Opinion ID: 2994717
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: I believe I said [in writing to SIU’s Director

Text: of Human Resources] I would like to go back to work, but I did not want to go back to work under Carol Kammerer. . . . I was expressing the fact that I wanted to work. I didn’t want to be off work, but I didn’t want to have to work under Carol Kammerer and [sic] aggravated, harassed, treated unfair--. . . . Being unfair and her being racist towards me. Q. So if Lieutenant Doan had taken over responsibilities for supervising the radio room, that would have been fine? A. Sure. That would have been fine. The job was not the problem. Corporal Kammerer was the problem with me. (Emphasis added.) /3 Specifically, Shands swore in the following paragraphs of her affidavit that: 4. At no time during my employment in the Department of Public Safety at Southern Illinois University did I personally hear any police officer or supervisor in the Department of Public Safety make any racially derogatory remark. 5. At no time during my employment in the Department of Public Safety at Southern Illinois University did I personally hear any police officer or supervisor in the Department of Public Safety make any racist remark concerning Mark Mason. /4 If the employee does not suffer a tangible employment action as a result of such harassment, the employer may raise an affirmative defense comprising two elements: (a) that the employer exercised reasonable care to prevent and correct promptly [the] 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. Ellerth, 118 S. Ct. at 2270; Farragher, 118 S. Ct. at 2293. Here, SIU has not raised the affirmative defense, and it is thus waived. /5 That the harassment had the effect of unreasonably interfering with Plaintiff’s work performance, and creating an intimidating, hostile and offensive work environment that seriously affected the psychological well-being of the Plaintiff. Complaint, para. 23. /6 Mason argues that SIU was fully aware of plaintiff’s claim of coworker harassment because it did not object to a proposed jury instruction regarding coworker harassment that Mason had drafted and that the parties had submitted as part of their joint instructions. This contention was also not raised until Mason’s reply brief, and to the extent he is contending that this submission implies SIU’s agreement under Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(b) to amending the pleadings, we disagree. See Rosario v. Livaditis, 963 F.2d 1013, 1022 n.4 (7th Cir. 1992). SIU’s repeated objections to Shands’ proposed testimony as not relevant to Mason’s claim of supervisor harassment belie any notion that SIU tacitly consented to Mason bringing in at trial an additional claim based on coworker harassment. Contrast Whitaker v. T. J. Snow Co., 151 F.3d 661, 663 (7th Cir. 1998) (Because both parties squarely addressed the strict liability theory in their summary judgment briefs, the complaint was constructively amended to include that claim.). /7 While in Williams, upon which Mason relies, the Sixth Circuit recognized that courts must separate supervisor and coworker conduct in order to apply the appropriate standards for employer liability, id., it stated that it is not appropriate to separate the conduct according to the type of perpetrator to determine whether the harassment is severe or pervasive. See 187 F.3d at 562 & 563 n.4. Williams is distinguishable from this case in that the plaintiff there was claiming a hostile work environment based on the actions of both supervisors and coworkers, see id. at 559, whereas Mason has pursued only a supervisor-based hostile work environment claim. /8 We have stated, however, that with respect to a hostile work environment claim that is predicated on coworker behavior, the pervasiveness of coworker conduct could show the employer’s constructive notice of the harassment (presumably even if the plaintiff is not present). Wilson v. Chrysler Corp., 172 F.3d 500, 509 (7th Cir. 1999). /9 The only indication in the record that Mason and Shands might have discussed their coworkers’ alleged comments is Mason’s one-word mention during his testimony that he and Shands had talked about discrimination. But this solitary reference is too cryptic to have apprised the district court (or us) that Shands indeed told Mason of these statements. And even if Shands told Mason about some of these comments, such through the grapevine or second-hand conduct is not sufficiently severe or pervasive so as to create a hostile work environment. See Savino v. C.P. Hall Co., 199 F.3d 925, 933 (7th Cir. 1999); Adusumilli v. City of Chicago, 164 F.3d 353, 362 (7th Cir. 1998). And if we further assume that Shands did relay these incidents to Mason, we do not know how many times she did so; an isolated (and in this case second-hand) comment also does not create a severe or pervasive environment. See Farragher, 118 S. Ct. at 2283-84 (offhand comments . . . will not amount to discriminatory changes in the ’terms and conditions’ of employment’); see also Ngeunjuntr, 146 F.3d at 467 (isolated racial comments did not show a severe or pervasive environment).