Opinion
No. 10-2204-cv.
April 18, 2011.
Appeal from a judgment of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut (Dorsey, J.).
UPON DUE CONSIDERATION, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED, ADJUDGED AND DECREED that the judgment of the district court be AFFIRMED.
Sally A. Roberts (John R. Williams, New Haven, CT, of counsel), Law Office of Peter Upton Associates, New Britain, CT, for Appellant.
John H. Gorman, City of Meriden Department of Law, Meriden, CT, for Appellee.
SUMMARY ORDER
Plaintiff-Appellant John Neron appeals from a judgment entered on March 8, 2010 by the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut (Dorsey, J.), granting summary judgment for Defendant-Appellee Jeffry Cossette, the chief of the Meriden Police Department, on Neron's First Amendment retaliation claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. We assume the parties' familiarity with the underlying facts, the procedural history, and the issues presented for review.
A grant of summary judgment is reviewed de novo, "resolv[ing] all ambiguities and draw[ing] all permissible factual inferences in favor of the party against whom summary judgment is sought." Terry v. Ashcroft, 336 F.3d 128, 137 (2d Cir. 2003) (internal quotation marks omitted).
"To survive summary judgment on a First Amendment retaliation claim, a public employee must bring forth evidence showing that he has engaged in protected First Amendment activity, he suffered an adverse employment action, and there was a causal connection between the protected activity and the adverse employment action." Anemone v. Metro, Transp. Auth., 629 F.3d 97, 114 (2d Cir. 2011) (internal quotation marks omitted).
Neron provides insufficient evidence of causation to warrant "the inference that the protected speech was a substantial motivating factor in the adverse employment action." Cotarelo v. Village of Sleepy Hollow Police Dep't, 460 F.3d 247, 251 (2d Cir. 2006) (internal quotation marks omitted). He relies exclusively upon the temporal proximity between his complaint to the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities ("CCHRO") and the internal investigations, suspensions, and (allegedly) forced resignation that he faced. Although "[a] plaintiff can establish a causal connection that suggests retaliation by showing that protected activity was close in time to the adverse action,' see Espinal v. Goord, 558 F.3d 119, 129 (2d Cir. 2009), for such a showing to "provide an independent basis for an inference of causation, temporal proximity must be significantly greater" than a case with corroborating evidence. Mandell v. Cnty. of Suffolk, 316 F.3d 368, 384 (2d Cir. 2003) (emphasis added).
Neron was subjected to three internal investigations and two suspensions within three months of his CCHRO complaint. However, the chronology does not support an inference of retaliation: The criminal trespass investigation pre-dated the CCHRO complaint; the second investigation was initiated by a private citizen just two days after CCHRO received Neron's complaint; and Neron's involvement in the third investigation, prompted by the discovery of a prisoner's unsecured property, was not known to the police until after a sergeant began investigating. The second and third investigations were commenced shortly after Neron's complaint was filed, but Cossette did not initiate them. Nor were the two suspensions so harsh as to raise an inference of retaliation, given the circumstances of each offense, Neron's recidivism, and his false statements at the disciplinary hearings.
The investigation of Neron's mishandling of a domestic relations claim, begun more than twelve months after the CCHRO complaint, is too attenuated to be causal.
We have considered all of Neron's arguments and conclude that they lack merit. For the foregoing reasons, we hereby AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.