Order, Supreme Court, New York County (Milton A. Tingling,
Viewed in the light most favorable to plaintiff, the record shows that plaintiff, an acting supervisor, was sexually assaulted by a higher-ranking shift supervisor, who locked the door to the supervisors' office late at night and repeatedly groped and kissed her while she asked him to stop and repeatedly pushed his hands away. The assault stopped only when another supervisor called to ask the assailant for help. As the assailant left the office, he looked at plaintiff and, in vulgar terms, told her that she was "hot" and that she sexually excited him.
Defendant suspended the offending supervisor, conducted an investigation, found that the offending supervisor had engaged in "inappropriate conduct," and disciplined the supervisor by giving him what was, in effect, a final warning. Defendant then informed plaintiff that the supervisor would be returning to work with plaintiff. When plaintiff asked that she be separated from the supervisor, defendant offered only to transfer her from the evening shift to an early morning shift, which would entail a pay cut and a functional demotion, because there would be no acting supervisor positions available.
Given the foregoing factual assertions, plaintiff raised issues of fact as to whether defendant constructively discharged her by deliberately creating working conditions that were so intolerable "that a reasonable person would have felt compelled to resign" (Short v Deutsche Bank Sec., Inc., 79 A.D.3d 503, 504 [1st Dept 2010] [internal quotation marks omitted]). Plaintiff also raised triable issues of fact as to her retaliation cause of action, since the record shows that she formally complained about the sexual harassment and was constructively discharged within a short time thereafter, permitting an inference of a causal connection between her complaint and the constructive discharge (see Fletcher v Dakota, Inc., 99 A.D.3d 43, 51-52 [1st Dept 2012]).
Plaintiff may assert her constructive discharge theory with respect to her retaliation cause of action, which we reinstate,