Summary
The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan denied Plaintiff D’Andre Thomas’s motions to exclude evidence concerning William Adamson, for sanctions, and to modify the scheduling order to add FOIA materials. The court also denied without prejudice Defendant Accent Controls, Inc.’s broad motion to exclude unauthenticated or undisclosed evidence and settlement-related materials. The opinion addresses hearsay, authentication, discovery disclosures, Rule 11 sanctions, scheduling-order modification, and Federal Rule of Evidence 408.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether Adamson’s memorandum and testimony should be excluded before trial as hearsay, unauthenticated, lacking foundation, undisclosed during discovery, unfairly prejudicial, or violative of due process.
- Whether Accent’s broad motion to exclude all unauthenticated or late-disclosed materials and all settlement-related evidence should be granted.
- Whether Thomas was entitled to Rule 11 or inherent-authority sanctions against Accent.
- Whether Thomas established good cause to modify the scheduling order and expand the record with TACOM’s FOIA response and related documents.
Holdings
- The court denied Thomas’s motion to exclude because the record did not establish at that stage that the memorandum or Adamson’s testimony was inadmissible, unauthenticated, unsupported by foundation, undisclosed, or unfairly prejudicial.
- The court denied Accent’s motion without prejudice because the motion identified no specific evidence and the court could not assess authentication, disclosure, relevance, or the purpose for which settlement evidence might be offered.
- Thomas was not entitled to Rule 11 or inherent-authority sanctions against Accent.
- Thomas failed to establish good cause for modifying the scheduling order or expanding the record with the TACOM FOIA response.
Key quotations
“A ruling on a motion in limine is no more than a preliminary, or advisory, opinion that falls entirely within the discretion of the district court.”
“For these reasons, motions in limine that “exclude broad categories of evidence” are rarely granted.”
“Rule 11 sanctions are unavailable, unless the motion for sanctions is served on the opposing party for the full twenty-one day ‘safe harbor’ period before it is filed with or presented to the court”
Factual background
The action arose from D’Andre Thomas’s employment with Accent Controls, Inc. at the Detroit Arsenal. Accent intended to offer a March 2, 2022 memorandum by William B. Adamson, a Contracting Officer Representative, and Adamson’s testimony concerning communications about COVID-19 testing and Thomas’s conduct and employment. Thomas also sought to introduce or rely on a TACOM FOIA response and related screening documents, while Accent sought categorical exclusion of undisclosed or unauthenticated evidence and settlement communications.
Procedural history
The case was pending before the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan and was set for jury trial on March 31, 2026. A magistrate judge had previously denied an earlier motion concerning William Adamson’s memorandum and testimony as untimely, while expressly declining to decide the evidence’s admissibility. The district court denied the plaintiff’s three motions and denied the defendant’s motion in limine without prejudice.