Court Opinion

ID: 9665302
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 00:44:17.259173+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:14.609097
License: Public Domain

Williams, C.J.
(concurring in part and dissenting in part). While also in agreement with the majority’s adoption of the continuing violation theory of employment discrimination, I write separately because the majority’s result in Knight seems inconsistent when compared with those in Sumner and Robson. Consistent application of the continuing violation theory would allow all three plaintiffs in these consolidated cases to recover.
In my opinion, the disparity in application be*561tween Sumner and Robson on the one hand and Knight on the other hand occurs because Knight was decided by special verdict of the jury and in Sumner and Robson the trial court was the trier of fact. In fact, the majority states:
The verdict of the jury, however, leaves us no alternative but to conclude that the discharge from that assignment was a neutral act, and therefore only the "present effect of past discrimination” .... [Ante, p 544. Emphasis added.]
The jury used a special verdict form on which the crucial instruction stated that the jury should find for the plaintiff if "Knight’s rejection of McGuire’s advances was a significant influencing factor in her termination . . . .” Ante, p 523. Compare this instruction to the trial court’s finding in Sumner that
the acts of racial harassment and the act of discharge, although separate acts, were so closely related that they were a continuous course of conduct,
and that
the continuing racial abuse and harassment which precipitated the altercation, were a series of separate but related acts and were, therefore, a continuous course of conduct up to and including the time of Claimant’s discharge.
This is not to say that Ms. Knight’s allegations were the same as Mr. Sumner’s, but that she should have had the benefit of a jury instruction more closely aligned to the continuing violation theory.
I would remand Knight to the trial court to fashion an instruction or instructions consistent with the continuing violation theory of employment discrimination.