The New York City Human Rights Law is quite different from Title VII, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the other federal antidiscrimination statutes. The NYC HRL relaxes the plaintiff's burden of proof, for example, and it does not cap damages for pain and suffering. It also provides a different test for punitive damages.
The case is Emamian v. Rockefeller University, issued on August 19. The plaintiff won her national origin discrimination case under the City law, and the Court of Appeals (Livingston, Park and Underhill [D.J.]) upheld the verdict, rejecting a challenge to the verdict form.
Under federal law, you cannot get punitive damages unless the discrimination was malicious or willful. The City law does not explicitly mention any particular punitive damages standard, the New York Court of Appeals held in Chauca v. Abraham, 30 N.Y.3d 325 (2017), that the punitive damages test under the City law is less burdensome than under federal law (requiring only recklessness but not malice). The standard under Chauca is as follows: punitives are appropriate upon a showing of "willful or wanton negligence, or recklessness, or where there is a conscious disregard of the rights of others or conduct so reckless as to amount to such disregard." The New York Court of Appeals reached this holding under the liberal principles of statutory interpretation that guide the City law. But since Chauca was only decided a few years ago, we do not know what constitutes a reckless state of mind under the City law. This case may be the most comprehensive discussion thus far on what it takes (or doesn’t take) to get a punitive damages charge under the City law.
The plaintiff says the trial court should have allowed her to seek punitive damages. But the Court of Appeals says this argument was waived because plaintiff did not object when the trial court declined to issue it, and the record shows this would not have been a futile objection since the trial court was still open to the possibility that punitive damages may be awarded when they were discussing the issue in colloquy.
But the Second Circuit still addresses this issue on the merits. Plaintiff can still win this waived argument if the failure to charge the jury on punitives was “plain error,” but that is a high standard. Bear in mind that intentional discrimination by itself does not automatically entitle the plaintiff to a punitive damages charge, even under the City law. When I argued Chauca, the New York Court of Appeals rejected the argument that punitive damages may be available in any case involving intentional discrimination. In this case, the Second Circuit says that plaintiff had a weak case for punitives because she only claims the university failed to properly respond to her discrimination claim, and her supervisor’s criticisms of her work were not detached from valid scientific concerns. Nor did plaintiff establish that the university’s response to her complaint was insufficient, particularly since the jury rejected plaintiff’s retaliation claim. So, while the plaintiff's case was enough to win on her intentional discrimination claim, defendant's actions were not sufficiently reckless to justify punitive damages.
What was the evidence of discrimination in this case? The Court of Appeals details that in a summary order that accompanies this published ruling:
Emamian introduced ample evidence of being “treated less well” in the lab of Dr. Greengard including being paid a lower salary, being subjected to harsher criticism and ridicule, and being denied office space and resources relative to non-Iranian employees. Moreover, there was sufficient evidence at trial to permit a reasonable jury to conclude that this differential treatment was caused at least in part by a discriminatory motive. The jury could have concluded that Greengard harbored such a motive based on testimony regarding a conversation between Greengard and Emamian during which, according to Emamian, Greengard aggressively questioned her about her headscarf in a hostile manner. Moreover, Greengard testified that he had been informed by his secretary, whom Greengard described as a “highly educated woman who grew up in Tehran, as did Dr. Emamian,” that Emamian’s headscarf indicated her submissiveness to men and that Greengard should not have hired her. In addition, the jury could have found probative the email sent to the entire lab by Dr. Marc Flajolet, another scientist in the lab, which contained language that, according to Emamian’s testimony, constituted a racist slur directed specifically at her.
That looks like a serious discrimination case, but the Second Circuit does not think it deserves a punitive damages charge. Plaintiffs may try to distinguish this case on the basis that this does not deserve punitive damages under the heightened "plain error" rule, but defendants will note that the Second Circuit still examined this issue on the merits.
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