Brennan v. Metropolitan Opera Ass'n

• Decision Date: 01 August 1998
• Docket Number: Docket No. 98-7749
• Citation: 192 F.3d 310
• Parties: (2nd Cir. 1999) MARTHA ELLEN BRENNAN, Plaintiff Appellant, v. METROPOLITAN OPERA ASSOCIATION, INC., DAVID KNEUSS, JOSEPH VOLPE, Defendants-Appellees
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

Page 310

192 F.3d 310 (2nd Cir. 1999)

MARTHA ELLEN BRENNAN, Plaintiff Appellant, v. METROPOLITAN OPERA ASSOCIATION, INC., DAVID KNEUSS, JOSEPH VOLPE Defendants-Appellees.

Docket No. 98-7749

August Term, 1998

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT

Argued: December 4, 1998

Decided: September 21, 1999

Appeal from a judgment of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Michael B. Mukasey, Judge).

Affirmed.

[Copyrighted Material Omitted]

[Copyrighted Material Omitted] Renee L. Cyr, New York, NY, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

Neil H. Abramson, New York, NY (Proskauer Rose LLP, New York, NY, Henry W. Lauterstein, General Counsel, Metropolitan Opera Association, New York, NY, of counsel), for Defendants Appellees.

Before: NEWMAN, PARKER, Circuit Judges, and PATTERSON, District Judge^*.

Judge Newman concurs in part and dissents in part with a separate opinion.

PARKER, Circuit Judge:

Plaintiff-appellant Martha Ellen Brennan appeals from a final judgment of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Michael B. Mukasey, Judge) entered April 24, 1998, granting summary judgment for the Metropolitan Opera Association, Inc. (the "Metropolitan Opera" or the "Met"), David Kneuss, Executive Stage Director at the Met and Joseph Volpe, the Met's General Manager (collectively "defendants" or "appellees") and declining to exercise jurisdiction over one of the plaintiff's supplemental state law claims.

Appellant sued her employer alleging that she had been discharged from her job as an Assistant Stage Director with the Met because of her age, gender, and sexual orientation. She also contends that she was subjected to a hostile work environment based on her age, gender, and sexual orientation. The district court found that Brennan presented insufficient evidence to raise a triable issue of fact as to any of her claims. We agree.

I. BACKGROUND

A. Brennan's Employment With the Met

Brennan began working for the Met in 1986 as an "observer," a volunteer position. She continued to work as a volunteer in various capacities until late spring 1987, when she accepted a part-time paid position as secretary to Phebe Berkowitz, Executive Stage Director, for the 1987-88 season. On the employment verification form Brennan completed in August 1987, she misrepresented her birth date as December 30, 1956. Brennan's actual birth date is December 30, 1946.

Brennan returned as Berkowitz's Administrative Assistant for the 1988-89 season, with the understanding that Berkowitz would be going on maternity leave and Brennan would then be working with Berkowitz's temporary replacement, David Kneuss. Brennan describes Kneuss's attitude toward her at this time as "charming" and "gregarious."

When first working for Berkowitz, Brennan spoke with her about Brennan's goal to become an Assistant Stage Director. An Assistant Stage Director aids the Stage Director in coordinating rehearsal schedules, organizing and preparing the rehearsal room, acting as liaison to other departments, preparing the production book, doing background research and preparing and rehearsing understudies ("covers") and replacements. Berkowitz suggested to Brennan that she needed to get some experience in smaller opera houses and improve her language skills. To this end, Brennan resigned in March 1989 to become an Assistant Stage Director at the Houston Grand Opera. During the next year she also worked at the Opera Theater of St. Louis and the Struthers Library Theater in Pennsylvania as well as spending three months in Germany studying the language.

In April 1990, Kneuss, who had become Executive Stage Director when Berkowitz stepped down after returning from maternity leave in spring 1989, offered Brennan a position as an Assistant Stage Director at the Met for the 1990-91 revival of Der Rosenkavalier. Brennan accepted the offer and entered into a "Standard Principal's Contract (Weekly)." All Assistant Stage Directors entered into this type of contract which constituted an employment agreement for one season. During the season, usually in mid-February, the Met sent all Assistant Stage Directors a letter indicating whether there would be work for them the following season ("ABC letter").

During the 1990-91 season Brennan worked with Bruce Donnell, Stage Director for Der Rosenkavalier. She had minimal contact with Kneuss, but she felt that he was not as friendly to her as he had been in the past. In February 1991, Brennan received an ABC letter informing her that she would not be rehired for the 1991-92 season. However, Kneuss later contacted her and offered her a position as Assistant Stage Director for The Magic Flute, which he was directing in the 1991-92 season. Brennan accepted the position.

During her 1991-92 work on The Magic Flute, Brennan conducted rehearsals for the first time. She remembers only one occasion on which Kneuss criticized her work, telling her that she needed to be better about getting rehearsals started on time. Brennan characterized Kneuss's treatment of her during this season as "hostile, degrading, and demeaning." She could not recall specific remarks, but thought his tone of voice and his facial expressions were intended to demean her. Brennan and Rosemarie White, Kneuss's secretary, thought Kneuss, who was born in 1948, treated Brennan, Paul Mills, Sharon Thomas, Pamela McRae and Lesley Koenig more harshly than other Stage Directors and Assistant Stage Directors. Thomas, Mills and McRae were all over 40, as was Brennan.

In February 1992, Brennan received an ABC letter informing her of the Met's intention to rehire her for the 1992-93 season. Kneuss asked her to be the Assistant Stage Director for The Magic Flute and Der Rosenkavalier. Brennan found working for Kneuss during the 1992-93 season "depressing and demoralizing." She thought he spoke to her scornfully and derisively. He was rude to her several times in the presence of other people, undermining her authority. She remembers three incidents in particular. First, he was very curt in answering her questions in front of a Stage Manager, and told her "you may go." Second, one day in the cafeteria when Brennan introduced Kneuss to Christian Thielemann, a new conductor, in the presence of Irene Spiegelmann, a diction coach, Kneuss said to Thielemann, after giving Brennan a "nasty" look, "Stick with Irene." Finally, when asked a question by Brennan, Kneuss rolled his eyes at Gil Wechsler, a lighting designer.

At a meeting in early 1993, Kneuss told Brennan that he expected Assistant Stage Directors to grow into the role of Stage Director. Brennan thought this was a change in policy and responded by telling Kneuss that she did not know if she wanted to direct. According to Brennan, Kneuss had never met with her to critique her performance, when in February 1993 she received an ABC letter informing her that the Met would not be offering her a contract for the 1993-94 season. When Brennan approached Kneuss about the letter, he told her that he felt she lacked energy and did not bring life to the stage or propel performances forward. At the end of March 1993, Brennan asked Kneuss once again to reconsider, but he refused, recounting his feelings about her performance and adding that she was getting expensive, especially if she did not wish to grow towards directing. In addition, he told Brennan that he felt she did not "fit in." Brennan called Kneuss one more time in March; he persisted in his determination not to rehire her.

After this last discussion with Kneuss, Brennan called Alan Olsen at the American Guild of Musical Artists, Inc., the union with which the Met contracted, to complain about not being rehired. In late March 1993, Brennan met with Charles Reicker, Coordinator for Artistic Relations at the Met, and read him a document she had written called "David Kneuss treatment of some stage directors." The document criticized Kneuss's management style, but did not mention any claims relating to age, sex, or sexual orientation discrimination. Reicker set up a meeting for Brennan with Pamela Rasp, the Met's Director of Labor Relations. When she met with Rasp in March or April 1993, Brennan reiterated her complaints.

Kneuss hired Robin Guarino as Assistant Stage Director for the 1993-94 season for The Magic Flute and Der Rosenkavalier. Guarino, who was then 33, had worked at the Met during the 1992-93 season. In April 1994, Kneuss wrote about Guarino that she had done remarkably well as an Assistant Stage Director, but he was unsure whether she would ever be prepared to direct at the Met. Guarino was rehired for the 1994-95, 1995-96, 1996-97 and 1997-98 seasons. She received her first directing credit during the 1996-97 season.

B. Evidence of a Sex-based Hostile Work Environment

When Brennan first worked at the Met as an Assistant Stage Director during the 1990-91 season, she shared an office, Room C-5, with several other Assistant Stage Directors. During 1991, one of Brennan's co-workers, Stephen Pickover, placed pictures of semi-clothed and nude men on one of the three bulletin boards in the office. There were seven post-card sized pictures which took up about one-quarter of the bulletin board. On five of the pictures the models were wearing shorts or bathing suits. On one picture the model was draped in a sheet. Two of these pictures were cropped so that the head of each subject was removed from the picture, thereby making the torso of each individual the focus of the picture. The last picture depicted four nude men standing in a semi-circle on a beach. Brennan was offended by the pictures and removed them from the bulletin board on December 28, 1992. When she gave them to Pickover she complained to him about their being on the bulletin board. Pickover said nothing in response, he simply put the pictures back up.

Catherine Hazelhurst and Robin Guarino, who shared the office, were in the room at the time and both...