The following article was first published on the Employment Law Letter section of Shipman & Goodwin’s website. It is reposted here with permission.
In Hartford Police Department v. Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities, the Connecticut Supreme Court upheld the agency’s post‑hearing finding that a police department unlawfully terminated a probationary officer due to discriminatory animus displayed by, and imputed from, a supervisor other than the final decision maker.
In doing so, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the continuing vitality of the “transferred intent” doctrine, tracing back to United Technologies Corp. v. Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities, and popping up in cases since.
The transferred intent doctrine permits a claimant to establish the employer’s requisite intent by demonstrating that a supervisor, motivated by discriminatory animus, engaged in conduct that resulted in an adverse action (such as the employee’s termination) by someone else.
Twelve years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court endorsed a variant of this standard, sometimes called the “cat’s paw” theory—a term derived from an Aesop fable and coined by former Seventh Circuit Judge Richard Posner.
In HPD v. CHRO, the human rights referee found that the officer, who had Vietnamese ancestry, was fired in a chain of events initiated by a negative performance review from a sergeant.
The sergeant also had subjected the plaintiff to ethnically derogatory remarks (and had previously...
Actor Kim Soo-hyun's legal team vowed to file a 30 billion won ($19.9 million) civil suit against the head of far-right YouTuber Kim Se-eui for damages caused by allegedly fabricated claims about ...