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CONNECTICUT OPINIONS MARCH 22, 2021 ¦ 43

According to plaintiffs, Anatra made false and denied, Brockman left the company and filed suit.
defamatory statements about all three plaintiffs NAES attempted to dismiss the action on summa-
at the meeting. One plaintiff secretly audio- ry judgment, but the court found genuine issues of
recorded the meeting and gave it to her lawyer, fact, and denied NAES’s motion.
who filed the lawsuit. The lawsuit alleged claims
of unequal pay, sex discrimination, and defama-
tion. The date of disclosures came and went MEDICAL MALPRACTICE

without plaintiffs disclosing the secret record- Court Found for Plaintiffs in Medical
ing. It did not surface until plaintiffs sprung Malpractice Lawsuit Arising From A
it on Anatra during his deposition. Plaintiff ’s
counsel still did not disclose the recording until
several months after the deposition and after Bowel Repair Procedure

the close of discovery in the lawsuit. Defen- CASE: March v. United States
dants moved to preclude the recording at trial. COURT: U.S. District Court for Connecticut
The court granted the motion. Pursuant to the DOC. NO.: 3:17-cv-2028
Federal Rules of Evidence, if a party fails to COURT OPINION BY: Bolden
comply with a discovery disclosure requirement, DATE: March 05, 2021 • PAGES: 75
a court has the discretion to preclude the evi-
dence unless the failure was substantially justi- Plaintiff Eric March sued defendant, alleging that
fied or harmless. Here, the court rejected plain- several Veterans Administration Hospital doctors
tiffs’ argument that the impeachment exception committed medical malpractice during a June 2015
to the initial disclosure requirements applied. laparoscopic ventral hernia repair procedure per-
The court stated that there was no good rea- formed on him that resulted in plaintiff suffering
son for why counsel ignored the protocols. The a thermal injury. Plaintiff’s wife Dina March also
court then noted that even if the recording is ex- brought a loss of consortium claim. The court de-
cluded, plaintiffs can still elicit testimony from nied defendant’s motion in limine to preclude and
the meeting’s participants as to what was said. limit testimony of plaintiff’s treating primary care
Therefore, the court granted defendants’ motion physicians and expert witness, ordered judgment
to preclude admission of the recording. in favor of plaintiffs, and awarded several million
dollars in damages. The court first addressed de-
fendant’s motion in limine, which sought to pre-
clude a life care planner from testifying that plain-
EMPLOYMENT LITIGATION • CIVIL RIGHTS tiff’s primary care physicians reviewed her life

Construction Company Denied care plan and agreed with it. Defendant argued
that the life care planner does not have a medical
Summary Judgment in Hostile Work degree and may not be qualified to judge the ac-
Environment Lawsuit curacy and reliability of the doctors’ out-of-court
statements, and is only parroting their findings.
The court disagreed. The court found that given
CASE: Brockman v. NAES Corp. undisputed testimony as to the life care planner’s
COURT: U.S. District Court for Connecticut standards of practice, experts in the life-care plan-
DOC. NO.: 3:19-cv-00006 ning field would reasonably rely on conversations
COURT OPINION BY: Meyer
DATE: March 08, 2021 • PAGES: 15 with their client’s treating physicians, and those
A former employee of a construction engineering doctors would review such a report in the normal
company, who claimed he was subject to a racially course of preparing a life plan. The court relied
hostile work environment, successfully opposed on state precedent to support its finding. As to the
the company’s summary judgment argument by substantive charges, the court first determined that
showing genuine issues of fact. The plaintiff, Mi- the standard of care required the treating physi-
chael Brockman, is an African American male cians to inspect the bowel carefully before the pro-
who worked at NAES Corporation full time as a cedure ended, but did not require them to find any
loader operator. Brockman alleged that since the and every injury that may have occurred during
time he was hired, his supervisor subjected him the procedure. The court found that the doctors
to derogatory racial statements, used profanity, deviated from this standard because the postop-
and spray-painted a swastika near his break area. erative note did not indicate that a final, careful
When the company’s internal investigations failed examination of the bowel occurred, and that it
to reprimand the supervisor, Brockman attempt- was more likely than not that the thermal injury
ed to transfer to a new location. When that was occurred during plaintiff’s procedure.

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