Torres-Oliveras v. Special Care Pharmacy Serv.

BRENDA TORRES-OLIVERAS, Plaintiff,

v.SPECIAL CARE PHARMACY SERVICES, Defendant.

CIVIL NO.: 10-1464 (MEL)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO

Dated: June 6, 2011

OPINION AND ORDER

I. PROCEDURAL HISTORY

On May 27, 2010, Brenda Torres-Oliveras ("plaintiff") filed a complaint against her former employer Special Care Pharmacy Services, Inc. ("Special Care Pharmacy" or "defendant") asserting claims pursuant to the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA"), 42 U.S.C. §§ 12101, et seq. ("ADA"); Law No. 100 of June 30, 1959, P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 29, §§ 146-151 ("Law 100"); Law No. 80 of May 30, 1976, P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 29, § 185, et seq. ("Law 80"); Law No. 115 of December 20, 1991, P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 29, § 194, et seq. ("Law 115"); Law No. 44 of July 2, 1985, P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 1, §§ 501, et seq. ("Law 44"); and the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. (Docket No. 2.) Defendant filed its answer on January 5, 2011. (Docket No. 25.)

Pending before the court is defendant's motion to dismiss under Fed. R. Civ. P. ("Rule") 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6). (Docket No. 13.) Plaintiff has filed an opposition, and defendant has replied. (Docket Nos. 20; 23.)

II. FACTUAL BACKGROUND

The court draws the following facts from plaintiff's complaint (Docket No. 2) and treats them as true for purposes of the pending motion:

Plaintiff was diagnosed with depression and bipolar disorder in July 2008. (Docket No. 2, ¶¶ 9-10.) Her employer at that time, Special Care Pharmacy, was aware of plaintiff's diagnosis. (Docket No. 2, ¶ 9.) Plaintiff's physician prescribed a pharmaceutical regimen and instructed her to take a two-week leave of absence from work to recuperate. (Docket No. 2, ¶¶ 10-11.) Since plaintiff's condition did not stabilize, her physician instructed her to take several additional leaves of absence from July to November 2008, each lasting between one and two weeks. (Docket No. 2 ¶ 13.)

On November 18, 2008, following plaintiff's return to work after one such leave of absence, defendant suspended plaintiff without pay for two months. (Docket No. 2, ¶ 14.) Plaintiff filed a state administrative charge for discrimination on December 5, 2008. (Docket No. 2, ¶ 16.) Upon returning to work on January 16, 2009, plaintiff was demoted, stripped of her duties as team leader, and isolated from co-workers and supervisors.¹ (Docket No. 2, ¶ 18.) As a result, plaintiff resigned on January 27, 2009. (Docket No. 2, ¶ 19.) On June 15, 2009, plaintiff filed a state administrative proceeding for retaliation. (Docket No. 2, ¶ 6.) On March 4, 2010, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("E.E.O.C.") issued a notice of the right to sue. (Docket No. 2, ¶ 8.)

III. LEGAL ANALYSIS

A. Motion to Dismiss Standard Under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(1) & (b)(6)

Defendant seeks dismissal of this case for lack of subject matter jurisdiction pursuant to Rule 12(b)(1) and for failing to state a claim upon which relief can be granted under Rule 12(b)(6). (Docket No. 13.) When confronted with motions to dismiss under both Rules 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6), a court "ordinarily ought to decide the former before broaching the latter" since, if subject matter jurisdiction is lacking, an assessment of the merits "becomes a matter of purely academic interest." Deniz v. Municipality of Guaynabo, 285 F.3d 142, 149-150 (1st Cir. 2002) (citations omitted).

A motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction is decided under Rule 12(b)(1). Valentin v. Hospital Bella Vista, 254 F.3d 358, 362 (1st Cir. 2001). In assessing such a motion, the plaintiff has the burden of establishing that the court has subject matter jurisdiction over the case. Amoche v. Guar. Trust Life Ins. Co., 556 F.3d 41, 48 (1st Cir. 2009). Under Rule 12(b)(1), the court must "construe the complaint liberally, treating all well-pleaded facts as true and drawing all reasonable inferences in favor of the plaintiffs." Viqueira v. First Bank, 140 F.3d 12, 16 (1st Cir. 1998). In making such a determination, the court may also "review the evidence on record, including affidavits and depositions, as opposed to a dismissal request under any other subsection of Rule 12(b)." Garcia-Clavelo v. Nogueras-Cartagena, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 116191, at *5 (D.P.R. Nov. 1, 2010).

Under Rule 12(b)(6), a defendant may move to dismiss an action against him for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6). In Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544 (2007), the Supreme Court held that to survive a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), a complaint must allege "a plausible entitlement to relief." Rodriguez-Ortiz v. MargoCaribe, Inc., 490 F.3d 92, 95-96 (1st Cir. 2007) (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 599). In considering such a motion, the court accepts all well-pleaded factual allegations as true, and draws all reasonable inferences in plaintiff's favor. See Correa-Martinez v. Arrillaga-Belendez, 903 F.2d 49, 51 (1st Cir. 1990). While Twombly does not require of plaintiffs a heightened fact pleading of specifics, it does require enough facts to have "nudged their claims across the line from conceivable to plausible." Twombly, 550 U.S. at 570. Accordingly, in order to avoid dismissal, the plaintiff must provide the grounds upon which his claim rests through factual allegations sufficient "to raise a right to relief above the speculative level." Id. at 555.

In Ashcroft v. Iqbal, __ U.S. __ , 129 S.Ct. 1937 (2009), the Supreme Court upheld Twombly and clarified that two underlying principles must guide this court's assessment of the adequacy of a plaintiff's pleadings when evaluating whether a complaint can survive a Rule 12(b)(6) motion. See Iqbal, 129 S.Ct. at 1949-50. "First, the tenet that a court must accept as true all of the allegations contained in a complaint is inapplicable to legal conclusions. Threadbare recitals of the elements of a cause of action, supported by mere conclusory statements, do not suffice." Iqbal, 129 S.Ct. at 1949 (citing Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555). "Second, only a complaint that states a plausible claim for relief survives a motion to dismiss." Iqbal, 129 S.Ct. at 1950 (citing Twombly, 550 U.S. at 556). Thus, any nonconclusory factual allegations in the complaint, accepted as true, must be sufficient to give the claim facial plausibility. Iqbal, 129 S.Ct. at 1950. Determining the existence of plausibility is a "context-specific task" which "requires the court to draw on its judicial experience and common sense." Id. "[W]here the well-pleaded facts do not permit the court to infer more than the mere possibility of misconduct, the complaint has alleged - but it has not 'show[n]' 'that the pleader is entitled to relief.'" Id. (quoting Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2)). Furthermore, such inferences mustbe at least as plausible as any "obvious alternative explanation." Id. at 1950-51 (citing Twombly, 550 U.S. at 567).

In two recent cases, the First Circuit has cautioned against equating plausibility with an analysis of the likely success on the merits, affirming that the plausibility standard assumes "pleaded facts to be true and read in a plaintiff's favor" "even if seemingly incredible." Sepulveda-Villarini v. Dep't of Educ. of P.R., 2010 U.S. App. LEXIS 25228, at *11 (1st Cir. Dec. 10, 2010) (citing Twombly, 550 U.S. at 556); Ocasio-Hernandez v. Fortuno-Burset, 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 6763, at *24 (1st Cir. Apr. 1, 2011) (citing Iqbal, 129 S.Ct. at 1951). Instead, the court has emphasized that "[t]he make-or-break standard ... is that the combined allegations, taken as true, must state a plausible, not a merely conceivable, case for relief." Ocasio-Hernandez, 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 6763, at *25 (quoting Sepulveda-Villarini, 628 F.3d at 29).

B. Plaintiff's Claims Under the ADA

1. Failure to Exhaust Administrative Remedies

Defendant argues that plaintiff's discrimination and retaliation claims - including her allegation that defendant failed to grant her a reasonable accommodation - should be dismissed under Rule 12(b)(1) because they are based on facts that were never raised at the administrative level. (Docket Nos. 13, pp. 8-14; 23, pp. 4-6.) Plaintiff counters that her administrative claim should not be held to the standards of formal pleading in civil court, but rather - as befits a claim filed by a layperson - should be read liberally and be found to encompass the claims and allegations set forth in the complaint. (Docket No. 20, pp. 2-6.)

It is well-settled that an employee alleging discrimination must file an administrative claim with the E.E.O.C. or with a parallel state agency before bringing a civil action. Thornton v. UPS,Inc., 587 F.3d 27, 31 (1st Cir. 2009) (citing Bonilla v. Muebles J.J. Alvarez, Inc., 194 F.3d 275, 277-78 (1st Cir. 1999)). The administrative claim "provides the agencies with information and an opportunity to eliminate the alleged unlawful practices through informal methods of conciliation, and affords formal notice to the employer and prospective defendant of the charges that have been made against it." Powers v. Grinnell Corp., 915 F.2d 34, 37 (1st Cir. 1990) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). In keeping with this purpose, courts have limited the scope of a plaintiff's civil complaint by the filed administrative charge as well as the investigation "which can reasonably be expected to grow out of that charge." Powers, 915 F.2d at 38. However, "the scope of a civil action is not determined by the specific language of the charge filed with the agency[.]" Thornton, 587 F.3d at 31. Rather, the court may "look beyond the four corners of the administrative charge to consider collateral and alternative bases or acts that would have been uncovered in a reasonable investigation but still fall within the parameters of the original administrative charge." Thornton, 587 F.3d at 31-32 (citations omitted).

Regarding her discrimination claim, plaintiff stated in her administrative charge that she had been the "victim of...