Second Department Deems Submission Of Alleged Perpetrator’s Employment File Sufficient To Establish Prima Facie Lack Of Notice

After several years of denying summary judgment to defendants for a failure to establish prima facie lack of notice, the Appellate Division, Second Department appears to have changed course in Reichenbach v. Garden City Public Schools, 248 A.D.3d 1148 (2d Dep’t 2026). In Reichenbach, the plaintiff alleged his sixth-grade teacher, an employee of defendant’s school district, sexually abused him once in 1998, and asserted causes of action for negligence and negligent training, supervision, and retention. At the close of discovery, the defendant moved for summary judgment, arguing that based on the lack of prior allegations of sexual abuse or misconduct in the teacher’s personnel file, the defendant had no notice of the teacher’s alleged propensity to sexually abuse students. The Supreme Court, Nassau County granted the summary judgment motion, and the Second Department affirmed. Specifically, the Court held the personnel file, which had no evidence of prior misconduct, was sufficient to demonstrate the defendant had no actual knowledge of a propensity for sexual abuse. Although the teacher was one accused of sexually inappropriate behavior with a fellow teacher, a subsequent investigation deemed the accusation unfounded, and did not raise a triable issue of fact.

The Riechenbach decision appears to be a departure from the Court’s previous holding in Stanton v. Longwood Central School District, 233 A.D.3d 1010 (2d Dep’t 2024), where the Court held that the defendant school district failed to establish its prima facie burden that it lacked notice of the teacher’s alleged propensity for sexual abuse, despite defendant’s submission of the teacher’s unremarkable personnel file and testimony from former teachers and a principal that they were unaware of any misconduct during the teacher’s employment. The Reichenbach decision is also unique in that it does not expressly address a lack of constructive notice. While the Second Department has often found triable issues of fact when the alleged abuse occurred with some frequency (see Staton, 233 A.D.3d at 1014-15), it will be interesting to see how courts within the Second Department (and the Second Department itself) reconcile an employee’s file that shows no evidence of prior sexual misconduct with allegations of abuse occurring more than once. Whether the courts deem such conflicting evidence to raise a triable issue of fact, the Reichenbach decision provides a path for defendants to establish its prima facie entitlement to summary judgment, shifting the burden to plaintiffs to establish evidence of notice.

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