IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF RIDGEWAY
FOR THE STATE OF RIDGEWAY
HALO4ASIN,
Plaintiff,
v.
RIDGEWAY PARKS SERVICE,
Defendant.
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Case No. RSC-CV-0750
REPLY IN SUPPORT OF
MOTION FOR SUMMARY
JUDGMENT
PLAINTIFF’S REPLY IN SUPPORT OF HIS MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT
ON LIABILITY
INTRODUCTION
1. Defendant’s Opposition disputes who made the determination and when. It does not
dispute - because it cannot - what the determination was based on. Count I asks whether
an activity warning issued for failure to submit weekly logs is a criterion 4 R. Stat. §
122.402 permits an appointing authority to rely upon. That is a question of law, and this
Court already held that disagreements of this character between these parties are “purely
legal issues.” Ruling § I. Defendant’s new evidence does not touch it.
2. Defendant’s central move - that the coordinator, not the Superintendent, was the decision
maker - is immaterial as a matter of law. Sections 122.402 and 122.404 impose their
duties on “an appointing authority.” The appointing authority is the Ridgeway Parks
Service. It is the Defendant in this action. Which of its employees performed the task
does not change what the agency was obligated to do.
3. As to Count II, the dispute Defendant asserts is not genuine. It rests on a theory that
contradicts Defendant’s own pleaded admissions, advanced only after those admissions
became fatal; on exhibits that have not been filed; on screenshots that cannot establish
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what an editable spreadsheet displayed on a past date, when the revision history that
could was not produced; and on an account irreconcilable with what Defendant’s own
officials told Plaintiff at the time.
ARGUMENT
A. THE STATUTORY DUTIES RUN TO THE APPOINTING AUTHORITY, NOT
TO AN INDIVIDUAL EMPLOYEE.
4. Defendant devotes its Opposition to establishing that Supervisory Park Ranger
BobbyBobitheBobbian, rather than the Superintendent, conducted the investigation and
rendered the determination. Coordinator Decl. ¶¶ 2-5; Chief Ranger Decl. ¶ 6. Assume it
is so. It changes nothing.
5. Section 122.402 provides that “[b]ackground investigation criteria shall be limited to” an
enumerated list. Section 122.404 provides that “[w]here an appointing authority denies an
individual on the basis that their background investigation has yielded a negative result, it
shall notify the applicant and specify the reasoning for the negative result.” Neither
provision speaks to individual employees. Both impose duties on the appointing authority
- here, the Ridgeway Parks Service, the named Defendant. An agency’s internal
allocation of tasks among its personnel does not narrow its statutory obligations, and
notice to the agency is notice to the agency regardless of which desk it lands on.
6. Defendant’s own submission confirms the point. It concedes that Plaintiff communicated
to the Superintendent on June 25, 2026, with documentation, that both warnings were
appealed, and asked that the denial be reversed or held pending resolution. Response
SUMF ¶ 14; Ex. D. It concedes the Chief Ranger had the file in hand on June 21. Chief
Ranger Decl. ¶¶ 3-4. It concedes the results excluding Plaintiff issued afterward.
Defendant’s answer to all of this is that a fourth official, the coordinator, did not
personally know. An agency does not escape a statute by distributing knowledge among
its officers.
B. COUNT I TURNS ON A QUESTION OF LAW THE OPPOSITION DOES NOT
REACH.
7. The only criterion Defendant has ever invoked is § 122.402(f). Defendant’s own
declaration now establishes that the coordinator recorded and published § 122.402(f), and
nothing else, as the basis for the negative result. Coordinator Decl. ¶ 5. Defendant is
therefore fixed to subsection (f), and the question is whether subsection (f) reaches what
the coordinator says he saw: on his own account, “one active adverse action and one
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appealed adverse action,” the active one being “a warning for failure to complete weekly
activity logs.” Coordinator Decl. ¶ 4.
8. It does not. Subsection (f) reaches an individual who “has been terminated, or has
received other adverse consequence, within a department or agency.” “Other adverse
consequence” takes its meaning from the word it accompanies. A word “is given more
precise content by the neighboring words with which it is associated.” Yates v. United
States, 574 U.S. 528, 543 (2015); accord Gustafson v. Alloyd Co., 513 U.S. 561, 575
(1995). Termination is final, career ending, and settled. A weekly activity warning is
none of those things: it is appealable on demand, it retracts automatically upon
completion of clean activity cycles, and it may be nullified outright for clerical error - as
one of Plaintiff’s two warnings was, by the issuing department’s own Deputy Chief, four
days before the determination Defendant now says is operative. Exs. E, F.
9. The structure of § 122.402 confirms the reading. Subsection (d) separately authorizes
consideration of “whether the individual has a certain amount of records that exceeds a
predetermined threshold.” Minor records are the subject of (d), and (d) permits
disqualification only where a threshold is exceeded. If (f) reached every warning of any
kind, (d) would be surplusage and its threshold requirement a nullity. Defendant never
invoked (d), never identified a threshold, and does not contend that one activity warning
exceeds one.
10. Defendant’s answer to Count I is entirely temporal: it says the appeal of the second
warning was incomplete on June 20. That argument concedes the premise it must defeat.
Whether the warning was active or appealed on any given morning, it remained an
activity warning for a missed weekly log - and an activity warning for a missed weekly
log is not a termination or an equivalent adverse consequence within § 122.402(f). No
declaration can make it one.
C. THE ASSERTED COUNT II DISPUTE IS NOT GENUINE.
11. First, it contradicts Defendant’s own pleaded admissions. Answer ¶ 20 states: “Defendant
affirmatively states that its Superintendent communicated the specific basis for Plaintiff’s
Final Screening result to Plaintiff on June 25, 2026, days prior to the publication of final
results on June 29, 2026, as reflected in Plaintiff’s own Exhibit D, and that this
communication satisfied any notice obligation arising under 4 R. Stat. § 122.404.”
Answer ¶ 18 refers to “the publication of Ranger Class 22 results on June 29, 2026.”
Defendant’s Partial Motion to Dismiss told this Court that Exhibit D “conclusively
establishes” that the Superintendent “specified the precise basis for the denial to Plaintiff
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on June 25, 2026, four days before Defendant’s final results were published on June 29,
2026.”
12. Those are judicial admissions, and they are binding unless withdrawn by amendment. A
party may not manufacture a triable issue by contradicting the factual position it pleaded
and pressed to the Court, offered for the first time after that position proved unavailing.
Cf. Cleveland v. Policy Mgmt. Sys. Corp., 526 U.S. 795, 806 (1999); New Hampshire v.
Maine, 532 U.S. 742, 749-51 (2001). Defendant recognizes as much: it has moved for
leave to amend precisely these paragraphs. Its Opposition therefore depends entirely on
that motion being granted. Plaintiff has opposed it separately, and if leave is denied the
admissions stand and the Opposition collapses with them.
13. Second, the evidence does not exist in the record. Every factual assertion in the
Opposition’s Count II section rests on Exhibits K and L. Counsel advised the Court and
Plaintiff that the exhibits were still to come. As of this filing, Exhibits G through Q have
not been filed. A declaration that recites the contents of documents not before the Court is
an assertion, not evidence, and an assertion cannot “set forth specific facts showing that
there is a genuine issue for trial.” Plaintiff reserves the right to respond to those exhibits
if and when they are filed.
14. Third, a photograph cannot establish what an editable spreadsheet displayed on a past
date. The Application Tracker is a live, editable document. A screenshot of it establishes
what it showed when the screenshot was taken and nothing more. Exhibit L is offered as
“a photograph reflecting the date the entry was published,” but a spreadsheet does not
display per cell publication dates. One record can establish what the Tracker displayed on
June 20-21, 2026: the revision history the platform maintains automatically. It is within
Defendant’s exclusive control. Defendant did not produce it. Where a party asserts a fact
that its own uniquely held records would conclusively prove or disprove, and offers a
screenshot instead, the assertion does not create a genuine dispute.
15. Fourth, Plaintiff’s Exhibit A is a contemporaneous capture of the Application Tracker
taken on June 21, 2026 - inside the very window in which Defendant now says the
citation was published. It shows Plaintiff’s Final Screening and Outcome as “Failed.” It
does not show a statement of reasoning.
16. Fifth, and most tellingly, Defendant’s own officials contradict the account. If the §
122.402(f) basis had been posted publicly on the Tracker on June 20-21, no official
would have had reason to withhold it from Plaintiff days later. It was withheld. When
Plaintiff asked the Chief Ranger what adverse action was being referenced, the Chief
Ranger answered: “Not at my will to say, you could talk to Aaron.” He told Plaintiff the
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matter was “[o]ut of my hands.” Ex. D. That is the same Chief Ranger who now declares
that on June 21 he personally requested and received “the specific instances of adverse
action underlying every applicant failed under 4 R. Stat. § 122.402(f)” - including
Plaintiff’s. Chief Ranger Decl. ¶¶ 3-4. Both accounts cannot be true. An agency does not
publish its statutory reasoning on a public database and simultaneously tell the applicant
that the reason is not at its will to say.
17. Plaintiff then asked the Superintendent on June 24, received no answer, asked again on
June 25, and received a single sentence: that he “had an activity strike within RCFD.” Ex.
D. That sequence is not what compliance with § 122.404 looks like, and it is the sequence
Defendant’s own pleadings described before the construction of the statute made it costly.
D. THE RULE 38(e) REQUEST IS WAIVED AND CONTRADICTS THE
OPPOSITION IT ACCOMPANIES.
18. On July 11, 2026, the Court asked: “Does either party require time for discovery? I
appreciate further motions may arise but wanted to deal any discovery issues/requests
now.” Defendant did not answer. Plaintiff answered on July 12 that he required none. On
July 13, Defendant’s counsel asked the Court to impose no deadlines - saying nothing of
discovery. Defendant now asks for a continuance to develop evidence it says it already
obtained on July 13, two days before it filed. A party that declines the Court’s express
invitation to raise discovery issues, and then requests a continuance only after a
dispositive motion is briefed, has waived the request.
19. The request also contradicts the filing it accompanies. Rule 38(e) relief is available to a
party who “cannot for reasons stated present by affidavit facts essential to justify his
position.” Defendant presented affidavits. It calls them dispositive. A party that has filed
the affidavits it says decide the motion is not a party that cannot present them.
E. THE AFFIRMATIVE DEFENSES REMAIN INSUFFICIENT
20. Defendant says its Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Affirmative Defenses are corroborated by the
new record. They are not. The Fourth (good faith reliance) fails because the reliance
asked about is the agency’s, and the agency was told - on June 25, with documentation,
before its results issued - that the asserted basis was appealed. Ex. D. The Fifth
(independent sufficient basis) fails because the second warning, active or not, is not a §
122.402(f) criterion. The Sixth (subjective weighing discretion) fails because no measure
of discretion authorizes reliance on a criterion outside the closed statutory list, and
because the secondary review Defendant now invokes is contradicted by the reviewer’s
own contemporaneous statements to Plaintiff.
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CONCLUSION
21. Defendant’s Opposition raises questions of law dressed as questions of fact, supported by
exhibits that are not in the record, in service of a theory its own pleadings foreclose.
Plaintiff respectfully requests that the Court grant summary judgment on liability as to
Counts I and II, and in the alternative Count III; deny the request for a continuance under
Rid. R. Civ. P. 38(e); and enter the proposed order submitted with the Motion.
Respectfully Submitted,
_________________________
/s/ Halo4asin
HALO4ASIN
Plaintiff, Pro Se
Ridgeway State Bar License No. 18110
Dated: July 16, 2026
CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE
I certify that on July 16, 2026, I served a true copy of the foregoing Reply on counsel for the
Defendant via the Court’s e-filing system and the case channel.
_________________________
/s/ Halo4asin
HALO4ASIN
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