In Bruce v. Adams and Reese, LLP, Case No. 3:24-cv-00875, 2025 WL 611071 (M.D.Tenn. Feb. 25, 2025), the court, inter alia, denied defendant’s motion to dismiss plaintiff’s claim of hostile work environment sexual harassment asserted under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
After summarizing the black-letter law, the court applied it to the facts as follows:
Setting aside the alleged events that occurred before the plaintiff began working for A&R and that cannot, as a result, be attributed to A&R, the plaintiff alleges, as set forth above, that Pinson was rarely in the office after they transitioned to A&R, that she “went out of her way to avoid him” because his comments made her increasingly uncomfortable, and that, by the fall of 2022, she “hardly spoke to him.” Despite the relative rarity of their contact, Pinson “continued” to sexually harass Bruce when he was in the office. This harassment consisted of sexual comments to and about her and inappropriate comments about her appearance, clothing, and private life, including inappropriate comments related to her engagement and relationship with her fiancé. Bruce provides three examples of inappropriate comments: (1) Pinson’s saying, “Let’s have Randi [Bruce] go down there in a short skirt”; (2) his saying “Hoe no” instead of “Oh no” when talking to her; and (3) his making a comment on April 19, 2023 “about how ‘hot’ it would be to see Bruce and another paralegal engaging in sexual acts on his desk.”
The defendant argues that these allegations, even if accepted as true, do not show that the alleged harassment was sufficiently severe or pervasive to “alter the conditions of [Bruce’s] employment and create an abusive working environment.” In responding to this argument, the plaintiff points to her allegations of “almost four years of harassment that culminated in her termination” and contends that the “continuous nature of the harassment is enough” to permit the court to find that Pinson’s actions were “hostile.” She also points out that she and Pinson worked together at A&R for almost a year and that she alleges that the unwanted comments continued until her termination. She asserts that Pinson “retaliated against her by working with Brooke Ponder to put her under increased scrutiny and have her fired.”
Although the case presents an extremely close call, the court finds that the plaintiff has adequately pleaded a hostile work environment claim, for purposes of Rule 8 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the standards articulated in Twombly and Iqbal. She is not required to allege every instance of harassing conduct, and the three examples of inappropriate comments are apparently intended to be just that: examples. She alleges that such comments were essentially continuous for the period of time she was employed by A&R, whenever she interacted with Pinson, continuing up until her termination. Although none of the conduct qualifies as severe, it was, at least as alleged in the FAC, pervasive.10 When the facts are fleshed out through discovery, it may well be that the alleged conduct was neither objectively nor subjectively sufficiently pervasive to create a hostile working environment. For now, however, viewing the facts in the light most favorable to the plaintiff and drawing all reasonable inferences in her favor, the court finds that the FAC very marginally alleges that Pinson’s “ ‘repeated conduct’ created a hostile work environment.”
As for the defendant’s argument that the plaintiff has failed to allege that the conduct was “unwelcome,” the court is not persuaded. First, as previously noted, Bruce does not need to plead every element of a prima facie case at this juncture. And second, she has, in fact, adequately alleged that the conduct was unwelcome and that Pinson knew it was unwelcome. The comments she attributes to Pinson are sufficiently offensive that any reasonable person—and certainly any reasonable attorney—would have known that they were inappropriate and unwelcome.
[Citations omitted.]
As to this point, the court concluded that plaintiff’s complaint “adequately alleges a hostile work environment claim based on Pinson’s repeated and continuous sex-based inappropriate comments and jokes.”