United States District Court, D. Connecticut
HAILEE R. DESOUZA, Plaintiff,
v.
PARK WEST APARTMENTS, INC. et al. Defendants.
RULING ON MOTIONS FOR RECONSIDERATION
Michael P. Shea, U.S.D.J.
Hailee
R. DeSouza (“DeSouza”) brings this
suit[1]
against his landlord, Park West Apartments, Inc., and The
Community Builders, Inc., the nonprofit corporation that
controls it (collectively “Park
West”).[2] DeSouza chiefly claims that Park West
racially discriminated and retaliated against him by
repeatedly attempting to evict him. He also claims that Park
West violated his privacy rights by informing other tenants
of the eviction proceedings and that Park West's former
property manager, Kim Doughtie, falsely accused him of
sexually assaulting her daughter and granddaughter. Based
upon these accusations, he set out claims against Park West
for: (i) race discrimination and retaliation in violation of
the Fair Housing Act (“FHA”) (Counts 1, 2, and
3); (ii) violation of the First Amendment (Count 4); (iii)
violation of the Fourth Amendment (Count 5); (iv)
interference, coercion or intimidation in violation of 42
U.S.C. § 3617 of the FHA (Count 6); (v) discrimination
and retaliation in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1981 (Count
7); (vi) violation of the Privacy Rights Act of 1974, 5
U.S.C. § 552a (“Privacy Act”)
(Count
8); and (vii) common law slander and intentional infliction
of emotional distress for Ms. Doughtie's alleged false
sexual assault allegation[3] (Count 9). (See ECF No. 100-2
at 17-19). Park West moved for summary judgment on all
counts. (ECF No. 128). I granted the motion in part, but
denied it with respect to the portion of DeSouza's
retaliation claims under the FHA concerning Park West's
filing of an affidavit of noncompliance in March 2015 (Counts
1, 2, 3, 6). Now before me is Park West's motion for
reconsideration (ECF No. 162), and what I construe as a
motion for reconsideration filed by DeSouza (ECF No. 163; ECF
No. 164). For the reasons that follow, Park West's motion
for reconsideration is granted and DeSouza's motion is
denied.
I.
Background [4]
A.
Eviction Proceedings
DeSouza
is a tenant of Park West and has been for approximately
thirteen years. In January 2014, he attained a position as a
senior project engineer in Texas-he would remain in this
position until April 2014. Given the change in his income
upon attaining this position, DeSouza had to complete an
interim recertification to retain his Section 8 subsidy. The
parties disagreed regarding whether DeSouza complied with
this requirement. While Park West contended that DeSouza
failed to complete this process, DeSouza maintained that he
had complied by reporting his new income. Park West
subsequently issued DeSouza a Notice to Quit on April 22,
2014, for failing to complete the recertification process. On
June 12, 2014, DeSouza received an eviction notice for
failing to complete the recertification process in violation
of his lease.
The
parties mediated the matter with a housing court mediator on
August 29, 2014, resulting in the execution of a Stipulated
Agreement (“Agreement”) providing, among other
things, that DeSouza agreed to complete the recertification
process. (See ECF No. 130-8, Exhibit H, at 2
(“Stipulated Agreement”).) The Agreement also
provided that “[b]oth parties shall be respectful and
courteous to one another.” (Id.) The
parties' subsequent meeting to complete the
recertification process went poorly. During the meeting, Park
West staff asked DeSouza several times whether he was
recording them. He refused to answer. Park West staff
subsequently asked DeSouza to leave. Park West then filed an
affidavit of non-compliance with the Stipulated Agreement
documenting the incident. A hearing was held in Connecticut
Superior Court, but the judge never issued an order on the
matter.
In
December 2014, DeSouza was served with a notice of intent to
remove subsidy based on information received by Park West
demonstrating that he was making $69 per hour in a new job.
Despite this notice, DeSouza refused to pay the market rent
for his apartment. On February 26, 2015, as the parties'
dispute over this matter was unfolding, Park West manager Kim
Doughtie sent an email to Park West Attorney Neil Paul
stating as follows:
This letter was hand delivered about 15 minutes ago by
Desouza himself. I am hoping you can get this man evicted. I
consider his words a hate crime which [sic] is against the
law. It is also untrue slander. I have never had an accident
let alone a hit and run. Being a lawyer please tell me how to
stop this person????
(ECF No. 88-2 at 3) The remainder of the email chain
contained in the document at issue did not shed light upon
the context for this email. A few weeks later, Park West
filed a second affidavit of noncompliance with the Stipulated
Agreement on March 11, 2015. In the affidavit, Park West
avers that DeSouza's use of discourteous language
directed toward itself and Doughtie violated the portion of
the Stipulated Agreement requiring the parties to be
courteous to one another. (See ECF No. 130-17 at 2, Exhibit
Q, Affidavit of Noncompliance (“Second Affidavit of
Noncompliance”).) Park West noted in the affidavit that
DeSouza had used various epithets to refer to it and had,
amongst other discourtesies, compared Ms. Doughtie to Charles
Manson and Susan Smith, a woman who had drowned her two young
children in South Carolina. (See id.) A Connecticut
Superior Court judge subsequently held hearings on the matter
and concluded that DeSouza had an obligation to pay market
rent for his apartment for those months he was employed. The
judge concluded that Park West had failed to prove any other
infractions of the Stipulated Agreement by a preponderance of
the evidence. DeSouza ultimately paid his arrearage to Park
West in July 2015 and has continued to live in his apartment
since that time.
B.
DeSouza's HUD Complaints
DeSouza
filed various complaints with the Department of Housing and
Urban Development (“HUD”) during the events
described above. On February 18, 2014, he filed a complaint
with HUD offices in Washington, DC, and Boston,
Massachusetts. The complaint recounted a variety of
DeSouza's disputes with Park West staff, alleging among
other things that Park West management had informed him that
they wanted him to leave his apartment. DeSouza sent another
copy of his HUD complaint to HUD's Washington and Boston
offices on March 18, 2014. He mailed a document containing
three questions concerning Park West's alleged
malfeasance to various HUD offices on April 23, 2014. The
parties disputed whether Park West had notice of the February
and March complaints at the time they were filed. DeSouza
filed four or five more complaints with HUD and various other
parties between October 8, 2014, and October 11, 2014,
averring that Park West had violated his right to privacy by
informing other tenants about the eviction proceedings
against him.
C.
Ruling on Park West's Motion for Summary
Judgment
On
June 14, 2018, I issued a ruling on Park West's motion
for summary judgment. (ECF No. 160 (“SJ
Ruling”).) I granted Park West's motion with
respect to the majority of DeSouza's claims but rejected
it with respect “to the portion of DeSouza's
retaliation claims under the FHA concerning Park West's
filing of an affidavit of noncompliance in March of 2015
(Counts 1, 2, 3, 6). (Id. at 2.) I concluded that
these latter claims survived due to the February 26, 2015
email from Ms. Doughty to Attorney Paul quoted above.
(Id. at 27.) In particular, I noted that
Doughtie's statement that she was “hoping that
[Attorney Paul] can get [DeSouza] evicted” suggested
“that she wished DeSouza to be evicted as a general
matter rather than as a result of specific misconduct on his
part.” (Id. (internal quotation marks
omitted).) I concluded that this email raised an inference of
retaliation given that Park West filed a second affidavit of
non-compliance with the Stipulated Agreement a few weeks
after the email was sent. (Id. at 27, 30.) I
concluded that “[w]hile the email does not mention
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