Villanueva-Cruz v. Puerto Rico
| Decision Date | 15 May 2012 |
| Docket Number | CIVIL NO. 10-2075 (JAG) |
| Parties | VILLANUEVA-CRUZ, Plaintiff v. COMMONWEALTH OF PUERTO RICO, et al., Defendants |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Puerto Rico |
Garcia-Gregory, D.J.
Pending before the Court is defendants' Motion to Dismiss. (Docket No. 14). Plaintiff timely opposed. (Docket No. 19). For the reasons that follow, the Court grants in part defendants' Motion to Dismiss.
Plaintiff Raimundo Villanueva-Cruz ("Villanueva" or "plaintiff") filed a pro se complaint against the Puerto Rico General Services Administration ("GSA"), the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ("Commonwealth"), and several of his co-workers alleging violations of a wide gamut of federal and state law.1 (Docket No. 1). Plaintiff submits that his employer retaliated against him due to an EEOC2 claim he filed alleging discrimination on account of his race, as well as for his participation in a co-worker's disability discrimination EEOC claim. Plaintiff also alleges that he was subjected to a hostile work environment due to his colleagues' discriminatory remarks and his employer's retaliation. Several months later, plaintiff obtained legal representation and submitted an amended complaint that substantially reduced the number of federal and state causes of action asserted in the complaint. (Docket No. 10).
Defendants then moved to strike the amended complaint and, on the same day, sought leave to file a 36-page Motion to Dismiss. (Docket Nos. 12-14). The Court granted the request for excess pages, but denied the motion to strike the complaint. (Dockets No. 13). By inadvertence, the Court did not realize that the excess pages requested were largely in response to the original, not the amended, complaint. Given that the amended complaint withdrew several federal and state causes of action, a large portion of defendants' motion to dismiss is now moot.Therefore, the Court dismisses without prejudice, pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(1)(A)(i),3 plaintiff's claims brought under: (1) Title VII and ADA against defendants in their individual capacity; (2) the Rehabilitation Act; (3) § 1983 against the Commonwealth and the GSA; (4) the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause; and (5) Puerto Rico Laws 44, 426 and 115. (Cf. Docket Nos. 1, 10; see also Docket Nos. 11, 19). Additionally, the Court dismisses, without prejudice as well, plaintiff's claims against co-defendant Marielis Rivera-Cosme. (Docket No. 19, p. 13).
Remaining before the Court are plaintiff's claims brought under Title VII and ADA against the Commonwealth and the GSA, as well as his § 1983 claims against his co-workers in their individual capacity brought under the First Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection clause. Finally, the amended complaint invokes this Court's supplemental jurisdiction to attend to plaintiff's claim under Puerto Rico's general tort statute, Article 1802 of the Puerto Rico Civil Code, 31 P.R. Laws Ann. § 5141.
Plaintiff Villanueva, an African-American, has been in the public service for more than twenty years. Since 2004, plaintiff held the position of Administrative Director of the Puerto Rico GSA, a position he presumably still holds today.
In 2008, plaintiff's fellow co-worker Nathan Pinzón-Bilbraut ("Pinzón") worked for the GSA under a federally-funded employment program. A federal statute required the recipients of those federal funds to establish and implement antidiscrimination provisions. Accordingly, plaintiff and Ivan Toledo-Colón ("Colón"), plaintiff's immediate supervisor, obtained government-issued posters advising employees about their rights and obligations under state and federal antidiscrimination statutes. Toledo and plaintiff then placed these posters in the GSA's working areas.
In November of 2008, plaintiff witnessed several of his co-workers making discriminatory remarks against Pinzón because ofhis mental disabilities. Plaintiff informed his immediate supervisor, Toledo, of the discriminatory remarks made against his co-worker. Pinzón complained to Toledo that Zaida Santana-Sanabria had asked him to carry out certain tasks that his condition did not allow him to perform, in order to give Pinzón a negative evaluation of his performance. As a result, Toledo told plaintiff to supervise Pinzón, and later ordered plaintiff to take Pinzón's complaints to William Marrero-Calderon ("Marrero"), then Auxiliary Manager of the GSA's human resources division.
In February 2009, co-defendant Carmen Coronas-Aponte ("Coronas") replaced Toledo as plaintiff's supervisor. That month, Pinzón filed an EEOC discrimination charge against the GSA. Plaintiff served as a witness in the EEOC's investigation of Pinzón's charge. Toledo also filed his own EEOC charge alleging race discrimination. Plaintiff served as a witness in this proceeding as well. Finally, plaintiff brought his own EEOC charge alleging racial discrimination against the GSA. In sum, plaintiff served as a witness in two EEOC complaints brought by his co-workers, as well as filing his own EEOC charge.
Plaintiff claims that, from February through June 2009, Carmen Coronas retaliated against plaintiff for hisparticipation in the three EEOC investigations mentioned above. To support his contention, plaintiff alleges that Coronas deprived him of duties inherent to his position; instructed "plaintiff's underlings [to] ignore plaintiff's legitimate orders;" and tolerated or took no action towards the disparaging remarks regarding plaintiff's race made by his co-workers (Docket No. 10, p. 4-5). Plaintiff also claims that he was excluded from staff meetings regarding administrative affairs of the Office of Administrative Services, as well as from participation in the revision and execution of the GSA's contracts relating to services rendered to the agencies of the Commonwealth. (Id. at p. 5). Finally, plaintiff avers that "Coronas effectively precluded plaintiff (despite his managerial position) from participating in the [supervision and administration] of the programmatic services of the [GSA]." (Id.).
On March 2009, plaintiff sent an email to Coronas asking her to intervene in a situation where one of plaintiff's subordinates, Jerry Calderon-Rosario, was disobeying plaintiff's orders. Instead of intervening, Coronas ignored the request and allowed the insubordination to continue. Coronas then began "obsessively monitoring" plaintiff's movements in the workplace, which according to plaintiff, hampered his performance.
That same month, two attorneys for the GSA, Iris Vizcarrondo ("Vizcarrondo") and Teresa Garcia ("Garcia"), asked plaintiff to prepare a report regarding the complaints voiced by Pinzón. Plaintiff states that Vizcarrondo was the officer tasked with investigating and defending EEOC charges against the GSA. According to plaintiff, Vizcarrondo was a personal friend of Zaida Santana, whose acts were being called into question in Pinzón's EEOC charge. Plaintiff asked for additional time so that he could consult the matter with an attorney. The GSA attorneys denied plaintiff's request.
The GSA attorneys also asked Toledo to submit a similar report, which he did on March 27, 2009. Though Toledo attested to the discriminatory actions against Pinzón, the EEOC dismissed the complaint, stating that the internal investigation (conducted by the GSA attorneys) did not reveal any evidence of discrimination. Plaintiff submits this was due to defendants' goal of sweeping "all evidence of discrimination under the rug," to "give the EEOC the false impression that the [GSA] was in compliance with the pertinent anti-discrimination legislation." (Docket No. 10, p. 6).
In May 2009, plaintiff met with Toledo and informed him of the situation. Plaintiff also showed Toledo a document "that was being distributed amongst the agency's employees (with Coronas'knowledge and consent) containing racial attacks based on the color of plaintiff's skin." (Docket No. 10, p. 6). Toledo then decided to elevate the matter to the GSA's Deputy Administrator, co-defendant Jesus Mendez-Rodriguez ("Mendez"), and to the EEOC's investigator, Luiz Calzada. On May 4, 2009, Toledo sent an email to co-defendants Mendez and GSA attorney Garcia informing them of the situation with plaintiff. Plaintiff states that this gesture did not bear fruit; allegedly, Mendez and Garcia did nothing to end the discriminatory atmosphere at the GSA. Plaintiff mentions that other employees who had testified in the aforementioned EEOC proceedings, who happened to be white, did not suffer from the same campaign of retaliation as did plaintiff.
According to plaintiff, the combined effect of the supervisors' inaction was that his co-workers felt free to harass and discriminate against him. Plaintiff claims that he received racially charged comments on a daily basis. For example, plaintiff was called "el camaleon" (the chameleon) by his co-workers. (Docket No. 10, p. 7). In sum, plaintiff contends that the discriminatory comments and letter, the interference with his EEOC testimony, and his supervisors' indifference towards the unruliness of his subordinates areenough to support the causes of action he now brings to federal court.
Under Rule 12(b)(6), a defendant may move to dismiss an action for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. To overcome a Rule 12(b)(6) motion, the complaint must plead sufficient facts "to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face." Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007); see also Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662 (2009).
In Ocasio-Hernández v. Fortuño Burset, 640 F.3d 1 (1st Cir. 2011), the First Circuit distilled from Twombly and Iqbal a two-pronged test designed to measure the sufficiency of a complaint. First, the reviewing court must identify and disregard "statements in the complaint that merely offer legal conclusions...
To continue reading
Request your trial