Judge Thomas Griesa
Guercia sued former employer Equinox for sex discrimination. During her time as a construction manager for Equinox, she was subjected to derogatory comments about her gender and sabotaged in the performance of her job duties. That sabotage became so pernicious, she was forced to resign from Equinox. District court quashed subpoenas seeking records from Guercia’s former employers. Their service could be seriously detrimental to her business reputation and career. The court found Guercia’s actual work experience not a "central issue" in her case, and that her former employers’ records were irrelevant to establishing the facts on which Equinox’s defense depended. When Equinox made the decisions challenged in Guercia’s lawsuit, it must have done so based on information it already possessed. If it possessed the employment information it sought to obtain by subpoena, the subpoenas were unnecessary. If not, they could not have played any role in Equinox’s decision-making process. Further, the marginal benefit to Equinox in obtaining the documents sought as evidence of Guercia’s credibility was outweighed by the harm that would be done by obtaining them by subpoena from Guercia’s former employers.
