To show causation in a retaliation case -- the connection between an employee's protected activity and an adverse employment action -- it is not necessary to show that the managing agent most directly responsible for the adverse employment action knew of the employee's protected activity. The connection between protected activity and an adverse employment action is "sufficiently demonstrated if the agent who decides to impose the adverse action but is ignorant of the plaintiff's protected activity acts pursuant to encouragment by a superior (who has knowledge) to disfavor the plaintiff" the Second Circuit recently ruled in Henry v Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, No 08-1477 (2d Circuit, August 4, 2010).
The court also reiterated its apparently never-ending attempt to educate trial courts on what is necessary to show "knowledge" any retaliation case and quoted from a 10-year-old case, Gordon v. New York City Board of Education, 232 F3d 111, 116 (2d Cir. 2000):
Neither this nor any other circuit has ever held that, to satisfy the knowledge requirement, anything more is necessary than general corporate knowledge that the plaintiff has engaged in a protected activity.
