Rivera v. Brooklyn Hospital Medical Center

28 F. Supp. 3d 159, 2014 WL 2960450, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 91257
CourtDistrict Court, E.D. New York
DecidedJune 30, 2014
DocketNo. 14 Civ. 1861 (BMC)
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 28 F. Supp. 3d 159 (Rivera v. Brooklyn Hospital Medical Center) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Rivera v. Brooklyn Hospital Medical Center, 28 F. Supp. 3d 159, 2014 WL 2960450, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 91257 (E.D.N.Y. 2014).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM DECISION AND ORDER

COGAN, District Judge.

Defendant has moved to dismiss this employment discrimination action on the ground that aside from conclusory asser[161]*161tions of discrimination, the amended complaint alleges inadequate facts to state a plausible claim for relief. Defendant is correct and its motion is granted.

SUMMARY OF AMENDED COMPLAINT

The amended complaint alleges three interrelated sets of circumstances that attempt to raise issues of hostile work environment, discrimination and retaliation based on plaintiffs Puerto Rican origin and age. First, plaintiff alleges that a Director of the hospital, Fred Gurken, falsely accused him of being off-premises during a non-scheduled break. Gerken ultimately fired plaintiff but he was reinstated after a hearing.

Approximately a year later, plaintiff had an altercation with another worker, who was Dominican. The co-worker called plaintiff several names in Spanish, none of which referred to plaintiffs ethnic origin or age. After first saying that he wanted to get both parties’ sides of the story, Gerken instead refused to hear plaintiffs side and again fired plaintiff. Plaintiff claims that this was in retaliation for his having grieved the earlier firing. At a worker’s compensation hearing about eight months later, an Administrative Law Judge determined that there was no cause to fire plaintiff and awarded him unemployment compensation.

Plaintiff also asserts that he was “bullied, ostracized and verbally harassed by his [Dominican] co-workers.” He lists several insulting epithets that they used against him but only one was an ethnic slur; some unidentified co-worker called him “stupid like a Puerto Rican.” Plaintiff claims that as part of this campaign of harassment, a co-worker named William Rodriguez, whose ethnicity plaintiff does not identify, challenged him to a fight. Plaintiff refused to fight and reported Rodriguez to a security guard, although he gives no indication of what he said to the security guard. The next day, he “complained to his then supervisor Mr. Kim Chang about the practices and the ongoing harassment and bullying he received from his coworkers, but the Defendant Hospital failed to take any remedial measures and the Plaintiffs complaints went unanswered.” The amended complaint contains no further allegations of what plaintiff said to Mr. Chang.

Based on these allegations, plaintiff concludes:

42. The Defendant Hospital allowed and fostered the discriminatory environment so that the Plaintiffs co-workers could continue harassing the Plaintiff. It is further Plaintiffs belief that the Hospital allowed this poor behavior and favored the younger workers committing those acts since the Hospital paid them substantially less to the do the same job as the plaintiff and thus preferred younger workers to older workers. There is no other explanation for the Hospital’ failure to act despite numerous complaints about such behavior by the plaintiff.
43. It is the Plaintiffs belief that Defendant Hospital fostered the hostile and discriminatory work environment in order to encourage the Plaintiff to quit and to create a basis to terminate the Plaintiff.

As factual support to this conclusion, plaintiff refers to and annexes a “Certificate of Recognition” that he had received for good work in October 2010. Based on these allegations, plaintiff asserts claims for hostile work environment, discrimination, and retaliation under the Civil Rights Act of 1866, 42 U.S.C. § 1981; Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e; the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (Pub.L.90-202), 29 [162]*162U.S.C. § 621 et seq., and corresponding provisions of state and local law.

DISCUSSION

Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 677-78, 129 S.Ct. 1937,173 L.Ed.2d 868 (2009), and Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007), require a plaintiff to provide the grounds upon which his claim rests through factual allegations sufficient to raise a right to relief above the speculative level. A Complaint must allege “enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” Starr v. Sony BMG Music Entm’t, 592 F.3d 314, 321 (2d Cir.2010) (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 570, 127 S.Ct.1955); see also Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678, 129 S.Ct. 1937 (same).

“A claim has facial plausibility when the plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.” Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678, 129 S.Ct. 1937. To apply that standard, the Court accepts as true all well-pled factual allegations, but does not credit “mere eon-clusory statements” or “[t]hreadbare recitals of the elements of a cause of action.” Id. If the court can infer no more than “the mere possibility of misconduct” from the factual averments — in other words, if the well-pleaded allegations of the Complaint have not “nudged claims across the line from conceivable to plausible,” dismissal is appropriate. Twombly, 550 U.S. at 570, 127 S.Ct. 1955; Starr, 592 F.3d at 321 (quoting Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 679, 129 S.Ct. 1937). The “[factual allegations must . be enough to raise a right to relief above the speculative level....” Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555, 127 S.Ct. 1955; see also Brown v. Daikin America, Inc., No. 12-2955-cv, 756 F.3d 219, 228 n. 10, 2014 WL 2895974, at *5 n. 10 (2d Cir. Jun. 27, 2014).

Plaintiffs ethnic origin claims come nowhere near meeting this standard. As to his hostile work environment claim, he conclusorily alleges that his Dominican coworkers were mean to him and he believes it was based on his Puerto Rican origin. But despite the number of insults to which he refers, he alleges only one instance in which a co-worker referred to his ethnicity. Moreover, the amended complaint contains no allegation that plaintiff ever reported his belief that he was discriminated against based on his ethnic origin to management. He alleges that he did complain about the way the way he was treated by his co-workers, but there is no allegation that his complaint to management had any ethnic component. Although there is no requirement that plaintiff plead the substance of his complaint to management in hoc verba, the absence of any substance here is telling since plaintiff, of course, knows exactly what he said to management in his generally referenced complaints. In addition, this deficiency was pointed out to him in his original complaint, and his amended complaint added no further detail.

This is important because an employer has no obligation to insure a pleasant work environment, nor to act on any employee complaint of unfairness or derogatory treatment by co-workers. An employer only has an obligation to prevent harassment based on ethnic origin or other protected categories.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
28 F. Supp. 3d 159, 2014 WL 2960450, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 91257, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/rivera-v-brooklyn-hospital-medical-center-nyed-2014.