In Paige v. Garvan’s Rock and Rye, LLC, Maggie Mae’s, LLC, & Garvan McCloskey, No. 24CV3189 (DLC), 2025 WL 3201762 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 14, 2025), the court, inter alia, denied defendant’s motion for summary judgment on plaintiff’s disability discrimination claims asserted under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the New York State Human Rights Law.
From the decision:
The plaintiff has established a prima facie case of disability discrimination under the ADA and the NYSHRL. Although the parties dispute precisely when Paige reported his knee injury to the defendants, they agree that Paige discussed it with Combs on June 27, 2022. Paige then obtained a doctor’s note on July 26 that excused him from work for six weeks, and he began his worker’s compensation leave on August 3. His employment was terminated on August 30. The temporal proximity of these events provides enough evidence of causation to carry the low burden of establishing a prima facie case of disability discrimination.
At the next step of the analysis, the defendants have easily met their burden of providing evidence that there was a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for terminating Paige’s employment. There is evidence that McCloskey was dissatisfied with Paige’s performance well before his injury in May 2022. Indeed, McCloskey had been looking for a replacement for Paige as early as February 2.
The deciding issue, therefore, is whether Paige has provided evidence from which a reasonable jury could conclude that his injury was at least a motivating factor in the decision to fire him. He has. A reasonable jury could conclude that McCloskey’s final decision to terminate Paige’s employment was cemented by the disclosure of Paige’s injury, and that this caused McCloskey to renew or accelerate his search for a new executive chef.
The defendants argue that temporal proximity alone is not sufficient evidence of pretext. But the evidence here is not limited to temporal proximity. For example, Paige has testified that McCloskey said, “maybe I’ll fire you when you’re Workers’ Comp,” which a jury could view as evidence of a discriminatory motive.
The defendants also argue that the evidence of pretext is undercut by the fact that when Paige tore his ACL in February 2018, he was permitted to be on leave until May 2018 and continued to be paid. While this evidence is relevant, it does not preclude a reasonable jury from finding that the plaintiff’s injury in 2022 was at least a motivating factor in the termination of his employment.
Finally, the defendants argue that the plaintiff’s case has been discredited by certain inconsistencies in his descriptions of the events at issue. While the defendants may challenge the plaintiff’s credibility at trial, that does not entitle the defendants to summary judgment. Issues of credibility must be resolved by the jury.
Accordingly, summary judgment dismissal was not warranted.