In Pall v. Roosevelt Union Free Sch. Dist., No. 11734/13, 2016 WL 6885459 (N.Y. App. Div. 2nd Dept Nov. 23, 2016), the court affirmed the dismissal – for failure to state a claim under CPLR 3211(a)(7) – of plaintiff’s defamation and (NYS Human Rights Law) hostile work environment claims.
The facts, as summarized by the court:
[P]laintiff is a sixth grade teacher at Roosevelt Middle School within the defendant Roosevelt Union Free School District[]. The District allegedly contracted with a nonparty entity to conduct audits and surveys of the student population at Roosevelt Middle School. In October 2012, a document generated by that entity allegedly was distributed to teachers and principals in the District, as well as to the Superintendent of Schools, by the defendant Kevin O’Connell, the Assistant Superintendent of the District. This document allegedly contained a comment by an anonymous student referring to both the teachers in the school in general, and the plaintiff in particular, as “bitches.”
Plaintiff sued, alleging that defendants were liable because they failed to redact the “bitches” comment.
The court summarized defamation law as follows:
To state a cause of action to recover damages for defamation, a plaintiff must allege that the defendant published a false statement, without privilege or authorization, to a third party, constituting fault as judged by, at a minimum, a negligence standard, and it must either cause special harm or constitute defamation per se. Since falsity is a necessary element of a defamation cause of action and only facts are capable of being proven false, it follows that only statements alleging facts can properly be the subject of a defamation action. The dispositive inquiry … is whether a reasonable [reader] could have concluded that [the statement was] conveying facts about the plaintiff.
Applying the law, the court dismissed plaintiff’s defamation claim, noting that “[t]he context of the alleged statement was such that a reasonable reader would have concluded that he or she was reading an opinion, and not a fact, about the plaintiff.”
The court also dismissed plaintiff’s hostile work environment claim, noting that “plaintiff’s allegations of a hostile work environment fell short of alleging that the workplace was permeated with discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult … that [was] sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of … employment and create an abusive working environment.”