The city has asked a judge to dismiss a sweeping ageism lawsuit filed by a group of FDNY chiefs against Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh, arguing that it does not show that veteran fire officials were targeted or discriminated against because of their age .
Six veteran FDNY leaders say in the lawsuit that they were harassed, defamed and ultimately demoted because they seemed too old in Kavanagh’s eyes. They were all between 54 and 62 years old when the complaint was filed in March 2023.
At Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Patria Frias-Colón’s request to dismiss the case, City Attorney Hayley Bronner said Wednesday that the complaint does not show the heads 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.
Attorney Jim Walden, who represented the chiefs, accused the city of “playing games” with the complaint, shooting down parts of the lawsuit that it said are not specific enough to show age discrimination, while the entire complaint shows what he a ‘pattern of behavior.”
“The city claims 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 conduct, is a comprehensive conspiracy and 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, Frank Leeb, EMS Computer Aided Dispatch Programming Manager, Deputy Director Carla Murphy and retired EMS Chief James Booth, who has since been removed after it emerged that his claims the four-year limitation period has been exceeded.
Kavanagh, in her early forties, is New York’s first female fire commissioner. She is also one of the city’s youngest fire chiefs.
Walden argued that the fire officials who filed charges “were all qualified to do their jobs and all faced adverse consequences.”
Beginning in 2018 and continuing to this day, “the most senior people within the FDNY… were demoted, put on sick leave, had their benefits reduced, had their computer access cut off, were discredited, and had false claims filed against them,” says Walden. said.
City attorneys say the lawsuit is filled with allegations involving other FDNY employees to bolster the age discrimination argument, but “they have not alleged an inference of discrimination for any or all of them.”
The lawsuit seeks to allege that “an inference of age discrimination would exist for any FDNY employee over the age of 50 by reference to any other employee over the age of 50 who has ever been subjected to any form of adverse treatment,” the city attorney wrote in her motion.
“It is not enough for the plaintiff to say, I am in a protected class; something bad happened to me at work; Therefore, it must have happened because I am in a protected class,” she wrote.
Walden disagreed, saying all the allegations show an undercurrent of discrimination against older members of the department.
“We have 20 people who are all experiencing similar adversity and discrimination,” Walden asked. “In harassment and discrimination, the employer doesn’t often 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 argue a case.”
The judge is expected to rule on the city’s dismissal request in the coming weeks. Over the past year, she has ordered parts of the sprawling lawsuit to be dropped, including allegations that one of its chiefs was ordered to speed up fire inspections for businesses and corporations friendly to the Adams administration.
Colon determined that the allegations about a list of deep-pocketed developers whose inspections would be placed on fire inspectors’ to-do lists did not belong in the lawsuit because they did not get to the heart of the age discrimination complaint. Allegations that Adams accelerated the opening of the Turkish consulate in 2021 have become a focus of an FBI investigation; Adams has not been charged with any wrongdoing.
The judge also ordered that “outrageous and damaging” claims against Kavanagh be dropped.
Outside court, Walden called the dismissal request a “delaying tactic.”
“We hope that the real conclusion here is not just that the complaint is upheld, which it should be, but that the court tells the city, ‘Enough is enough’ and puts us on a discovery schedule so that we can get to the real can find facts. underlying evidence,” he said. “That will show that there is further misconduct.”
The department has repeatedly labeled the chiefs’ lawsuit as “baseless” and “merely an attempt to undermine the authority of the fire commissioner.”
The chiefs charged Kavanagh about a month after she demoted Gala, Jardin and Assistant Chief Fred Schaaf to deputy chief.
Their demotions prompted an outcry from FDNY chiefs who criticized Kavanagh and asked to be demoted in rank and leave department headquarters. So far, she has not signed any demotion requests, FDNY officials said.
