Paul, Weiss Pro Bono Client Wins Appeal in Age Discrimination Case

Paul, Weiss won an appellate victory for a pro bono client in a lawsuit against the town of East Haven, Conn., alleging age discrimination in the termination of her employment in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 and Connecticut state law. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit vacated a district judge’s dismissal of the case on summary judgment, and remanded the case for further proceedings.

From 2001 to 2014, our client was an employee of the East Haven Police Department’s records division. In 2012, when our client was 58 years old, a much younger colleague was hired to work in the records division. From that point on, our client experienced “a sustained and systematic pattern of publicly criticizing, micromanaging and scrutinizing” of her work, designed to force her to retire. Ultimately, disciplinary charges were brought against her after she took abandoned biscuit dough and a wire basket from the common kitchen area, despite an incomplete investigation into the circumstances. On the advice of her union representative, she resigned to avoid termination.

In February 2016, our client brought suit asserting that her employment had been constructively terminated because of her age. The town moved for summary judgment, and the district court granted the motion on the ground that our client could not establish an adverse employment action because she elected to resign.

In vacating the decision, the Second Circuit held that the district court erred in imposing “an unduly stringent standard for proof of a constructive discharge” by requiring that the plaintiff show she had received a “categorical ultimatum that if she did not resign she would be fired” and that this threat “was delivered by an ultimate decisionmaker as to firing.” Rather, the appeals court explained, the established standard is whether, “in light of the evidence as a whole as to intolerable working circumstances, ‘a reasonable person in the employee’s shoes would have felt compelled to resign.’” The appeals court held that the lower court “did not take into account all of the evidence in the record, and surely did not view the evidence in the light most favorable to [the plaintiff],” as is required in a motion for summary judgment.

The Paul, Weiss team was comprised of litigation counsel Karen King (who argued the appeal) and associate Alex Hyman.