Carol Park, the plaintiff-appellant, filed a lawsuit against Kurtosys Systems, Inc. and related defendants, claiming discrimination and retaliation under the New York State and City Human Rights Laws. The Supreme Court of New York County, under Justice Lynn R. Kotler, ruled in favor of the defendants, granting their motion for summary judgment to dismiss Park's complaint on October 8, 2021.
The Appellate Division, First Department, affirmed this ruling on June 28, 2022, without costs. The court found that the defendants had established a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for terminating Park's employment, citing her poor performance. She was hired as the director of enterprise sales but failed to meet expectations, having logged only 11 activities in Salesforce, attended no in-person client meetings, and generated no revenue from closed deals.
Park's attempt to argue that the defendants' reasons were a pretext for gender discrimination was unconvincing. She presented a male coworker as a comparator, but the court noted significant discrepancies, including that he had a lower salary, was hired for an entry-level role, and his performance metrics greatly exceeded hers.
Regarding her retaliation claims, the court ruled that Park did not engage in any protected activity. Her complaints about exclusion from meetings did not demonstrate that any alleged mistreatment was due to her gender, especially since she acknowledged that female coworkers were included in those meetings. The defendants established a legitimate reason for the termination, which Park did not successfully challenge.
The court also dismissed claims that individual defendants aided and abetted discriminatory conduct, noting that her supervisor, Abramson, could not aid and abet his own actions and that there was no evidence supporting Gellman's awareness of any discrimination. The decision concluded that Park's claims were unsupported by evidence of discrimination or retaliation, leading to the dismissal of her claims.
