A fired employee's age bias claim failed - his retaliation claim didn't
A New York appeals court has revived a retaliation claim against Elliott Management, even as it upheld the dismissal of a former employee's discrimination case.
The Appellate Division, First Department, issued the ruling on June 30, 2026, modifying a lower court order that had thrown out the entire lawsuit on summary judgment - a process where a judge decides a case can be resolved without a trial because the key facts aren't really in dispute.
The lawsuit was brought by a former Elliott Management employee, who alleged age discrimination, a hostile work environment, and retaliation following his termination. The trial court had sided fully with Elliott Management in an order entered around July 7, 2025. The appeals panel left most of that ruling intact but sent one claim back for a jury to weigh.
On age discrimination, the court found nothing to show the former employee was treated worse than younger colleagues doing similar work. It pointed to one comment - the company's chief technology officer had told another employee that the former employee wasn't "young and energetic" - but called it a stray remark, the kind of offhand comment that, on its own, doesn't prove bias. The court also noted his work went to someone seven years older after he left, an older manager made the call to fire him, and the company's average employee age rose slightly after his departure.
The hostile work environment claim didn't survive either. It rested on allegations that the chief technology officer made disparaging remarks about women and Indian employees to other staff. The court said that even taking those allegations as true purely for argument's sake, the former employee couldn't build a hostile environment claim around comments aimed at groups he isn't part of and that were never made to him directly.
The retaliation claim is the one heading back to court. Elliott Management said it fired him over unsatisfactory performance on a major project - concerns the company said predated his internal complaint to HR about discrimination on behalf of a colleague he supervised. The court flagged the timing: he made that complaint, and was let go three months later. The chief technology officer who made the termination call said he hadn't known about the complaint until afterward. The appeals court found circumstantial evidence could challenge that account, and said sorting out who to believe is a jury's job, not a judge's. Judges also pointed to a positive performance review he received in 2017, and noted that no other employee was let go over what the court itself called the project's "purported" lack of progress - a word choice suggesting the judges weren't fully convinced by that explanation either.
The case now returns to the lower court, limited to the retaliation claim alone. No court has ruled on whether retaliation actually occurred - only that a jury should get the chance to decide. The five-judge panel was unanimous in reaching that outcome.
