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Sanchez v. Children's Hospital and Health Center9/14/2005
ison is that the department was completely restructured nine months after Sanchez was terminated, and a director was newly appointed, who hired Ortega as her secretary. That is not the position that Sanchez held; nor was it a position that Sanchez could have been offered at the time of her termination.
2. Lack of Merit of Sanchez's Evidentiary Objections
Second, we turn to the admissibility of the evidence that Sanchez challenges. The trial court declined to specifically rule on each aspect of Sanchez's motion to strike, stating: "The Court declines to rule further on specific objections as to evidence that the Court did not rely upon in rendering its decision. Any evidence cited in support of the Court's ruling herein, is deemed admissible and any objection made to that evidence is considered overruled. The Court disregards all evidence which is found to be incompetent or inadmissible."
Because it is unclear whether the trial court intended to sustain, overrule or simply decline to rule upon the specific objections at issue here, it is also unclear what standard of review we should apply. Although, normally, we apply an abuse of discretion standard of review to the trial court's ruling on the admissibility of evidence (People v. Waidla (2000) 22 Cal.4th 690, 717), when, as here, the trial court's ruling is unclear, as a practical matter we have no alternative (except for sending the issue back to the trial court for a ruling) but to apply the de novo standard generally applicable to summary judgment rulings. (See Biljac, supra, 218 Cal.App.3d 1410, 1419 [noting de novo standard of review on summary judgment and principle that it is presumed on appeal that a judge has not relied on irrelevant or incompetent evidence]; Browne v. Turner Construction Co. (2005) 127 Cal.App.4th 1334, 1349 & fn. 6 [noting unsettled approach in light of Biljac and Sambrano, but in effect conducting a de novo review to conclude that plaintiff's evidentiary objections were "meritless" when trial court had not specifically ruled on the objections].) Here we conclude there is no merit to Sanchez's evidentiary objections.
First, Sanchez objects to Nugent's statements about the 10 terminated employees because Nugent stated during her deposition that she was not personally involved with the terminations of those employees. Sanchez's objection lacks merit because the information at issue here is data contained in the employees' personnel files, such as their age, departmental assignment and employment history, and that information does not depend on Nugent's personal observation of their termination. Nugent established an adequate foundation for her declaration by explaining that she reviewed the employees' personnel files, which are accurate business records that she maintains control of and has access to as a human resources manager. (See Zuckerman v. Pacific Savings Bank (1986) 187 Cal.App.3d 1394, 1404 [declarant was competent to testify to the contents of business documents within the scope of the department that he managed and for which he was one of the custodians].)
Second, Sanchez objected to Nugent's statement about the average age of employees terminated in the reduction in force. Her objection is premised on a letter that defense counsel sent to plaintiff's counsel during discovery, stating that defense counsel had researched the statistic. Sanchez claims that Nugent has no foundation for her statement and the statement is hearsay if defense counsel is the one who researched the statistic. However, as explained in Nugent's supplemental declaration, she researched the statistic herself at the request of defense counsel, and her conclusion was based on Children's business r
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