Henderson v. Montefiore Med. Ctr. (Summary)

DISCRIMINATION AND RETALIATION CLAIMS

Henderson v. Montefiore Med. Ctr., No. 12 CV 1468(HB) (S.D. N.Y. Mar. 21, 2013)

The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York partially granted and partially denied a medical center’s motion for summary judgment against a former employee’s allegations of discrimination and retaliation.  In the case, the employee is a black woman who suffers from multiple sclerosis.  She is board certified in Obstetrics and Gynecology and Maternal-Fetal Medicine.  She served as the Chief of Maternal-Fetal Medicine (“MFM”) at a hospital that was subsequently acquired by the medical center.  After this acquisition, the medical center eliminated the employee’s Chief of MFM position.  In the two years after the medical center acquired the local hospital, the employee was cited for 11 deviations from the standard of care.  The medical center ultimately intervened with a meeting between the employee and the medical center’s Senior Medical Director.  The Director’s notes from this meeting included comments about the employee’s slow movements – these movements were the result of the employee’s MS.  During the meeting, the employee raised concerns that she was the victim of disability and racial discrimination, but the Director did not follow the medical center’s protocol that required him to report such complaints to the medical center’s administrators.  The medical center then retained an outside consultant to review the employee’s conduct, and he concluded that the employee required at least temporary supervision if she were to continue to practice medicine.  Rather than adopting this suggestion, the medical center terminated the employee.  The employee then sued for racial and disability discrimination and retaliation.

In its evaluation of the employee’s discrimination claims, the court began by concluding that the employee had established a prima facie case for discrimination.  The court then concluded that the medical center’s negative appraisals of the employee’s work provided legitimate reasons for terminating her employment.  However, the court concluded that questions of fact remained as to whether the termination was at least partially motivated by a discriminatory animus.  For the court, these questions of fact emerged from the Director’s notes about the employee’s slow movements – these notes indicated to the court that the employee’s disability was on the Director’s mind when he terminated her employment.  Furthermore, the Director’s failure to address the employee’s complaints of discrimination suggested a possible discriminatory animus.  Finally, the medical center’s replacement of the employee with nonblack and nondisabled physicians could allow a fact finder to infer a discriminatory animus.  Accordingly, the court denied the medical center’s motion for summary judgment of the discrimination claims.

With regard to the employee’s allegation of retaliation, the court looked for a causal nexus between a protected activity and an adverse employment action.  Here, the protected activity was the employee’s complaint to the Director that she had suffered from racial and disability discrimination.  The adverse employment action was her termination four months later.  The court concluded that a finder of fact might conclude that these two events were close enough in time to infer a causal nexus.  Accordingly, the court denied the medical center’s motion for summary judgment of the employee’s retaliation claim.

Finally, the court addressed the employee’s discriminatory demotion and failure-to-promote claims.  Here, the court cited the medical center’s non-discriminatory justifications for demoting the employee – the demotion was necessary to ease the integration process after the medical center acquired the hospital where the employee served as Chief of MFM, and the Chief of MFM position was redundant after the integration.  Thus, the court concluded that the employee had failed to present any evidence that her demotion and failure to be promoted were tainted with a discriminatory animus.  Accordingly, the court granted the medical center’s motion for summary judgment for these claims.