Opinion ID: 187050
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Fourth Claim: Retaliatory Harassment

Text: The District Court granted appellee's motion to strike appellant's claim for retaliatory harassment, primarily on the grounds that it was raised for the first time in appellant's opposition to appellee's motion for summary judgment. This was error. The factual basis for appellant's new claim was substantially similar to the hostile work environment claim that appellant had alleged in her original complaint, and BBG did not demonstrate that allowing appellant's claim would cause undue prejudice. Therefore, this claim should not have been struck. The real issue . . . is not whether legal theories may be pleaded but whether the original theory may be discarded or augmented and recovery had on some other theory. The federal rules, and the decisions construing them, evince a belief that when a party has a valid claim, he should recover on it regardless of his counsel's failure to perceive the true basis of the claim at the pleading stage, provided always that a late shift in the thrust of the case will not prejudice the other party in maintaining a defense upon the merits. 5 CHARLES ALAN WRIGHT & ARTHUR R. MILLER, FEDERAL PRACTICE & PROCEDURE § 1219 at 281-83 (3d ed.2004) (footnote omitted); see also Alley v. Resolution Trust Corp., 984 F.2d 1201, 1207-08 (D.C.Cir.1993) (allowing plaintiffs to add an ERISA claim after motions for summary judgment had been filed because there was no prejudice to the defendant). The District Court granted summary judgment to appellee on appellant's hostile work environment claim, and that judgment has not been appealed. In addition to granting the motion to strike appellant's retaliatory harassment claim, the District Court held, in the alternative, that insofar as appellant's retaliatory harassment claim was merely a variation of her prior hostile environment claim, it lacked merit for the same reasons that the hostile environment claim had failed. During oral argument, appellant's counsel conceded that Ms. Wiley could not prevail on her retaliatory harassment claim unless she could establish that the alleged harassment resulted in a hostile environment. See Hussain v. Nicholson, 435 F.3d 359, 366 (D.C.Cir. 2006) (noting that [i]n this circuit, a hostile work environment can amount to retaliation under Title VII). Because there is no claim here that the District Court erred in granting summary judgment on appellant's hostile environment claim, appellant's retaliatory harassment claim necessarily fails as well. We therefore grant summary judgment for appellee on this claim.