The city asked a judge to throw out a comprehensive ageism lawsuit filed by a group of FDNY chiefs against Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagharguing that it does not demonstrate that experienced firefighters were targeted or discriminated against because of their age.
A half-dozen experienced FDNY chiefs say in the suit that they were harassed, slandered and ultimately demoted because they seemed too old in Kavanagh’s eyes. Each was between 54 and 62 years old when the complaint was filed, in March 2023.
In asking Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Patria Frias-Colón to dismiss the case, City Attorney Hayley Bronner said Wednesday that the complaint does not demonstrate that the bosses were specifically targeted because of their age.
“There is nothing in the allegations that (the chiefs) were replaced by someone younger or that they were targeted because of their age,” Bronner said.
Representing the chiefs, attorney Jim Walden accused the city of playing “whack-a-mole” with the complaint, striking down sections of the lawsuit that he claims were not specific enough to show ageism when the entire complaint shows what he called “ pattern of behavior.”
“The city argues that there is a lack of specificity, but I don’t understand how there could be more specificity,” Walden said. “The story of this complaint, the arc of the behavior is a broad conspiracy that is one of the most detailed stories I have ever seen in a complaint.”
The lawsuit was filed by Assistant Fire Chiefs Michael Gala, Joseph Jardin, Michael Massucci, EMS Computer Aided Dispatch Programming Manager Frank Leeb, Deputy Director Carla Murphy and retired EMS Chief James Booth, who has since been removed after it was discovered that his claims exceeded the four-year statute of limitations.
Kavanagh, who is in her mid-40s, is New York’s first female fire commissioner. She is also one of the youngest fire commissioners in the city.
Walden argued that the firefighters who filed the lawsuit were “all qualified to do their jobs and all suffered adverse actions.”
Starting in 2018 and continuing to the present, “the most senior employees of the FDNY… have been demoted, taken sick leave, had their benefits cut off, had their computer access cut off, been belittled, and had false allegations brought against them,” Walden said .
City attorneys say the lawsuit is filled with allegations involving other FDNY employees to bolster the ageism argument, but “they have not alleged an inference of discrimination for any or all of them.”
The lawsuit attempts to allege that “an inference of age discrimination would exist for any FDNY employee over the age of 50, pointing to any other employee over the age of 50 who has ever been subjected to any type of unfavorable treatment,” the attorney wrote. of the city in its motion.
“It is not enough for the plaintiff to say: I belong to a protected class; something bad happened to me at work; therefore, it must have happened because I belong to a protected class,” she wrote.
Walden disagreed and said all of the allegations show an undercurrent of discrimination against older members of the department.
“We have 20 people who experience similar acts of adversity and discrimination,” asked Walden. “In cases of bullying and discrimination, an employer doesn’t typically say, ‘Hey, we’re demoting you because we don’t like you because of your age.’ If that were the case, it would be much easier to defend a case.”
The judge is expected to make her decision on the city’s dismissal request in the coming weeks. Over the past year, she has ordered parts of the sprawling lawsuit expunged, including allegations that one of the chiefs was ordered to speed up fire inspections for companies and businesses friendly to the Adams administration.
Colon determined that allegations about a list of wealthy developers whose inspections were supposed to be included on fire inspectors’ to-do lists did not belong in the process because they did not get to the heart of the allegation of ageism. Claims of Adams accelerating the opening of the Turkish consulate in 2021 became the focus of an FBI investigation; Adams was not charged with any wrongdoing.
The judge also ordered that “scandalous and harmful” claims against Kavanagh are quashed.
Outside the courtroom, Walden called the dismissal motion a “delay tactic.”
“We hope that the real conclusion here is not just that the complaint is upheld, which it should be, but that the court says ‘Enough’ to the city and puts us on a discovery schedule so we can find the real underlying evidence,” he said. he. “This will show that there is even more misconduct.”
The department has repeatedly labeled the chiefs’ lawsuit “baseless” and “merely an attempt to undermine the authority of the Fire Commissioner.”
The chiefs sued Kavanagh about a month after she demoted Gala, Jardin and Deputy Chief Fred Schaaf to deputy chief.
Your downgrades sparked a protest from FDNY chiefs who criticized Kavanagh and asked to be demoted and transferred out of department headquarters. So far, she has not signed any of the demotion requests, FDNY officials said.
