Knights v. City University of New York

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

EASTERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK

ROGELIO KNIGHTS, JR.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

Plaintiff,

Case No. 1: 19-CV-480 (FB) (RML)

-against-

THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW

YORK, THOMAS A. ISEKENEGBE,

and CHRISTOPHER TODD

CAROZZA,

Defendants.

Appearances: For the Defendants:

For the Plaintiff: SYLVIA O. HINDS-RADIX

ROOSEVELT SEYMOUR CHRISTOPHER ARKO

147 Prince Street, Room 203 Corporation Counsel for the

Brooklyn, NY 11201 City of New York

100 Church Street, Room 2-140

New York, NY 10007

BLOCK, Senior District Judge:

I write in response to the Court’s remand “for the District Court to

reconsider its award of fees in light of the relevant standards and considerations

and, if it again finds that an award of fees is appropriate, to articulate its basis for

such a finding.” Knights v. City Univ. of New York, No. 23-7708-CV, 2024 WL

3912895, at *2 (2d Cir. Aug. 23, 2024).

To be sure, as I wrote in my underlying decision awarding counsel fees, I

was “mindful of the Supreme Court’s holding in Farrar v. Hobby, 506 U.S. 103

(1992), that ‘[w]hen a plaintiff recovers only nominal damages because of his

failure to prove an essential element of his claim for monetary relief . . . the only

reasonable fee is usually no fee at all.’” Knights v. City Univ. of New York, 697 F.

Supp. 3d 3, 4 (E.D.N.Y. 2023). And I was “also mindful of the Second Circuit’s

interpretation of Farrar in Pino v. Locasio, 101 F.3d 235 (2d Cir. 1996), where it

held that ‘while there is no per se rule that a plaintiff recovering nominal damages

can never get a fee award, Farrar indicates that the award of fees in such a case

will be rare.’” Knights, 697 F. Supp. 3d at 4 (citing id. at 238).

Moreover, I recognized that “in Pino, the Court cabined those rare

circumstances justifying a fee award to those cases where a tangible result was

achieved by the litigation that ‘confers a benefit to society’ such as the creation of

‘a new rule of liability that served a significant public purpose.’” Id. And I cited

Second Circuit precedent calling for “ground-breaking conclusions of law,” or

litigation which “resulted in the granting of injunctive relief” to warrant counsel

fees. Id. (citing Pino, 101 F.3d at 239; McGrath v. Toys “R” Us, Inc., 356 F.3d

246, 252 (2d Cir. 2004); and LeBlanc-Sternberg v. Fletcher, 143 F.3d 748, 758 (2d

Cir. 1998)).

Why then did I award counsel fees in this case? Although I thought that my

decision laid out the bases for my fee award, perhaps in retrospect it was not

sufficiently explicit.

Preliminarily, I do not read Farrar or Pino as being preclusive of unusual,

rare situations where justice and fairness support an award of fees, especially

where, as here, the litigation came about principally because of the defendant’s bad

acts. See Pino, 101 F.3d at 239 (there is “no per se rule that a plaintiff recovering

nominal damages can never get a fee award”).

I found one such example: Judge McMahon’s decision in Lee v. McCue, No.

04-CIV-6077 CM, 2007 WL 2230100 (S.D.N.Y. 2007) (attached hereto). There

the plaintiff made no new law, but nonetheless “prevailed on a significant

constitutional claim of false arrest . . . as well as on his state law claims of battery,

false arrest, and false imprisonment.” Id. at *7. Although he sought $1.5 million

in damages, the jury only awarded nominal damages.

In awarding counsel fees, Judge McMahon reasoned that “the plaintiff

achieved a meaningful victory on a significant constitutional claim; moreover,

Plaintiff’s counsel was also compelled to defend against a patently meritless pre-

trial motion . . . .” Id.

The bona-fides of a defendant’s litigation strategy causing the plaintiff here

to unnecessarily litigate a case which, if not for the defendant’s bad acts, might

never have happened, should not be countenanced.

Let me explain:

The following facts are largely taken from the arbitration decision rendered

on November 7, 2018. See Arbitration Op., ECF No. 15-2 (attached hereto for the

Court’s convenience).

Knights had been hired on September 6, 2016, by the defendant CUNY as a

Substitute Higher Education Associate at Bronx Community College as Student

Athletic Manager. His term was to expire on March 5, 2017, but his appointment

had been extended until April 5, 2017. He was the subject of a Title IX

investigation of sexual harassment of an adult student at LaGuardia College, and

was summarily discharged, without a hearing, on March 17, 2017. Exercising his

rights under the CUNY collective bargaining agreement he promptly sought

arbitration, seeking reinstatement and back pay.

Knights maintained that he was “entitled to a fact-finding hearing based

upon the due process protections contained in the fourteenth (14) amendment of

the U.S. Constitution and/or a name clearing hearing,” citing the Supreme Court

decision in Cleveland Board of Education v. Loudermill, 470 U.S. 532 (1985), as

well as Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564 (1972), and similar cases

supportive of his entitlement to a name-clearing hearing “because the government

entity’s termination has imposed a stigma or disability that prevents him from

taking advantage of other employment opportunities.” Arbitration Op. at 6.

Instead of giving him the opportunity to clear his name in a classic “he said,

she said” verbal situation, CUNY sought to moot the arbitration. It did so by

rescinding his termination with back pay, letting his employment lapse, and then

bringing a motion before the arbitrator to abort the arbitration as moot.

Its gambit was successful. The arbitrator held that because Knights was

reinstated with back pay there was no justiciable dispute remaining. She held that

“the Grievant’s contention he is entitled to a fact-finding hearing to clear his name

based upon U.S. precedent is misplaced.” She reasoned that “[w]ithout addressing

any claim of stigma claimed by the Grievant, these cases apply to public

employees with a property interest in their job,” and that he did not have a

constitutional property interest in his temporary job. Id. at 9.

The arbitrator was correct that Knights did not have a property interest in his

employment but was dead wrong that he was not entitled to a name-clearing

hearing. It is almost hornbook law that regardless of whether a property interest is

extant, a terminated employee — regardless of whether he was a temporary or

permanent employee — who claims that he has suffered a stigma because of his

termination has a liberty interest entitling him to a name-clearing hearing. As the

Second Circuit has made crystal clear, even if an at-will or temporary employee

does not have a property interest in his continued employment, “a probationary

employee can ‘invoke the protections of the Due Process Clause’ where that

employee has suffered a loss of reputation ‘coupled with the deprivation of a more

tangible interest, such as government employment.’” Segal v. City of New York,

459 F.3d 207, 212 (2d Cir. 2006) (quoting Patterson v. City of Utica, 370 F.3d

322, 330 (2d Cir. 2004)).

Surely, CUNY’s counsel must have known the law, but counsel never

conveyed that basic principle of constitutional law to the misguided arbitrator.

Knights had to resort to protracted litigation for the next six years before the jury

correctly decided that he was indeed entitled to a name-clearing hearing.

If Knights had received a timely name-clearing hearing before a CUNY

decisionmaker, it would have rendered nugatory any prospective trial because he

would have received all to which he was entitled. See Patterson, 370 F.3d at 328

(“The remedy for a stigma-plus violation of a government employee’s

constitutional due process rights is a name-clearing hearing where the employee is

given the opportunity to clear his name.”).

To be sure, Knights’ lawsuit did not go well for him, and the jury ruled

against him on the merits. However, it is understandable why he would seek

monetary damages for the employment opportunities that his ubiquitous stigma

allegedly caused him throughout the years. They included stigmatizing statements

made by CUNY personnel to the New York Daily News, which ran an article on

Knights on July 11, 2017. See ECF No. 53-14 (attached hereto). But, once again,

it never would have gotten that far if he had been given a prompt opportunity to

clear his name. That he understandably sought significant monetary damages was

conceptually irrelevant, just as it was in Lee.

I thus believe that CUNY had acted in bad faith in successfully employing

its mootness gambit to abort the arbitration and Knights’ entitlement to his name-

clearing hearing by reinstating him with back pay, thereby precluding him from his

constitutional right to tell his side of this “he said, she said” story. I simply could

not in good conscience condone CUNY’s manipulative behavior and penalize

Knights’ attorney for engaging in six years of unnecessary litigation without any

compensation.

I therefore consider the unique facts of this case to be tantamount to a rare

example of when counsel fees are justified for a constitutional violation, even if no

new rule of law resulted from the litigation. Moreover, I do not view depriving one

of his constitutional entitlement to a name-clearing hearing as inconsequential. The

Supreme Court has made it perfectly clear that this liberty interest is a fundamental

right, not to be trampled on. Once again, as it stated in Wisconsin v. Constantineau,

400 U.S. 433 (1971), “[w]here a person’s good name, reputation, honor, or

integrity is at stake because of what the government is doing to him, notice and an

opportunity to be heard are essential.” Id. at 437.

I trust that I have explained my decision with sufficient clarity to allow the

Court to make its final ruling.

SO ORDERED.

_/S/ Frederic Block___________

FREDERIC BLOCK

Senior United States District Judge

Brooklyn, New York

September 20, 2024