Case Name: John NERON, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Jeffry W. COSSETTE, Defendant-Appellee
Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
Jurisdiction: United States
Decision Date: 2011-04-18
Citations: 419 F. App'x 123
Docket Number: No. 10-2204-cv
Parties: John NERON, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Jeffry W. COSSETTE, Defendant-Appellee.
Judges: PRESENT: DENNIS JACOBS, Chief Judge, JOSÉ A. CABRANES, Circuit Judge, and MARK R. KRAVITZ, District Judge.
Reporter: West's Federal Appendix
Volume: 419
Pages: 123–124

Head Matter:
John NERON, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Jeffry W. COSSETTE, Defendant-Appellee.
No. 10-2204-cv.
United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.
April 18, 2011.
Sally A. Roberts (John R. Williams, New Haven, CT, of counsel), Law Office of Peter Upton & Associates, New Britain, CT, for Appellant.
John H. Gorman, City of Meriden Department of Law, Meriden, CT, for Appel-lee.
PRESENT: DENNIS JACOBS, Chief Judge, JOSÉ A. CABRANES, Circuit Judge, and MARK R. KRAVITZ, District Judge.
The Honorable Mark R. Kravitz, of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut, sitting by designation.

Opinion:
SUMMARY ORDER
Plaintiff-Appellant John Nerón appeals from a judgment entered on March 8, 2010 by the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut (Dorsey, /.), granting summary judgment for Defendant-Ap-pellee Jeffry Cossette, the chief of the Meriden Police Department, on Neron's First Amendment retaliation claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1988. We assume the parties' familiarity with the underlying facts, the procedural history, and the issues presented for review.
A grant of summary judgment is reviewed de novo, "resolv[ing] all ambiguities and drawling] all permissible factual inferences in favor of the party against whom summary judgment is sought." Terry v. Ashcroft, 386 F.3d 128, 137 (2d Cir.2003) (internal quotation marks omitted).
"To survive summary judgment on a First Amendment retaliation claim, a public employee must bring forth evidence showing that he has engaged in protected First Amendment activity, he suffered an adverse employment action, and there was a causal connection between the protected activity and the adverse employment action." Anemone v. Metro. Transp. Auth., 629 F.3d 97, 114 (2d Cir.2011) (internal quotation marks omitted).
Neron provides insufficient evidence of causation to warrant "the inference that the protected speech was a substantial motivating factor in the adverse employment action." Cotarelo v. Village of Sleepy Hollow Police Dep't, 460 F.3d 247, 251 (2d Cir.2006) (internal quotation marks omitted). He relies exclusively upon the temporal proximity between his complaint to the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities ("CCHRO") and the internal investigations, suspensions, and (allegedly) forced resignation that he faced. Although "[a] plaintiff can establish a causal connection that suggests retaliation by showing that protected activity was close in time to the adverse action," see Espinal v. Goord, 558 F.3d 119, 129 (2d Cir.2009), for such a showing to "provide an independent basis for an inference of causation, temporal proximity must be significantly greater" than a case with corroborating evidence. Mandell v. Cnty. of Suffolk, 316 F.3d 368, 384 (2d Cir.2003) (emphasis added).
Nerón was subjected to three internal investigations and two suspensions within three months of his CCHRO complaint. However, the chronology does not support an inference of retaliation: The criminal trespass investigation pre-dated the CCHRO complaint; the second investigation was initiated by a private citizen just two days after CCHRO received Neron's complaint; and Neron's involvement in the third investigation, prompted by the discovery of a prisoner's unsecured property, was not known to the police until after a sergeant began investigating. The second and third investigations were commenced shortly after Neron's complaint was filed, but Cossette did not initiate them. Nor were the two suspensions so harsh as to raise an inference of retaliation, given the circumstances of each offense, Neron's recidivism, and his false statements at the disciplinary hearings.
The investigation of Neron's mishandling of a domestic relations claim, begun more than twelve months after the CCHRO complaint, is too attenuated to be causal.
We have considered all of Neron's arguments and conclude that they lack merit. For the foregoing reasons, we hereby AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.