McDonough v. City of Quincy

• Decision Date: 23 June 2006
• Docket Number: No. 04-1969.,No. 04-1902.,04-1902.,04-1969.
• Citation: 452 F.3d 8
• Parties: John McDONOUGH, Plaintiff, Appellee/Cross-Appellant, v. CITY OF QUINCY, Defendant, Appellant/Cross-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

452 F.3d 8

John McDONOUGH, Plaintiff, Appellee/Cross-Appellant, v. CITY OF QUINCY, Defendant, Appellant/Cross-Appellee.

No. 04-1902.

No. 04-1969.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard March 9, 2006.

Decided June 23, 2006.

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David Grunebaum, with whom Jonathan C. Green and Monica E. Conyngham, City of Quincy Solicitor's Office were on brief, for appellant/cross-appellee.

Marisa A. Campagna, for appellee/cross-appellant.

Before HOWARD, Circuit Judge, COFFIN and CAMPBELL, Senior Circuit Judges.

HOWARD, Circuit Judge.

A jury sitting in the District of Massachusetts found that the City of Quincy, Massachusetts, violated Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e, et seq., and Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 151B, by unlawfully retaliating against police officer John McDonough for assisting a fellow officer in pursuing an employment discrimination claim. The jury awarded McDonough $300,000 in compensatory damages. The parties cross-appealed. The City challenges the verdict on several grounds, including that the action was barred by the claim preclusion doctrine and that the evidence was insufficient to support the verdict. McDonough challenges the district court's refusal to instruct the jury on awarding punitive damages. We reject the City's appeal but remand for further proceedings concerning punitive damages.

I. Background

We present the facts in the light most favorable to the verdict, reserving certain details for the discussion. See Grajales-Romero v. Am. Airlines, Inc., 194 F.3d 288, 292 (1st Cir.1999). McDonough joined the Quincy Police Department in 1969, subsequently held various ranks and was promoted to lieutenant in 1984. In 1990 he was assigned to command the drug unit, where he has remained since.

In 1997, McDonough wrote to the then mayor of Quincy, James Sheets, questioning certain decisions made by police department management. In response, Sheets arranged a meeting with McDonough to discuss his grievances. At the meeting, McDonough presented Sheets with a packet of materials highlighting his concerns. One page of the packet included a compilation of allegations that McDonough had heard from other officers about sexual harassment by department employees against police officer Nancy Coletta. Sheets took no action on the Coletta matter.

In late 1999, McDonough learned from other officers that Coletta was planning to file a sexual harassment lawsuit against the City. McDonough did not know Coletta but wanted to help her pursue her claim. He therefore provided Susan Perch, another officer who knew Coletta, with a copy of the page of allegations that he previously had presented to Sheets. This page of allegations was eventually given to Coletta.

On April 25, 2000, the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination held a hearing on Coletta's claim against the City. Captain William Falco, then administrative assistant to Chief of Police Thomas Frane, attended the hearing at Frane's request. At the hearing, Coletta presented the hearing officer with the page of allegations that McDonough had passed to her and mentioned McDonough's name.

After the hearing, Falco reported to Frane about the hearing and indicated that the "police department . . . or city had some problems" because of Coletta's suit. Frane instructed Falco to investigate the matter further.

On May 5th, Falco contacted McDonough to discuss the page of allegations that Coletta had presented at the hearing. McDonough explained that he had given it to Mayor Sheets in 1997 and that, if Falco wanted to obtain a copy, he could contact the mayor's office. Falco unsuccessfully attempted to obtain the page from the mayor's office.

The members of the drug unit, including McDonough, worked the night shift and as compensation received fifteen percent higher pay than day-shift employees. Three days after Falco talked to McDonough about the Coletta matter, Frane reassigned McDonough to the day shift. As a result, McDonough lost the pay differential and was essentially stripped of his supervisory duties because the officers he supervised worked on the alternate shift. At the time that McDonough was reassigned, another officer was placed in the drug unit and assumed most of McDonough's supervisory responsibilities.

Shortly after the reassignment was announced, McDonough, who was on medical leave at that time, called Frane to inquire about the transfer. Frane told him that he had ordered it because McDonough had "trouble communicating." When McDonough objected to this characterization, Frane told him "in everyone's life a little rain must fall. You can always retire." On another occasion, Frane told McDonough that he placed him on the day shift because several city councilors had indicated that they wanted to increase funding for the drug unit and that he wanted McDonough available to answer questions from the councilors. At trial, Frane testified that he had transferred McDonough as part of a department-wide reorganization and because he wanted to better integrate McDonough into the department's management team.

McDonough returned from his medical leave in August 2000 and assumed day-shift duties, where he "had no one to supervise" and "nothing to do." He served in this role without significant incident until March 8, 2001, when he signed several "court slips" (authorizing extra pay for officers required to attend court proceedings) for officers of the drug unit. McDonough learned the next day that the court slips that he had signed were denied because he no longer was authorized to sign such slips.

McDonough immediately called acting Chief of Police Terrence Kelly (Chief Frane was on a leave of absence after suffering a heart attack; he never returned to his position) to ask why the court slips were denied. Kelly told him that Captain Robert Crowley, McDonough's direct supervisor, had removed McDonough's signing authority. McDonough proceeded to explain that the drug unit was investigating Crowley for potential corruption and that Kelly therefore had to overrule Crowley's order. Kelly refused, and McDonough "very heatedly screamed at him" that he would go to the newspapers and city hall if Kelly did not act. McDonough gave Kelly a short deadline to change his position before Kelly hung up the phone. After this conversation, Kelly described to Falco the heated exchange with McDonough and told Falco that he was afraid that McDonough might suffer a heart attack.¹ But Kelly took no immediate action.

Immediately thereafter, McDonough authored a letter to Kevin Madden, the director of personnel for the department, alerting him to the court-slip incident and other workplace grievances. McDonough stated that he had given relevant documents to another officer to be used in the case of his "sudden or suspicious death."

After Madden received this letter, he met with Kelly and Falco to discuss the situation. It was agreed that McDonough should be placed on paid administrative leave and that his service weapon should be taken pending a fitness-for-duty evaluation by a mental health provider.

After the meeting, Kelly and Falco summoned McDonough to Kelly's office to inform him that he was being placed on administrative leave. They then took his firearm and told him that he had to leave the police headquarters immediately and could not return unless and until he passed a mental health evaluation. After McDonough was placed on leave, no one from the department checked to make sure that McDonough had no other weapons in his possession, contacted McDonough's family to alert them to the concerns about his mental health, or arranged to ensure that McDonough made it home safely.

McDonough subsequently met with a psychiatrist who concluded that McDonough was fit to return to his post. McDonough returned to his day-shift position in May 2001 and several weeks later was returned to the night shift by Falco, who in the interim had been appointed chief.

In October 2001, McDonough filed this action claiming that the City had retaliated against him by, inter alia, transferring him to the day shift and placing him on administrative leave. After a five-day trial, the court submitted the case to the jury but declined to allow the jury to consider awarding punitive damages. The jury returned a general verdict for McDonough and awarded him $300,000 in lost wages and emotional distress damages. The City moved for judgment as a matter of law on the ground that McDonough had not presented sufficient evidence to ground the jury's retaliation finding and, alternatively, moved to have the damage award remitted. The district court denied the motion and entered judgment.

II. The City's Appeal

A. Claim Preclusion

The City asserts that McDonough's action should have been dismissed as it was barred under the claim preclusion doctrine as a result of an unsuccessful Massachusetts state court action that McDonough filed against the City in 1999. In 1998, McDonough was passed over for promotion to police captain and subsequently sued the City in Massachusetts Superior Court, claiming that he had been denied the promotion in retaliation for his complaint to Sheets in 1997. The case went to trial in 2003, and a state court judge entered judgment for the City at the close of McDonough's case-in-chief. The City argues that the state and federal actions are identical and that the federal action is therefore barred. It bases this argument on a foundational assertion that both cases center on the page of Coletta allegations that McDonough first presented to Sheets at their 1997 meeting.

The district court rejected this argument on the ground that the federal and state actions are distinct. The court viewed the state action as based primarily on the alleged retaliatory conduct by Sheets after the 1997 meeting, while the federal action is based primarily on...