McConkey v. The Churchill School and Center

Background

Dennis McConkey moved under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(a) to compel The Churchill School and Center to produce discovery. Discovery is the process through which parties obtain relevant, non-privileged information before trial. McConkey requested documents about: (1) other Churchill employees who complained of age- or gender-based discrimination or retaliation; (2) other employees’ misconduct and Churchill’s responses; (3) Ashley Greene’s separation from Churchill; and (4) performance evaluations for McConkey’s former teaching assistant, Hilary Van Santen. In a supplemental request, he also sought a recording allegedly containing statements by Jason Wallin at a high school meeting and related documents.

Under Rule 26, discovery may cover non-privileged information relevant to a claim or defense and proportional to the case’s needs. The party seeking discovery bears the initial burden of showing relevance.

Rulings on the Requests

The court granted the request for documents about complaints of discrimination or retaliation referenced in deposition testimony. Although Churchill represented that no complaints of gender-based discrimination or retaliation by other employees existed, McConkey provided evidence referring to complaints involving gender discrimination and retaliation, ageism, and age discrimination. The court directed Churchill to provide copies of documents concerning those referenced complaints. The court stated that McConkey was not entitled to complaints of race or ethnicity discrimination.

The court also granted the request in part as to misconduct by other employees. McConkey showed that a Churchill teacher who remained employed had been investigated for allegedly flirting with and stalking a female high school student. Because that conduct was sufficiently comparable for discovery purposes to the misconduct Churchill alleged as the reason for McConkey’s firing, the court directed Churchill to produce non-privileged documents concerning that investigation. The court did not order the broader production of documents about all employee misconduct sought by McConkey.

The court denied the request for documents about Greene’s separation. McConkey argued that the evidence suggested Greene had settled discrimination or retaliation claims with Churchill, but the court found that assertion unsupported. Churchill represented that no internal or external complaints had been filed by or on behalf of Greene and that it had no responsive documents. The court also denied the supplemental request for the Wallin recording because McConkey did not show that Greene had complained of discrimination or retaliation, that Wallin’s conduct was comparable to the conduct for which McConkey was disciplined, or that the recording concerned age, gender, or sexual-orientation discrimination or retaliation.

The court denied the request for Van Santen’s performance evaluations because McConkey offered no evidence that she played a role in his termination. The court noted that the discovery relevance analysis did not decide whether the requested evidence would be admissible at trial.

Disposition

The court granted in part and denied in part McConkey’s motion to compel. It directed Churchill to produce documents about the specified discrimination or retaliation complaints and the teacher-misconduct investigation, while denying the requests concerning Greene, the Wallin recording, and Van Santen’s performance evaluations. The Clerk of Court was directed to close the motion at Docket Number 52.