BENTON and EAST ST. LOUIS – Coronavirus delayed a discrimination trial of former Madison County jailer Gustavo Navarrete and will almost certainly delay a national class action trial for employees of Jimmy John’s restaurants.
In Navarette’s case, on April 2, U.S. District Judge Staci Yandle granted a motion to continue a trial that would have started April 27.
She set it to start July 13.
Navarrete worked at the jail from 2008 to 2016.
Attorney Paul Slocomb of St. Louis filed suit for him in 2017, claiming the county terminated him for filing state and federal discrimination complaints.
He claimed the county required Navarrete to translate for Spanish speaking inmates though it hadn’t hired him for that purpose.
He claimed the county required Navarrete to translate in dangerous situations without bulletproof vest or weapon, and claimed other workers called him Speedy Gonzalez.
The county moved to dismiss the suit and Yandle denied the motion in 2018, finding Navarrete stated a plausible claim.
“Whether this conduct actually occurred and whether Navarrete can establish a link between the objectionable conduct and his status as a Hispanic are issues of proof, not pleading,” Yandle wrote.
This March 26, county counsel Heidi Eckert moved to continue the trial.
She wrote that she’d have difficulty meeting with witnesses.
She wrote that they are all jail officers or law enforcement officers, considered essential and continuing to respond to all emergency calls.
Navarrete didn’t oppose the motion.
In the Jimmy John’s case, employee Donald Conrad challenges a rule that franchise holders can’t recruit or hire each other’s employees.
Attorney Derek Brandt of McCune Wright in Edwardsville filed the suit for employee Sylas Butler in 2018, in association with nine California lawyers.
Butler alleged antitrust violations under the national Sherman Act and state law.
Jimmy John’s moved to dismiss it.
Former district judge Michael Reagan dismissed state law claims and ruled that Sherman Act claims could proceed.
Conrad took Butler’s place last year, after Brandt advised the court that Butler no longer wished to bear the burden of representing the class.
Reagan retired and the suit passed to Chief District Judge Nancy Rosenstengel.
Jimmy John’s moved to dismiss the Sherman Act claims that Reagan allowed, but Rosenstengel wouldn’t touch them.
“Although federal judges are appointed for life, they are not appointed for eternity,” Rosenstengel wrote.
“Every judge must leave the bench at some point and when they do, other judges in the district take in the orphaned cases.
“That does not mean, however, that parties in these transferred cases are entitled to new rulings on questions that the prior judge has already resolved.”
She set trial to start this September but on March 19, Conrad and Jimmy John’s jointly moved to amend the scheduling order.
They wrote that necessary responses to coronavirus would affect their ability to meet pending deadlines.
They proposed to set all deadlines back 35 days, moving completion of discovery from May 8 to June 12.
They left the deadline for dispositive motions and the date of a class certification hearing to be determined.
They kept the September trial date but wrote, “The parties recognize that this date may be affected by a postponement of the dispositive motion deadline.”
Rosenstengel granted the motion on March 20.