Opinion ID: 2999609
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Negligent Liability for Sexual Harassment

Text: Phelan’s sexual harassment claims should have survived summary judgment under a negligence theory. Under such a theory, Phelan can defeat summary judgment by introducing “competent evidence that [her employer] was negligent either in discovering or remedying the harassment directed at her.” Rhodes, 359 F.3d at 506. With regard to remedying the harassment, the district court ruled that Phelan’s hostile work environment claim could not succeed because “[t]he evidence presented shows that Cook County upheld its legal duty to investigate and take remedial actions when presented with allegations of sexual harassment.” Phelan v. Cook County, et al., No. 01-C-3638, 2004 WL 2390084, at  (N.D. Ill. Oct. 22, 2004). The court concluded that Phelan’s failure to file a formal complaint regarding the harassment she experienced at the CORE Center negated the defendants’ burden to demonstrate that it had taken appropriate remedial measures. In arriving at this conclusion, the court misapplied the Supreme Court’s ruling in Faragher, which dictates that a 18 No. 04-3991 hostile work environment defendant can raise an affirmative defense when no tangible employment action is taken. Faragher, 524 U.S. at 807. “The defense comprises two necessary elements: (a) that the employer exercised reasonable care to prevent and correct promptly any sexually harassing behavior, and (b) that the plaintiff employee unreasonably failed to take advantage of any preventive or corrective opportunities provided by the employer or to avoid harm otherwise.” Id. We find that the district court erred in applying the Faragher defense here because, as discussed above, Phelan’s termination constituted an adverse employment action. See id. at 808 (“No affirmative defense is available, however, when the supervisor’s harassment culminates in a tangible employment action, such as discharge, demotion, or undesirable reassignment.”).5 Nevertheless, the defendants argue that the harassment in the Powerhouse and the harassment in the CORE Center represent two distinct sets of events, one of which was adequately remedied (by the transfer to the CORE Center). As to the harassment that occurred after the transfer to the CORE Center, defendants argue that Phelan has not produced sufficient evidence to present a question of material fact as to whether Cook County was negligent in discovering this harassment. First, we cannot accept defendants’ argument that we should focus only on the harassment that took place after 5 In this circuit, we have generally used the terms “adverse employment action” and “tangible employment action” interchangeably. See, e.g., Herrnreiter, 315 F.3d at 744 (“The cases paraphrase this either as ‘a tangible employment action,’ . . . or as a ‘materially adverse employment action’); but see Lutkewitte v. Gonzales, 436 F.3d 238, 262 (D.C. Cir. 2006) (discussing conflict among the circuits as to whether these terms are interchangeable). This opinion does not draw a distinction between the two terms. No. 04-3991 19 Phelan’s transfer to the CORE Center. The district court observed that “Cook County, for the purpose of summary judgment, does not deny that Phelan was sexually harassed in her original assignment. However, Cook County contends that it took remedial actions by removing Phelan from the original hostile work environment and that it did not have sufficient notice of the recent incidents of sexual harassment.” Phelan, 2004 WL 2390084, at . After making this observation, the district court went on to assess whether the transfer to the CORE Center constituted an adverse employment action, and then, finding no adverse employment action, only examined the defendants’ activities at the CORE Center. The transfer to the CORE Center did not make irrelevant the harassment that occurred in the boiler room. The question regarding remedial steps taken by Cook County is whether it took steps to stop the harassing activity as a whole; the transfer to the CORE Center is simply one measure taken by the defendants in an arguable attempt to stop the harassment. The district court split the hostile work environment issue into two inquiries, and then concluded that the inquiry regarding the boiler room harassment was sufficiently answered by the fact that Cook County transferred Phelan to the CORE Center. Phelan presented substantial evidence that she was subjected to harassing language and physical contact in the boiler room. A question of fact remained as to whether the transfer to the CORE Center constituted a sufficient remedial measure, particularly since there was substantial evidence that the harassment continued in the CORE Center. Even looking at Phelan’s time at the CORE Center in a vacuum, there is sufficient evidence for Phelan’s hostile work environment claim to survive summary judgment. Phelan produced evidence that Silva had repeatedly placed her in a headlock, as well as evidence that he, along 20 No. 04-3991 with other co-workers, had subjected her to extensive, gender-related, verbal abuse, including statements that she needed to perform various sexual acts to appease her coworkers. The record also contains evidence that Phelan complained about this abuse to her superiors to no avail. All of this goes far beyond the situations in other cases in which we have concluded that the plaintiff produced sufficient evidence to defeat summary judgment. See, e.g., Hostetler v. Quality Dining, Inc., 218 F.3d 798 (7th Cir. 2000) (reversing grant of summary judgment where plaintiff ’s co-worker forcibly kissed her and attempted to remove her bra). In granting summary judgment for defendants, the district court relied exclusively on the fact that Phelan did not file a formal complaint after the events in the CORE Center. We find, however, that Phelan was not required to file a formal complaint regarding the harassment in the CORE Center. It is undisputed that Phelan filed a formal complaint regarding the harassment that she experienced in the boiler room, and Phelan offered evidence that, after the problem was not solved by her transfer to the CORE Center, she verbally complained to her supervisors and to Cook County’s Human Resources Department. This is a very different situation from that of the plaintiff in Durkin, cited by the district court, where we stated “[a]n employer is not liable for co-employee sexual harassment when a mechanism to report the harassment exists, but the victim fails to utilize it.” Durkin, 341 F.3d at 612-13. In Durkin, the plaintiff had made no attempt to utilize the City’s system for handling complaints of sexual harassment, which would have required her to simply make a verbal complaint to her homeroom instructor (the plaintiff was a Chicago Police Department trainee officer). Id. In that case, the plaintiff’s verbal complaints to others within the Department were too vague to put the City on notice, but No. 04-3991 21 we noted that “there could be instances where this approach is sufficient to put an employer on notice,” even where the verbal complaints did not follow the letter of the harassment policy. Id. Phelan’s situation is precisely the instance we alluded to in Durkin, where complaints that do not technically comply with the company’s internal procedure are nonetheless sufficient—Cook County cannot reasonably claim that it did not have sufficient notice of Phelan’s harassment where she continually complained of physical and verbal abuse in both of her work stations and various employees were witness to such harassment.6 Because an issue of material fact remains on the question of Cook County’s negligence in discovering and remedying Phelan’s co-worker harassment, we reverse the grant of summary judgment on Phelan’s hostile work environment claim.