In Baptiste v. The City University of New York, No. 150677/2025, 2025 WL 2556758, 2025 N.Y. Slip Op. 33325(U) (N.Y. Sup Ct, New York County Sep. 05, 2025), the court dismissed plaintiff’s claim on the ground of collateral estoppel.
From the decision:
The doctrine of collateral estoppel “bars the relitigation of an issue of fact or law actually litigated and resolved in a valid court determination essential to the prior judgment” (Russell v New York Univ., 42 NY3d 377, 384 [2024]) The “determination of an essential issue is binding in a subsequent action, even if it recurs in the context of a different claim” (id.). To establish a claim for retaliation a plaintiff must show that “(1) she has engaged in protected activity, (2) her employer was aware that she participated in such activity, (3) she suffered an adverse employment action based upon her activity, and (4) there is a causal connection between the protected activity and the adverse action” (Forrest v Jewish Guild for the Blind, 3 NY3d 295, 313 [2004]).
In the Federal Action, the Southern District applied the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting framework,1 Defendants argue that the doctrine applies here because the Southern **3 District found that plaintiff “does not offer any evidence to meet her burden of demonstrating that a triable issue of fact exists as to whether Defendants’ proffered justification for her termination was merely pretext for a hidden retaliatory motive” (id. at *6). Plaintiff argues that the determinations made by the Southern District which dismissed the federal retaliation claims are not dispositive of the NYCHRL claim asserted here, because the NYCHRL was designed to be evaluated under more liberal standards.
As plaintiff notes “provisions of the City Human Rights Law must be construed broadly in favor of plaintiffs alleging discrimination and assessed under more liberal standards, going beyond the counterpart state or federal civil rights laws” (Bennett v Time Warner Cable, Inc., 138 AD3d 598, 599 [1st Dept 2016]). However, “[w]here a federal court has made an explicit finding that plaintiff produced no evidence on the relevant specific factual issue in the litigation, as was done here, the application of the collateral estoppel bar to plaintiff’s identical claims under state statutes is warranted” (Russell, 42 NY3d at 387). “Application of the requisite liberal construction standard does not change the result,” when there was no evidence of a pretextual action presented in the original federal case (id.).
Based on this, the court held that dismissal was warranted.