Decisions — continued from Previous Page
further in the Johnson case, holding that where the other victims worked under the same supervisor, the evidence is per se admissible.(Johnson, supra, 173 Cal.App.4th 740.) At the crux of Johnson was a dispute over the admissibility of what the defen- dant had characterized as “me too” evi- dence. Ms. Johnson was allegedly fired from United Cerebral Palsy (“UCP”) for time-card fraud on the very day she returned from a brief pregnancy disability leave and within weeks of notifying her supervisor of her pregnancy. She subse- quently sued for pregnancy discrimina- tion and other related claims. In support of her claims, Ms. Johnson obtained dec- larations from five coworkers who worked for the same supervisors in the same facil- ity as plaintiff. The coworkers variously declared that 1) they too had been fired
shortly after informing UCP of their preg- nancies; 2) they knew of others who were fired after UCP learned of their pregnan- cies; 3) they had resigned because the same supervisor made their lives stressful after he learned that they were trying to get pregnant; and 4) they knew of occa- sions where others engaged in dishonest acts but were not fired. Johnson first observed that under
Mendelsohn, supra, 552 U.S. 329, the trial court would have had the discretion to exclude the “me too” evidence if the inci- dents had involved different supervisors in dif- ferent locations. But the Court of Appeals did not stop there. It went on to hold that because the other victims had the same supervisors and worked in the same loca- tion as the plaintiff, the evidence was auto- matically admissible:
Here we can say as a matter of law
that the “me too” evidence presented by the plaintiff in the instant case is per se admissible under both relevance and Evidence Code section 352 standards. The evidence sets out factual scenarios related by former employees of the defendant that are sufficiently similar to the one presented by the plaintiff con- cerning her own discharge by defendant, and the probative value of the evidence clearly outweighs any prejudice that would be suffered by defendant by its admission. (Id. at 767.) Importantly, the Johnson Court held that the “me too” declarations on their own were sufficient to defeat summary judgment. The court went on to explain that “[d]issimilarities between the facts related in the other employees’ declarations and
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