Opinion ID: 846030
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Age and Sexual Discrimination

Text: Plaintiff recorded incidents by Bacha that she believed were discriminatory in her daily planner. The incidents that plaintiff recorded occurred between August 1997 and September 1998. Plaintiff testified in her deposition that she never saw Bacha after he ceased working for the city in September 1998: Q. . . . Was there any type of harassment by Mr. Bacha that you're aware of after he went on leave in September of 1998? A. No, I never saw him again.[ [22] ] Even viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to plaintiff, on the basis of plaintiff's deposition testimony it is clear that Bacha engaged in no discriminatory conduct within the limitations period. The trial court and Court of Appeals erred in denying the motion for summary disposition with regard to Bacha.
Although in her deposition plaintiff testified that there was no specific incident of discrimination by Pitoniak between November 24, 1998, and November 30, 1998, [23] plaintiff claims on appeal that two discriminatory acts by Pitoniak occurred within the three years that preceded the filing of the complaint. First, plaintiff claims that she received disparate pay until she resigned. Specifically, plaintiff alleges that her income was decreased by approximately $15,000 because she no longer received overtime pay after the city hired Wittner as the new director of information systems. Wittner was hired on August 31, 1998. The hiring of the younger man was the alleged discriminatory act; the resulting loss of overtime pay was an ongoing damage that resulted from that discriminatory act, not a discriminatory act in itself. If an act is not in and of itself discriminatory, i.e., it has a discriminatory effect only because of a prior discriminatory act, it cannot sustain a cause of action. Sumner v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 427 Mich. 505, 530, 398 N.W.2d 368 (1986) (citing United Air Lines, Inc. v. Evans, 431 U.S. 553, 97 S.Ct. 1885, 52 L.Ed.2d 571 [1977]), overruled on other grounds by Garg v. Macomb Co. Community Mental Health Services, 472 Mich. 263, 696 N.W.2d 646 (2005). Plaintiff's claim based on the hiring of Wittner accrued when the alleged discriminatory act took place, when Wittner was hired on August 31, 1998, even though the damages from that discriminatory act continued during the limitations period. MCL 600.5827. Second, plaintiff made a request for severance pay in her resignation letter of November 30, 1998. Plaintiff alleges that this final request for severance pay, and Pitoniak's failure to respond to her request, was a discriminatory act that fell within the three-year period. But the failure to grant plaintiff's request for severance pay was not a discriminatory act. Plaintiff was not entitled to severance pay upon her resignation, though she would have been entitled to it had she been terminated by the city without cause. Because plaintiff alleged no discriminatory acts by Pitoniak that occurred on or after November 30, 1998, her complaint against him was not timely filed.