Chamberlin v. Town of Stoughton

• Decision Date: 01 April 2010
• Docket Number: No. 08-1289,08-1529.,08-1289
• Citation: 601 F.3d 25
• Parties: David CHAMBERLIN; Francis Wohlgemuth, Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. TOWN OF STOUGHTON; Scott Carrara, Individually and as a member of the Board of Selectmen; Richard Levine, Individually and as a member of the Board of Selectmen; John Kowalczyk, Individually and as a member of the Board of Selectmen; Christopher Ciampa, Defendants, Appellees, Board of Selectmen of the Town of Stoughton; Manuel Cachopa, Defendants. David Chamberlin; Francis Wohlgemuth, Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. Board of Selectmen of the Town of Stoughton; Manuel Cachopa, Defendants, Appellees, Town of Stoughton; Scott Carrara, Individually and as a member of the Board of Selectmen; Richard Levine, Individually and as a member of the Board of Selectmen; John Kowalczyk, Individually and as a member of the Board of Selectmen; Christopher Ciampa, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

601 F.3d 25

David CHAMBERLIN; Francis Wohlgemuth, Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. TOWN OF STOUGHTON; Scott Carrara, Individually and as a member of the Board of Selectmen; Richard Levine, Individually and as a member of the Board of Selectmen; John Kowalczyk, Individually and as a member of the Board of Selectmen; Christopher Ciampa, Defendants, Appellees, Board of Selectmen of the Town of Stoughton; Manuel Cachopa, Defendants.

David Chamberlin; Francis Wohlgemuth, Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. Board of Selectmen of the Town of Stoughton; Manuel Cachopa, Defendants, Appellees,

Town of Stoughton; Scott Carrara, Individually and as a member of the Board of Selectmen; Richard Levine, Individually and as a member of the

Board of Selectmen; John Kowalczyk, Individually and as a member of the Board of Selectmen; Christopher Ciampa, Defendants.

Nos. 08-1289, 08-1529.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Submitted September 11, 2009.

Decided April 1, 2010.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Diane M. Murphy, Joseph M. Mahaney and McLaughlin, Richards, Mahaney, Biller & Woodyshek, LLP on brief for appellants.

Joseph L. Tehan, Jr., Jackie Cowin and Kopelman and Paige, P.C. on brief for defendant, appellee Town of Stoughton.

Gareth W. Notis, Jennifer S. Bunce and Morrison Mahoney LLP on brief for defendants, appellees Scott Carrara, Richard Levine and John Kowalczyk.

Stephen C. Pfaff and Louison, Costello, Condon & Pfaff on brief for defendants, appellees Manuel Cachopa and Christopher Ciampa.

Before BOUDIN, GAJARSA^* and LIPEZ, Circuit Judges.

BOUDIN, Circuit Judge.

This case began with a lawsuit by two Stoughton, Massachusetts, police officers alleging that town officials and two officers who served as chiefs of police of the town retaliated against the plaintiff officers for cooperating with an investigation into police misconduct and for disclosing a hostile work environment at the police department. Following grants of summary judgment and directed verdicts by the district court, and a jury verdict on several remaining claims against one of the defendants, the defendants prevailed on each and every claim. The plaintiff officers now appeal.

Stoughton ("the Town") is governed by a board of selectmen ("the Board") that appoints both the town manager and the chief of police. In June 2004, the then board members, by a divided vote, failed to reappoint the then chief of police, Manuel Cachopa. David Chamberlin, until then serving as one of several police lieutenants, had earlier submitted his retirement papers effective in July 2004, but he agreed at the Board's request to serve as interim chief and withdrew his retirement application. He held the interim chief position until the Board hired a replacement chief, Joseph Saccardo, in October 2004 and then reverted to his lieutenant position.

In July 2004, Chamberlin learned of allegations that several police officers, including Cachopa, had engaged in criminal misconduct. Chamberlin informed the Norfolk County District Attorney, who appointed a special prosecutor in August. During this period Chamberlin met several times with the district attorney and the special prosecutor, joined on one occasion by a lieutenant, Francis Wohlgemuth. In October, at the special prosecutor's request, a number of officers were placed on leave, including Cachopa. A grand jury began to inquire into the matter and both Chamberlin and Wohlgemuth testified before the grand jury in late 2004.

After Cachopa was denied reappointment, a recall campaign was begun to remove the board members who had opposed him. In the town election held in November 2004, those members were replaced by two new selectmen, Richard Levine and John Kowalczyk. In mid-November, the new board ordered the suspended officers reinstated and then reappointed Cachopa as chief on November 24. On his return Cachopa immediately made Christopher Ciampa, a sergeant and strong supporter of Cachopa, his effective deputy, promoting him over the heads of the serving lieutenants. In March 2005, Cachopa and two other officers were indicted, and the Board then made Ciampa acting police chief.

In September 2006, Chamberlin and Wohlgemuth filed suit in federal district court against the Town, the Board, Cachopa, Ciampa, and three selectmen (who also had supported Cachopa): Levine, Kowalczyk and Scott Carrara. The gist of the complaint was that Cachopa and Ciampa, aided by the Board, had carried on in 2004 and 2005 a systematic campaign of retaliatory harassment against Chamberlin, Wohlgemuth and other officers who had either opposed Cachopa or remained neutral in the recall campaign. One of those other officers, Sergeant Robert Welch, brought his own suit against Cachopa, Ciampa and other defendants. See Welch v. Ciampa, 542 F.3d 927 (1st Cir.2008) (reversing and remanding in part the dismissal of his claims).

Some of the actions alleged by Chamberlin and Wohlgemuth were petty but a few were more serious; collectively, they arguably alleged enough harm to constitute a viable claim—assuming that the actions were taken for a purpose unlawful under federal or state law. They included inconvenient changes of office and shift for the two plaintiffs, depriving Wohlgemuth of access to many offices in the station, unjustified reprimands, imposing limitations on the plaintiffs' preexisting authority, requiring them to wear blue shirts instead of senior officer white and inflicting inappropriate medical and other examinations on Chamberlin.

The connection of the defendants other than Cachopa and Ciampa with these events was left obscure in the complaint save for one episode involving other town officials. In January 2005, the Town threatened to sue Chamberlin if he neither retired nor returned retirement incentive pay (allegedly totaling $21,000) which he had received after he initially agreed to retire. The Town did in fact bring such a suit, abandoning it when Chamberlin—out on vacation and then sick leave since November 2004—retired at the end of March 2005.

The complaint alleged that the claimed harassment was retribution for a set of specific actions by Chamberlin and Wohlgemuth comprising speech assertedly protected under federal or state law or both, specifically: (1) requesting in July 2004 that the town manager investigate the operation of the department, including unequal discipline for those supporting and opposing Cachopa; (2) cooperating with the special prosecutor and grand jury in fall and winter 2004; and (3) advising the town manager by letters of a hostile work environment at the police department in December 2004.

Several different statutes were invoked —the Massachusetts Whistleblower Statute, Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 149, § 185(b) (2009), the Massachusetts Civil Rights Act, id. ch. 12, § 11I, and the federal civil rights statute, 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (2006), based on the First Amendment—together with a charge of abuse of process relating to the Town's lawsuit. In addition to this final common law claim, each of three categories of protected speech was made the subject of several different statutory claims and each was stated separately for each plaintiff—resulting in 17 counts. Different defendants appeared in the various counts.

Thereafter the case was narrowed in steps beginning with the district court's dismissal of the Board. Early on, the Board was dismissed on the ground that it was not subject to suit under the Whistleblower Statute or § 1983 and, although the district court's order does not explain why, dismissal of the Massachusetts Civil Rights Act claim against the Board was also granted; plaintiffs make no mention of this lack of explanation on their present appeal so we need not pursue that issue.

On November 27, 2007, the court granted summary judgment for the defendants on a number of counts, qualifying the order a week later. The remaining claims, then set for trial, were a single count under the Massachusetts Civil Rights Act—Wohlgemuth's claim against Cachopa based on his hostile work environment letter to the town manager—the Whistleblower statute claims of both plaintiffs against the Town, and their § 1983 claims based on their hostile work environment letters and of Chamberlin based on his grand jury testimony and cooperation with the special prosecutor.

In the first trial, a mistrial was declared as to all claims against Cachopa after plaintiffs' counsel improperly referred to Cachopa's indictment. Then at the close of the plaintiffs' case, the district court, acting from the bench, granted defendants' oral motions for a directed verdict as to all claims against the remaining defendants. Asked to explain the basis for the directed verdict, the district court invoked (with one exception) "all the reasons argued by the defense counsel and as expressed in their brief"—a category containing a number of disparate contentions.¹ The district court denied the plaintiffs' motion for reconsideration and motion for a new trial.

A second trial then ensued on the remaining claims against Cachopa—plaintiffs' § 1983 claims based on the December hostile work environment letters, Wohlgemuth's Massachusetts Civil Rights Act claim based on his letter, and Chamberlin's § 1983 claim based on cooperation with the special prosecutor and grand jury— and the jury found in Cachopa's favor on all of the claims. Before us now are appeals relating to the summary judgment and the district court's rulings in both trials. Denial of a separate new trial motion in the second trial was appealed too late and is not before us.

Plaintiffs' joint principal brief asserts that the district court erred first by entering summary judgment on specified claims prior to the first trial and directing verdicts in that trial and second by making a series of errors in the course of the second trial. Our review of the directed verdicts is de novo, Ahern v. Scholz, 85 F.3d 774, 793 (1st Cir.1996); review as to alleged trial errors depends upon the...