Alexander v. The Stop and Shop Supermarket Company

Background

Jeriel Alexander, representing himself, sued The Stop and Shop Supermarket Company, LLC, under 42 U.S.C. § 1981, the New York Human Rights Law, and the New York Civil Rights Law. He alleged that Stop & Shop violated his right to receive the equal benefit of the law by intentionally discriminating against him because of his race. A jury trial began on March 17, 2025, and the jury returned a verdict for Stop & Shop on all claims on March 19, 2025.

Alexander then filed a motion for judgment as a matter of law under Rule 50(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. That rule allows a party to ask the court to overturn a jury verdict when the evidence could not reasonably support it, but generally requires the party to have made an earlier motion under Rule 50(a) before the case went to the jury. Alexander also sought a new trial under Rule 59(a), which permits a new trial when the verdict was seriously erroneous, against the weight of the evidence, or a miscarriage of justice.

Rule 50(b) motion

The court found that Alexander had not made his own Rule 50(a) motion before the case was submitted to the jury. Referring to the higher standard that applies in that situation, the court held that Alexander had not shown that overturning the verdict was necessary to prevent a manifest injustice. The court explained that the verdict was not wholly without legal support.

The court also said that the motion would fail even under the ordinary Rule 50 standard. At trial, Alexander had to prove the required elements of his equal-benefit claims, including that Stop & Shop intentionally discriminated against him because of his race. The jury was instructed that the same substantive standard applied to his federal and New York claims, although the New York Civil Rights Law claim also included a separate notice requirement that the jury did not need to consider because it found for Stop & Shop on the merits.

Alexander argued that his testimony, his family members’ testimony, and an audio recording proved discrimination, and that Stop & Shop had not presented sufficient evidence to support its position. The court rejected those arguments. It noted that the recording ended before the alleged discriminatory conduct and did not capture the incident. It also noted conflicting testimony about whether the employee involved was male or female. The jury could reasonably have credited Stop & Shop witness Elia Cardenas’s testimony, based on company records, that the employees working in the self-checkout area were male, rather than the testimony from Alexander, his sister, and his mother. The court emphasized that a Rule 50 motion could not be used simply to reweigh the evidence or replace the jury’s credibility judgments.

Rule 59(a) motion

The court treated Alexander’s request for a new trial as a Rule 59(a) motion. It held that Alexander had not shown that the verdict was egregious, seriously erroneous, or a miscarriage of justice. The trial’s outcome depended largely on the jury’s assessment of the witnesses’ credibility, and the court found no sufficient reason to disturb that assessment.

The court rejected Alexander’s challenges to Cardenas’s lack of firsthand knowledge because Cardenas had acknowledged that limitation and had testified for other purposes, including identifying the employees working in the self-checkout area. The court also rejected Alexander’s claim that Stop & Shop’s lawyer improperly focused the jury on alleged events in October and November 2020. The court found that the lawyer was addressing Alexander’s later visits to the store and that the lawyer ultimately described the case as involving one event on August 7, 2020. The court further found that testimony about Stop & Shop’s COVID-19 policies was irrelevant and that the court had sustained Alexander’s objection to testimony about Cardenas’s name badge and instructed the jury to disregard it.

Disposition

The court denied Alexander’s motion for judgment as a matter of law and/or for a new trial. Because the jury found for Stop & Shop on all claims, the court did not reach Alexander’s arguments about emotional-distress or punitive damages. The court also certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a) that an appeal from the order would not be taken in good faith.