Spilman recently obtained summary judgment in a gender discrimination matter for our client, a global chemical company. At the summary judgment stage, Plaintiff's counsel attempted to argue that Plaintiff's lawsuit also included a claim of hostile work environment gender harassment. However, Plaintiff's counsel initially had alleged that claim in the original Complaint and then removed verbiage relating to that claim when filing an Amended Complaint. Spilman successfully argued that such claim was not part of this lawsuit and could not properly be asserted in Plaintiff's Response to Summary Judgment and, instead, Plaintiff's claims were limited to those stated in her Amended Complaint. Spilman also successfully argued that Plaintiff could not base her claims on conduct that occurred while Plaintiff was employed by a previous company (from which our client spun off and created a new company), and Plaintiff asserted no facts demonstrating that our client was responsible for the alleged misconduct that occurred at the previous company. Finally, Spilman convinced the Court that the only alleged conduct that occurred during Plaintiff's employment with our client (a temporary reassignment from one position into another position and our client's adoption of a Last Chance Agreement issued by the parent company) did not constitute adverse employment actions because such employment actions did not detrimentally affect Plaintiff's terms, conditions and/or benefits of employment with our client.

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