Opinion ID: 1537069
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Appellant's Hostile Work Environment Claim Was Barred by the Statute of Limitations

Text: Appellant contends that the trial court erroneously dismissed her hostile work environment claim on summary judgment, arguing that her claim was not time-barred as the trial court found. According to appellant, a July 23, 2004, conversation with Mary Ellen Carter, Covington's Director of Human Resources, in which Carter told appellant that she would be terminated if she could not return to the office on a full-time basis ..., was the final incident in a pattern of unlawful and abusive pressure on Ms. Barrett ... expressly premised on [her] disabilities and need for accommodation. [1] Because the Carter conversation falls within the statute's one-year limitation period, [2] she argues, all of the incidents which collectively comprised a hostile work environment should have been considered even if they occurred more than one year before her complaint was filed. To make out a claim under the DCHRA for creating a hostile work environment, a plaintiff must prove (1) that [she] is a member of a protected class, (2) that [she] has been subjected to unwelcome harassment, (3) that the harassment was based on membership in the protected class, and (4) that the harassment is severe and pervasive enough to affect a term, condition, or privilege of employment. Lively v. Flexible Packaging Ass'n, 830 A.2d 874, 888 (D.C.2003) (en banc) (citation omitted). A work environment is actionably hostile when the workplace is permeated with discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult ... that is sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of the victim's employment and create an abusive working environment.... Id. at 889 (quoting Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc., 510 U.S. 17, 21, 114 S.Ct. 367, 126 L.Ed.2d 295 (1993)) (citation and quotation marks omitted). The Supreme Court has held that consideration of the entire scope of a hostile work environment claim, including behavior alleged outside the statutory time period, is permissible ... so long as an act contributing to that hostile environment takes place within the statutory time period. National R.R. Passenger Corp. v. Morgan, 536 U.S. 101, 105, 122 S.Ct. 2061, 153 L.Ed.2d 106 (2002) (emphasis added). We explicitly adopted this approach in Lively. 830 A.2d at 890. Thus, in order to survive summary judgment on timeliness grounds, appellant had the burden of establishing that there was a genuine issue of material fact as to whether the Carter conversation contributed to a hostile work environment. On this record, we agree with the trial court that something more than the July 23, 2004, conversation with HR Director Carter was necessary to avoid the bar of the statute of limitations. In order to render the earlier incidents timely, the conduct which falls within the limitations period must contribute to a hostile environmentan environment which is permeated with discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult that is sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of the victim's employment and create an abusive working environment. Daka, Inc. v. Breiner, 711 A.2d 86, 93 (D.C.1998) (citations and punctuation omitted). The claim must be based on a series of separate acts ... that are so objectively offensive as to alter the conditions of the victim's employment. Harris v. Wackenhut Servs., Inc., 590 F.Supp.2d 54, 77 (D.D.C. 2008) (citations and punctuation omitted). Moreover, the allegedly hostile incidents must be more than episodic; they must be sufficiently continuous and concerted in order to be deemed pervasive. Faragher v. City of Boca Raton, 524 U.S. 775, 787 n. 1, 118 S.Ct. 2275, 141 L.Ed.2d 662 (1998) (citation omitted). [I]solated incidents of offensive conduct do not amount to actionable [workplace] harassment. Smith v. Jackson, 539 F.Supp.2d 116, 138 (D.D.C. 2008) (citation omitted). The trial court ruled on alternative grounds, concluding that none of the incidents about which appellant complained made out a hostile work environment claim, but we need not decide that broader issue. Assuming, without deciding, that the more remote incidents appellant cites actually occurred, and were sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of her employment, the conversation with Ms. Carter could not reasonably be seen as contributing to actionable workplace hostility. Accordingly, appellant's claim is time-barred. According to appellant, the Carter conversation contributed to a hostile work environment because Ms. Barrett was told that she would be terminated if she could not return to the office on a full-time basis by the date mandated by Covington, and against medical advice. We are not persuaded. First, as appellant acknowledges, she had been out on medical leave for at least five monthssince February of 2004when the July 23, 2004, conversation with Ms. Carter took place. Indeed, that conversation involved the terms of appellant's return to Covington after her extended absence. The conversation with Ms. Carter simply was not part of the work environmentappellant had not been in the workplace for months. In any event, the discussion with Ms. Carter was hardly hostile as that term has been construed in relevant case law. The communication was, by all accounts, a professional and amiable interchange between an employee and an HR Director discussing the terms of appellant's return to work. According to Ms. Barrett's own testimony, Ms. Carter said that Covington would be thrilled to have [Ms. Barrett] back.... When Ms. Barrett said that she was excited to come back to work, Ms. Carter responded that we'd love to have you back. There is no indication that Ms. Carter used abusive or inappropriate language or behaved in an objectively hostile fashion in the course of her conversation with Ms. Barrett. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine how Ms. Carter could have conveyed the terms of Ms. Barrett's return to work in a less hostile fashion. Furthermore, the Carter conversation bears little, if any, relation to the earlier events which appellant alleges created a hostile work environment. Ms. Barrett contends that her workplace was actionably hostile because of various disparaging comments made by her supervisors, Ashley and Schroeder, and the delays and attitude of upper management in response to appellant's requests for accommodation. The only continuity between the Carter conversation and the earlier incidents appellant cites is not severe or pervasive hostility, but the recurring topic of appellant's requests for accommodation. The mere fact that Ms. Carter indicated that Covington would not accommodate appellant with a 30-hour work week after September 15, 2004, does not transform a failure to accommodate claim into a hostile work environment claim. Permitting this transmutation would significantly blur the distinctions between both the elements that underpin each cause of action and the kinds of harm each cause of action was designed to address. Rattigan v. Gonzales, 503 F.Supp.2d 56, 82 (D.D.C.2007). See also Smith, 539 F.Supp.2d at 138 ([I]nsofar as Plaintiff attempts to base his hostile work environment claim on his [compressed work schedule] revocation and AWOL charge, he cannot simply regurgitate his disparate treatment claims in an effort to flesh out a hostile work environment claim.) (punctuation and citation omitted). Accord, Keeley v. Small, 391 F.Supp.2d 30, 51 (D.D.C.2005) ([P]laintiff's alleged `hostile' events are the very employment actions he claims are retaliatory; he cannot so easily bootstrap alleged retaliatory incidents into a broader hostile work environment claim.). In sum, we agree with the trial court that no reasonable jury could find that the conversation with HR Director Carter on July 23, 2004, which by all accounts was polite and cordial (albeit unsatisfactory to appellant), contributed to a hostile work environment. Cf. Morgan, 536 U.S. at 120-21, 122 S.Ct. 2061 (plaintiff presented evidence that managers made racial jokes, performed racially derogatory acts, made negative comments regarding the capacity of blacks to be supervisors, and used various racial epithets; [C]ourt of [A]ppeals concluded that the pre-and post-limitations period incidents involve[d] the same type of employment actions, occurred relatively frequently, and were perpetrated by the same managers[,] and the Supreme Court could not say that acts occurring outside the filing period are not part of the same actionable hostile environment claim); Lively, 830 A.2d at 895-96 (where supervisor demeaned abilities and intelligence of women over many years, supervisor's instructing female plaintiff within limitations period to submit to diagnostic testing at brain dysfunction center could be considered part of one unlawful employment practice). Thus, appellant's hostile work environment claim was barred by the statute of limitations.