UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT SUMMARY ORDER THIS SUMMARY ORDER WILL NOT BE PUBLISHED IN THE FEDERAL REPORTER AND MAY NOT BE CITED AS PRECEDENTIAL AUTHORITY TO THIS OR ANY OTHER COURT, BUT MAY BE CALLED TO THE ATTENTION OF THIS OR ANY OTHER COURT IN A SUBSEQUENT STAGE OF THIS CASE, IN A RELATED CASE, OR IN ANY CASE FOR PURPOSES OF COLLATERAL ESTOPPEL OR RES JUDICATA.

At a stated term of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, held at the United States Courthouse, Foley Square, in the City of New York, on the 6th day of September , two thousand and two.

PRESENT:

HON. GUIDO CALABRESI, HON. BARRINGTON D. PARKER, JR.

Circuit Judges, HON. SIDNEY H. STEIN, District Judge.*

SOM NATH CHITKARA, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. No. 01-7274

NEW YORK TELEPHONE COMPANY, and NYNEX CORPORATION Defendants-Appellees.

For Plaintiff-Appellant: DONALD F. SCHNEIDER, Schneider, Goldstein & Bloomfield, LLP, New York, NY.

For Defendants-Appellees: CARLA R. WALWORTH, Neil B. Stekloff, on the brief, Paul, Hastings, Janofsky &

Walker, LLP, Stamford, Conn.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York (Sterling Johnson Jr., J.).

UPON DUE CONSIDERATION, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED, ADJUDGED, AND DECREED that the judgment of the District Court be and it hereby is AFFIRMED.

Plaintiff-Appellant Som Nath Chitkara (" Plaintiff") appeals from a decision of the district court (Johnson, J.) granting the defendants' Motion to Enforce the Parties' Settlement Agreement. We affirm the district court's decision for substantially the reasons it stated.

BACKGROUND In the 1993, Plaintiff filed Title VII and state-law discrimination and retaliation claims against his former employer, the New York Telephone Company, and its parent company, the NYNEX Corporation (collectively, "Defendants"). Not long afterwards he filed for bankruptcy. In 1998, the district court (Block, J.) dismissed most of Plaintiff's claims as time-barred, leaving only a single retaliation count. 1 Hoping to resolve this final claim, counsel for both sides applied to participate in a court-annexed mediation program. Their application was granted, and mediation took place on June 12, 2000. What came out of the mediation was a handwritten agreement, signed by both parties and their respective attorneys, indicating that Plaintiff would dismiss his claim with prejudice in return for $50,000. What took place during the mediation is hotly contested and not verifiable on the record before us.

The heart of the matter, on Plaintiff's account, is that after meeting privately with Defendants' counsel who, Plaintiff surmises, provided the mediator with a copy of Plaintiff's bankruptcy petition,2 the mediator harangued the plaintiff into settling: "Mr. Chitkara, Come on!

What are we doing here? You have no case! This case belongs to the trustees of the bankruptcy court." The mediator explained that the lawsuit was not listed on Chitkara's bankruptcy petition, and so if the case went to trial, any moneys recovered would go directly to creditors. The only way that Plaintiff would ever "see a dime," the mediator said, was if he "agreed to the mediated settlement then and there."

On the affidavit from Defendants' lawyer, however, the mediation was quite ordinary and, in any event, counsel for the defendants did not supply and could not have supplied the mediator with information about Plaintiff's bankruptcy because, at the time, counsel was unaware of it.

Within days of the mediation, Plaintiff learned from his bankruptcy attorney that his Title VII claim was in fact insulated from creditors of the bankruptcy estate. He promptly disavowed the settlement and cut ties with his Title VII attorney. Five months later, Defendants served a motion to enforce the settlement. Plaintiff responded by hiring a new attorney, who drafted and filed a Memorandum of Law in Opposition to the Motion to Enforce. This document advances but one legal argument, to wit, that the settlement agreement was voidable, pursuant to Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 164(2), because Plaintiff had justifiably relied on a fraudulent or material misrepresentation by the mediator. The court below granted Defendants'

motion, holding that Plaintiff could not prevail even on his own version of the "facts,"

whereupon Plaintiff switched lawyers yet again and filed a motion for reconsideration. This motion advances a new theory of voidability and argues, in the alternative, that local mediation confidentiality rules preclude judicial enforcement of settlement agreements procured through court-annexed mediation unless the agreement has been memorialized in a standard-form stipulation and filed with the court. The motion for reconsideration was denied, and this appeal followed.

On appeal, Plaintiff contends that the district court erred in denying the motion for reconsideration. He also puts forth several contract-based theories of voidability, and further proposes that the settlement is "a nullity" due to procedural violations of mediation rules.

DISCUSSION In reviewing a district court's ruling on a motion for reconsideration, we apply an "abuse of discretion" standard, see Devlin v. Transp. Communications Int'l. Union, 175 F.3d 121, 131-

therefore affirm.

We have considered Plaintiff's remaining contentions and adjudge them meritless.

Accordingly, the trial court's ruling is AFFIRMED.

For the Court, ROSEANN B. MACKECHNIE, Clerk of Court by:

[*]-. The Honorable Sidney H. Stein, United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, sitting by designation.

[1]-. In June of 1999, the case was transferred to the docket of Judge Johnson.

[2]-. Defendants allegedly got hold of this document through discovery.