Gares v. Willingboro Tp.

Decision Date23 July 1996
Docket NumberNo. 95-5269,95-5269
Citation90 F.3d 720
Parties71 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. (BNA) 596, 68 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 44,234 Margaret GARES v. WILLINGBORO TOWNSHIP; Willingboro Township Council; Willingboro Township Police Dept.; Gary Owens, Willingboro Township, Appellant.
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit

Joseph F. Betley (argued), Michael D. Markey, Capehart & Scatchard, Mount Laurel, NJ, for Appellant.

Lanier E. Williams (argued), Philadelphia, PA, and Christopher Morkides, Upper Darby, PA, for Appellee.

Before: STAPLETON, SAROKIN and ROSENN, Circuit Judges.

OPINION OF THE COURT

STAPLETON, Circuit Judge:

This case involves a sexual harassment claim by plaintiff Margaret Gares against her former employer Willingboro Township and the Township's former police chief Gary Owens. Following a trial in June of 1993, the jury returned a verdict in favor of Gares against the Township for $20,000 in compensatory damages and $30,000 in punitive damages pursuant to the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination ("LAD"), N.J.Stat.Ann. §§ 10:5-1 to -42, and against Owens for $4,000 in compensatory damages and $8,000 in punitive damages pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Owens did not appeal the judgment. The Township is appealing only the jury's award of punitive damages, arguing that the district court erroneously denied the Township's motion for judgment as a matter of law because: (1) punitive damages are unavailable under the LAD against municipalities, (2) New Jersey law requires evidence of the defendant's ability to pay as a predicate for an award of punitive damages and the plaintiff failed to provide such evidence, and (3) there is insufficient evidence to support a punitive damage award. We will affirm.

I.

In reviewing the denial of the defendants' motion for judgment as a matter of law, we must view the evidence in a light most favorable to the plaintiff. Rotondo v. Keene Corp., 956 F.2d 436, 438 (3d Cir.1992).

Willingboro Township, a New Jersey municipal corporation, is governed by a popularly-elected Town Council, which in turn appoints a Township Manager to handle the day-to-day operations of the Township in the manner of a chief executive officer. The Township Manager is ultimately responsible for all personnel actions, including hirings, promotions, terminations and disciplinary sanctions. Additionally, under the Township's policy on sexual harassment, employees are to direct all sexual harassment claims to the Township Manager, who must then decide what investigative or remedial steps to take.

The next tier of Township officials includes the Chief of Police, who is the head of the Township's Police Department. The Chief of Police, in turn, directly supervises and manages two Captains, one of whom is the Captain of the Services Division. These two Captains supervise the various sergeants and lieutenants within their respective divisions. The Police Department is an integral unit of the Township government, so that all who work in the department are in fact Township employees.

Margaret Gares began working for the Township's Police Department in about 1974 as a school traffic guard in the Services Division. From at least 1983, upon her promotion to Lieutenant of School Traffic, Gares was under the direct supervision and management of defendant Gary Owens, who served as Captain of the Services Division until his promotion to Chief of Police in October 1990. Continually over that seven-year period, Owens subjected Gares to a sexually hostile work environment by engaging in conduct including: calling Gares sexually offensive names, such as "bimbo," "bimbette," "tramp," "mere woman," "trollop," "dumb blonde," and "Township slut," in the presence of her fellow employees; openly condoning degrading conduct against female employees by other male employees under Owens' direct supervision; permitting the open display of pornographic material in the office; encouraging the public telling of obscene jokes; and touching Gares in an unwelcome and degrading manner, including at one point taunting her by holding her badge up out of her reach and pinning her body against the wall of his office with his own body. Owens persisted in such conduct even after Gares expressly and publicly asked him to stop. Each of the seven other female employees under Owens' direct supervision in the Services Division had made complaints similar to Gares' to then Chief of Police Richard Van Sciver.

A few specific examples of Owens' conduct will provide ample illustration of the nature of his actions. At one point, while Owens was Captain of Gares' division, someone left an obscene photograph on Gares' desk of a nude, extremely large-breasted woman, with Gares' name written across the top of the photograph. When Gares arrived at her desk and discovered the photograph, Owens and several other male officers laughed, much to Gares' anger and embarrassment, and Owens compared Gares' breasts to those depicted in the photograph. A female co-worker testified that Owens had made rude remarks about Gares' breasts on a number of occasions, calling them "bazooka-size" or "elephant-size."

In 1988, on the day after a Township-sponsored seminar on sexual harassment in the workplace (a mandatory seminar that Gares, but not Owens, attended), Gares was working at her desk, which was situated with other desks in a large, main office. A broken garage door into the building was making a lot of noise, and one of a group of several male officers (including Captain Owens) asked what the source of the noise was. Another male officer replied, "Oh, just ignore it, that's [Gares'] dildo." Angry and embarrassed by the officers' and Owens' laughter, Gares immediately stated, as she had been instructed to do in the previous day's seminar, that Owens and the officers were all "on notice" that she found that conduct offensive and wanted it to stop. She then asked Owens, as the officers' supervisor, formally to reprimand the officer who had made the offensive joke. Owens merely walked away, laughing, to his office, but Gares followed him and repeated her demand. Owens then sharply replied, "Just get out of my office, I don't have time for you." (Supp.App. at 8.)

Thus, by his own affirmative conduct, and by tolerating and encouraging similarly offensive conduct on the part of other male employees against Gares and her female co-workers, Captain Owens created and fostered a sexually hostile work environment in the Services Division.

The Police Department operated on a strict "chain-of-command" procedure for employees to register their work-related complaints. Under this system, an employee with a complaint of sexual harassment must first complain to her immediate supervisor. If she is not satisfied with her immediate supervisor's response, the employee must persuade that supervisor to permit an appeal to the next official in the Department's command hierarchy. Should the complaining employee's supervisor choose not to authorize an appeal, the matter would be at an end: a Police Department employee was not permitted to bypass her immediate supervisor to report complaints directly to the Chief of Police or to the Township Manager. Former Chief Van Sciver testified that, if the Chief of Police elects not to tell the Township Manager, the Township Manager would never learn of the complaint. Several witnesses testified that the Police Department had clear, standing orders, reaffirmed periodically, that employees were to obey the chain-of-command rules and were not to see the Township Manager without the permission of the Chief of Police.

The Police Department's chain-of-command policy conflicted squarely with the Township's sexual harassment policy which provides that all employees should direct complaints of sexual harassment to the Township Manager. Gares and several other long-term Police Department employees testified, however, that they were unaware of the Township's sexual harassment policy. Chief Van Sciver was aware of the Township policy and of the Township Manager's personal "open door" policy, but he nonetheless enforced his department's chain-of-command policy because he believed it encouraged employees to work out their problems among themselves.

Gares' immediate supervisor was Owens, the man who was sexually harassing her, and so the Department's chain-of-command procedure trapped her between the Scylla of enduring Owens' offensive conduct and the Charybdis of possible termination for violating the chain-of-command rules by reporting Owens' conduct directly to the Chief of Police or the Township Manager. Gares endured Owens' conduct towards her and his dismissive responses to her complaints for years.

On one occasion in 1987, however, when former Chief Van Sciver happened to observe Gares in tears after Owens had made a sexually offensive remark to her, Van Sciver asked Gares what was the matter. Gares complained of Owens' conduct and explained that Owens had denied her permission to appeal to the Township Manager. Van Sciver told Gares he would take care of the matter, but Owens persisted in his offensive conduct. About a year later, Van Sciver again happened to observe Gares in tears following another of Owens' remarks, and Gares explained that Owens' offensive conduct had not diminished. Van Sciver told Gares that both he and the Township Manager were aware of the situation. Van Sciver engaged Gares in a third such conversation in 1989, repeating his assurances, yet neither Van Sciver nor the Township Manager ever conducted any investigation or took any remedial action.

After Owens had been promoted to Chief of Police, and shortly after Gares filed her discrimination charges with state and federal agencies in the spring of 1991, Gares met with the Township Manager to discuss Gares' allegations against Owens. The Township Manager told Gares that she did not believe Owens would do such things, and asked if Gares thought...

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