Parker v. Columbia Pictures Indus.

• Decision Date: 01 August 1999
• Docket Number: Docket Nos. 99-7104L
• Citation: 204 F.3d 326
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit
• Parties: (2nd Cir. 2000) DOUGLAS PARKER, Plaintiff-Appellant-Cross-Appellee, v. COLUMBIA PICTURES INDUSTRIES, Defendant-Appellee-Cross-Appellant, SONY PICTURES ENTERTAINMENT, INC., Defendant-Appellee, SONY CORPORATION OF AMERICA, Defendant. & 99-7178XAP

Page 326

204 F.3d 326 (2nd Cir. 2000)

DOUGLAS PARKER, Plaintiff-Appellant-Cross-Appellee, v. COLUMBIA PICTURES INDUSTRIES, Defendant-Appellee-Cross-Appellant, SONY PICTURES ENTERTAINMENT, INC., Defendant-Appellee, SONY CORPORATION OF AMERICA, Defendant.

Docket Nos. 99-7104L & 99-7178XAP

August Term, 1999

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT

Argued: October 13, 1999

Decided: February 28, 2000

Appeal from a final judgment of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Lewis A. Kaplan, Judge) granting appellees' motion for summary judgment on appellant's claim of disability discrimination and denying appellant leave to amend his complaint to add a breach of contract claim.

Affirmed in part, vacated in part and remanded.

[Copyrighted Material Omitted]

[Copyrighted Material Omitted]

[Copyrighted Material Omitted] STANLEY N. FUTTERMAN, ESQ., New York, NY, for plaintiff-appellant-cross-appellee.

LAUREN REITER BRODY, Rosenman & Colin LLP, New York, NY, for defendants-appellees.

JOHN F. SUHRE, Washington, D.C., (C. Gregory Stewart, General Counsel, Philip B. Sklover, Associate General Counsel, Vincent J. Blackwood, Assistant General Counsel), for Amicus Curiae Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Before: WINTER, Chief Judge, NEWMAN, and SOTOMAYOR, Circuit Judges.

Chief Judge Winter dissents in part in a separate opinion.

SOTOMAYOR, Circuit Judge:

Appellant Douglas Parker brought this action claiming that his former employer, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc. ("SPE"), discharged him because of his disability in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. 12101 et seq. (1994 & Supp. 1999) ("the ADA") and the New York State Human Rights Law, N.Y. Exec. Law 296 (McKinney 1993 & Supp. 1999). Parker also claimed that SPE violated the ADA by retaliating against him for filing a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, as well as denied him medical leave in violation of the Family and Medical Leave Act, 29 U.S.C. 2612(a)(1)(D) (1999) ("the FMLA").

On March 30, 1998, SPE moved for summary judgment on all claims. In addition, Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. ("CPI"), whom Parker had also named as a defendant based on its alleged common personnel functions with SPE, moved for summary judgment on the independent ground that it was not Parker's employer. Parker then cross-moved to amend his complaint to add a claim for breach of contract, on the ground that SPE had refused to grant him the full period of leave to which he was entitled under the company's benefit plan.

On September 4, 1998, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Lewis A. Kaplan, Judge) granted the defendants' motion for summary judgment on Parker's discriminatory discharge claims and denied Parker's cross-motion for leave to amend his complaint. The court denied the motion for summary judgment on Parker's other claims, and denied CPI's motion for summary judgment on the ground that it was not Parker's employer. For the reasons that follow, we vacate the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of SPE on the discriminatory discharge claims, but affirm its denial of Parker's cross-motion for leave to amend his complaint. We also affirm the court's denial of summary judgment in favor of CPI.

BACKGROUND

In 1993, Douglas Parker began working at SPE's Film and Tape Operations facility in Inwood, New York. The Inwood facility prepares and services film and videotape products that are used to create custom-made videotapes for SPE customers. As the Executive Director for Technical Services at that facility, Parker supervised a staff of up to thirty-one employees, attended frequent meetings with his superiors, worked with other facility employees, and monitored his staff's work product on videotape equipment located at the facility.

On Thursday, March 16, 1995, Parker injured his back while working at the facility. He returned to work the next day and for part of the following Monday, but then left to seek medical attention. Parker did not return to the Inwood facility, but instead stayed home to recover, and, he claims, to continue performing his job from home via telephone, fax, and e-mail. In mid-May 1995, while still recovering at home, Parker decided to undergo back surgery and informed SPE's human resources department that he would be out of work for an extended period of time. SPE then sent Parker a letter confirming his leave of absence and informing him of his rights under the FMLA and under SPE's short-term disability plan. According to the company's short-term disability policy, Parker was entitled to up to six months' paid leave. In June 1995, SPE filed an internal Vacation/Absence form listing Parker's leave as beginning on March 17, 1995, the day after his accident. Parker claims he did not see this form, and thus did not learn the date on which SPE deemed his leave to have begun, until discovery in this action.

Parker underwent back surgery on May 31, 1995. Over the next three months, pursuant to SPE's disability policy, he submitted a series of medical reports to SPE's human resources department updating the company on his medical condition. In the first several of these reports, his doctor prescribed "no work" as part of the treatment plan. The final two reports, dated August 24, 1995 and September 8, 1995, omitted this directive, though they did state their findings regarding Parker's condition as "unchanged since last visit." Parker alleges that sometime near the end of August, he spoke to his supervisor, Bill Theis, about returning to work at the Inwood facility on a part-time basis and that Theis agreed to investigate that possibility. On September 11, 1995, however, while Parker was still at home on leave, SPE human resources employee Mary Cipolla informed him that he had exhausted SPE's six-month limit on paid leave and that his employment at SPE consequently would be terminated on September 15, 1995. Cipolla advised Parker to apply for additional benefits under SPE's long-term disability plan and offered to send him the forms, which he completed on September 13, 1995. Parker subsequently applied for Social Security disability benefits as well. SPE terminated Parker on September 15, 1995.

On March 28, 1996, Parker filed a complaint with the EEOC, claiming that SPE had violated the ADA by discharging him because of his disability. After applying unsuccessfully for another position at SPE in June 1996, Parker filed a second EEOC charge, alleging that SPE had refused to rehire him in retaliation for filing his first complaint. The EEOC dismissed both complaints and issued right-to-sue letters. Parker then filed the instant action against SPE, claiming discriminatory discharge and retaliation under the ADA and the New York State Human Rights Law, as well as violation of the leave provisions of the FMLA. Parker also named as defendants SPE's parent company, the Sony Corporation of America ("SCOA"), and Columbia Pictures Industries, another subsidiary of SCOA whose name appeared on several of SPE's employment forms.

The defendants moved for summary judgment on all claims, and Parker cross-moved to amend his complaint to add a claim for breach of contract on the ground that the defendants had failed to grant him a full six months' leave in accordance with SPE's short-term disability policy. The district court granted summary judgment to SCOA on all claims and to SPE and CPI on Parker's discriminatory discharge claims, but denied summary judgment to both SPE and CPI on Parker's retaliation and FMLA claims. The court also denied Parker's cross-motion for leave to amend his complaint.

The parties subsequently reached a settlement of Parker's retaliation and FMLA claims. Following the entry of a final judgment on January 12, 1995, disposing of all claims, Parker appealed the district court's grant of summary judgment on his discriminatory discharge claims and its denial of leave to amend his complaint. CPI cross-appealed the district court's decision to deny summary judgment dismissing it from the case, arguing that it was not Parker's employer.

DISCUSSION

I. Discriminatory discharge under the Americans with Disabilities Act

The district court granted summary judgment to the defendants on Parker's discriminatory discharge claims on the ground that Parker had not made out a prima facie case under the ADA.¹ We review this grant of summary judgment de novo. See Distasio v. Perkin Elmer Corp., 157 F.3d 55, 61 (2d Cir. 1998). In determining whether summary judgment was appropriate, we must resolve all ambiguities and draw all inferences in favor of the non-moving party, and we will affirm only if the record reveals no genuine issue of material fact for trial. See id.

To establish a prima facie case of discriminatory discharge under the ADA, an employee bears the burden of demonstrating that: 1) he was an "individual who has a disability" within the meaning of the statute; 2) the employer had notice of his disability; 3) he could perform the essential functions of the job with reasonable accommodation; and 4) the employer refused to make such accommodation. See Stone v. City of Mount Vernon, 118 F.3d 92, 96-97 (2d Cir. 1997), cert. denied, 118 S. Ct. 1044 (1998). We have ruled that failure to make reasonable accommodation, when the employee has satisfied the first three elements of his claim, amounts to discharge "because of" his disability. See, e.g., Ryan v. Grae & Rybicki, P.C., 135 F.3d 867, 870 (2d Cir. 1998). If the plaintiff succeeds in establishing a prima facie case of disability discrimination, the burden shifts to the employer to demonstrate that the employee's proposed accommodation would have resulted in undue hardship. SeeStone, 118 F.3d at 97.

The court below found that Parker failed to establish both the third and fourth elements of his prima facie case. For the reasons explained below, we...