Articles

Connecticut Supreme Court Issues Decision Reversing Summary Judgement Based On Hostile Work Environment-Sexual Harassment

In a case released March 31, 2015, the Connecticut Supreme Court reversed the Appellate Court and found that the plaintiff’s hostile work environment claim based on sex survived summary judgment based upon a manager’s vulgar comments about the physical attributes of female customers, a co-worker and plaintiff, his repeated touching of his crouch and his sexually provocative conduct.  Felciano v. AutoZone, Inc., 2015 Conn. LEXIS 73, SC 19200 (March 31, 2015).  This case reaffirms the elements necessary to establish a hostile work environment claim.

The plaintiff, a black female who was born in the U.S. Virgin Islands, was employed by the defendant as a supervisor.  She was terminated from her position for the alleged improper use of a customer loyalty reward card for her own purposes.

The Court affirmed the Appellate Court in concluding that she failed to make out a prima facie case that her employment was unlawfully terminated on the basis of her national origin, religion (Rastafarian) or race.  However, the Court reversed the Appellate Court with its finding that the plaintiff established a genuine issue of material fact as to whether she was subjected to a hostile work environment on the basis of her sex.

The evidence revealed that of the twenty transactions of the customer loyalty card for personal reasons, nineteen were made by the plaintiff and one was made with the plaintiff’s card by another employee who was not investigated for wrongdoing.

What is significant about this case is that the Court reiterated the elements of a hostile work environment claim:  “[T]o establish a hostile work environment claim, a plaintiff must produce evidence sufficient to show that the workplace is permeated with discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult that is sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of the victim’s employment and create an abusive working environment ….a sexually objectionable environment must be both objectively and subjectively offensive, one that a reasonable person would find hostile or abusive…” (emphasis added).