(Reuters) - Perhaps the third time will prove to be a charm for the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and a Houston judge who has received two previous admonitions over his handling of employment discrimination cases.
The appeals court vacated U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes’ grant of summary judgment to ambulatory care center operator KS Management Services LLC, ruling that Hughes abused his discretion by refusing to permit plaintiff Dana Bailey to conduct depositions to support her age discrimination claim. Judges Edith Jones, Leslie Southwick and Andy Oldham also reversed Hughes’s order denying discovery to Bailey.
The Bailey decision, as the 5th Circuit said in the very first paragraph of its per curiam opinion, is the third decision in which the appeals court has overturned Hughes for denying discovery to the plaintiff in a discrimination suit, following 2017’s McCoy v. Energy XXI GOM, LLC and 2021’s Miller v. Sam Houston State University.
“It is “déjà vu all over again,” the 5th Circuit said, quoting Yogi Berra. “And we reverse. Again. But we trust that the district court will heed the Federal Rules and the mandates of our precedent.”
Bailey’s lawyers at the Villa Law Firm also asked the 5th Circuit to reassign her case to a new judge. Such reassignments, as I’ve written, are extraordinarily rare – but not, unfortunately, for Hughes. My Reuters colleague Mike Scarcella noted last month, in a piece about the appellate revival of a big debit card antitrust case...
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