Cojocaru v. City University of New York
- Alvin Hellerstein
- 1:19-cv-05428
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 14
In Cojocaru v. City University of New York, Judge Hellerstein granted in part and denied in part plaintiffs’ motion to dismiss counterclaims.
Claudia Cojocaru and Naomi Haber’s motion to dismiss was partially granted and otherwise denied; the counterclaims by Ric Curtis, Leonardo Dominguez, and Barry Spunt could proceed except to the limited extent stated by the court.
What happened
Cojocaru v. City University of New York concerns counterclaims by professors accused by Claudia Cojocaru and Naomi Haber of sexual misconduct, discrimination, and retaliation. The professors alleged that the plaintiffs defamed them through media interviews, social-media posts, text messages, and statements to investigators.
The plaintiffs asked the court to dismiss the counterclaims. They argued that some defamation claims were too late, protected by a legal privilege, based on opinions rather than facts, or unsupported by allegations of damages. They also argued that Ric Curtis’s claim for interference with his work relationship duplicated his defamation claims.
Judge Hellerstein granted the motion in part and denied it in part. He ruled that claims based on Cojocaru’s text messages to her former fiancé and certain statements by Haber about the effect of her experience were not actionable, but allowed the counterclaims to proceed in all other respects.
The detailed version
- Cojocaru v. City University of New York · No. 1:19-cv-05428
- Alvin Hellerstein
- July 7, 2020
Background
Claudia Cojocaru and Naomi Haber sued City University of New York, doing business as John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and several professors. They alleged gender discrimination, retaliation, gender-based violence, and related violations of federal, state, and city law. The professors denied those allegations.
Ric Curtis, Leonardo Dominguez, and Barry Spunt brought counterclaims for defamation, including libel and slander per se. Curtis also brought a counterclaim for interference with his contractual and business relationships. The counterclaims relied on statements the plaintiffs allegedly made in New York Post interviews, social-media posts, text messages, and communications with law-enforcement and university investigators.
The plaintiffs moved to dismiss the counterclaims under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), which asks whether a pleading contains enough factual allegations to state a legally plausible claim. For this motion, the court treated the counterclaim allegations as true and drew reasonable inferences in the counterclaim defendants’ favor.
Defamation claims
The court held that Dominguez and Spunt’s claims based on Cojocaru’s text messages to her former fiancé were time barred. The messages were allegedly sent in 2018, but Dominguez and Spunt first raised them in amended answers and counterclaims rather than their initial answers. The court ruled that the allegations did not relate back to the earlier pleadings because the messages were separate publications to a different recipient and included distinct accusations.
The court declined to decide at the pleading stage whether the plaintiffs’ interviews, social-media posts, and other statements were protected by New York’s privilege for fair and accurate reports of official proceedings. Whether the statements fairly and accurately described those proceedings, or instead made independent accusations, depended on disputed context and facts.
The court ruled that most of the challenged statements were factual statements, or statements combining opinion with implied facts, that could support defamation claims. The court specifically treated statements that Curtis encouraged Haber to have sex with other professors, descriptions of the professors’ alleged misconduct, and comparisons to people involved in the Jeffrey Epstein case as potentially actionable. The court held that Haber’s statements that her experience made her suicidal and killed her spiritually were pure opinions describing her personal reaction and therefore could not support defamation liability.
The court also held that the counterclaim defendants sufficiently alleged defamation per se. That category includes statements accusing someone of a serious crime or tending to injure someone in their profession. Because the alleged statements concerned violence, drug sales, and professional misconduct, the court held that damages were presumed at the pleading stage and did not need to be separately alleged or proven.
Curtis’s interference claim
The court held that Curtis sufficiently alleged a claim for tortious interference with contract and business relations. He alleged that he had contractual and business relationships with the university, that the plaintiffs knew about those relationships, and that their allegedly fabricated accusations caused the university to suspend him and begin termination proceedings. He also alleged economic and professional losses.
The court rejected the argument that this claim duplicated Curtis’s defamation claims. The court distinguished the claims because the defamation claims were based mainly on media interviews and social-media posts, while the interference claim was based mainly on alleged statements to the university and its investigators.
Disposition
Judge Hellerstein granted the plaintiffs’ motion to dismiss the counterclaims to the limited extent that liability could not be based on Cojocaru’s alleged text messages to her former fiancé or Haber’s alleged statements that her experience made her suicidal and killed her spiritually. The motion was denied in all other respects. The court directed the clerk to close the motion and stated that the parties would appear for a scheduled status conference to discuss discovery.
Read the full 14-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.