Disability Discrimination Jury Verdict for Plaintiff Remains; No Undue Hardship Shown

In Reveyosos v. Town Sports Intl., LLC, 2018 NY Slip Op 04441 (App. Div. 1st Dept. June 14, 2018), a jury issued a verdict for plaintiff on her disability discrimination claim under the NYC Human Rights Law. The trial court granted defendant’s motion to set aside the jury verdict as against the weight of the evidence under CPLR 4404. This court reverses; i.e., plaintiff was entitled to her verdict.

The court provides some guidance as to what constitutes a “reasonable accommodation” and “undue hardship” under the statute.

From the Decision and Order:

The jury verdict was not against the weight of the evidence (see McDermott v Coffee Beanery, Ltd., 9 AD3d 195, 206 [1st Dept 2004]). A fair interpretation of the trial evidence shows that plaintiff, a sightless 66-year-old woman, asked for, and received, from defendant, owner of a commercial gymnasium open to the public, an accommodation for her disability in the form of an employee escort from the gym entrance downstairs to her preferred exercise machine. The employee would then program the machine to plaintiff’s preferred settings and would be available to escort plaintiff back upstairs when she was finished exercising. This accommodation functioned, with a minimum of disruption for either party, over the next six months, during which period plaintiff visited the gym a half-dozen times. Notably, there is no evidence in the record that the accommodation cost defendant any money at all, or otherwise represented any sort of undue hardship on defendant as that term is defined in the statute (see Administrative Code of City of NY § 8-102[18][a]-[d]; Jacobsen v New York City Health & Hosps. Corp., 22 NY3d 824, 835 [2014]). While plaintiff typically had to wait a few minutes for defendant to find an employee to assist her, she did not mind the short wait.

Since the parties had already reached a reasonable accommodation, in the form of the employee escort, there was no legally cognizable reason for defendant to ask plaintiff to have Medicare provide her with a trainer. Indeed, in so doing, defendant would have been abdicating its legal obligation to provide a reasonable accommodation altogether, by shifting the burden entirely to another party. Defendant’s witnesses testified that it also proposed an alternative accommodation — in the form of asking plaintiff to call in advance of her visits to permit defendant to arrange assistance for her. Plaintiff testified that this did not occur and that she was told by the gym’s employees that she would no longer be assisted to and from the exercise machine. The jury resolved this credibility determination in plaintiff’s favor

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