Diaz v. Pima County
Diaz v. Pima County
Opinion of the Court
MEMORANDUM
Elena Diaz appeals from an adverse jury verdict on her Title VII claim. The facts and prior proceedings are known to the parties; they are not cited herein, except as necessary.
The district court did not abuse its discretion in restricting Diaz’s cross-exam
Nor did the district court abuse its discretion in excluding the proffered Exhibit 36(B). The document was not self-authenticating, as it bore no indicia of origin or filing, such as an official letterhead, seal, or signature, and Diaz presented no certification from the custodian of records. Fed.R.Evid. 902(1), (4), (11). Diaz sought to authenticate the exhibit with Miles’s testimony that she had obtained it from Vasquez. However, Vasquez was not the document’s purported author or even a named addressee, although it did refer to her. Miles’s ability to testify that she received the document from Vasquez does not make her a “witness with knowledge” of its authenticity. Fed.R.Evid. 901(b)(1); see United States v. Dibble, 429 F.2d 598, 602 (9th Cir. 1970). Because Diaz submitted no evidence (other than the document itself) from which a reasonable jury could conclude that the document was authentic, the district court did not err in excluding it.
Nor did the district court abuse its discretion in rejecting Diaz’s attempts to refer to the contents of Exhibit 36(B), ostensibly for impeachment purposes, in her redirect examination of Miles and her cross-examination of Nusbaum. (Diaz also argues that she should have been allowed to cross-examine Malkin about the allegations in the report, but she made no attempt to do so at trial.) Whatever relation the document bore to Miles’s testimony, which touched only tangentially on Miles’s role in the Vasquez complaint, it did not serve to impeach Miles. “Impeachment is improper when employed as a guise to present substantive evidence to the jury that would be otherwise inadmissible.” United States v. Gilbert, 57 F.3d 709, 711 (9th Cir. 1995) (per curiam). Similarly, Diaz fails to identify any portion of Nusbaum’s testimony that the document would have served to impeach; Nusbaum testified that she was aware of complaints by minority employees, and Diaz does not explain how the report’s documentation of complaints about Nusbaum’s management skills would have impeached Nusbaum’s testimony. The district court’s refusal to allow this line of questioning was not an abuse of discretion.
We reach a similar conclusion with respect to the district court’s refusal to allow Maldonado’s testimony. “Trial courts have broad authority to impose reasonable time limits.” Navellier v. Sletten, 262 F.3d 923, 941 (9th Cir. 2001). When Diaz sought to call Maldonado, she was already near the end of her allotted time and she herself still faced cross-examination by the County. At that point the district court could reasonably have concluded that Maldonado’s testimony would be sufficiently cumulative to warrant her exclusion.
AFFIRMED.
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and may not be cited to or by the courts of this circuit except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.