Brown v. Ameriprise Financial Services, Inc.

Rosalind Brown (plaintiff), a Black woman, sued her former employer, Ameriprise Financial Services, Inc. (Ameriprise) (defendant), alleging that Ameriprise had discriminated against her and other similarly situated Black employees. Brown’s complaint contained particularized allegations of specific discriminatory policies and practices. During her deposition, Brown was asked to provide the foundation for many of these allegations. However, she was often unable to do so. For example, her complaint alleged that “written guidelines permit employees at lower job grades to be paid more than employees at higher grades,” yet Brown stated she was unaware of any such guidelines. In addition, certain portions of Brown’s testimony directly contradicted her complaint. For instance, she testified that she did not think there was significant Black representation among salaried employees, despite alleging the opposite in her pleading. Ameriprise later discovered that Brown’s complaint was largely copied from an unrelated lawsuit brought against Coca-Cola by different plaintiffs over a decade earlier. The copied material included company-specific practices and statistical claims, which Brown retained with only superficial edits, such as changing party names and omitting supporting data. Ameriprise moved for sanctions under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure (FRCP) 11, seeking dismissal of the complaint. The magistrate judge found that Brown had violated FRCP 11 by failing to conduct a reasonable prefiling inquiry and relying on unsupported, copied allegations. The magistrate recommended striking all of Brown’s class-based allegations from the complaint and recommended that Brown and her counsel pay Ameriprise’s attorneys’ fees. Brown objected to the recommendation.