Claims under the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act (ELCRA); Failure to comply with MCL 600.6431’s notice-&-verification requirement; Christie v Wayne State Univ; Unverified notice; Fairley v Department of Corrs; Judicial disqualification; Untimely motion to disqualify; Pattern & practice of discrimination evidence; Relevance; Spoliation of evidence; Adverse inference; Ward v Consolidated Rail Corp; Whether evidence should have been excluded under MRE 403; Office of Clinical Affairs (OCA)

The court held that plaintiff’s claims against defendant-University of Michigan Regents related to her former employment with Michigan Medicine failed due to lack of compliance with MCL 600.6431. As to her claims against defendant-former supervisor (Dr. Desmond), the court found there was no abuse of discretion in the denial of her motion to disqualify a trial court judge. Further, the trial court did not abuse its discretion in (1) excluding pattern and practice evidence, (2) denying plaintiff’s request for an adverse-inference instruction, or (3) admitting testimony about her personality and job performance. Thus, the court affirmed the jury’s verdict for defendants. Plaintiff sued for age discrimination, sex discrimination, and retaliation under ELCRA after her position was eliminated. On appeal, defendants argued for the first time that her complaint should be dismissed for failure to comply with MCL 600.6431’s notice-and-verification requirement. The court noted that failure to comply with this requirement requires dismissal. Because “plaintiff did not verify her complaint or file a verified notice with the court of claims, and” the one-year period had long since passed, her “claims against Michigan Medicine would be subject to dismissal, had the jury not already found them not to be liable in this case. Regardless, plaintiff cannot maintain her claims against Michigan Medicine, and her arguments on appeal” as to this defendant failed. Assuming for purposes of the appeal only that her “claims against Dr. Desmond were made in his personal capacity,” the court considered her appellate arguments on those claims. As to her motion to disqualify a trial court judge (which was untimely), the court found that she did not establish “bias or prejudice to warrant disqualification.” As to her pattern and practice evidence, the court found that it “was, at best, minimally relevant to her claims.” Given that it “did not relate to OCA employees who reported to Dr. Desmond, it was not a direct response to defendants’ admission of evidence about the age-and-gender composition of OCA employees.” As to the request for an adverse inference instruction, the court noted that the individual who destroyed the notes in question “provided a reasonable explanation for” doing so, and that an “abuse of discretion is a high bar to show on appeal[.]” Finally, the trial court did not abuse its discretion in not excluding evidence under MRE 403.