Demoret v. Zegarelli
| Decision Date | 08 June 2006 |
| Docket Number | Docket No. 05-1831-cv. |
| Citation | 451 F.3d 140 |
| Parties | Theresa A. DEMORET, Barbara A. Napoli and Robin A. Pell, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Philip ZEGARELLI, Dwight Douglas and The Village of Sleepy Hollow, New York, Defendants-Appellants. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit |
Terence M. O'Neil, Garden City, New York (James P. Clark, Bond, Schoeneck & King, PLLC, Garden City, NY, of counsel), for Defendants-Appellants Philip Zegarelli and the Village of Sleepy Hollow.
Jack Babchik, White Plains, New York (Babchik & Young, LLP, White Plains, NY, of counsel), for Defendant-Appellant Dwight Douglas.
Jane Gould, White Plains, New York (Kim Berg, Lovett & Gould, LLP, White Plains, NY, of counsel), for Plaintiffs-Appellees.
Before: CARDAMONE, POOLER, and SOTOMAYOR, Circuit Judges.
The case before us on this appeal has as one of the named defendants the Village of Sleepy Hollow (Village), a small municipality located on the banks of the Hudson River in Westchester County, New York. The very name Sleepy Hollow evokes shades of the Headless Horseman, Ichabod Crane, and Katrina Van Tassel—all fictional figures made famous by Washington Irving in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Wildside Press 2004) (1917). According to the legend, the Headless Horseman haunts this tranquil village. Its ghost is reportedly responsible for numerous frightful encounters, including one in which the specter scared the schoolmaster, Ichabod Crane, out of town. In this case we do not deal with a headless horseman, but with discord of another kind—the alleged discriminatory treatment faced by plaintiffs, two female employees of the Village.
Plaintiffs Theresa Demoret and Robin Pell, employed by the Village of Sleepy Hollow since 1997 and 1998, respectively, sued the Village, Mayor Philip Zegarelli (Zegarelli or Mayor), and Village Administrator Dwight Douglas (Douglas or Administrator) for gender discrimination, asserting claims pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for violation of their rights under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq.; and New York State Executive Law § 296. Plaintiffs claimed they were exposed to a hostile work environment, disparate treatment because of their gender, and retaliation for their complaints of discrimination.
Defendants Zegarelli and Douglas moved for summary judgment based on qualified immunity on the § 1983 claims. The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Robinson, J.), granted in part, and denied in part, their motion in an order dated March 4, 2005. Demoret v. Zegarelli, 361 F.Supp.2d 193, 205 (S.D.N.Y.2005). From this order defendants appeal. In addition, defendants and the Village ask us to exercise pendent appellate jurisdiction to dismiss plaintiffs' related state law and Title VII claims.
Philip Zegarelli served as Mayor of the Village from 1979 to 1987 and then again during the relevant time period; reelected in 1999, he serves presently. Being Mayor of Sleepy Hollow is a part-time job. As Mayor, Zegarelli is a voting member of the seven-member Village Board and is responsible for its personnel practices, including hiring, firing, and disciplinary matters. The Mayor also directly supervises the Village Administrator. The Village Administrator makes recommendations to the Mayor on personnel decisions and is responsible for the Village's day-to-day operations. In May 2000 Mayor Zegarelli hired Dwight Douglas to serve in that capacity. Douglas's duties included the direct supervision of plaintiffs and the Village department heads.
Plaintiff Demoret was the secretary/assistant to the Mayor and to the Administrator for six years from August 1997 to September 2003. Plaintiff Pell is the Village recreation supervisor, taking that position in 1998 and serving through the present time. Plaintiffs brought suit against the defendants on March 19, 2003. A third plaintiff, Barbara Napoli, joined the original complaint but, by stipulation and agreement with defendants, discontinued it. Plaintiffs Demoret and Pell filed an amended complaint on October 16, 2003. Accepting plaintiffs' allegations and drawing all permissible inferences in their favor, we set forth the factual background.
Theresa Demoret's duties initially included answering the telephone, faxing documents, and drafting letters. During the three years she was employed by the Village prior to Douglas's hire as Village Administrator in May 2000, Demoret worked without much direct supervision, reporting to the acting administrator and the part-time Mayor as necessary. In addition to her duties as secretary/assistant, she took on special projects from time to time. For example, in 1998 she began assisting the treasurer with preparing the payroll.
When Douglas became the Village Administrator, he told Demoret he objected to her working on the payroll because he needed a full-time assistant. When Demoret continued her assistance on the payroll, Douglas checked frequently at her desk to see if she was accomplishing her other duties for him. One of Demoret's charges is Douglas acted condescendingly toward her by closely supervising her work.
She also asserts Douglas treated her rudely throughout the time they worked together—in failing to say good morning to her or engage her in conversation, and that when he did speak he was condescending. At the same time, Demoret asserts that she observed Douglas treating male colleagues in a friendly manner and with courtesy. According to Demoret, Douglas micromanaged the assignments he gave her. For example, he asked her to double check the spelling of another employee's name even after she assured him the spelling was correct, wrote unnecessarily detailed notes to her about assignments she had performed in the past, and accused her of reading the newspaper instead of working when she clipped newspaper articles mentioning Sleepy Hollow as part of her job duties. Further, Demoret complains defendants failed to give her meaningful or enough work to do. Douglas relegated to her basic tasks such as typing, photocopying, and answering the telephone. He delegated substantive projects, such as assisting with park renovation plans, to a male college student intern, while relying on Demoret only for administrative work.
When Demoret complained to Mayor Zegarelli about Douglas's treatment of her and other women in the office, Zegarelli replied by telling Demoret that others had also complained about the Village Administrator because of Douglas's difficult personality. The Mayor promised to talk to Douglas and to try to resolve the personality conflict. To Demoret's knowledge, the Mayor never took such remedial action.
Demoret also contends the Mayor gradually removed meaningful job duties and responsibilities from her, including editing the Village's newsletter, preparing payroll, and using the mayoral stamp. Custody of the mayoral stamp was given to the Village clerk (a female). In addition, the Mayor hired a woman whom he knew from his prior work in the private sector to serve as deputy clerk, and he gave her some duties previously assigned to plaintiff. Without these duties, Demoret complains she was left with little to do. Further, she laments, the Mayor and Village Administrator moved her workspace from the second floor to the third floor of the Village office building after she filed the present lawsuit, and they took from her still more duties at that time.
Through discovery conducted in this litigation, the Village learned that Demoret had engaged in the unauthorized disclosure of Village documents to her attorneys, who were involved with other litigation against the Village. The Village held a hearing on September 3, 2003 to allow Demoret to respond to the allegations. Thereafter, Mayor Zegarelli announced his decision to fire Demoret, which the Village Board of Trustees approved by resolution on October 14, 2003.
Robin Pell took the job as recreation supervisor having previously worked for the Village, running the day camp in the summer of 1998 and managing the fall festival. In 1998 she received a provisional appointment to the position of recreation supervisor. The Village made that appointment permanent in 2000 after Pell passed a qualifying civil service test.
Pell, like Demoret, contends that as an employee she was subjected to a hostile work environment and disparate treatment on the basis of her gender. Pell's hostile work environment claims are similar to those of Demoret. She declares that Douglas spoke to her in a condescending manner and did not extend social pleasantries, such as saying hello or good morning, that he offered to male colleagues. On one occasion at a Village function, Douglas commented to her in front of two other town employees that she looked nice "and that [she] should dress that way more often, because when [she] wear[s] a sweatsuit [her] IQ must drop 20 points." Also, according to Pell, Douglas accused her of being insubordinate when she expressed disagreement with him. Pell contends that the Administrator used a different tone of voice to speak to her than the one he used to speak to male colleagues at the department head meetings. When Pell complained to him that he did not treat her the same as male department heads, Douglas accused her of being "too emotional."
As part of her hostile work environment claim, Pell points to Zegarelli's and Douglas's comments regarding a sexual harassment seminar for Village employees. According to Pell, Mayor Zegarelli said that the seminar would be pointless for some Village employees. He permitted jokes about the seminar during a department head meeting, and he joked about the amount of litigation against the Village. Village...
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