Opinion
No. 06-15403.
June 14, 2007.
Collette Bridget Cunningham, Office of General Counsel, Ernst D. Mueller, Office of City Attorney, Jacksonville, FL, for Defendant-Appellant.
Scott Thomas Fortune, Jax Bch, FL, for Plaintiffs-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida. D.C. Docket No. 00-00469-CV-J-32-TEM.
The Consolidated City of Jacksonville appeals from the denial of its Renewed Motion For Judgment As A Matter Of Law And, In The Alternative, For A New Trial, after a jury found the City liable in this Title VII employment discrimination case. The case was brought by four Caucasian fire rescue lieutenants who alleged that rescue captain positions were not created by the City's African-American fire chief after he improperly considered their race, and that they would have been promoted into the newly created positions. The City contends on appeal that its motion for judgment as a matter of law should have been granted because the evidence was insufficient to support the jury's verdict, and because the district court erred in denying the City's Batson challenges after the plaintiff's struck all African-American jurors from the jury pool. The City also contends that the district court abused its discretion by admitting evidence of later created positions, admitting evidence of a racial slur that was unduly prejudicial, and excluding the City's expert's report and admitting the plaintiff's expert report.
Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986).
After reviewing the record, reading the parties' briefs and having the benefit of oral argument, we find no error as to any of the issues submitted for our consideration on this appeal.