Ramos v. Palm West Corporation

Background

Alberto Ramos alleged that he experienced workplace discrimination and retaliation while working as a server at Palm West from December 2010 through March 2016. He sued Palm West Corporation, which owns and operates Palm West; Tryon & Stonewall Restaurant Inc., which allegedly assumed Palm West in 2020; and supervisors Richard Hammel and Craig Levy. The corporate defendants were the only defendants that had been served when they moved to dismiss under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6), which address subject-matter jurisdiction and whether a complaint states a legally sufficient claim.

Ramos asserted claims under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Section 1981, the New York State Human Rights Law, the New York City Human Rights Law, the New York Labor Law, and related state and city-law theories. The claims included retaliation, hostile work environment, race, national-origin, and age discrimination, aiding and abetting, supervisory liability, interference with protected rights, wage-related violations, and promissory estoppel.

Claims Withdrawn or Dismissed Without Extended Analysis

Ramos withdrew his promissory-estoppel claims and his claims for aiding and abetting under the New York State and New York City Human Rights Laws.

The court dismissed the New York City Human Rights Law supervisory-liability claim to the extent it was duplicative of Ramos’s general discrimination claims based on race and national origin. The court later addressed the claim separately to the extent it involved age discrimination.

The court dismissed Ramos’s Title VII age-discrimination claim with prejudice because age is not a protected class under Title VII. The court did not address the defendants’ arguments concerning the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act because Ramos stated that he had not brought an Age Discrimination in Employment Act claim.

The court dismissed Ramos’s New York Labor Law claims against all defendants without prejudice to refiling them in state court. Ramos conceded that the federal court lacked supplemental jurisdiction because his claims concerning spread-of-hours pay, overtime, and recordkeeping did not arise from the same facts as his race-discrimination claims. The court declined to remand those claims to state court.

The court dismissed the New York City Human Rights Law interference claim as untimely. It concluded that the only alleged threat occurred around March 2016, outside the law’s three-year limitations period, and that Ramos had not responded to the defendants’ timeliness argument.

Age-Discrimination Claims

The court held that Ramos did not plausibly allege age discrimination under either the New York State or New York City Human Rights Laws. For the state-law claim, he needed to allege that age was the reason the employer acted. The city law uses a more generous standard, but still requires allegations that Ramos was treated worse than other employees because of his age.

Ramos alleged that Hammel and Levy called him “old man” and “dinosaur” and asked when he would retire. The court found that he did not allege when or in what context the comments occurred, or connect them to the allegedly inferior treatment and adverse employment actions. The court also noted that the complaint attributed the alleged inferior treatment to race or retaliation for race complaints rather than age. It therefore dismissed the New York State and New York City age-discrimination claims for failure to state a claim.

Supervisory-Liability Claim

The court dismissed the New York City Human Rights Law supervisory-liability claim insofar as it concerned the corporate defendants’ alleged race- and national-origin discrimination because Ramos’s general city-law claims based on those grounds remained. But the court denied the motion to dismiss insofar as the supervisory-liability claim concerned age discrimination. Because Ramos’s direct age-discrimination claim under the city law had been dismissed, the court did not find that portion duplicative on the ground presented by the corporate defendants.

The court noted that the corporate defendants’ supervisory liability depends on the liability of the individual defendants. It stated that, if the age-discrimination claims against the individual defendants are dismissed, the corporate defendants may renew their motion, presumably through a motion for judgment on the pleadings.

Disposition and Further Proceedings

The court granted the corporate defendants’ motion to dismiss as to all claims they sought to dismiss except Ramos’s New York City Human Rights Law supervisory-liability claim insofar as it concerns age discrimination. The remaining claims included retaliation, hostile work environment, and race- and national-origin discrimination under Title VII, the New York State and New York City Human Rights Laws, and Section 1981. Claims other than the New York Labor Law claims also remained against the individual defendants, although the docket did not show that those defendants had been served.

The court declined to grant leave to amend the dismissed claims, finding that the defects were substantive and that Ramos had not identified additional facts that would cure them. It treated certain requested caption and pleading corrections as already made because they were typographical. The corporate defendants were ordered to answer the remaining claims within two weeks. Ramos was ordered to explain why the individual defendants had not been served within the required period or, if they had been served, when and how service occurred. The court warned that it could dismiss all claims against the individual defendants without further notice if Ramos did not respond or establish good cause.