Coates v. Suthars, Inc.
| Decision Date | 14 December 2020 |
| Docket Number | Civil Action No. 4:19cv00049 |
| Citation | 507 F.Supp.3d 678 |
| Parties | Allison COATES, Plaintiff, v. SUTHARS, INC., d/b/a Kare Pharmacy and Compounding, Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Western District of Virginia |
Terry Neill Grimes, Terry N. Grimes, Esq., P.C., Roanoke, VA, for Plaintiff.
Laurin H. Mills, Samek Werther & Mills, LLC, Alexandria, VA, Kimberly Jane Jandrain, Samek Werther & Mills, LLC, Rockville, MD, for Defendant.
Until she was fired in August 2018, Plaintiff Allison Coates worked as a sales representative for Defendant Suthars, Inc., d/b/a Kare Pharmacy and Compounding ("Kare"), a large compounding pharmacy and manufacturer of specialized prescription drugs, headquartered in Danville. Kare's then-chief operating officer ("COO") and part-owner, Jay Suthar ("Suthar"), unilaterally made the decisions to hire and later fire Coates, and his alleged conduct while she was employed there gives rise to this lawsuit.1
After her termination, Coates filed this suit under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, alleging a sexually hostile work environment and unlawful retaliation perpetrated by the defendant—namely Suthar. Coates alleges that beginning immediately after Suthar hired her and continuing for approximately seven months thereafter, he continually made unwanted romantic and implicitly sexual advances towards her, culminating in a marriage proposal made over dinner at a Mexican restaurant in January 2018. Coates further alleges that after she firmly rebuffed Suthar's marriage proposal, he began to actively undermine her success at Kare over the next seven months. According to Coates, Suthar's animus towards her, which she alleges was the direct result of her refusal be in a romantic relationship with him, was manifested in various ways: excluding her from key meetings, imposing unreasonable technological demands on her, failing to rectify glitches in software and other IT issues that made it difficult for her to meet these new technological demands, and openly criticizing her job performance despite achieving record-breaking sales numbers. According to Coates, as the natural conclusion to his months-long campaign to undermine her, Suthar fired her.
The defendant has moved for summary judgment, arguing that Suthar's romantic interest in and attendant conduct towards Coates over her first seven months at Kare "does not establish the existence of a hostile work environment" that is actionable under Title VII. Kare further argues that Coates's retaliation claim fails as a matter of law because the undisputed evidence demonstrates that Suthar terminated her because of "documented issues with her employment." (Def.'s Br. in Supp. of Mot. for Summ. J. [hereinafter "Def.'s Br."] pg. 1 [ECF No. 56].)
The court has carefully reviewed the entire record and concludes that Coates has adduced sufficient facts from which a reasonable jury could find that Suthar's conduct satisfied the elements of a hostile work environment claim, and that his decision to terminate her employment constituted unlawful retaliation. The court will therefore deny the motion for summary judgment.
In June 2017, Jay Suthar hired Allison Coates as a sales representative for Kare. Coates, who had recently graduated from Virginia Tech, applied for the position at the suggestion of her aunt, who at that time directed marketing for the pharmacy. Suthar interviewed Coates in his office in Danville and offered her a job a few days later. Other than working her way through college as a pharmacy technician, Coates's position at Kare was her first full-time job, and she had no prior sales or marketing experience.
Immediately after her hiring, Coates spent some time at Kare's Danville headquarters learning how the business worked before beginning her day-to-day responsibilities of visiting doctors and other health-care professionals in her assigned geographic region to market Kare's compounded drugs. Although Suthar, as COO of the entire company, which operates in multiple states and earns annual revenues of approximately $10 million, was not Coates's direct supervisor, Coates alleges—and others corroborate—that Suthar took a noticeable interest in her and, at least for a while, effectively acted as her day-to-day supervisor.
Coates contends that she interacted frequently with Suthar during her first six months on the job. After she completed her training, she returned to the Danville office at least two or three times a month, and Suthar would often accompany her on sales calls to doctors' offices, riding with her in the car and watching her pitch to potential clients. Coates described her interactions with Suthar as follows:
So he was someone who I would ask questions to, interact with, especially in the beginning, in the first six months, and try to get direction from about how he wanted his marketing person to grow the business as well.
(Allison Coates Dep. 54:4–8, Nov. 3, 2020 [ECF No. 60-1].) Coates and Suthar also regularly communicated through text messaging and daily phone calls during this period. (Coates Dep. 54:14–55:7.) Although Suthar frequently rode with Coates to visit doctors' offices, she recalls that he rarely provided any feedback or advice on how to make sales calls. When Coates asked for his input, Suthar replied: (Coates Dep. 70:6–7.)
Within a month of her hiring, Suthar began to express a romantic interest in Coates. She vividly recalls a conversation with him in her car as she drove him back to the airport, where he had left his private plane. Before getting out of the car, Suthar told Coates that he really enjoyed being with her and that he probably liked her "too much." (Coates Dep. 74:18–75:15.) According to Coates, at this point Suthar "asked [her] out romantically, to which [she] declined," explaining that it was her desire to keep her personal and professional lives separate. (Coates Dep. 75:2–3.) Coates asserts that as she tried to explain her position, Suthar abruptly cut her off, saying, "So you don't shit where you eat?" (Coates Dep. 75:8–9.)
Apparently undaunted by her initial refusal to go out with him, Suthar asked her out to dinner frequently when she visited the Danville office. (Coates Dep. 132:22–133:7; 177:5–11.) Coates testified that Suthar's initial advances "creeped [her] out" and generally made her uncomfortable. (Coates Dep. 84:9, 132:3.)
In July 2017, shortly after the airport incident, Suthar sent Coates a series of text messages inviting her to accompany him on his plane to Tangier Island.3 (Def.'s Br. Ex. H [ECF No. 56-2]; Coates Dep. 135:9–138:6.) In extending this invitation, Suthar texted: "I was also thinking of dropping into Richmond on the way there or back if I'm feeling saucy." (Def.'s Br. Ex. H.) Coates declined the invitation. She also recalls another incident in Suthar's office in Danville, relatively close in time to Suthar's initial advances, when Suthar asked if an acquaintance had "hit on" her. Coates demurred and told Suthar that she could take care of herself. (Coates Dep. 119:10–120:3.)
Coates contends her refusal of Suthar's initial advances caused him to be more critical of her job performance. Specifically, Coates recalls that after she declined to go out with him multiple times, Suthar, who until that point had mainly offered praise and "positive feedback," began to be more negative about her progress and wrote terse emails. (Coates Dep. 105:20–107:15.) In Coates's mind, there was a direct correlation between her reaction to Suthar's romantic interest and his assessment of her performance, and she worried that her refusal to accede to his romantic entreaties would jeopardize her fledgling career. Coates explained her concerns as follows:
It felt to me ... okay, well, I said no to him—it raised a red flag. It raised a question in my head of, okay, is this going forward? This was the moment that I kind of knew this week, okay, he has already asked me out, I've said no. Now is it going to be a problem? And then it did continue on and became a bigger problem with future interactions that were much worse than this.
The first of those future interactions occurred a few months later, in October 2017, when Coates accompanied Suthar and pharmacist-in-charge Ed Breslow to an overnight professional event in Richmond. After the scheduled event ended, the three of them made plans to go out to dinner. For some reason, Breslow did not show up at the restaurant, leaving Suthar and Coates to dine alone. Both of them consumed alcohol at dinner, and Suthar apparently became intoxicated. After returning to the hotel around midnight and going to their separate rooms, Suthar sent Coates a series of text messages, including one telling her that she "shouldn't be expecting him to wear pants at breakfast the next morning." (Def.'s Br. Ex. I [ECF No. 56-2].)
At breakfast the next day, Breslow asked Coates if she was dating anyone. After a brief exchange on this topic and some joking about marrying for money—which occurred in Suthar's presence—Suthar became angry. According to Breslow and Coates, in the car on the way to visit a doctor's office, Suthar "blew a gasket," lashing out at Coates in front of Breslow and criticizing her job performance. (Ed Breslow Dep. 26:10–11, Nov. 5, 2020 [ECF No. 60-4]; see also Coates Dep. 171:19–173:15.) Later that day, Suthar sent Coates a text apologizing for his earlier outburst, adding:
Can you please stop talking about gold digging old guys and how lonely and desperate you are around me. I get that you're not interested but you've got to stop rubbing salt in the wound. You're not the only one who's painfully alone.
(Def.'s Br. Ex. I.) Coates did not respond, but testified that this message distressed her:
It thoroughly stressed me out. I didn't...
To continue reading
Request your trial