Sanders v. Ny City Human Resources Admin.
| Decision Date | 16 March 2004 |
| Docket Number | No. 02-7624.,02-7624. |
| Citation | 361 F.3d 749 |
| Parties | Evelyn C. SANDERS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. NEW YORK CITY HUMAN RESOURCES ADMINISTRATION, Medical Assistance Program, City of New York and Jason A Turner, Commissioner NYC Human Resources Administration, Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit |
Irene Donna Thomas, Thomas & Associates, Brooklyn, NY, for Plaintiff-Appellant.
Elizabeth S. Natrella, New York, NY (Michael A. Cardozo, Corporation Counsel of the City of New York, Pamela Seider Dolgow, New York, NY, of counsel), for Defendant-Appellee.
Before: CARDAMONE, JACOBS, and POOLER, Circuit Judges.
Plaintiff Evelyn C. Sanders (plaintiff or appellant), an African-American woman employed by the New York City Human Resources Administration (Human Resources or Agency), brought suit against the City of New York (City or defendant), claiming that one of her supervisors discriminated against her on account of her race and gender, and retaliated against her when she filed an internal complaint regarding the alleged discrimination. Either of these actions may trigger liability under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq. (2000).
During the course of her five-day trial in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York before Judge Victor Marrero, plaintiff was unable to persuade a jury to find in her favor. Accordingly, on May 15, 2002 the district court entered judgment for defendant. Plaintiff, who had previously moved unsuccessfully for judgment as a matter of law, renewed this motion, and also moved, in the alternative, for a new trial. Judge Marrero denied both motions in an order dated September 6, 2002. Sanders v. City of New York, 218 F.Supp.2d 538, 544 (S.D.N.Y.2002). It is from this order that plaintiff appeals.
Plaintiff asks us to disregard the verdict of the jury that heard the evidence in her case. The right to trial by jury, the roots of which go back to the eleventh century, see Richard S. Arnold, Trial By Jury: The Constitutional Right to a Jury of Twelve in Civil Trials, 22 Hofstra L.Rev. 1, 6-7 (1993), is preserved in the Seventh Amendment and that guarantee includes assigning fact-finding to the jury and law-giving to judges. See Baltimore & Carolina Line, Inc. v. Redman, 295 U.S. 654, 657, 55 S.Ct. 890, 79 L.Ed. 1636 (1935). As a result, judges have a very limited role in controlling jury fact-finding, acting only when they think it highly likely that the jury decided wrongly. Edward H. Cooper, Directions for Directed Verdicts: A Compass for Federal Courts, 55 Minn. L.Rev. 903, 906 (1970). For that reason, a request like plaintiff's is one a court does not grant lightly. Reviewing the proof in this record, we cannot conclude — as we would need to were we to grant plaintiff's request — that in returning a verdict for the defendant City, the jury relied only on the bases of unsupported surmise and conjecture.
Sanders has been working for Human Resources since late 1984. Beginning as a caseworker she worked her way up to the position of Supervisor I. In 1993 she passed the civil service examination required for promotion to the position of Supervisor II. In that capacity, plaintiff was given a new position in the cost containment section of the Manhattan-based medical assistance program. The director of the cost containment section was a white male named John Milioti, and it is his alleged actions that are the subject of plaintiff's grievances against the City.
The job description for plaintiff's supervisor position appears initially to have indicated that she would be supervising three field units and one screening unit. When Sanders reported for work in April 1993, Milioti asked her to give up the screening unit so that it could remain under the supervision of a lower-ranking employee named William Settino. Plaintiff felt pressured to agree to this change, and in place of the screening unit, she ended up supervising a fourth and, ultimately, a fifth field unit.
According to Milioti, this decision was based on legitimate management concerns. Settino had been working in the cost containment section since its inception, and he had helped to create the screening unit. In Milioti's view, Settino had practical expertise that was important to retain. Plaintiff sees what occurred differently. She believes Milioti wanted to keep the screening unit in Settino's hands because Settino is a white male and plaintiff is a black female. She points out that Milioti had previously filed a lawsuit claiming that minority and female Agency employees were being promoted ahead of him, and she suggests this provides a glimpse into his motives for discriminating against her.
Sanders also alleges her director held meetings exclusively with male staff members between June and September 1993. Milioti denies this allegation and testified that while he held special meetings with three male staff members to discuss a computerized record-keeping system, the participants were chosen based on their expertise in that field and also on office functions, not on their gender. Moreover, he declares he continued to hold regular operational meetings with all of the division's supervisors, including plaintiff and other women.
In October 1993 Sanders filed a complaint with the Agency's in-house office of Equal Employment Opportunity (in-house EEO). Although its investigation turned up insufficient evidence to substantiate her claims, the in-house EEO informed one of Milioti's superiors that Milioti's management style had created a perception of race and gender discrimination that needed to be addressed. Plaintiff claims that Milioti then retaliated against her for having filed the complaint.
The form of retaliation plaintiff first cites is a negative performance evaluation. As a newly-appointed probationary supervisor, Sanders was ostensibly subject to quarterly evaluations during her first year of work. When she received her first evaluation in January 1994 from John Braccia, who held the title of Supervisor III and was her immediate supervisor, she was the only probationary employee in the cost containment section evaluated. Even Braccia himself was not evaluated despite the fact that he too was newly appointed and presumably subject to the same probationary quarterly evaluations as plaintiff. Further, Sanders' evaluation was based on a list of tasks and standards given to her only a month earlier. While she received generally favorable comments from Braccia, Milioti attached two pages of addendum to the evaluation, criticizing her performance.
She complained immediately to the in-house EEO, which conducted an investigation and later expressed its opinion that the evaluation was made in retaliation for plaintiff's previous complaint. Within two weeks of its having been issued, the evaluation was rescinded, and all copies (other than the one on file with the in-house EEO) were destroyed. According to Milioti, the effect of having no evaluation on file was that plaintiff's performance was presumed to be satisfactory. Indeed, after completing her first year as a supervisor in a provisional capacity in the cost containment section, plaintiff's supervisor position was made permanent.
In September 1994 Sanders was transferred from the Manhattan-based cost containment section into a medical review team located in Brooklyn. Although Sanders retained her rank of Supervisor II, she went from having her own office in a habitable building to having to share an office with six other people in what she asserted was a run-down, vermin-infested building. In addition, her commuting time from home to work increased by more than 30 minutes a day. Sanders believes Milioti orchestrated her transfer to Brooklyn as further retaliation against her for filing the in-house EEO complaint.
After exhausting her administrative remedies, plaintiff filed the present action in the Southern District of New York on May 13, 1998. The case went to trial four years later on May 6, 2002. Plaintiff's complaint named the City and its Human Resources Commissioner, Jason A. Turner as defendants. Plaintiff later withdrew her claims against Turner at the close of evidence, leaving only the City as defendant. Sanders v. City of New York, 200 F.Supp.2d 404, 405 (S.D.N.Y.2002). The jury was asked to consider whether plaintiff had faced discrimination on account of her race or her gender, and to consider further whether she had been subject to retaliation for filing the in-house EEO complaint. The jury answered all of these questions in the negative. The district court entered judgment for defendant and denied plaintiff's motions for judgment as a matter of law and for a new trial.
On appeal, plaintiff challenges the district court's denial of both her renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law and her motion for a new trial. We treat each of these challenges separately.
We review denials of motions for judgment as a matter of law de novo, viewing the evidence, as the district court was required to, in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party. Wolf v. Yamin, 295 F.3d 303, 308 (2d Cir.2002). We reverse only when there is "such a complete absence of evidence supporting the verdict that the jury's findings could only have been the result of sheer surmise and conjecture," or where there is "such an overwhelming amount of evidence" in favor of the moving party that fair minded jurors could not reasonably arrive at a verdict against the movant. Phillips v. Bowen, 278 F.3d 103, 108 (2d Cir.2002).
Title VII makes an employer liable for discriminating against its employees based on race or gender, or for retaliating against an employee...
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