Tonique Griffin v. City of East Orange (074937), 139 A.3d 16

In 2009 three City of East Orange employees (Griffin, Best, Walker) alleged sexual harassment by their supervisor, Obed Prinvil; the City retained outside investigator Dina Mastellone.
Corletta Hicks, a mayoral aide and friend of Griffin, told the investigator that Griffin and Best were not credible and praised Prinvil; Mastellone’s report relied in part on Hicks and found no hostile work environment.
At deposition Hicks testified that Mayor Bowser told her to undermine Griffin and bolster Prinvil before her interview, and that she followed those instructions.
Trial court precluded Hicks from testifying at trial about the Mayor’s alleged instructions, limiting her testimony as relevant only to punitive damages and then barring it entirely; the jury returned verdict for the City.
The Appellate Division affirmed; the Supreme Court granted certification on whether excluding Hicks’s testimony (that superiors directed her to lie to the investigator) was erroneous.
The Supreme Court held the exclusion was an abuse of discretion: Hicks’s testimony was relevant to hostile-work-environment compensatory and punitive claims, admissible under the party-agent hearsay exception, and not excludable under N.J.R.E. 403.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Relevance of Hicks’s testimony to hostile work environment claims	Hicks’s account of the Mayor’s instructions shows upper-management interference and undermines City’s defenses and credibility of investigation	Hicks lacked personal knowledge of alleged incidents and did not work in the relevant department, so testimony is irrelevant and prejudicial	Relevant: tends to prove management attitude, undermines City’s remedial/defense evidence, admissible for compensatory and punitive HWE claims
Hearsay (admissibility of Mayor’s statements reported by Hicks)	Mayor Bowser was an agent of the City and his statements about the investigation concern his official duties, fitting the party-agent hearsay exception	Mayor’s statements are hearsay and should be excluded	Admissible under N.J.R.E. 803(b)(4) as statements by a party’s agent about matters within scope of employment
Rule 403 (undue prejudice)	Probative value is high; jury can assess credibility; not unfairly inflammatory	Admission would be highly prejudicial, linked to Hicks’s separate litigation, and would confuse issues	Not unduly prejudicial: probative value not substantially outweighed; exclusion was improper

Lehmann v. Toys ‘R’ Us, 132 N.J. 587 (1993) (elements and standards for hostile work environment sexual harassment)
Aguas v. State, 220 N.J. 494 (2015) (employer liability, standards for negligence and vicarious liability in LAD claims)
Cavuoti v. N.J. Transit Corp., 161 N.J. 107 (1999) (availability of employer affirmative defense for anti-harassment programs)
Lockley v. Dep’t of Corr., 177 N.J. 413 (2003) (punitive damages against public employers require upper-management participation or willful indifference)
Spencer v. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., 156 N.J. 455 (1998) (scope and application of party-agent hearsay exception)
Rosenblit v. Zimmerman, 166 N.J. 391 (2001) (Rule 403: powerful/probative evidence not excluded merely because damaging)