Opinion
11732 Index 153013/18
07-02-2020
Sheila BROWN, Plaintiff–Appellant, v. The CITY OF NEW YORK, Defendant–Respondent.
Stewart Lee Karlin Law Group, P.C., New York (Stewart Lee Karlin of counsel), for appellant. James E. Johnson, Corporation Counsel, New York (Jamison Davies of counsel), for respondent.
Stewart Lee Karlin Law Group, P.C., New York (Stewart Lee Karlin of counsel), for appellant.
James E. Johnson, Corporation Counsel, New York (Jamison Davies of counsel), for respondent.
Richter, J.P., Kapnick, Gesmer, Moulton, JJ.
Order, Supreme Court, New York County (Lyle E. Frank, J.), entered March 7, 2019, which, to the extent appealed from as limited by the briefs, granted defendant's motion to dismiss plaintiff's New York City Human Rights Law retaliation claim, unanimously affirmed, without costs.
Plaintiff, a supervisor with the New York City Human Resources Administration (HRA) who lives in Staten Island, failed to allege a causal connection, based on temporal proximity, between her complaints about a supervisor's alleged discriminatory conduct and four alleged disadvantageous employment actions in 2017 (see Fletcher v. Dakota, Inc., 99 A.D.3d 43, 51–52, 948 N.Y.S.2d 263 [1st Dept. 2012] ). Her previous federal litigation, which terminated in November 2015 ( Brown v. City of New York, 622 F Appx 19, 20 [2d Cir2015] ), was too remote in time (see Cadet–Legros v. New York Univ. Hosp. Ctr., 135 A.D.3d 196, 206, 21 N.Y.S.3d 221 [1st Dept. 2015] ), and the complaint did not allege any "other facts supporting causation" ( Harrington v. City of New York, 157 A.D.3d 582, 586, 70 N.Y.S.3d 177 [1st Dept. 2018] ). For the same reason, plaintiff cannot show a causal connection between complaints she made in March, May, and June 2017, which were resolved in July 2017—to the extent they were protected activity—and the September 2017 decision to transfer her after two short-term assignments to the Bronx field office (see e.g. Brown, 622 F Appx at 20 [two-month gap insufficient]; Murray v. Visiting Nurse Servs. of N.Y., 528 F Supp 2d 257, 275 [S.D. N.Y.2007] [three- or four-month gap generally insufficient], citing Clark County School Dist. v. Breeden, 532 U.S. 268, 273–274, 121 S.Ct. 1508, 149 L.Ed.2d 509 [2001] ).
Further, plaintiff cannot show a causal connection between her complaints and the three suspensions that plaintiff served in 2017, arising from conduct pre-dating her complaints. Those penalties were a "continuation of a course of conduct that had begun before [she] complained" ( Sims v. Trustees of Columbia Univ. in the City of N.Y., 168 A.D.3d 622, 623, 92 N.Y.S.3d 277 [1st Dept. 2019], quoting Melman v. Montefiore Med. Ctr., 98 A.D.3d 107, 129, 946 N.Y.S.2d 27 [1st Dept. 2012] ), in direct response to the latest misconduct accusation.