Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani Partners Aya Deam and Mark Posard secured a summary judgment dismissal in a wrongful demotion, retaliation, and discrimination lawsuit on behalf of GRSM’s client, a Los Angeles County governmental entity.
The plaintiff, a 30-year career administrator, alleged that her demotion was retaliatory and discriminatory based on gender and race. The plaintiff had previously faced allegations of sexual harassment, which a neutral third-party investigation determined were unsubstantiated. Though the sexual harassment claims were not substantiated, the investigation did find that the plaintiff created a toxic environment in her department. The defendant disciplined her for her unprofessional treatment of her subordinates.
Two years later, those who participated in the sexual harassment investigation reported that the plaintiff retaliated against them when she discovered they were interviewed in the earlier investigation. A second third-party investigation determined that the plaintiff did, indeed, retaliate against these subordinates. Rather than terminate her employment, the defendant demoted her to balance the need for disciplinary action against her decades-long contribution to the organization. The demotion resulted in reduced income, which the plaintiff argued caused significant loss of her retirement pension.
GRSM argued that the defendant’s decision to demote the plaintiff was a legitimate business reason and neither discriminatory nor retaliatory. The plaintiff challenged the validity of the second third-party report, arguing that the defendant’s decision makers could not rely on its findings because they did not personally observe the alleged misconduct before deciding to demote the plaintiff.
Quoting directly from GRSM’s moving papers throughout, the court ruled that an employer need not have firsthand knowledge of an employee’s bad actions and that relying on the third-party investigation is exactly what the employer should have done, underscoring that the demotion was reasonable, fair, and not discriminatory or retaliatory. The plaintiff failed to raise a triable issue of material fact that the defendant improperly relied on the third-party reports or that its stated reasons for the demotion were pretextual. The court ruled that the only consideration to grant the summary judgment was whether the defendant acted in good faith to demote the plaintiff, and GRSM made that demonstration.
GRSM also defeated the plaintiff’s comparator evidence and successfully demonstrated to the court that the plaintiff presented no evidence to support her position that she was treated differently than male employees because of her protected class.
