Parks v. Speedy Title & Appraisal Review Servs.

• Citation: 318 F.Supp.3d 1053
• Decision Date: 11 July 2018
• Docket Number: Case No. 16-cv-2103
• Parties: Lisa PARKS, Plaintiff, v. SPEEDY TITLE & APPRAISAL REVIEW SERVICES, Karie Magedoff, and Anthony Greer, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois

318 F.Supp.3d 1053

Lisa PARKS, Plaintiff,

v.SPEEDY TITLE & APPRAISAL REVIEW SERVICES, Karie Magedoff, and Anthony Greer, Defendants.

Case No. 16-cv-2103

United States District Court, N.D. Illinois, Eastern Division.

Signed July 11, 2018

Lisa Parks, Chicago, IL, pro se.

Paul Ehrich Bateman, Catherine Sarah Lindemann, Christina A. Andronache, Keemya Maghsoudi, Littler Mendelson, P.C., Chicago, IL, for Defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

Robert M. Dow, Jr., United States District Judge

Plaintiff Lisa Parks has sued Defendants Speedy Title & Appraisal Review Services, Karie Magedoff, and Anthony Greer for various violations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e, et seq. ("Title VII"), Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ("Title VI"), Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 ("Section 1981"), the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C. § 201 et seq. ("FLSA"), the Illinois Minimum Wage Law, 820 ILCS 105/4a ("IMWL"), the Equal Pay Act, 29 U.S.C. § 206(d) ("EPA"), the Illinois Whistleblower Act, 740 ILCS 174/1 et seq. ("IWA"), the New Jersey Conscientious Employee Protection Act, N.J. Stat. Ann. § 34:19-1 et seq. ("CEPA"), the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 ("ERISA"), Appraiser Independence Requirements, and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act ("Dodd-Frank"). Currently before the Court is Defendants' motion [99] to dismiss Plaintiff's Amended Complaint and, in the alternative, for a more definite statement, and Defendants' motion to strike certain exhibits from Plaintiff's Amended Complaint. For the reasons stated below, Defendants' motion to dismiss [99] is granted. Plaintiff's Amended Complaint is dismissed without prejudice. Plaintiff is given until August 17, 2018 to file a second amended complaint consistent with this opinion, if Plaintiff believes that she can overcome the deficiencies identified below. This case is set for further status hearing on August 22, 2018 at 9:00 a.m.

I. Background¹

Plaintiff Lisa Parks ("Plaintiff") began working for Defendant Speedy Title & Appraisal Review Services ("STARS") in June 2012 as a real estate review appraiser. [96, at 3.]² Defendant Anthony Greer served as Plaintiff's direct supervisor beginning in January 2013. [Id. ] Defendant Karie Magedoff was the Director of Human Resources at STARS during Plaintiff's employment. [Id. ] Defendants Greer and Magedoff worked out of STARS' office in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, while Plaintiff telecommuted from Chicago, Illinois. [Id. ]

According to Plaintiff, when she began working at STARS, she was a good employee who received good evaluations along with Quality of Excellence Awards in 2012 and 2013. [Id. , at 3, 6.] Plaintiff also alleges that she was well-qualified for the position based on her prior work experience and advanced education. [Id. , at 2.] However, Plaintiff alleges that at some point during her tenure at STARS, her superiors (particularly Defendant Greer) began to harass her in various ways or to otherwise contribute to a hostile and unfair work environment that forced her to eventually resign her position as an appraiser in 2015.

According to Plaintiff, soon after she was hired in 2012, Defendant Greer threatened to give her more difficult assignments than other employees. Plaintiff thereafter received more assignments than other appraisers. [96, ¶¶ 18–21.] Plaintiff further alleges that Defendant Greer sent Plaintiff unnecessary copies of work-related e-mails to her personal e-mail account, which made her feel unsafe; did not refer to her awards in a professional manner; completed work for other employees but not for Plaintiff; and disciplined her for errors that were non-critical or not her fault. [Id. , ¶¶ 14, 24, 31, 40.] Defendant Greer also allegedly disciplined Plaintiff more frequently and more severely than other employees, and over time her performance evaluations stopped being as positive as they had initially been when she began her job at STARS. [Id. , ¶ 15.] Plaintiff alleges that another supervisor, Andrew Reisser, once threatened her in a meeting along with Defendant Greer and "spoke in a voice louder than normal" to her. [Id. , ¶ 4.] Plaintiff makes other general allegations of verbal threats and disciplinary actions by STARS employees, but does not specify what those threats were or who (besides Reisser and Greer) made such threats. [Id. , at 6–7.]

In 2014, Plaintiff received two corrective actions (one in August and one in December). [Id. , ¶¶ 6–9.] These corrective actions seem to be related to technical issues that Plaintiff faced in performing her job responsibilities. As a telecommuter, Plaintiff faced many technical difficulties in completing her work on the STARS system, affecting her work output. These technical issues were not properly addressed, however, and she was reprimanded in these corrective actions for not completing her work despite Defendant Greer's knowledge of these technical issues she encountered throughout her tenure. [Id. , ¶¶ 26–27, 33, 51.] While technical support employees would call Plaintiff in an attempt to address and fix these issues, they would often call her near or during her lunch hour. [Id. , ¶ 14.]

The August 2014 corrective action that she received via email stated that Plaintiff was no longer eligible for merit increases, promotions, or transfers. [Id. , ¶ 7.] Plaintiff was also denied a raise during her 2014 performance review after she received these two corrective actions. [Id. , ¶¶ 15, 34.] According to Plaintiff, these corrective actions were retaliatory and part of the harassment that she faced at STARS.

Plaintiff makes various other allegations regarding her salary and benefits while she was employed as an appraiser at STARS. STARS paid Plaintiff less than her male "and possibly female" counterparts, despite her advanced experience and education. [Id. , ¶ 38.] Although other employees received overtime pay, Plaintiff was denied such overtime. [Id. , ¶¶ 38–39.] Plaintiff also had to work additional hours without pay in order to remain employed at STARS. [Id. , ¶ 32.] According to Plaintiff, she would have qualified for a better benefits plan and higher company contributions with a better salary. [Id. , ¶ 53.] Plaintiff was also issued an insurance policy by STARS, but STARS could not properly explain this policy to her. [Id. , ¶ 52.]

Plaintiff describes various other conditions of her employment that contributed to the hostile and threatening environment she faced while employed at STARS. Plaintiff maintains that she was not given a balanced workload as she was promised, and that at times she was given more assignments than other appraisers. [Id. , ¶¶ 18, 21.] Additionally, STARS managers continually insisted that she was an underwriter, rather than an appraiser, [id. , ¶¶ 2–5, 10–11, 29]; STARS took excessive deductions from her paycheck and lost one of her paychecks in 2015, [id. , at 2, ¶ 13]; Plaintiff often faced confusion about whether or not she needed to travel to New Jersey for training opportunities, and for one such training trip she was not reimbursed as quickly for her travel expenses as other employees, [id. , ¶¶ 25, 35–37]; and Plaintiff was forced to get a second internet contract at her home in order to work, although other employees were allowed to use their regular internet contract, [id. , ¶¶ 40–41].

Plaintiff reported at least some of these events to Defendant Magedoff in December 2014 and February 2015, including Defendant's Greer's treatment of her. [Id. , ¶¶ 16, 23.] Defendant Magedoff failed to discipline Defendant Greer appropriately, nor did she speak to Plaintiff about how to cope with the treatment she had received. [Id. , ¶ 57.] Plaintiff claims that she also made reports to the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulations ("IDFPR"), the Illinois Department of Labor, and the New Jersey Board of Real Estate Appraisers, although she does not describe the timing or the contents of these reports. [Id. , at 5.] Plaintiff does allege that she spoke extensively with a representative of the IDFPR. The exact content of these conversations is unclear, but it seems that Plaintiff spoke to this representative about proper methods of recordkeeping and STARS's failure to follow these methods. [Id. , ¶¶ 1–6.] According to Plaintiff, she discussed contacting the IDFPR with her STARS supervisor Andy Reisser in July 2014. [Id. , ¶ 2.] Plaintiff also started the process of filing a complaint with the EEOC in December 2014, after receiving her second corrective action. [Id. , ¶ 9.] Plaintiff wrote to the EEOC again after Greer spoke to her in a "very unprofessional" manner in March 2015. [Id. , ¶ 31.] Based on the sum total of these events and the hostility that Plaintiff felt at her job, Plaintiff resigned from STARS on March 23, 2015. [Id. , ¶ 35.]

Plaintiff alleges that she is a member of a protected class because she is female and African American. [Id. , at 4.] She notes that she was the only African American employee in her department in 2014. [Id. , at 7.] According to Plaintiff, at least some of the disciplinary actions that she faced at STARS were motivated by her membership in these protected classes, as well as by her complaints about STARS both internally and to the IDFPR. [Id. , at 6–7.] Other such actions were, according to the Amended Complaint, "retaliatory" or otherwise related to the corrective actions that she had received. [Id. , ¶¶ 15, 34, 51.] Plaintiff had no choice but to leave her position after this treatment became increasingly hostile and an IDFPR representative suggested to her that she resign. [Id. , at 7.]

Plaintiff filed the instant lawsuit against Defendants in February 2016 after receiving a Notice of Right to Sue letter from the EEOC in December 2015. Defendants moved to dismiss the complaint, [see 29], and the Court struck this motion without prejudice after granting Plaintiff's oral motion for leave to file an amended...