Alfonso v. Community Bridges Incorporated

1 WO [5] 6 IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 7 FOR THE DISTRICT OF ARIZONA [8] 9 Lisa Alfonso, No. CV-21-01305-PHX-DWL 10 Plaintiff, ORDER 11 v. 12 Community Bridges Incorporated, 13 Defendant. [14] 15 Pending before the Court is Defendant’s request for summary disposition of its 16 summary judgment motion. (Doc. 63.) The motion is denied. The advisory committee’s 17 notes to Rule 56’s 2010 amendment explain that “summary judgment cannot be granted by 18 default even if there is a complete failure to respond to the motion.” This is because “under 19 the summary judgment standard, if the moving party fails to meet its initial burden of 20 production, the opposing party need not produce anything.” Finkle v. Ryan, 174 F. Supp. 21 3d 1174, 1181 (D. Ariz. 2016). Thus, “a local rule permitting a district court to treat a lack 22 of a response as consent to granting a motion does not apply to summary judgment 23 motions.” Id. at 1180. 24 Instead, in the summary judgment context, “the opposing party’s failure to respond 25 to a fact asserted in” a summary judgment motion merely “permits a court to consider the 26 fact undisputed for purposes of the motion.” Heinemann v. Satterberg, 731 F.3d 914 , 917 27 (9th Cir. 2013) (internal quotation marks omitted). Rule 56 does not, in contrast, 28 “condon[e] summary judgment by default.” Id. 1 Accordingly, 2 IT IS ORDERED that Defendant’s motion for summary disposition (Doc. 63) is 3|| denied. The Court will rule on the pending summary judgment motion (Doc. 62), as to 4|| which the briefing process is now closed, in due course. 5 Dated this 10th day of October, 2023. [6] fT-L 8 "Dominic W. Lanza 9 United States District Judge [28] _2-