Cojocaru v. City University of New York

Background

Claudia Cojocaru and Naomi Haber proposed a settlement with the defendants other than Ric Curtis. The settlement agreement provided for monetary payments by the State of New York on behalf of the City University of New York and John Jay College of Criminal Justice. It also provided for dismissal with prejudice of the claims against individual defendants Anthony Marcus, Leonardo Dominguez, and Barry Spunt.

As to Curtis, the proposal provided for dismissal with prejudice of all claims except Cojocaru’s and Haber’s retaliation claims. Those retaliation claims were based on New York State and New York City human-rights laws. The opinion states that the proposed settlement would release the federal claims against Curtis without requiring him to pay anything.

Curtis objected that his counterclaims for defamation and interference with his contractual relations with John Jay College arose under state law. He argued that dismissing the federal claims would eliminate the federal jurisdictional basis for those counterclaims and would prevent the court from approving the dismissal under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(a)(2). His counterclaims were based on his assertion that the plaintiffs’ claims against him involved defamation, which the opinion describes as a privileged activity. The settlement agreement also did not address a new action Curtis sought to bring concerning alleged discriminatory and due-process failures in the John Jay process leading to his suspension as a tenured professor.

Court’s analysis

Because not all parties who appeared consented to the dismissal, the court treated the parties’ papers as a motion for an order under Rule 41(a)(2). That rule permits a court-ordered dismissal when the terms are proper and, if a counterclaimant objects, only when the counterclaim can remain pending for independent adjudication. The rule’s primary purpose is protecting defendants’ interests.

The court concluded that the settlement terms were fair. It noted that each plaintiff would receive $164,499.74, plus attorneys’ fees of $281,000.52, for a total stated payment of $610,000.00. The opinion also states that all claims against the City University of New York would be dismissed, the claims against the individual defendants would be released without payment by them, and the federal claims against Curtis would likewise be released without payment by him.

The court recognized that its supplemental jurisdiction over the remaining state-law claims might end after dismissal of all claims within its original jurisdiction. But it concluded that this would not prevent independent adjudication of Curtis’s counterclaims. The court proposed conditioning the dismissal on the plaintiffs’ acceptance of New York Supreme Court jurisdiction, incorporation of the federal court’s records there, and permission to use the federal court’s pretrial proceedings and discovery in the state case, along with other reasonable protections Curtis might request. The opinion linked those conditions to New York’s tolling statute and to protections sometimes used when cases are transferred between federal courts.

Ruling and next step

Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein found the settlement fair and indicated that the parties’ motion for dismissal with prejudice could be granted subject to protective conditions for Curtis. The court directed the parties to settle an order by February 17, 2021, and required that order to include reasonable protective conditions Curtis requested. The text provided does not state that the final dismissal order had already been entered.