Judge William Skretny
Health Research Institute Inc. (HRI) operates the Roswell Park Cancer Institute. In 2005 it hired Harnack, then 52, as the “Online Content Coordinator” for Roswell’s marketing department. After Trump’s appointment as Roswell’s chief executive in 2007, it was found that Roswell’s website did not appear prominently in search engine results. HRI concluded that the marketing department had to create an in-house marketing agency, and hire an “in-house ‘web guru’” to rebuild the site. HRI concluded that Harnack was not the man for the job. He was among those laid off when HRI restructured the marketing department. Together with web project coordinator Graffam ‘web guru’ Gonzalez, hired in 2008, rebuilt the website. District court dismissed Harnack’s suit alleging breach of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. Aside from the fact that younger employees were hired after Harnack’s discharge, there was no evidence of age bias. Further, Harnack was hired while a member in a protected class, by a member of a protected class and released by that same class member less than three years later. Quoting from Graves v. Deutsche Bank Sec., the court observed that “under such circumstances, ‘it is difficult to impute an invidious motivation.’”
