Hall v. Scores Holding Company, Inc.

Background

Jessica Brooke Hall brought claims under federal, state, and city antidiscrimination laws against various people and entities that she alleged jointly employed her. Scores Holding Company, Inc. filed an answer and later moved for summary judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56. Summary judgment is a ruling that resolves claims without a trial when the undisputed evidence shows that the moving party is entitled to judgment.

Scores argued that Hall’s charge filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission did not name Scores; that Scores did not have enough employees to qualify as an employer under the relevant laws; that the evidence did not support Hall’s claim that Scores indirectly or jointly employed her; that Scores was not her employer under state or city law; and that Hall had not informed Scores about discrimination.

Request for Additional Discovery

Hall opposed the motion under Rule 56(d), which allows a court to delay or deny summary judgment when a nonmoving party shows by affidavit that it cannot yet present essential facts for its opposition. Hall’s attorney, Daniel Grace, submitted an affidavit identifying discovery that Hall needed.

The affidavit identified potentially important facts about Scores’s status as Hall’s employer, including the degree of control Scores had over other entities’ operations and policies, whether staff was shared, and whether policies were shared. It also identified the documents sought to obtain those facts. The affidavit stated that Scores had not produced documentary evidence in response to Hall’s demands and had instead relied on objections and conjecture.

The court also noted that Hall had not been able to depose Robert Gans when her opposition was due, even though Scores’s motion relied almost entirely on his affidavit. The court said Hall should have an opportunity to test Scores’s assertion that it merely granted adult-entertainment establishments the right to use its name and logo. The court further stated that Hall should be allowed to contest each of Scores’s summary-judgment arguments with the benefit of discovery, including Scores’s argument concerning Hall’s failure to name Scores in her administrative charge. The court noted that this argument could involve an “identity of interest” exception allowing a Title VII action against an unnamed party when there is a clear identity of interest between that party and the party named in the administrative charge.

Ruling

Judge John P. Cronan determined that Grace’s affidavit satisfied Rule 56(d). The court therefore denied Scores’s motion for summary judgment without prejudice and directed the Clerk of Court to close the motion pending at Docket Number 67. The order did not resolve the merits of Hall’s discrimination claims or decide whether Scores was Hall’s employer.