay damages. 

One issue is that the trial court excluded certain medical evidence that plaintiff thought would help his case. It was not clear to the Court of Appeals why this evidentiary ruling made a difference at trial, and the Court notes that it will not "manufacture" an argument for plaintiff on this issue. That evidentiary ruling is affirmed. The other issue was the trial court's restriction on plaintiff's cross-examinations at trial. You can imagine what a pro se cross-examination must look like when his adverse witnesses are on the stand. The Second Circuit notes that the cross was messy, requiring the trial judge to frequently interrupt to keep things on track, as some of the examinations "were often interspersed with lengthy soliloquies or took the form of plaintiff's testimony and arguments. The trial court was just trying to keep order, the Court of Appeals says, another matter wholly within the trial court's discretion.