Garavaglia v. City of St. Louis

CourtDistrict Court, E.D. Missouri
DecidedJuly 25, 2022
Docket4:20-cv-01681
StatusUnknown

This text of Garavaglia v. City of St. Louis (Garavaglia v. City of St. Louis) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. Missouri primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Garavaglia v. City of St. Louis, (E.D. Mo. 2022).

Opinion

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT EASTERN DISTRICT OF MISSOURI EASTERN DIVISION

JAMES GARAVAGLIA, ) ) Plaintiff, ) ) v. ) Case No. 4:20 CV 1681 CDP ) CITY OF ST. LOUIS, et al., ) ) Defendants. )

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

On October 1, 2019, plaintiff James Garavaglia retired from his employment with defendant City of St. Louis. He held the position of Deputy Comptroller, Finance and Development, at the time of his retirement and was supervised by defendant Comptroller Darlene Green. In this employment discrimination action, Garavaglia, a white male over 40 years old, claims that his retirement constituted a constructive discharge because Green’s harassment directed to him on account of his race, age, and/or sex rendered his working conditions so intolerable that he had no choice but to retire earlier than he had planned. Because Garavaglia did not provide the defendants a reasonable opportunity to remedy the alleged discriminatory conduct and, further, has presented no evidence showing that the conduct allegedly giving rise to his retirement decision was motivated by any discriminatory animus, I will grant the defendants’ motion for summary judgment. Background Garavaglia, a white male, was employed with the City of St. Louis from

April 1987 until he retired effective October 1, 2019. He was 67 years old when he retired. In May 2016, Comptroller Green, an African American female, had promoted Garavaglia from his position of Asset Manager (which he had held for

nearly 20 years) to the position of Deputy Comptroller, Finance and Development – a position that became available upon the death of the previous officer holder, who was an African American female. At the time of Garavaglia’s promotion and continuing throughout the period relevant to this lawsuit, Beverly Fitzsimmons

held the position of Deputy Comptroller. Fitzsimmons is a white female six years younger than Garavaglia. As Deputy Comptroller, Finance and Development, Garavaglia supervised

several activities assigned to the Comptroller’s office, including administration of telecommunication systems serving City departments; real estate transactions involving City property; administration of the Gateway Transportation Center; administration of public borrowings through bond issuance, bond refunding, and

lease purchase agreements; and supervising an internal audit. He was not authorized to sign contracts that bind the City. Nor was he authorized to sign contracts when he served as Asset Manager.

As Deputy Comptroller, Finance and Development, Garavaglia was involved in the Municipal Courts (Muni Courts) Project – a years-long, multi- million-dollar redevelopment project involving the City’s municipal court building.

In early June 2019, Garavaglia became aware that the developer intended to request a deadline extension from the City because of financing issues, and he asked Fitzsimmons to add the issue to the preliminary agenda for the upcoming

June 19 meeting of the Estimate and Apportionment (E&A) Board. The item was later removed from the agenda. While there is a dispute as to whether Green knew of Garavaglia’s initial request, there is no dispute (and several email exchanges and Garavaglia’s deposition testimony show) that there was confusion regarding

whether the issue was placed on the agenda, at whose behest, and the reasons why it was removed. At the June 19 meeting, the mayor addressed this confusion and read the emails into the record, which embarrassed Green. Given the lack of

required public notice of the issue, it was not addressed at the June 19 meeting; but because the developer’s requested extension was an urgent matter, a special meeting was scheduled for June 24. The E&A Board approved the developer’s request for extension at the

special meeting held June 24. Once E&A approved the request, all of the related documentation had to be signed and submitted to the City Register’s office no later than 5:00 p.m. on Friday, June 28. Garavaglia was responsible for assuring that

the documents were properly vetted and in order before submitting them to the Comptroller. Instead of delivering the documents to Garavaglia’s office for review, however, the developer submitted them directly to the mayor’s office.

When Garavaglia learned of this on the morning of June 26, he directed the mayor’s secretary to send the documents to his office via interoffice mail, expecting that he would receive the documents that afternoon. By the end of the

business day on June 26, however, the documents had not yet arrived in Garavaglia’s office and their whereabouts were unknown. In the meanwhile, Garavaglia was scheduled to leave for vacation the following day, June 27.

Given the unknown whereabouts of the time-sensitive documents and Garavaglia’s upcoming scheduled absence from the office, the City’s outside counsel, Tom Ray, contacted Green’s executive assistant on June 26 and advised

that there may be problems timely executing the documents, which could result in default. At Green’s direction, a conference call was held between herself, Ray, Garavaglia, and others to set up a process to review the documents when they arrived at Garavaglia’s office, to deliver them to Green, and to have them executed

and filed before the deadline. The documents arrived in Garavaglia’s office the morning of June 27. Garavaglia had already left for vacation and was not scheduled to return until the

following week. Garavaglia’s assistant delivered the documents to Green’s office the afternoon of June 27 and, after resolution of some deficiencies in the documents, they were executed and timely filed in the Register’s office.

Garavaglia agrees with Green’s executive assistant’s assessment that the manner by which the documents were delivered, reviewed, and executed was chaotic. Green testified that because these documents were time-sensitive financial

documents, Garavaglia should have instructed the mayor’s office to hand-deliver them instead of instructing that they be placed in interoffice mail. Green perceived that the confusion regarding the June 19 E&A agenda was because of Garavaglia’s misrepresentations and his providing incomplete

information regarding his proposed agenda item. She perceived that the mishandling of documents during the week of June 24 was because of Garavaglia’s failure to follow protocol in the delivery of time-sensitive material. Given these

events, Green decided on June 28 that some form of discipline was needed for Garavaglia to understand the seriousness of the matter. On June 29, 2019, Judy Armstrong, appointing authority designate for the Comptroller, called City Personnel Director Richard Frank and advised that Green

had concerns regarding Garavaglia’s handling of fiscal issues and compliance with office protocols serious enough to warrant that Garavaglia be placed on forced leave. In a letter to Frank dated July 2, Green formally requested that Garavaglia

be placed on forced leave and Frank approved the request that same date. Green then provided written notice to Garavaglia that he was being placed on forced leave. Armstrong delivered the notice to Garavaglia on July 2, after which

Garavaglia surrendered his keys and badge and was escorted from the building. Garavaglia appealed his forced leave, and the Civil Service Commission scheduled a hearing for July 23.

With Garavaglia on forced leave, Green directed Armstrong and others to fill in for him and perform certain of his duties. Armstrong assumed Garavaglia’s duties with respect to the Gateway Transportation Center, and she worked with a staff attorney to reconcile certain outstanding invoices from AT&T. During the

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