Desire v. Dreamwear Inc.
| Decision Date | 10 February 2022 |
| Docket Number | 1:21-cv-16178-NLH-SAK |
| Parties | FEDELINE DESIRE, TIFFANY ROBERTSON, individually and on Behalf of All Others Similarly Situated, Plaintiffs, v. DREAMWEAR INC. et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of New Jersey |
ON BEHALF OF PLAINTIFFS.
JEFFREY DOUGLAS
DAVID ABRAHAM GOLD
KANE KESSLER, P.C.
ON BEHALF OF DEFENDANT.
Before the Court is Defendants' motion to dismiss the amended complaint. (ECF 14). For the reasons expressed below, the motion will be granted in its entirety and Plaintiffs will be given thirty (30) days to amend their complaint.
For purposes of analyzing this motion to dismiss, the Court takes the facts in the Amended Complaint as true. Plaintiffs in this case are an employee, Tiffany Robertson, and former employee, Fedeline Desire of Dreamwear Inc. (“Dreamwear”), a company founded and owned by Joseph Franco and Elliot Franco (together, with Dreamwear “Defendants”). Plaintiffs are two African American females who allege that Defendants unlawfully discriminated against them and that they suffered “dueling indignities of sexual harassment, racial discrimination, and diminished economic opportunities because Defendants foster a hostile work environment and enforce a de facto racial hierarchy among its staff.” (ECF 12 at 3). The Amended Complaint alleges that while the few African American women employed by the company possess exceptional qualifications and perform well, they experienced discrimination and limitations in terms of their opportunities to advance their pay. (Id.)
In particular, the Amended Complaint alleges that the African American women are promoted less in the company, are subject to a hostile work environment, and denied advancement opportunities to which they were otherwise entitled. (Id. at 3-5). Further, Plaintiffs claim that they brought this discrimination to the attention of Defendants and that Defendants failed to investigate the claims or to remedy the issue. (Id.) The Amended Complaint becomes slightly more specific in that it specifically alleges that the Plaintiffs notified Defendants that they had each experienced racial and sexual discrimination at the hands of certain employees, which the Amended Complaint identified by first names or initials. (Id. at 5-6). Plaintiffs also state that Defendants retaliated against them for raising their concerns in regard to harassment and unsafe policies in response to Covid-19. (Id. at 9-14). While the Amended Complaint alludes to concerning conduct in the abstract, it does not allege any dates, locations, or specific circumstances surrounding the alleged misconduct making it difficult to discern what actually happened, even taking the facts in the Amended Complaint as true. (Id. at 1-14).
This action was originally filed on July 22, 2021 in New Jersey Superior Court. (ECF 1 at 2). Plaintiffs proceeded anonymously in the Complaint. (ECF 1-1 at 2). On August 27, 2021, Defendants removed the action to the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey. (ECF 1 at 2). Then, on August 30, 2021, the Court filed an Order To Show Cause as to why Plaintiffs should be allowed to proceed anonymously. The Order directed that if Plaintiffs failed to respond within 15 days, the Defendants could move to dismiss the case under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 10(a). (ECF 4 at 3).
Plaintiffs failed to respond in a timely manner to the Order to Show Cause, first seeking leave to respond long after the deadline on October 11, 2021 (ECF 8) and soon thereafter filing an Amended Complaint on October 14, 2021 revealing the identity of the Plaintiffs (ECF 12). Defendants moved to dismiss the Amended Complaint on October 28, 2021. (ECF 14). Plaintiffs never filed an opposition brief and Defendants filed a brief in further support of their motion to dismiss on November 24, 2021. (ECF 15). It is against this backdrop that the Court will analyze the motion to dismiss the Amended Complaint.[1]
I. Subject Matter Jurisdiction
This Court has jurisdiction over Plaintiffs' federal claims under 28 U.S.C. § 1331 and pendent jurisdiction over their state law claims under 28 U.S.C. § 1367 II. Standard for Rule 12(b)(6) Motion to Dismiss
When considering a motion to dismiss a complaint for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), a court must accept all well-pleaded allegations in the complaint as true and view them in the light most favorable to the plaintiff. Evancho v. Fisher, 423 F.3d 347, 351 (3d Cir. 2005). It is well settled that a pleading is sufficient if it contains “a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.” Fed.R.Civ.P. 8(a)(2).
“While a complaint attacked by a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss does not need detailed factual allegations, a plaintiff's obligation to provide the ‘grounds' of his ‘entitle[ment] to relief' requires more than labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do . . . .” Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007) (alteration in original) (citations omitted) (first citing Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 47 (1957); Sanjuan v. Am. Bd. of Psychiatry & Neurology, Inc., 40 F.3d 247, 251 (7th Cir. 1994); and then citing Papasan v. Allain, 478 U.S. 265, 286 (1986)).
To determine the sufficiency of a complaint, a court must take three steps: (1) the court must take note of the elements a plaintiff must plead to state a claim; (2) the court should identify allegations that, because they are no more than conclusions, are not entitled to the assumption of truth; and (3) when there are well-pleaded factual allegations, a court should assume their veracity and then determine whether they plausibly give rise to an entitlement for relief. Malleus v. George, 641 F.3d 560, 563 (3d Cir. 2011) (quoting Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 664, 675, 679 (2009) ().
A district court, in weighing a motion to dismiss, asks “not whether a plaintiff will ultimately prevail but whether the claimant is entitled to offer evidence to support the claim.” Twombly, 550 U.S. at 563 n.8 (quoting Scheuer v. Rhoades, 416 U.S. 232, 236 (1974)); see also Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 684 (); Fowler v. UPMC Shadyside, 578 F.3d 203, 210 (3d Cir. 2009) (“Iqbal . . . provides the final nail in the coffin for the ‘no set of facts' standard that applied to federal complaints before Twombly.”). “A motion to dismiss should be granted if the plaintiff is unable to plead ‘enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.'” Malleus, 641 F.3d at 563 (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 570).
A court in reviewing a Rule 12(b)(6) motion must only consider the facts alleged in the pleadings, the documents attached thereto as exhibits, and matters of judicial notice. S. Cross Overseas Agencies, Inc. v. Kwong Shipping Grp. Ltd., 181 F.3d 410, 426 (3d Cir. 1999). A court may consider, however, “an undisputedly authentic document that a defendant attaches as an exhibit to a motion to dismiss if the plaintiff's claims are based on the document.” Pension Benefit Guar. Corp. v. White Consol. Indus., Inc., 998 F.2d 1192, 1196 (3d Cir. 1993). If any other matters outside the pleadings are presented to the court, and the court does not exclude those matters, a Rule 12(b)(6) motion will be treated as a summary judgment motion pursuant to Rule 56. Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b).
III. Analysis
All fourteen Counts in the Amended Complaint must be dismissed because they contain mere recitations of the elements of the claims and the Amended Complaint does not have enough factual underpinnings to sustain them.
Although, Plaintiffs do not cite a particular provision of the Equal Pay Act, it appears that they are trying to state a claim under 29 U.S.C. § 206(d)(1) as the Amended Complaint quotes part of its provisions. (See ECF 12 at 15-16). Claims under this provision are subject to a two-step burden shifting process. Stanziale v. Jargowsky, 200 F.3d 101, 107 (3d Cir. 2000). First, a plaintiff must “establish a prima facie case by demonstrating that employees of the opposite sex were paid differently for performing ‘equal work'-work of substantially equal skill, effort and responsibility, under similar working conditions.” Id. (citing E.E.O.C. v. Delaware Dept. of Health and Social Services, 865 F.2d 1408, 1413-14 (3rd Cir.1989)). Once a plaintiff meets that burden, “[t]he burden of persuasion then shifts to the employer to demonstrate the applicability of one of the four affirmative defenses specified in the Act.” Id. (emphasis in original).
The Amended Complaint does not meet this burden. Plaintiffs have made boilerplate statements that “Plaintiffs working in similar roles to non-black employees were paid less than to nonblack employees and males performing similar roles, albeit with different titles” and that “[n]on-black counterparts received preferential payment and financial awards relative to Plaintiffs.” (ECF 12 at 16). That is not enough. Smarte Carte, Inc. v. Innovative Vending Sols. LLC, 2020 WL 5758363, at *7 n.7 (D.N.J. Sept. 28 2020) (); Marra v. Twp. of Harrison, 913 F.Supp.2d 100, 104 (D.N.J. 2012) (“To survive a motion to dismiss, a complaint must allege, in more than legal boilerplate, those facts about the conduct of each defendant giving rise to liability.”) Once these conclusory assertions are...
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