Cadet-Legros v. N.Y. Univ. Hosp. Ctr.

• Decision Date: 08 December 2015
• Citation: 21 N.Y.S.3d 221,135 A.D.3d 196
• Parties: Jessie CADET–LEGROS, Plaintiff–Respondent–Appellant, v. NEW YORK UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL CENTER, doing business as New York University Langone Medical Center, Defendant–Appellant–Respondent.
• Court: New York Supreme Court — Appellate Division

135 A.D.3d 196

21 N.Y.S.3d 221

Jessie CADET–LEGROS, Plaintiff–Respondent–Appellant,

v.NEW YORK UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL CENTER, doing business as New York University Langone Medical Center, Defendant–Appellant–Respondent.

Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Department, New York.

Dec. 8, 2015.

DeLince Law PLLC, New York (J. Patrick DeLince of counsel), for appellant-respondent.

Tarter Krinsky & Drogin LLP, New York (Richard L. Steer and Laurent S. Drogin of counsel), for respondent-appellant.

PETER TOM, J.P., ROLANDO ACOSTA, RICHARD T. ANDRIAS, KARLA MOSKOWITZ, JJ.

ACOSTA, J.

Plaintiff, an African–American woman who worked as a clinical supervisor in defendant's Langone Serology/Diagnostic Immunology Lab (the lab), claims that she was discharged from employment because of her race and in retaliation for filing an internal complaint of discrimination. Defendant argues that plaintiff was fired not on the basis of race, but because of her long-standing insubordination and disruptive behavior. We find that, in response to defendant's evidence of a nondiscriminatory reason for firing her, plaintiff failed to adduce evidence that either created a factual dispute as to whether defendant's decision to terminate her employment might have been based in part on race or would allow a reasonable jury to conclude that she was discharged in retaliation for engaging in protected activity, and we therefore dismiss both causes of action.

Facts and Background

Plaintiff was hired in 1992. In 2007, she began to engage in a struggle with her managers concerning her behavior and her resistance to the administrative hierarchy. Plaintiff was first admonished in or around May 2007. Five days later, she was issued a "Final Warning" regarding her "insubordination and unacceptable behavior as a member of the management team." Around that time, plaintiff received a performance evaluation of 2 out of 5, which she claims was retroactively downgraded from a rating of 5.

Defendant's personnel continued to complain about plaintiff's inappropriate interactions with them throughout the rest of the year. In January 2008, plaintiff received a 2 on her performance evaluation for May to December 2007, in which it was noted that she had failed to improve her communication or respect the chain of command and that she was continuing to inappropriately air her grievances to her staff. Her supervisors warned her that her failure to immediately improve would result in her termination.

In February 2008, plaintiff was once again seen to be conducting herself inappropriately, and one manager said that this was evidence that a "leopard does not change its spots." Another manager, with a less negative view of plaintiff's record from December to February, did not disagree with the first manager's overall characterization, but said that plaintiff's recent "attitude and demeanor" had been excellent.

At this juncture, despite the new incident and the December 2007 warning about termination, plaintiff was not terminated.

In a memo dated August 18, 2008, after several incidents in which she refused to report directly to the designated manager, plaintiff was issued a "Final Warning" for her "refusal to accept [her manager as her] superior and to communicate with him as required." She was again warned that failure to improve would result in immediate termination. Almost immediately thereafter, plaintiff filed an internal complaint of racial discrimination.

Plaintiff received additional warnings because of what defendant described as her continuing insubordination and refusal to report to a manager. One was a "critical alert" in late 2008 and another was a third "Final Warning" in early 2009.

By May 2009, a manager who had maintained over the years that plaintiff should be given additional chances now agreed with another manager that plaintiff did indeed need to be fired. That previously supportive manager and a third manager (the person who had hired plaintiff) then completed plaintiff's final performance evaluation, again giving her a 2. A termination letter was prepared on May 11, 2009, and given to plaintiff on May 14, 2009.

Plaintiff brought the instant action in August 2009, asserting four causes of action under the New York City Human Rights Law (the City HRL) (Administrative Code of City of N.Y. § 8–107 et seq. ). Only two of the causes of action are relevant to this appeal: disparate treatment (discriminatory discharge) and retaliation. The motion court denied defendant's motion for summary judgment dismissing the disparate treatment claim (to the extent it was predicated on plaintiff's termination), and granted the motion with respect to the retaliation claim. Both parties appeal.

Discussion

1. Standard of Review

Where a defendant has "offered evidence in admissible form of one or more nondiscriminatory motivations for its actions, a court should ordinarily avoid the unnecessary and sometimes confusing effort of going back to the question of whether a prima facie case has been made out in the first place" (Bennett v. Health Mgt. Sys., Inc., 92 A.D.3d 29, 39–40, 936 N.Y.S.2d 112 [1st Dept.2011], lv. denied 18 N.Y.3d 811, 2012 WL 1432090 [2012] ). Instead, the court should focus on "whether the defendant has sufficiently met its burden, as the moving party, of showing that, based on the evidence before the court and drawing all reasonable inferences in plaintiff's favor, no jury could find defendant liable under any of the evidentiary routes [applicable to discrimination cases]" (id. at 45, 936 N.Y.S.2d 112 ).¹ One way for a plaintiff to defeat summary judgment is by offering "some evidence that at least one of the reasons proffered by defendant is false, misleading, or incomplete" (id. ).

If the plaintiff succeeds in this regard, "such evidence of pretext should in almost every case indicate to the court that a motion for summary judgment must be denied" (id. ). This is because once a plaintiff introduces "pretext" evidence, "a host of determinations properly made only by a jury come into play, such as whether a false[, misleading, or incomplete] explanation constitutes evidence of consciousness of guilt, an attempt to cover up the alleged discriminatory conduct, or an improper discriminatory motive coexisting with other legitimate reasons" (id. at 43, 936 N.Y.S.2d 112 ).

This formulation, founded on the uniquely broad and remedial purposes of the City HRL, provides the framework for evaluating the sufficiency of evidence, and differs significantly from federal civil rights law (by assigning, for example, more weight to the possibility that a pretextual justification reflects consciousness of guilt).² As a practical matter, therefore, the Bennett formulation helps embody the substantive law applicable to City HRL claims (i.e., what constitutes because of discrimination ).

How the City HRL's distinctive substantive definitions, standards, and frameworks interact with existing standards for summary judgment has been the subject of some confusion (see e.g. Mihalik v. Credit Agricole Cheuvreux N. Am., Inc., 715 F.3d 102, 110 n. 8 [2d Cir2013] ). As with any other civil case, a discrimination plaintiff must produce enough evidence to preclude the moving defendant from being able to prove that (1) no issues of material fact have been placed in dispute by competent evidence, and (2) a reasonable jury (resolving all inferences that can reasonably be drawn in favor of the non-moving party) could not find for the plaintiff on any set of facts under any theory of the case. But recognizing that the general evidentiary standard remains the same in discrimination cases does not permit a court to apply the standard in a manner that ignores the distinctiveness of City HRL causes of action. All the general standard does, in other words, is provide the template that says, "Defendant must prove that no reasonable jury can conclude X." The "X" depends on the cause of action.

Thus, the only substantive requirement in a City HRL case where the plaintiff goes the "pretext" route is for the plaintiff to produce some evidence to suggest that at least one reason is "false, misleading, or incomplete." A plaintiff who satisfies this requirement may well have produced less evidence than would be required under the state and federal laws. But he or she will have produced enough evidence to preclude the defendant from proving that no reasonable jury could conclude that any of the defendant's reasons was pretextual. In other words, the general evidentiary standard comfortably co-exists with the distinctive substantive framework that must be applied to City HRL claims.³

2. Discriminatory Discharge

Plaintiff suffered an adverse action when defendant terminated her employment⁴ ; the question is whether that action was motivated, in whole or in part, by racial discrimination. Because defendant offered in support of its summary judgment motion admissible evidence of one or more nondiscriminatory motivations for its actions, we will move directly to the question of whether defendant carried its burden of showing that plaintiff did not raise an issue of fact as to whether defendant's reasons were pretextual or whether race otherwise played a part in its decision to fire her (see Bennett, 92 A.D.3d at 39–40, 936 N.Y.S.2d 112 ). We conclude that, notwithstanding the more plaintiff—friendly City HRL standard discussed above, defendant showed that plaintiff failed to adduce a sufficient quantum of evidence to allow a reasonable jury to conclude either that defendant's nondiscriminatory reason for firing her was pretextual or that discrimination otherwise played a role in defendant's decision to discharge her; therefore, summary judgment dismissing her claim of discriminatory discharge is warranted.

Defendant submitted evidence—essentially undisputed by plaintiff—of a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for firing plaintiff. As the motion court explained, defendant had been warning plaintiff for years that her conduct...