Hill v. Goodfellow Top Grade
- Haywood Gilliam
- 4:18-cv-01474
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 2
In Hill v. Goodfellow Top Grade, Judge Gilliam ordered supplemental briefing on whether three incidents could support a hostile-work-environment claim.
Trina Hill must file the supplemental brief; Goodfellow Top Grade may not file a response to it under this order.
What happened
In Hill v. Goodfellow Top Grade, the defendant made a new argument in its reply supporting a renewed request for judgment as a matter of law. The defendant argued that three alleged incidents during Hill’s four-month employment were not severe or pervasive enough to support a hostile-work-environment claim.
The court gave Trina Hill an opportunity to respond to that new argument. It ordered her to file a supplemental brief of no more than three pages explaining whether the incidents were sufficiently severe and pervasive under relevant Ninth Circuit decisions and how this case differed from two cited cases.
Judge Haywood S. Gilliam, Jr. set November 15, 2019, as the filing deadline and said no response would be permitted. The order directed additional briefing but did not decide the renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law.
The detailed version
- Hill v. Goodfellow Top Grade · No. 4:18-cv-01474
- Haywood Gilliam
- Nov. 5, 2019
Background
Goodfellow Top Grade had filed a renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law. In its reply brief, it argued for the first time that three alleged incidents during Hill’s four-month employment were not sufficiently severe or pervasive to establish a hostile work environment. The opinion does not state the ultimate result of that motion.
Issue
The court addressed whether Hill should be allowed to respond to the new argument raised in the reply brief. The court directed Hill to address whether the three alleged incidents were severe and pervasive under relevant Ninth Circuit case law. It also required her to explain how the incidents differed from those in Brooks v. City of San Mateo and Westendorf v. W. Coast Contractors of Nevada, Inc., where the Ninth Circuit held that the alleged misconduct did not establish sufficiently severe or pervasive sexual harassment.
Order
The court ordered Hill to file a supplemental brief no longer than three pages by November 15, 2019. Hill could not repeat arguments from her opposition brief, and the court permitted no responsive filings. The order directed supplemental briefing; it did not grant or deny the renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law and did not resolve the hostile-work-environment claim.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.