Knotts v. Univ. Of North Carolina At Charlotte, :3:08-CV-478

DOROTHY C. KNOTTS, Plaintiff,

v. UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHARLOTTE, BRIAN GUNS, PHILIP JONES, and SUBHASHCHRANDA PANDYA, Defendants.

NO.:3:08-CV-478

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

WESTERN DISTRICT OF NORTH CAROLINA

CHARLOTTE DIVISION

Dated: February 10, 2011

ORDER

THIS MATTER is before the Court on Defendants' Motion to Dismiss Amended Verified Complaint and Memorandum in Support (Docs. 24-25), both filed March 23, 2009, Plaintiff's Response in Opposition (Doc. 31) filed April 21, 2009, and Defendants' Reply (Doc. 33), filed April 30, 2009. This matter is ripe for disposition.

I. BACKGROUND

Plaintiff Dorothy C. Knotts ("Knotts"), a 63 year old African-American female, was employed as a housekeeper by Defendant University of North Carolina at Charlotte ("UNCC") from February 2000 until her retirement in March 2008. In the summer of 2007, Defendant Subhashchandra Pandya ("Pandya") became Knotts's new supervisor. (Am. Compl. 13.) Soon thereafter, Knotts began to experience workplace conflict with her employer.

The allegations in Knotts' amended verified complaint are as follows. Knotts asserts that Pandya gave better assignments to younger male housekeeping employees and that Pandya would only speak directly to younger male employees. (Am. Compl. 14.) In addition, Knotts states that Pandya would switch the areas she was assigned to clean, so that Knotts was always required toclean the dirtiest places. According to Knotts, these constant reassignments were not imposed upon Knotts's coworkers. Knotts claims that she was also held to a higher standard of cleanliness than her coworkers. (Am. Compl. 16.) Knotts also alleges that she was unfairly required to work alone instead of being assigned to a housekeeping team. (Am. Compl. 17.)

Another source of workplace conflict, according to Knotts, involved the use of a motorized cart. Prior to the summer of 2007, Knotts was allowed to use a motorized cart to carry especially heavy loads of trash from the campus buildings to the dumpster. Once Pandya became Knotts's supervisor, he revoked Knotts's permission to use this cart. Thenceforth, Pandya told Knotts to call him anytime Knotts had a load of trash that was too large for her to carry, and Pandya said that he would take the trash to the dumpster for her. However, whenever Knotts called Pandya to perform this trash removal, Pandya would respond "in an angry and dismissive manner." (Am. Compl. 18.) Knotts does not know of any other employees who were required to call Pandya for trash removal. (Am. Compl. 19.)

At a meeting with her coworkers, Pandya publicly reassigned Knotts to clean different buildings because Pandya claimed that Knotts had complained that the trash where she was previously stationed was too heavy to carry. Knotts, however, denies that she ever made any complaint about the weight of the trash. (Am. Compl. 19.) Knotts complained about Mr. Pandya's embarrassing remarks to her Third Shift Supervisor Essie Spears, to University Housekeeping Administrator Greg Kish, and to Defendant Brian Guns ("Guns"), Director of Housekeeping and Recycling. (Am. Compl. 20.) At the meeting that followed-attended by Kish, Pandya, and Knotts-Pandya stated that he would prefer to have a man remove the trash from the UNCC buildings. (Am. Compl. 20.)

On August 13, 2007, Knotts wrote a letter to her "chain of command, " including Guns, Kish, Spears, Pandya, and Defendant Phil Jones ("Jones"), complaining of her treatment at the hands of Pandya. (Am. Compl. 22.) Specifically, Knotts complained of no longer being allowed to use the motorized cart to move trash, of Pandya's requirement that Knotts contact him for trash removal, and of Pandya's comment during the meeting with Kish that he would "prefer a man to do the trash." (Ex. C. of the Am. Compl.) Knotts did not receive a response to her letter, and she noticed no positive change in Pandya's behavior towards her. (Am. Compl. 23.)

In September 2007, Knotts's permission to change from her uniform into her street clothes while at UNCC so that she could go to another job was revoked without warning by Pandya. This privilege had previously been granted to Knotts with the proviso that she would forego the last 15 minute break of her shift. Despite this agreement, Knotts received a personal conduct "write-up" on September 9 from Pandya for changing clothes at the end of her shift. (Am. Compl. 24.)

On October 2, 2007, Knotts received a "memorandum of counseling" from Guns for unsatisfactory conduct pertaining to the following alleged offenses: (1) violation of the chain of command for writing an anonymous letter to the Vice-Chancellor complaining about the Third Shift Housekeeping Manager, (2) speaking negatively about the Third Shift Housekeeping Manager and other coworkers to another coworker outside of work, and (3) taking complaints to Human Resources instead of to Knotts's direct supervisor. (Am. Compl. 26; Ex. D of the Am. Compl.)

At some point around this same time, Knotts alleges that Pandya began to follow Knotts during her cleaning shift. Pandya would enter the room where Knotts was cleaning, seat himself in a chair, remain silent, and watch Knotts clean. Knotts believes that Pandya intended to intimidate her with this behavior. (Am. Compl. 25.)

In October of 2007, Knotts and a coworker had a confrontation. According to the Petition for a Contested Case Hearing and supporting documents filed by Plaintiff in the North Carolina Office of Administrative Hearings, the confrontation between Knotts and her coworker began when Knotts alleged that her coworker's coat fell on her and that coworker allegedly said "it should have been a brick." According to the investigation performed by Defendant Guns on behalf of UNCC, Knotts said, "That nigger can not talk to me like that. I will call my husband and son to see him." When her shift ended, Knotts' son arrived in the parking lot to confront the coworker. Knotts approached the coworker when he was talking to her son and allegedly taunted the coworker, saying, "Now you're talking to a real man and look at you, you're bowing down, now listen at you."

Later, a grievance hearing was held to discuss a complaint filed by Knotts against a coworker, which was attended by Guns, Pandya, and a member of UNCC's Human Resources department. At this hearing, Pandya accused Knotts of using the word "nigger" to describe other UNCC employees, an accusation which Knotts denies. According to Knotts, Pandya repeated the racial slur in a manner that led Knotts to believe that Pandya was using the word to describe her (Am. Compl. 27.) Knotts avers that none of the other UNCC employees in the room did anything to stop Pandya.

Knotts claims that her health began to suffer as a result of her treatment by Pandya and UNCC. Knotts is diabetic, and during the time under inquiry her blood pressure and glucose levels became unstable. Knotts claims that she quit her job in March 2008 as a result of the treatment that she was subjected to and the strains that this was placing on her health. (Am. Compl. 28-29.)

In her Amended Complaint, Knotts advances claims for Race Discrimination and Retaliatory Constructive Discharge in violation of Title VII and 42 U.S.C. § 1981, age discrimination in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, negligent supervision, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Defendants move to dismiss all counts, asserting lack of subject matter jurisdiction, lack of personal jurisdiction, improper service of process, and failure to state aclaim.

In Knotts's response, she agrees that all claims made against Defendants Guns, Jones, and Pandya, in both their official and individual capacities, should be dismissed. The Court agrees, and all such claims are therefore dismissed.

Knotts also requests voluntary dismissal without prejudice of her claims for negligent supervision, intentional infliction of emotional distress, discrimination under 42 U.S.C. § 1981, and punitive damages. Pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 41, an action may be dismissed at the plaintiff's request by court order and on terms that the court considers proper. Here, since the Defendants have not filed an answer or moved for summary judgment, Knotts could have filed a notice of dismissal that would have resulted in a dismissal without prejudice of all of these counts. As such, the Court will dismiss these claims without prejudice.

II. STANDARD OF REVIEW

In order to survive a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, a complaint "must contain 'a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.'" Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 129 S. Ct. 1937, 1949 (2009) (quoting Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2)). This standard "does not require detailed factual allegations, but it demands more than an unadorned, the-defendant-unlawfully-harmed-me accusation." Id.. (quotation omitted). "To survive a motion to dismiss, a complaint must contain sufficient factual matter... to 'state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.'" Id.. (citing Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007)). Although plausibility does not entail probability, the facts in the complaint must establish more than the mere possibility that a defendant acted unlawfully. Id. In considering whether the plaintiff has established a plausible claim for relief, this court is bound to accept the well-pleaded facts of the complaint as true; however, conclusory assertions of law or fact are not entitled to the assumption of truth. Id. at 1949-50. In sum, "[w]hilea plaintiff is not charged with pleading facts sufficient to prove her case, as an evidentiary matter, in her complaint, a plaintiff is required to allege facts that support a [plausible] claim for relief." Bass v. E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co., 324 F.3d 761, 765 (4^th Cir. 2003) (emphasis in original).

III. DISCUSSION

A. Sufficiency of Complaint

In her complaint, Knotts alleges that UNCC "discriminated against [Knotts] on the basis of her race by...