Gustilo v. Hennepin Healthcare System, Inc.

Background

This order concerns Plaintiff Tara Gustilo’s Request for Judicial Notice. Judicial notice is a procedure allowing a court to accept certain facts without requiring ordinary proof at trial. The request arose after the Eighth Circuit remanded the case and the court denied Defendant Hennepin Healthcare System, Inc.’s supplemental motion for summary judgment. The parties had agreed to divide Gustilo’s First Amendment retaliation claim into two trials.

The first trial will address whether Gustilo’s 2020 Facebook posts were disruptive under the balancing test used for speech by government employees. The jury will consider questions involving workplace harmony, possible disruption, whether the posts could be attributed to the employer’s OB-GYN Department, the context and subject of the posts, their contribution to public debate, and whether they impaired Gustilo’s ability to perform her duties as department chair. A second trial, if necessary, will address causation and damages.

Requested Facts

Gustilo asked the court to judicially notice two alleged facts that she believed were necessary to respond to possible arguments that her posts were “blatantly racist,” “thoughtless,” and “reckless.” The first alleged fact was that multiple government organizations had concluded that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory leak in Wuhan, China, and that the World Health Organization had allowed the Chinese Community Party to conceal the pandemic’s severity. The second was that police in the United States killed more white people than Black people in each year from 2015 through 2019.

Gustilo relied on a report from a U.S. House of Representatives oversight committee, a White House webpage, news articles, articles from special-interest groups, and a Washington Post database.

Analysis

Under Federal Rule of Evidence 201, a court may judicially notice a fact that is not reasonably disputable because it is generally known within the court’s jurisdiction or can be accurately and readily determined from sources whose accuracy cannot reasonably be questioned. In a civil case, when the requirements are met, the jury must be instructed to accept the noticed fact as conclusive.

The court distinguished adjudicative facts—facts about what the parties did, where and when they acted, how they acted, and their motives—from broader legislative facts that apply beyond the particular dispute. Rule 201 governs adjudicative facts. The court also stated that judicial notice may not override relevance, foundation, or hearsay requirements.

The court held that Gustilo had not met Rule 201’s demanding standard. It found that her proposed facts were derived largely from political sources, were argumentative, and were not basic or indisputable facts specific to the parties. Instead, they were complex and reasonably disputed facts that were not specific to this case.

The court separately held that, even if the proposed facts satisfied Rule 201, Federal Rule of Evidence 403 would bar them. Rule 403 permits exclusion when evidence’s value is substantially outweighed by risks such as confusing the issues, misleading the jury, or wasting time. The court found that the proposed facts had little value for the jury’s assigned questions, while political debates about race, policing, and COVID-19 could distract the jury and lead to time-consuming disputes over related issues.

The court emphasized that its earlier order barring arguments about whether Gustilo’s political opinions were right or wrong applies equally to both parties. Gustilo may not offer evidence to validate the opinions, and Hennepin Healthcare may not offer evidence to invalidate them. Both sides may offer evidence about how employees, patients, donors, and the public perceived the posts, including whether people were offended or unbothered, but not evidence about the underlying merits of the opinions.

Disposition

The court denied Plaintiff’s Request for Judicial Notice [Doc. 155].