In Pianko v. General R.V. Center, Inc. et al, Case No. 20-cv-13371, 2023 WL 3938852 (E.D.Mich. June 9, 2023), the court denied defendant’s motion for summary judgment on plaintiff’s hostile work environment sexual harassment claim.
From the decision:
A reasonable jury could find that Miller’s alleged conduct in the hotel room was subjectively and objectively severe enough to create a hostile work environment. On the subjective element, Pianko has repeatedly stated that Miller’s conduct caused her to feel unsafe at work. See ECF No. 3-5, PageID 82–83; ECF No. 121-2, PageID 7048; ECF No. 121-9, PageID 7135.
On the objective element, a reasonable person in Pianko’s position would have also found the environment to be abusive. Much like the plaintiffs in Ault and Radtke, Pianko states that she was faced with an upper-level manager—who may have had the power to fire her, see Section E.2.i, infra—touching her, trying to coerce her into performing sexual conduct, and, for at least a short time, physically preventing her from leaving. (ECF No. 121-2, PageID 7044–47.) Furthermore, this manager continued to pursue her for sex via text message after 2:00 AM. See ECF No. 3-2.2 This is enough to create a genuine dispute as to whether Miller created a hostile work environment.
General’s remaining arguments to the contrary are unavailing. The fact that Pianko “voluntarily followed [Miller] to his room” before this all occurred is inapposite. And the fact that the harassing conduct occurred outside of the office does not defeat Pianko’s claim either. Unlike in Duggins and Temparali, the conduct here did not occur at a purely private party with no connection to the workplace, and the perpetrator was not just a nominal co-worker with whom Pianko rarely or never worked. Cf. Duggins, 3. F. App’x at 311; Temparali, 1997 WL 361019 at *1–3. Instead, Miller harassed Pianko on an overnight business trip, in a hotel that General had designated for its employees, (ECF No. 96-3, PageID 58943); Miller was (possibly) Pianko’s supervisor, in a broad sense, Section E.2.i, infra; and the two had interacted at work before the trip, including by discussing Pianko’s career aspirations, and also saw each other at work after it, (ECF No. 96-3, PageID 5860–62, 5907; ECF No. 121-2, PageID 7043–7044). Under those circumstances, a reasonable jury could find that Miller’s conduct was sufficiently connected to Pianko’s employment to alter her working conditions. Cf. Wyatt, 999 F.3d at 408–12 (holding that the plaintiff’s (alleged) supervisor contributed to the creation of a hostile work environment by, after going out to lunch with the plaintiff, stopping at a hotel on the way back and “sexually propositioning her and exposing his genitals to her”); Moring v. Arkansas Dep’t of Corr., 243 F.3d 452, 456–57 (8th Cir. 2001) (holding that a reasonable jury could find that an incident in a hotel on an “overnight business trip”—in which the plaintiff’s supervisor entered her room “clothed only in boxer shorts,” “insisted that [she] ‘owed’ him for her job,” ignored her repeated requests for him to leave, and “touched her thigh and leaned in to kiss her”—“was severe enough to alter the terms and conditions of [the plaintiff’s] employment”); Ferris v. Delta Air Lines, Inc., 277 F.3d 128, 135 n.2 (2d Cir. 2001) (recognizing “cases that have found or implied that sexually abusive conduct committed by supervisors away from the place of employment can sustain employer liability” for a hostile work environment); Penry v. Fed. Home Loan Bank of Topeka, 155 F.3d 1257, 1261–63 (10th Cir. 1998) (considering a supervisor’s conduct while travelling on business trips with his employees as relevant to the determination of whether he created a hostile work environment).
Notably, the court rejected defendant’s argument that the alleged harasser’s conduct at the hotel cannot form the basis of a hostile work environment claim because it occurred “after work hours” and plaintiff and the alleged harasser did not work together.
It further held that there were sufficient facts to impute liability to defendant, holding that “[a] reasonable jury could find that General failed to exercise reasonable care to prevent the harassment endured by Pianko” and that “[e]ven assuming that General disseminated a facially sufficient sexual harassment policy, there is still a genuine dispute as to whether that policy was effective in practice.”