Matthews v. Trans World Airlines, Inc., 79 Civ. 3649 (LFM).
| Decision Date | 07 November 1979 |
| Docket Number | No. 79 Civ. 3649 (LFM).,79 Civ. 3649 (LFM). |
| Citation | 478 F. Supp. 1244 |
| Parties | Keith Herbert MATTHEWS, Plaintiff, v. TRANS WORLD AIRLINES, INC., Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York |
John J. Grimes, New York City, for defendant.
Lerner, Walker, Levy & Cohen by Robert E. Levy, New York City, for plaintiff.
Defendant moves, pursuant to Rule 12(b)(3), Fed.R.Civ.P., to dismiss the complaint for improper venue.
Plaintiff, a black male, alleges racial and sex discrimination against him by defendant for terminating him from its flight attendant trainee program and refusing to employ him as a flight attendant, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended.
Title VII has its own venue provision, which provides, in relevant part:
"Such an action may be brought in any judicial district in the State in which the unlawful employment practice is alleged to have been committed, in the judicial district in which the employment records relevant to such practice are maintained and administered, or in the judicial district in which the aggrieved person would have worked but for the alleged unlawful employment practice, but if the respondent is not found within any such district, such an action may be brought within the judicial district in which the respondent has his principal office. ..." 42 U.S.C.A. § 2000e-5(f)(3) (1974).
Plaintiff asserts that venue is proper under each of the first three standards.
As to the first standard, the complaint does not assert any particular state in which the alleged unlawful discrimination occurred. While the complaint alleges that defendant does business and has offices in New York State, these allegations appear to apply only to the issue of personal jurisdiction. It appears from the supporting affidavit that the practice complained of occurred in Kansas. The parties agree that after plaintiff applied for the flight attendant job from his Washington, D.C., home, defendant flew him to its Breech Training Academy at Overland Park, Kansas, where he participated in a training class from which he was terminated.
Plaintiff admits that the termination and his concomitant nonacceptance as a flight attendant occurred in Kansas, but he asserts that the "practice" leading up to his termination might have germinated in New York, the location of defendant's executive offices. There is, however, no allegation to that effect. While the allegations do not specify any other state as the locus of the discriminatory practice, the evidence all points exclusively to Kansas, not to New York. Accordingly, we hold that venue under the first standard lies in Kansas.
Turning to the second standard, the parties agree that, as a general matter, all records regarding flight attendant trainees are retained at the Breech Academy in Kansas during training, but when a trainee is terminated the records are forwarded to defendant's Administration Center in Kansas City, Missouri.
The parties also agree, however, that defendant's file regarding plaintiff is now held by defendant's legal department in New York City, where it has been prior to this lawsuit, for the purpose of responding to plaintiff's charges. Plaintiff contends that the presence of the records in New York supplies venue under the "maintained and administered" standard. We cannot agree.
The fact that records are here to facilitate a response to plaintiff's complaint is irrelevant to venue determination, for presumably they would not ordinarily have been sent here but for the filing of this complaint. Had the complaint been filed in another district, defendant would most likely have forwarded the papers to its counsel in that district. To hold that venue is conferred by the mere presence of records in a district for the purpose of answering a Title VII suit would be to allow plaintiff a complete choice of venue. The specificity of the Title VII venue provision suggests that Congress did not intend such a result. See generally Richman v. Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc., 441 F.Supp. 517, 519 (S.D.N.Y.1977).
This leaves the question whether the fact...
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