In Simmons v. Baccarat Inc., No. 651516/2023, 2026 WL 1538161 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. May 26, 2026), the court granted plaintiff’s motion for leave to amend their complaint alleging employment discrimination.
Initially, the court denied plaintiff’s motion to reargue the court’s June 23, 2025 decision and order granting defendants’ motion to dismiss plaintiff’s original complaint, which “completely failed to allege any protected class that the plaintiff might belong to, a threshold requirement for discrimination and hostile work environment claims.” While plaintiff’s counsel subsequently argued in a memorandum of law that plaintiff is a “gay man,” the court held that it “appropriately declined to consider this new factual assertion since it was not pleaded in the complaint or supported by an affidavit from the plaintiff.”
Turning to the plaintiff’s motion to amend, the court explained:
Substantively, the proposed amended complaint(“PAC’) sufficiently cures the pleading defects that led to the original dismissal. The PAC now explicitly pleads that the plaintiff is a Caucasian gay male and that his sexual orientation was known to the defendants (NYSCEF Doc. No. 29, PAC ¶ 11). It alleges a clear discriminatory nexus by asserting that CEO Jim Shreve, who is also a gay man, directed a pattern of unsolicited, sexually explicit communications and images specifically toward the plaintiff and other male subordinates (NYSCEF Doc. No. 29, PAC ¶¶ 14, 25-30, 37-38). While the defendants previously relied upon text messages showing the plaintiff’s participation in sexual banter to argue that the conduct was not unwelcome, the PAC addresses this by providing context regarding workplace power dynamics. The PAC alleges that Shreve treated the plaintiff more like a personal acquaintance due to a prior connection with Shreve’s spouse, creating a dynamic where the plaintiff felt pressured to maintain a cordial rapport to preserve his professional standing, and that the plaintiff responded to Shreve with minimal engagement out of fear of retaliation, rather than true consent (NYSCEF Doc. No. 29, PAC ¶¶ 33-39, 48-56).
The PAC also clarifies that the plaintiff engaged in protected activity by making formal workplace complaints to Director of Human Resources Marsha Salmon and Chief Financial Officer Miriam Vales regarding Shreve’s sexually harassing behavior and racially discriminatory directives, such as a command to focus on “more white sponsorships.” (NYSCEF Doc. No. 29, PAC ¶¶ 70, 76, 84, 87-90, 94-96). The PAC adequately establishes a causal nexus by pleading temporal proximity. The plaintiff alleges that he made these complaints in the summer and August of 2022, and was abruptly terminated shortly thereafter on November 3, 2022, under the pretext of an unfounded complaint from an underperforming subordinate (NYSCEF Doc. No. 29, PAC ¶¶ 102-105). To cure the jurisdictional and liability defects regarding individual defendants Salmon and Vales, the PAC alleges that both executives held direct authority over Baccarat’s U.S. operations, including the New York office (NYSCEF Doc. No. 29, PAC ¶¶ 74, 76). The PAC asserts that they had a specific duty to investigate and remedy unlawful workplace conduct but deliberately chose to ignore the plaintiff’s repeated complaints. Under the liberal pleading standards, an out of-state supervisor’s deliberate failure to take adequate remedial measures despite being informed of discriminatory conduct in New York is sufficient to state a claim for actual participation and aiding and abetting discrimination, which establishes both personal liability and long-arm jurisdiction under CPLR 302(a).
Accordingly, the court granted plaintiff’s motion for leave to amend, and deemed plaintiff’s Proposed Amended Complaint served upon service of a copy of the within order with notice of entry.