In Friedman v. Bloomberg, L.P., 2024 NY Slip Op 04602 (App. Div. 1st Dept. Sept. 26, 2024), the New York Appellate Division, First Department, unanimously affirmed the lower court’s denial of defendant’s motion for summary judgment dismissing plaintiff’s complaint for disability discrimination and failure to accommodate disability under the New York City Human Rights Law.
After assessing plaintiff’s failure-to-accommodate claim (which I discussed here), the court turned to plaintiff’s wrongful termination claim:
Issues of fact also preclude summary judgment on plaintiff’s claim that she was terminated because of her disability. Plaintiff was terminated two days after she submitted a written request for an accommodation. Defendant offered evidence that it terminated plaintiff for the legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons that plaintiff had missed deadlines, was unresponsive, and used an inappropriate tone and language with her colleagues. However, plaintiff’s evidence creates issues of fact as to whether her disability was a motivating factor in her termination (see Hamburg v New York Univ. Sch. of Medicine, 155 AD3d 66, 73 n 7 [1st Dept 2017]). Although there is evidence that defendant had already made the decision to terminate plaintiff when she submitted her written request, plaintiff’s supervisor wrote that the decision was based in part on plaintiff’s “mandate around [her] responsibilities,” which a reasonable jury could interpret as referring to plaintiff’s requests for an accommodation.
Accordingly, summary judgment was not warranted.