Courts have defined a material loss as an adverse change to a crucial aspect of the employment or educational experience. See e.g., Bowman v. Shawnee, 220 F.3d 456, 461-462 (6th Cir. 2000); Johnson …show more content…
Consistent with the court’s decision in Johnson where the court decided that receiving a poor evaluation was a tangible detriment as grades and evaluations were key components of an education, here, a jury could find that the drop in Prufrock’s grade was a material loss. Unlike Petrone, where the court found plaintiff suffered no material loss where she received a good grade and recommendation, here, a jury could differ and find Prufrock’s lower grade a material …show more content…
To establish this link courts consider the timing between the two. In Johnson, the court held the plaintiff’s rejection was linked to adverse action, since right after defendant said “wrong answer to give on the last day of clinical”, plaintiff received a failing evaluation, here, as soon as Prufrock rejected Professor Crewel’s advances and said “I’ll take my chances, Professor Crewel said she would not be available to Prufrock for office hours, thus in this instance a jury could find a link between Prufrock rejecting the sexual advances and being denied access to office hours. Unlike the plaintiff in Petrone, who was unable to establish a link between her professor’s advances and a material loss because she received a good recommendation and evaluation, Prufrock did not receive a good grade after rejecting Professor’s Crewel’s advances and therefore a jury a could find a link of material loss following rejection of advances. Similarly in Shrout and O’Donnell, the court found there was a link, respectively, where plaintiff was deprived of performance evaluations right after rejecting defendant’s advances, and where plaintiff lost compensation time and terminated immediately following rejecting defendant’s advances. CITE. Here, here, Crewel failed to address Prufrock’s questions with the course material in the two meetings they had, and he was effectively denied tutoring