Trivedi v. Cooper

1996 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 18715 (S.D.N.Y. 1996)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

Trivedi (P), who is of East Asian Indian national origin, worked as a research scientist at the New York State Office of Mental Health in 1982. P filed a claim in federal court under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981, 1983 and N.Y. Exec. Law § 296 alleging that his supervisor, D, harassed P, failed to promote him and retaliated against him for seeking legal assistance in connection with the discrimination. The claims against the Office of Mental Health were dismissed before trial on the ground that the claims were barred by the Eleventh Amendment. The most potent evidence of a hostile work environment was D's use of racial slurs from 1986 onward in speaking to P. D denied making such statements. P claimed an assortment of indignities. D testified that P did not ask D in 1994 for his support for a promotion and that, in any event, there were two avenues to promotion: sponsorship by a supervisor and self-nomination, where an individual directly approaches the director of the facility to seek a promotion. D also introduced evidence to demonstrate that P suffered from mental illness, specifically, a paranoid delusion that he was being persecuted by D. At a counseling session P taped his mouth shut with gauze he wrapped around his head and refused to speak. At the second meeting P wadded his ears with cotton, wore a wool hat, pretended he could not hear, and displayed a sign with directions in case of fire. D called two expert psychiatrists, who testified that P's actions at the counseling sessions were a sign of 'magical thinking' and a characteristic of people who have psychotic thought disorders in that they cannot distinguish fantasy from reality, and just wishing that something was unheard makes it so. They testified that P suffered from delusional disorder with manifestations of paranoid schizophrenia. P did not introduce any psychiatric evidence to dispute the psychiatrists' testimony. D moved for a directed verdict on two of the three claims, retaliation and failure to promote. In this motion, he moves for judgment as a matter of law as to all three claims. The jury found for P and awarded $700,000 in compensatory damages for pain and suffering for the hostile work environment claim.