Wudtke v. Davel

• Decision Date: 22 October 1997
• Docket Number: No. 94-2864,94-2864
• Citation: 128 F.3d 1057
• Parties: 122 Ed. Law Rep. 85 Karl F. WUDTKE and Hope C. Wudtke, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Frederick J. DAVEL, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 1057

128 F.3d 1057

122 Ed. Law Rep. 85

Karl F. WUDTKE and Hope C. Wudtke, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Frederick J. DAVEL, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 94-2864.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued Dec. 11, 1996.

Decided Oct. 22, 1997.

Karl F. Wudtke, Heart Butte, MT, pro se.

Hope C. Wudtke, Shawano, WI, pro se.

Charles H. Bohl, Pamela M. Schmidt, John P. Spector, M. Elizabeth O'Neil (argued), Whyte, Hirschboeck & Dudek, Milwaukee, WI, for Defendant-Appellees, Frederick J. Davel, Shawano-Gresham School District, Kathryn Cantwell, William Matthias, Michael Robbins.

W. Patrick Sullivan (argued), Robert W. Huff, Godfrey, Braun & Hayes, Milwaukee, WI, for Defendant-Appellee, Thomas Bartel.

J. Edison Woods, Jr., Aschenbrener, Woods, Lama & Schmid, Shawno, WI, for Defendant-Appellees, John Syndergaard, Valley Bank of Shawano.

Harvey M. Sheldon (argued), Kathryn T. Ditmars, Jillisa Brittan, McDermott, Will & Emery, Chicago, IL, for Amicus Curiae.

Before BAUER, WOOD, JR., and DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judges.

DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judge.

Karl and Hope Wudtke believe that the defendants, numerous officials of the State of Wisconsin, various governmental entities, a bank, and a private attorney, have engaged in a massive conspiracy to deprive them of both business and personal rights. Buried in their voluminous allegations is one claim that one state defendant, Frederick Davel, the superintendent of the Shawano-Gresham School District (the "District"), violated Hope's civil rights by sexually assaulting and harassing her while she was employed by the District. After a lengthy period of discovery, the district court either dismissed or granted summary judgment to the defendants on all of the Wudtkes' claims. We agree with this disposition with respect to everything except Hope's sexual assault and harassment claim, which we remand for further proceedings.

I

We relate the background facts in the light most favorable to the Wudtkes, since this is an appeal from dismissals under Rules 12(b)(6) and 56. (It will be plain that some or all of the defendants vigorously contest many of these allegations, but we do not separately note that fact each time.) From 1984 to 1988 Hope Wudtke was employed by the District as a teacher of emotionally distressed students. Her husband Karl, who had worked as a teacher elsewhere, unsuccessfully applied for a teaching position in the District in 1987. His principal work, however, was with the couple's beekeeping business and related agricultural research. It is this business and the Wudtkes' perception that it was valuable enough to spawn an elaborate conspiracy by jealous outsiders that lie at the heart of this case.

The alleged plot began in 1986, when Hope's superiors began to increase Hope's workload sharply while unfairly criticizing the quality of her written reports for the first time (similar reports had been found acceptable in the past). Hope claims that beginning in March 1987 Superintendent Davel embarked on an increasingly offensive course of sexual harassment, beginning with unwanted touching of her hands and leg. On June 5, as Hope tells the story, Davel proposed a physical relationship with her and forcibly touched her breasts. The next day, he kissed her. On June 16 he compelled her to perform fellatio, which caused her to vomit. On July 6 and July 21 he again coerced her to engage in oral sex. Davel used his official position to compel her to cooperate. He threatened that he would not assign her a classroom aide to alleviate her workload, that he would prevent the District from hiring Karl, and that he would refuse to approve the renewal of her provisional special education license (without which she would lose her job) if she did not engage in sexual acts with him. Because of this harassment, Hope began to suffer severe emotional and physical problems. A psychiatrist diagnosed her as having "moderate problems, requiring medication." In 1988 she resigned from her teaching position.

In late 1987 the Wudtkes complained about Hope's workload and Davel's behavior to defendant John Syndergaard, who was a member of the District's board of trustees and an officer of the Valley Bank of Shawano (the "Bank"). In April 1988 they followed up with a letter to defendant Kathryn Cantwell, the president of the board. Hope alleges that the District finally investigated her complaint, but without consulting her or showing her its findings. Unsatisfied, the Wudtkes next filed complaints with the EEOC and the Wisconsin Department of Justice, to no avail. At last, they turned to the courts, filing the present suit on December 28, 1989. Disheartened by their lack of success, the Wudtkes came to suspect that a large and growing number of their adversaries were collaborating in a shadowy conspiracy against them. A principal motive behind this conspiracy was the defendants' desire to drive the Wudtkes out of their agribusiness efforts and to acquire information about their beekeeping research and methods. This was why, as the Wudtkes saw things, Syndergaard threatened to foreclose the Bank's mortgage on their home when they fell behind in their payments, and why other defendants took steps to drive them into financial ruin.

II

In their federal court complaint, the Wudtkes sued Davel, the District, Cantwell, Michael Robbins (Director of Special Services for the District), William Matthias (Assistant Administrator for the District), Syndergaard, Thomas Bartel (a private attorney), the Bank, unknown corporations 1-100, unknown United States governmental or subordinate entities 1-100, unknown State of Wisconsin governmental or subordinate entities 1-100, and unknown individuals John and Jane Does 1-100. (We note in passing that it is pointless to include lists of anonymous defendants in federal court; this type of placeholder does not open the door to relation back under Fed.R.Civ.P. 15, see Delgado-Brunet v. Clark, 93 F.3d 339, 344 (7th Cir.1996), citing Sassi v. Breier, 584 F.2d 234, 235 (7th Cir.1978), nor can it otherwise help the plaintiff.) They asserted a myriad of claims against these defendants, which were detailed by Magistrate Judge Robert L. Bittner in a May 1991 recommendation to District Judge J.P. Stadtmueller. The claims included assertions of direct violations of the U.S. Constitution, RICO claims, Hobbs Act violations, violations of all of the major civil rights statutes (42 U.S.C. §§ 1981, 1982, 1983, 1985, and 1986), and a wide variety of supplemental claims under Wisconsin law. From the 27-page complaint, which the magistrate judge described as "rambling, indefinite, and inartfully stated," he distilled allegations of the following four conspiracies:

(1) Conspiracy by Davel, the District, Cantwell, Robbins, Matthias, Syndergaard, and Bartel to deprive Hope of her employment in the District, implemented by means of excessive workload and sexual harassment;

(2) Conspiracy by Davel, the District, Robbins, and Matthias to deprive Karl of potential employment with the District, in retaliation for Hope's refusals of the sexual advances or for her reporting this misconduct;

(3) Conspiracy by all defendants to deprive the Wudtkes of their home and property by raising their mortgage payments and foreclosing on their house; and

(4) Conspiracy by all defendants to commit RICO violations to deprive the Wudtkes of potential business interests in a honeybee/alfalfa seed/hay operation.

The Wudtkes sought compensatory damages on the conspiracy claims of $1,696,000, punitive damages of nearly $17 million, and treble damages under RICO of more than $10 million. In addition to the conspiracy claims, the Wudtkes alleged various state law torts and Hope raised an individual § 1983 claim arising out of Davel's sexual assaults and harassment prior to the end of August 1987.

The district court, after receiving the magistrate judge's recommendation, issued an order on July 9, 1991, granting summary judgment to all defendants except Davel, for whom it granted partial summary judgment, and denying the Wudtkes' countermotion for summary judgment. In an order of November 27, 1992, Judge Stadtmueller addressed both Hope's and Karl's supplemental claims. He concluded that none of Karl's could be brought for various technical reasons, but that Hope would be permitted to pursue her claims for common law assault and battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and invasion of privacy, because those claims all arose out of the same transactions and events that gave rise to her § 1983 claim against Davel. Hope's success, limited as it was, was not to last. On June 29, 1994, District Judge Rudolph Randa (to whom the case had been reassigned) concluded that none of Hope's federal claims against Davel stated a claim upon which relief could be granted, and that the supplemental state claims were time-barred. He dismissed the last vestiges of the suit, and the Wudtkes brought their appeal pro se to this court. This court enlisted the services of an amicus curiae on the Wudtkes' behalf so that it could obtain a full presentation of the issues. We are grateful for the help amicus has furnished in response to our request.

III

Initially, it is clear that the district court correctly perceived that the only possible claims in this lawsuit with any legal merit were those of Hope Wudtke against Davel for sexual assault and sexual harassment. The Wudtkes completely failed to substantiate their accusation of a broad and ever-expanding conspiracy. The mere fact that they repeated their speculations under oath is not enough to convert their suppositions into competent evidence. Moreover, these claims are riddled with evidentiary gaps: the Wudtkes ignore the fact that they have not shown that many of the defendants ever even met, let alone conspired. Likewise their purported evidence against the defendants other than Davel takes the form of unreasonable inferences from...