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Federal Jury Rejects Ex-Disciplinary Attorney's Lawsuit Alleging Retaliatory Firing
New York Law Journal
November 02, 2009
A federal jury took barely three hours on Thursday to throw out claims from a former staff attorney with the 1st Department's disciplinary committee that she had been fired in retaliation for the exercise of her First Amendment rights.
The unanimous, eight-member Southern District of New York jury rejected the civil rights suit brought by Christine A. Anderson, who claimed she was fired in 2007 because she objected that officials at the committee were "whitewashing" complaints and giving preferential treatment to attorneys with connections.
The jury credited the claims of the Office of Court Administration and three individual defendants that Anderson had been fired for insubordination. The state argued that she had exaggerated her complaints and had spurned numerous opportunities to repair her frayed relationship with her direct supervisor, Sherry K. Cohen, the committee's deputy chief counsel and a defendant in the case.
The other two individual defendants were Thomas J. Cahill, who at the time was the committee's chief counsel, and David Spokony, the 1st Department's deputy clerk.
One of Anderson's lawyers, Rory J. Bellantoni, in his closing statement Thursday morning had asked the jury to award Anderson $298,000 for lost wages and "substantial" damages for pain and suffering.
The jury, which returned a unanimous verdict as required, consisted of five women and three men.
Judge Shira A. Scheindlin, who presided over the three-day trial, had dismissed Anderson's claims that she had been discriminated against on the basis of race and national origin on a motion for summary judgment. Anderson is Jamaican.
Bellantoni, who left the bench over the summer after six years as County Court judge in Westchester, said after the verdict that Anderson is "weighing her options."
John McConnell, the 1st Department's clerk, said, "We are delighted with the verdict."
The verdict embraced Assistant Attorney General Lee A. Adlerstein's closing argument that Anderson "resented" Cohen's detailed style of management and resisted numerous efforts to repair her relationship with Cohen.
In 2001, Anderson, now 64, was hired as a staff attorney at the committee which is responsible for policing the conduct of attorneys practicing in Manhattan and the Bronx.
Cohen, who had been with the committee since 1993, became deputy chief counsel in 2003. Sometime thereafter, she became Anderson's supervisor.
There was no dispute that the relationship between the two was fraught. Both lawyers testified that in July 2006 a confrontation had occurred in Anderson's office when Cohen, with the door closed behind her, refused to accede to Anderson's demand that she be let out.
A panel convened by the 1st Department's then clerk, Catherine Wolfe, to investigate an "incident report" filed by Anderson, resulted in a decision that Cohen should apologize to Anderson and take a management course. The panel also recommended that Cahill make it clear that the lines of authority within the office made Cohen the direct supervisor of Anderson.
DETERIORATING RELATIONSHIP
Anderson had testified that her relationship with Cohen began to deteriorate in August 2005, when the two disagreed over the wording of a private admonition that both agreed should be given to a lawyer.
Cohen wanted references that the attorney had made misrepresentations taken out. When Anderson refused, Cohen took the file and rewrote the recommendation, which had to be approved by the committee's policy committee.
Prior to Cohen's revision, Anderson testified that she had objected that the report had been "whitewashed" and "sanitized" to affect the outcome of the case.
As the relationship became increasingly tense, Anderson testified that she was fearful of Cohen and refused to meet with her alone. Wolfe meanwhile counseled Cohen to take notes of her contacts with Anderson and to have a second person in the room.
Bellantoni described Wolfe's advice as designed to develop a paper trail to create a pretext for firing Anderson.
Anderson testified that in fall 2006 she again clashed with Cohen over the handling of several other cases.
In February 2007, Anderson stated, she had complained to Cahill that attorneys with political connections or ties to those on the 64-member disciplinary committee got preferential treatment. The same was true, she said, for lawyers who hired attorneys who had previously worked at the committee.
However, Adlerstein in his closing dismissed claims that Anderson had complained directly to Cahill, saying she only had made "general statements" that lacked specifics.
Referring to the fact that Cahill, a former Southern District U.S. Attorney, denied that the February 2007 conversation ever took place, Adlerstein charged Anderson had made the conversation up "out of whole cloth."
Anderson had "exaggerated" the incident with Cohen in her office in an effort to get rid of her as her supervisor, Adlerstein said.
Bellantoni's partner, John Lovett, had delivered the opening statement for Anderson and handled much of the witness examinations. He was not in court Thursday due to a family medical emergency.
Assistant Attorney General Wesley E. Bauman had delivered the opening statement for the four state defendants.
