[00:00:01] Speaker 00:
I can hear you, although there's quite a lot

[00:00:40] Speaker 02:
Okay, can you hear me again?

[00:00:44] Speaker 02:
I can hear you, but there is an enormous amount of echo and feedback.

[00:00:52] Speaker 06:
Apologize again, Your Honor.

[00:00:54] Speaker 06:
It's something I can't control.

[00:00:55] Speaker 06:
Does that mean better?

[00:00:56] Speaker 02:
That's perfect now.

[00:00:58] Speaker 02:
We can't see you, but we can hear you.

[00:01:01] Speaker 02:
All right.

[00:01:02] Speaker 02:
Thank you.

[00:01:02] Speaker 06:
I went on a little bit, but I'll start just where I began.

[00:01:07] Speaker 06:
And just to say that

[00:01:09] Speaker 06:
The case before the court, and first I'd like to reserve two minutes of time for rebuttal.

[00:01:15] Speaker 06:
The issue before the court today deals with, the issue before the court today is the three causes of action that was before the district court was dismissed.

[00:01:26] Speaker 06:
And the real issue is the pleading standard under 8A that requires only a short point of statement.

[00:01:34] Speaker 06:
And the guidance to be given or for the court to consider is

[00:01:39] Speaker 06:
what's under swipe revenge.

[00:01:42] Speaker 06:
He's a Roman and in that in that opinion, the court says that, um, you know, there's an incongruence if you're going to look at the pleading standard under or the promulgation standard under McDonald's Douglas versus the pleading standard under eight eight, which is required a short plain statement under Donald Douglas.

[00:02:07] Speaker 06:
the the the plan has given the benefit of some regard with an evidentiary standard.

[00:02:13] Speaker 06:
We need to hear the purpose.

[00:02:14] Speaker 06:
It's just to show the court that the plan is entitled to prevail or at least do not prevail, but to offer evidence to support the claim.

[00:02:25] Speaker 06:
Uh, that that's the, uh, in short, what the court says is that Mr. Joyner.

[00:02:32] Speaker 06:
Yes.

[00:02:33] Speaker 02:
With regard to the pleading standard and what you are required to plausibly allege under a ball and Twombly.

[00:02:43] Speaker 02:
Do you agree that you must plausibly allege that you were treated differently than.

[00:02:50] Speaker 02:
Someone similarly situated.

[00:02:56] Speaker 06:
I agree that your honor and that seems to be the response made.

[00:03:01] Speaker 06:
that that's something I didn't do.

[00:03:04] Speaker 06:
And on Friday, with very short notice, responding a additional 40 case case law in all that all those cases to fall into three different categories.

[00:03:16] Speaker 06:
They fall into the first category B that

[00:03:20] Speaker 06:
they've been playing it.

[00:03:21] Speaker 06:
But so out of the compared or and now it's really situated.

[00:03:27] Speaker 06:
He either he or she also either.

[00:03:30] Speaker 06:
It was very statements that did not provide the actual detail or lastly that they didn't provide any any detail at all.

[00:03:40] Speaker 06:
And for the first who are you going to miss because I did not

[00:03:44] Speaker 06:
When I named the comparators, I did not tweet them out.

[00:03:47] Speaker 06:
I did not name, say, like in Redmond, YMCA, that one person was the supervisor, one person was not inconsistent across the board.

[00:03:56] Speaker 06:
And I did not make just only conclusionary statements.

[00:04:00] Speaker 06:
I concluded factual detail.

[00:04:01] Speaker 06:
So what's relevant to this court is under Ascroft v. Ickeball at 129 Supreme Court, 137 pinpoint sites, 664.

[00:04:14] Speaker 06:
is that the determination is whether to claim states a plausible claim based on the specific context and that the court's supposed to, you know, use its judicial experience to common sense.

[00:04:28] Speaker 06:
And if you use that standard to what I actually pled, in the case of, I'll just run through real quickly, in the case, and I don't have the benefit of seeing a clock,

[00:04:38] Speaker 06:
I'll try to run this pretty quickly.

[00:04:42] Speaker 02:
Mr. Joyner, you're at 3 minutes and 30 seconds, and you've reserved 2 minutes for your time.

[00:04:49] Speaker 02:
I'll give you a few extra minutes because of the technical difficulties at the beginning.

[00:04:55] Speaker 06:
Great, thank you, sir.

[00:04:58] Speaker 06:
with most of it.

[00:05:00] Speaker 01:
Focus on this case.

[00:05:02] Speaker 01:
So if you're accepting that you have to plead something to show that others were treated differently from you and that they were similarly situated, what's the precise language in the complaint you would have us look to?

[00:05:19] Speaker 06:
So the site line is that I cited a person known signing to a

[00:05:27] Speaker 06:
to Rome and it was customary for team integration team members, that being a specific word used to be assigned to a specific team.

[00:05:42] Speaker 06:
I cited three specific co-workers, white co-workers,

[00:05:47] Speaker 06:
And I said, specifically that the higher council had hired, it's my information belief, again without discovery, had hired every single attorney had gone strictly to IT.

[00:06:03] Speaker 06:
And so the analogy would be,

[00:06:05] Speaker 06:
You know, what response are asking for is something that's just unusual.

[00:06:10] Speaker 06:
To know the background of an attorney, I would not know that, to know their title, and it's not relevant.

[00:06:16] Speaker 06:
What's relevant is that all team members were assigned to a team, and yet an African-American team member was not.

[00:06:24] Speaker 06:
That would be the first issue.

[00:06:25] Speaker 06:
It's also the issue of being restricted to

[00:06:29] Speaker 06:
to not go to certain areas and not be present based on complaint of a co-worker.

[00:06:34] Speaker 06:
While I also cited footnote number seven that a similar co-worker went to the same thing, a non-protected white attorney, and they did not have that same

[00:06:46] Speaker 06:
Restrictions.

[00:06:47] Speaker 06:
The similar situation is exactly the complaint that she raised against him versus the complaint that she raised against me.

[00:06:55] Speaker 06:
That information is confidential.

[00:06:57] Speaker 06:
There's no way that I could potentially have that information at the cleaning stage.

[00:07:04] Speaker 04:
Where do you get the idea that there's a dichotomy between a protected worker and a non-protected worker?

[00:07:13] Speaker 04:
Where does that come from?

[00:07:16] Speaker 06:
Well, that's the whole basis of being so much situated.

[00:07:21] Speaker 06:
That's how you show the inference, the difference of discrimination by that.

[00:07:27] Speaker 04:
McDonald Douglas said nothing of the sort.

[00:07:30] Speaker 04:
Didn't use the word protected, non-protected.

[00:07:34] Speaker 04:
It depends on what the invidious discrimination is.

[00:07:38] Speaker 04:
A white worker is protected from discrimination just like a black worker is.

[00:07:45] Speaker 04:
So I don't see where you get the idea that there's a difference between the two.

[00:07:51] Speaker 06:
Well, to begin with, to start with, similarly situated specifically in the race discrimination context, you can look to

[00:08:07] Speaker 06:
Muldrow versus City of St.

[00:08:09] Speaker 06:
Louis, the recent Supreme Court decision.

[00:08:11] Speaker 06:
That was an African-American female who brought charges that she discriminated fairly against based on nonprotected white.

[00:08:23] Speaker 04:
Before you get into other cases, let me ask you.

[00:08:25] Speaker 04:
Your claim as far as the workflow or whatever it's called, is based on section 1981?

[00:08:37] Speaker 05:
Correct.

[00:08:37] Speaker 04:
Right.

[00:08:39] Speaker 04:
What are the terms of the contract that you're claiming was enforced illegally?

[00:08:46] Speaker 04:
What are the terms?

[00:08:48] Speaker 04:
Well, actually, let me put it differently.

[00:08:53] Speaker 04:
Is there, number one, do you have a written contract?

[00:08:56] Speaker 04:
Did you have a written contract?

[00:08:59] Speaker 06:
Okay, well, you're right.

[00:09:00] Speaker 06:
I misstated.

[00:09:01] Speaker 06:
The original authority

[00:09:03] Speaker 06:
our country and i think one of the street but the story comes from forty two u r p two thousand a two a one and that that that the uh... the desperate treatment uh... or uh... uh... that that part where the death of people from whereas one of the things that the district court did not do was in prohibitive employment uh... contact forty two u r p section two thousand two also

[00:09:33] Speaker 06:
has a language that deals with limiting and segregating employees or otherwise affecting their status as an employee.

[00:09:44] Speaker 06:
That's specifically what I claim.

[00:09:47] Speaker 06:
And there is no need for me to specifically claim a specific theory of legal

[00:09:57] Speaker 06:
legal precedent, and the court didn't recognize that.

[00:10:01] Speaker 06:
That was clearly pled, and the district court failed to bring that up.

[00:10:09] Speaker 04:
Moving on to- I'm looking at your complaint.

[00:10:15] Speaker 04:
You invoke 42 U.S.C.

[00:10:17] Speaker 04:
1981, and that's discrimination with respect to contracts.

[00:10:22] Speaker 04:
There's a lot of case law that says

[00:10:24] Speaker 04:
that if you're not a party to a contract, you can't bring such a claim.

[00:10:29] Speaker 04:
So I'm asking you again, how do you square your complaint with the state of the law that is that you can only bring a 1981 case if you have a contract?

[00:10:45] Speaker 04:
And what the terms of the contract are?

[00:10:49] Speaker 06:
Sure.

[00:10:51] Speaker 06:
1981 lead into 42 USC 2000 based on the language where it says, into the full and equal benefit of the law when receiving.

[00:11:00] Speaker 06:
So that is the section that brings in 42 USC 2000 EQ that deals with terms and conditions.

[00:11:10] Speaker 06:
So that's how we get there.

[00:11:12] Speaker 06:
So it's not based on a strictly naked enforced contract language.

[00:11:17] Speaker 06:
1981 is?

[00:11:21] Speaker 06:
Well, no.

[00:11:22] Speaker 06:
That's the specific language of 1901 includes to make an enforced contract to sue the party to give evidence and to the full and equal benefit of all law to the decedent.

[00:11:33] Speaker 06:
For the security.

[00:11:35] Speaker 06:
Enjoyed by white citizens.

[00:11:37] Speaker 06:
So the protection is that 42 USC 20082 and case law shows that

[00:11:49] Speaker 06:
You know, the benefits of working are equal to, should be equal to, of a white citizen, of a protected class of African American male like myself.

[00:11:58] Speaker 06:
And that's why it goes into, you know, the other protected categories, you know, of gender and things like that.

[00:12:12] Speaker 06:
If I can move on.

[00:12:14] Speaker 02:
Mr. Mr. Joyner.

[00:12:17] Speaker 02:
You're about 4 minutes over time and about 6 minutes over the time.

[00:12:23] Speaker 02:
If we had stopped when you reserved 2 minutes for bottles, I am going to stop you there.

[00:12:30] Speaker 02:
I appreciate the argument and we will give you those 2 minutes on rebuttal.

[00:12:53] Speaker 03:
Thank please the court.

[00:12:54] Speaker 02:
The claim against Morrison.

[00:12:56] Speaker 02:
I'm sorry, Mr. Schenberg.

[00:12:56] Speaker 02:
Mr. Joyner, could you please mute while Mr. Schenberg is speaking?

[00:13:04] Speaker 02:
Thank you.

[00:13:04] Speaker 02:
Mr. Schenberg.

[00:13:05] Speaker 03:
Thank you, Your Honor.

[00:13:06] Speaker 03:
The claim against Morrison is that plaintiff wasn't assigned to a work stream from the very beginning of his employment, whereas others were.

[00:13:15] Speaker 03:
But the complaint provides no information about the relative qualifications and experience of those assigned

[00:13:22] Speaker 03:
to the various roles on the project, what those various roles on the project were, what a work stream is, or whether the assignments were made by the same decision maker or anything else that might justify an inference that the reason for the decision to assign him as he was is his race.

[00:13:40] Speaker 03:
In fact, plaintiff asserts in his brief that he had superior antitrust experience to the others.

[00:13:48] Speaker 03:
Maybe he did.

[00:13:49] Speaker 03:
Maybe he didn't.

[00:13:50] Speaker 03:
Maybe he was the only one with antitrust experience.

[00:13:53] Speaker 03:
Maybe the others had different antitrust experience.

[00:13:55] Speaker 03:
Certainly the complaint doesn't provide us any of that information.

[00:13:59] Speaker 03:
But the admission does highlight that not everyone there was the same.

[00:14:03] Speaker 03:
and that therefore no reasonable inference may be made from the fact that not everyone was treated the same.

[00:14:10] Speaker 01:
Council, are you familiar with our decision in Wright v. Eugene and Agnes Meyer Foundation?

[00:14:18] Speaker 01:
I believe... It's a 2023 decision.

[00:14:20] Speaker 01:
It's the latest case from our court addressing a motion to dismiss under this statute.

[00:14:26] Speaker 03:
Yes, and as I recall that Judge Walker joined Judge Wilkins' opinion that said that the pleading, what has to be pled, tracked the McDonald Douglas prima facie elements.

[00:14:37] Speaker 01:
You're close.

[00:14:37] Speaker 01:
I believe Judge Walker, well, you can clear that up, but well, let me just read something from that opinion to you.

[00:14:47] Speaker 01:
It says,

[00:14:49] Speaker 01:
I would just love to hear how you would have us distinguish this case, because in particular, you've drawn on cases like Butler, which is that summary judgment, and does say you need to do a lot to explain how others are similarly situated.

[00:15:02] Speaker 01:
And this decision draws on a prior one called NANCO shipping that said allegations regarding comparators and so forth would strengthen the claim, but they're not required.

[00:15:11] Speaker 01:
at the pleading stage.

[00:15:12] Speaker 03:
I think that's right and what I would say is that of course what Iqbal says is you can't just assume racial decision making, you can't just plead enough facts to make it a possibility that there was racial decision making.

[00:15:26] Speaker 03:
You have to provide enough facts from which the court can reasonably conclude that the defendant actually made the decision at issue because of race.

[00:15:37] Speaker 03:
You need not necessarily do that by pointing to a similarly situated comparator who was treated better.

[00:15:43] Speaker 03:
But that is the path that the

[00:15:48] Speaker 03:
complaint in this case tried to take.

[00:15:49] Speaker 03:
And if you're going to go down that path, then you have to do more than just allege the legal conclusion of similarly situated.

[00:15:56] Speaker 03:
You do have to provide some factual information that establishes that they are, in fact, similarly situated.

[00:16:04] Speaker 03:
Otherwise, you just have a person saying, I'm black, and they were white, and we were treated differently.

[00:16:08] Speaker 03:
And that's not enough to draw the inference.

[00:16:10] Speaker 01:
I guess one specific sentence in the complaint is the sentence that says, essentially, everybody else hired through hire counsel.

[00:16:21] Speaker 01:
And I suppose in theory, everyone else hired through hire counsel for this project was placed on a work stream.

[00:16:26] Speaker 01:
And he wants, he's asking us to infer, well, if you're hired for this project by higher counsel, there's at least some determination that you have similar qualifications for the project and that that's enough.

[00:16:37] Speaker 01:
What's your response to that?

[00:16:39] Speaker 03:
Well, we don't know enough about the project to know if everybody had the similar qualifications or not.

[00:16:44] Speaker 03:
Presumably there were at least two roles.

[00:16:46] Speaker 03:
on the project because he was assigned to something else other than a work stream, whatever a work stream might be.

[00:16:52] Speaker 03:
And there's no reason to think that it was limited to just two roles.

[00:16:56] Speaker 03:
And the allegation of everyone who was hired by a higher counsel was assigned to a work stream doesn't address at all the possibility that others were hired through other legal recruiting firms.

[00:17:07] Speaker 03:
So I think that what we don't have is enough to say that everyone was similarly situated and that race must therefore

[00:17:16] Speaker 03:
be the explanation, or even that a reasonable inference may be drawn from that.

[00:17:22] Speaker 03:
The claim against higher counsel is that after Morrison approved his request to work remotely, that higher counsel denied the request for him to work remotely for three days.

[00:17:36] Speaker 03:
which he says he did so that he did not quote inadvertently violate a court order that coworker one had obtained against him.

[00:17:43] Speaker 03:
Ironically enough, he looks to coworker one here as his similarly situated comparator, but not only is the complaint silent about who did not, who granted coworker one's request to work remotely or even who coworker one worked for, um,

[00:18:02] Speaker 03:
which plaintiff admits he doesn't say, and he admits that in his opening brief.

[00:18:06] Speaker 03:
The complaint actually shows that plaintiff and coworker one were not similarly situated.

[00:18:11] Speaker 03:
First, the complaint includes an exhibit that shows that in the higher counsel's denial letter to him with regards to remote work, it also pointed out that his request violated a previous instruction to him that he should not have submitted that request directly to Morrison, but rather he should have submitted it to higher counsel.

[00:18:29] Speaker 03:
then it goes on to say that if he does it again, he might lose his job.

[00:18:33] Speaker 03:
And there's nothing in the record to suggest that coworker one had violated a similar instruction from anybody.

[00:18:39] Speaker 03:
And second, the entire premise shows a material difference.

[00:18:43] Speaker 03:
Coworker one had not only accused plaintiff of sexual misconduct, but filed a lawsuit against him and obtained a court order telling him to stay away from her.

[00:18:52] Speaker 03:
And so it's just simply not reasonable to assume that race or to infer that race

[00:18:57] Speaker 01:
is the reason the plaintiff was treated differently.

[00:19:00] Speaker 01:
Can we just briefly go back to Wright, because at least on the face of the opinion, it was a plaintiff who said she was terminated from a position and then was defamed by her employer.

[00:19:11] Speaker 01:
And it looks like the key allegation that the court credited was that her predecessor, a white man who was also separated from the company, was not defamed.

[00:19:23] Speaker 01:
And so just if those are the facts,

[00:19:26] Speaker 03:
I don't know if those were all the facts in the case.

[00:19:31] Speaker 03:
It may be that the nature of the job was that they must have been similarly situated in ways that it's certainly not clear in this complaint that they must have been.

[00:19:39] Speaker 03:
In fact, he establishes there are at least two different roles here and he says he had superior qualifications and maybe he did and maybe he didn't.

[00:19:49] Speaker 03:
Maybe that's why he was assigned the way he was.

[00:19:50] Speaker 03:
We just don't know.

[00:19:52] Speaker 03:
A final point about the similarly situated issue, simply that in his opening brief he said he tried to make the similarly situated argument.

[00:20:01] Speaker 03:
When that's debunked in our brief, in his reply he comes up with a new argument that he doesn't have to make the similarly situated showing, which is true, except that he doesn't point to any other facts from which discrimination might be reasonably inferred.

[00:20:14] Speaker 03:
And his cases for the belated argument are also

[00:20:18] Speaker 03:
in apposite because they simply don't address similarity situated or if they do they do it in a different context of Fair Labor Standards Act collective access action certifications or they rely on pre-ecval decisions plaintiff one last one last question of course do you have a view on whether we actually have jurisdiction over the wrongful discharge claim that's a claim under DC law

[00:20:42] Speaker 01:
We only have supplemental jurisdiction over state law causes of action if they arise from a common nucleus of operative fact.

[00:20:50] Speaker 01:
And they really seem quite disconnected from the racial discrimination claims.

[00:20:56] Speaker 03:
I don't, I don't have an answer for you.

[00:20:58] Speaker 03:
I'm sorry.

[00:20:59] Speaker 01:
Okay.

[00:20:59] Speaker 01:
I appreciate that.

[00:21:01] Speaker 03:
I do know that the court felt that because there was no pleading with regards to

[00:21:06] Speaker 03:
dissimilar treatment, it didn't need to address the adverse action issue.

[00:21:10] Speaker 03:
But I would like to do so briefly in that plaintiff rightly cites that the Supreme Court's recent case in Muldrow provides the answer there.

[00:21:19] Speaker 03:
But that court says you have to show some kind of actual harm.

[00:21:23] Speaker 03:
And I don't think in either of these cases situations that he does that.

[00:21:27] Speaker 03:
With regards to the work stream assignment, the only thing he pleads is that theoretically he could have lost some pay, but in fact he pleads himself out of court because in a different paragraph he says he cut his own pay because he was unhappy with something an associate said to him.

[00:21:40] Speaker 04:
I want to ask you about the Wright case and the Nanko case.

[00:21:46] Speaker 04:
Wright says, quoting Nanko, the pleading standards under section 1981 track those

[00:21:53] Speaker 04:
in the familiar McDonald Douglas rubric for alleging a prima facie case of purposeful employment discrimination.

[00:22:02] Speaker 04:
And the same language, that's language that's quoted from the Nanko case.

[00:22:08] Speaker 04:
But later on, in a footnote, the court writes as something to the effect that

[00:22:19] Speaker 04:
in a non-disparagement, or I'm sorry, we explicitly stated that a comparator is not needed at the pleading stage, citing NANCO.

[00:22:34] Speaker 04:
And then there's an opinion by Justice Thomas in a case that I can't pronounce the name of that says that the pleading standards for

[00:22:44] Speaker 04:
not pleading standards, but the standards for summary judgment in McDonald Douglas don't apply at the pleading stage.

[00:22:52] Speaker 04:
Is it possible to square the statement in right and the statement in NANCO with the Supreme Court's decision in the Justice Thomas case?

[00:23:04] Speaker 03:
I'm not sure what Justice Thomas was talking about.

[00:23:06] Speaker 04:
He was talking about McDonald-Douglas.

[00:23:09] Speaker 03:
Well, of course, the difference, of course, is that at the pleading stage, you have to allege the facts, whereas at the summary judgment stage, you have to provide some admissible evidence to support that those facts are true.

[00:23:19] Speaker 03:
As to the statement about you don't need a comparator, again, you don't need a comparator, but if that's the path you're going to go down, then you need some facts to show that it actually is a comparator.

[00:23:28] Speaker 03:
And plaintiff, that is the path that he chose.

[00:23:30] Speaker 03:
He didn't choose any other path to go down.

[00:23:32] Speaker 04:
The Supreme Court case is not cited in either NANCO or in Wright, but it is cited by the plaintiff here in his reply brief on page 13, I think it was.

[00:23:47] Speaker 04:
And you don't cite the case either.

[00:23:50] Speaker 03:
I don't recall it, no.

[00:23:52] Speaker 04:
You don't know it at all?

[00:23:54] Speaker 03:
I don't think I know what case you mean, Your Honor.

[00:23:56] Speaker 03:
I'm sorry.

[00:23:58] Speaker 04:
Let me see if I...

[00:23:59] Speaker 04:
I have a copy of it here.

[00:24:02] Speaker 04:
Bear with me.

[00:24:03] Speaker 04:
Maybe I can straighten this out.

[00:24:12] Speaker 04:
Here's why I can't pronounce it.

[00:24:14] Speaker 04:
The petitioner is SWIERKIEWICZ.

[00:24:25] Speaker 03:
Oh, Sworkwitz?

[00:24:26] Speaker 03:
I think that's the case.

[00:24:27] Speaker 03:
I think it's an older case.

[00:24:28] Speaker 03:
I think it predates Iqbal.

[00:24:30] Speaker 04:
2002, yeah, it does.

[00:24:32] Speaker 03:
I think it predates Iqbal and I don't think it therefore provides the governing law with regards to what the plaintiff has to plead.

[00:24:39] Speaker 04:
The holding is that the McDonnell Douglas framework is not required at the

[00:24:47] Speaker 04:
Pleading.

[00:24:48] Speaker 03:
Certainly the entire framework is not, because the McDonnell Douglas framework includes burden shifting, which we don't ever get to at the pleading stage.

[00:24:55] Speaker 03:
But what we do get to in the pleading stage, and what the case of Judge Garcia referred to earlier, that Judge Walker participated in says, is that at the 12b6 stage, what you do is you track the prima facie elements of the McDonnell Douglas test.

[00:25:09] Speaker 04:
Your proposition is if you're going to make an argument on the basis of

[00:25:16] Speaker 04:
you know, disparate treatment, right?

[00:25:19] Speaker 04:
You've got to at least allege that the people who were treated like you were similarly, or unlike you, were similarly situated to you.

[00:25:31] Speaker 03:
You have to either do that or you do it a different way.

[00:25:34] Speaker 03:
You might do it through a pattern of decision-making, like a Teamsters case.

[00:25:37] Speaker 03:
You might do it through direct evidence of, you know, I am firing you because of this.

[00:25:43] Speaker 03:
But if you're going to compare yourself, you have to buttress that with some facts that show you were, in fact, similarly situated to those you're comparing yourself to.

[00:25:51] Speaker 04:
The rest of McDonnell Douglas you don't have to show.

[00:25:53] Speaker 03:
That's correct.

[00:25:54] Speaker 03:
That's correct.

[00:25:55] Speaker 03:
The burden shifting, you do not have to show.

[00:25:57] Speaker 03:
I have more, but my time is up, so I look to you to add.

[00:26:02] Speaker 02:
Your time is up.

[00:26:03] Speaker 02:
I thank you for your argument.

[00:26:04] Speaker 02:
Thank you, Your Honor.

[00:26:07] Speaker 02:
Mr. Joyner had reserved two minutes, but I will give him five minutes because we went three minutes over with Mr. Schenberg.

[00:26:17] Speaker 06:
Thank you, Your Honor.

[00:26:20] Speaker 06:
I'm actually familiar with Swycrovich.

[00:26:22] Speaker 06:
And I believe it is directly irrelevant to this case here.

[00:26:26] Speaker 06:
In the opinion that Justice Thomas specifically talked about in congruence between having the plaintiff have to plead a promissory case showing an interest of discrimination versus if direct evidence of discrimination was shown

[00:26:42] Speaker 06:
uh... during discovery that he wouldn't have to meet that work and that that's what's going on here and that the fact of shaker shaker rich are are very relevant because the court goes on to say that the pleading that the plaintiff did not plead every single detail but he pled enough to put the defendant on notice of what the claim was

[00:27:04] Speaker 06:
And to meet the fair-knows burden, what he said was that, you know, his block rush strokes, the event leading up to the termination, some of the relevant dates,

[00:27:16] Speaker 06:
the ages of, because it was an age discrimination case, and also within a nationality, and some of the relevant people involved.

[00:27:24] Speaker 06:
The court said, even conclusionary statements are allowed as long as you provide some type of detail.

[00:27:30] Speaker 06:
And the requirement, you know, if there's a problem, it needs to be changed based on the rule, because the language of the rule is a short, plain statement.

[00:27:39] Speaker 06:
And the only way that the court may accept, clearly said the only way the court may dismiss this

[00:27:44] Speaker 06:
There's no clear releasing can be granted based on the fact consistent with the complaint.

[00:27:52] Speaker 02:
Yes.

[00:27:53] Speaker 02:
Mr. Joyner, do you have thoughts on the question that Judge Garcia asked with regard to the wrongful termination claim and supplemental jurisdiction?

[00:28:06] Speaker 06:
Sure, Your Honor.

[00:28:07] Speaker 06:
Unfortunately, he's not going to be prepared for that.

[00:28:14] Speaker 02:
Okay.

[00:28:16] Speaker 01:
And you know, Mr. Joyner, one of the things the opposing council mentioned was that the complaint doesn't allege who made decisions about placing folks on work streams.

[00:28:30] Speaker 01:
Can you explain why that sort of basic allegation shouldn't be required?

[00:28:36] Speaker 06:
Well, I can say that I was assigned by partner Nolan and associate Harris

[00:28:46] Speaker 06:
And the reason why it's not relevant to actually explain those details is because at the point in time when I was hired or anybody was hired, it specifically got to say that hire counsel, everyone that hired counsel assigned was put on an integration, onto a specific team.

[00:29:09] Speaker 06:
It didn't matter who actually did the administration of that.

[00:29:14] Speaker 06:
It would be similar to the lifeguard that was working for a county to go from pool to pool to pool if he's an African American.

[00:29:22] Speaker 06:
And every other white employee, as soon as they were hired, they were assigned a team.

[00:29:30] Speaker 06:
How they got assigned a team is not relevant.

[00:29:32] Speaker 06:
It put, again, going back to the pleading standard and going back to the swipe revenge,

[00:29:37] Speaker 06:
The plaintiffs, excuse me, defendants or respondents case, they're on notice for what that claim is.

[00:29:42] Speaker 06:
That's the whole purpose of discovery that otherwise, like I also said in the brief, otherwise everyone has to be an investigator.

[00:29:50] Speaker 06:
It wouldn't be normal for any person to come into a place of business and get a sign or not to get a sign for some particular attack and then have to try to ask the question, hey, who made this decision?

[00:30:02] Speaker 06:
Who did this?

[00:30:03] Speaker 06:
And then something happens.

[00:30:06] Speaker 06:
You're forced to, you know.

[00:30:09] Speaker 06:
The information, there's no way that she would know.

[00:30:12] Speaker 06:
An employer looking at that, an employer looking at that situation is like, who is this guy?

[00:30:15] Speaker 06:
Why is he worried about that?

[00:30:16] Speaker 06:
That's not what I was hired for.

[00:30:18] Speaker 06:
I was hired to provide integration counsel for that murder.

[00:30:23] Speaker 06:
And the relevant factor is everybody on that team was an attorney.

[00:30:28] Speaker 06:
It wasn't just this.

[00:30:30] Speaker 06:
There were people that were doing a camp that I raised issue with were doing accounting or that were doing some kind of business analysis.

[00:30:37] Speaker 06:
All the attorneys that were put in that position were specifically there for the integration of these two companies.

[00:30:45] Speaker 06:
So at the point in time when I was hired, I should have been put on a team, but for

[00:30:51] Speaker 06:
You know, partner no one not, you know, not not finding and she has to provide to provide authority.

[00:31:00] Speaker 06:
There are a lot of issues that I wasn't able to touch on involving computed liability involving the hostile environment.

[00:31:10] Speaker 06:
And I believe there's also an issue that the court should consider based on the the recent St.

[00:31:16] Speaker 06:
Louis decision.

[00:31:18] Speaker 06:
where the court has changed the pleading standard or the requirement for these adverse events.

[00:31:24] Speaker 06:
I think there's definitely questions to the whole idea.

[00:31:26] Speaker 06:
OK.

[00:31:27] Speaker 06:
Thank you, Mr. Joyner.

[00:31:29] Speaker 02:
The case is submitted.