Hearn v. City of Gainesville

• Decision Date: 12 October 1982
• Docket Number: No. 81-5008,81-5008
• Citation: 688 F.2d 1328
• Parties: James M. HEARN, Jr., Plaintiff-Appellee, Cross-Appellant, v. The CITY OF GAINESVILLE and Richard C. Corriveau, Defendants-Appellants, Cross-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 1328

688 F.2d 1328

James M. HEARN, Jr., Plaintiff-Appellee, Cross-Appellant, v. The CITY OF GAINESVILLE and Richard C. Corriveau Defendants-Appellants, Cross-Appellee.

No. 81-5008.

United States Court of Appeals Eleventh Circuit.

Oct. 12, 1982.

As Modified on Granting of Rehearing in Part Jan. 31, 1983.

Julius F. Parker, Jr., Tallahassee, Fla., J.T. Frankenberger, City Atty., Gainesville, Fla., for defendants-appellants, cross-appellees.

Robert L. Hinkle, Wadsworth, Davis & Hinkle, Tallahassee, Fla., for James M. Hearn, Jr.

Appeals from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida.

Before GODBOLD, Chief Judge, HILL and FAY, Circuit Judges.

GODBOLD, Chief Judge:

The City of Gainesville, Florida and employee Richard Corriveau appeal from the district court's judgment entered against them in accordance with a jury verdict in favor of plaintiff-appellee James Hearn in an action brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. We reverse the judgment against the city and affirm the judgment against Corriveau.

I.

James Hearn had worked for the city as an interviewer since 1966. By 1977 he had attained the position of personnel technician II ("PT"). At that time the city employed two PTs. The working relationship between Hearn and the personnel department head, appellant Corriveau, began to deteriorate. In April 1977 Hearn proposed to take several days of paid leave as compensation for working overtime on a project. Corriveau denied the proposal in a memorandum, stating,

If you feel that this schedule and your work schedule in this department is beyond your physical capabilities and mental energies, I will accept your resignation from the City of Gainesville effective immediately.

On July 15, 1977 Hearn wrote a memorandum to city manager Farmer complaining that the personnel department had budgeted no money for him to attend a personnel conference. The memo was routed through Corriveau. The same day Corriveau sent a comment about the memo to Farmer complaining about Hearn. Part of his comment read:

I believe I will recommend to you that within the next two or three weeks, or as soon as I can arrange to review the workload of other professionals in this department and to review the management reorganization study, that Mr. Hearn's position be deleted from next year's City budget.

Mrs. Sain (the other PT) is capable of handling all of the General Government departments.... She is also capable of handling all of the CETA program....

On July 26, 1977 the city commission held one of a series of budget sessions. Because of increased energy costs and resulting decrease in consumption the city planned to lay off a substantial number of utility department employees. Under the city's personnel policy, one laid off, as opposed to terminated, had precedence for recall in his job classification over new applicants for 180 days. An employee not recalled within 180 days was considered terminated.

One of the commissioners, Mr. Junior, proposed that because of the smaller number of employment positions with the city, one of the PT positions could be eliminated by having the affirmative action officer perform some of the interviewing. Farmer objected to using the affirmative action office in this manner but stated that, based upon the personnel department's workload, he would agree to the elimination of one PT position. Corriveau was present and did not take issue with Farmer's statement concerning the workload in his department. Farmer requested that the commissioners talk in terms of money rather than positions. The commissioner's proposal was restated so as to eliminate a position equal to the pay grade of a PT, and it was passed unanimously.

The city formed a quality control board composed of Corriveau, his assistant, a representative of the city manager's office, the affirmative action officers and a union representative, to determine, when necessary, who would be laid off. City personnel policy required layoffs to be made by reverse seniority if the employees were otherwise equal in work performance. As with layoffs in other departments, the board members individually examined the personnel folders of Hearn and Sain to determine which one should be laid off. The members rated the PTs on a scale from 0 to 5 without discussion among themselves. All four members rated Sain a 5, for a total of 20, and rated Hearn a 3, for a total of 12. Therefore, even though Hearn had more seniority than Sain, he was chosen to be laid off.

Corriveau told Hearn in September that he would be laid off on December 5, 1977. According to Hearn, Corriveau gave as a reason for the layoff that Hearn was physically and mentally unable to do his job. The official notice of termination, dated in November, explains the termination as "LAYOFF-WORK NO LONGER AVAILABLE."

Hearn filed a formal grievance with Farmer, challenging the objectivity of the quality control board. His grievance was denied. He then filed a § 1983 action in district court claiming a denial of due process because the layoff was merely a pretext for his firing without just cause. ¹

At trial there was no general verdict. The jury was directed to answer two interrogatories, as follows:

Do you find by the greater weight of the evidence that the plaintiff, James M. Hearn, Jr., was terminated from his employment as a result of the claimed animosity between him and the defendant, Richard C. Corriveau? (answered "yes.")

(If the jury answered "yes" to the above question)

Do you find by the greater weight of the evidence that the plaintiff, James M. Hearn, Jr., would have been terminated from his employment anyway even in the absence of Richard Corriveau's animosity toward him? (answered "no.")

The district court made no findings of its own. It entered judgment against the city and Corriveau for $52,500.61, representing back pay, and ordered Hearn's reinstatement. Appellants' motion for a judgment n.o.v. was denied.

II.

Appellants make these arguments: (1) Hearn had no property interest entitled to due process protections. (2) There was insufficient evidence of causation to support the jury verdict. (3) The city cannot be liable because no policy, ordinance or custom operated to deprive Hearn of due process. (4) The district court erred by refusing to instruct the jury, in accordance with its pretrial finding, that if the layoff was bona fide Hearn received sufficient due process.

(A) Hearn's property interest

Plaintiff had no constitutional right of due process unless he had a property interest in continued employment. Bishop v. Wood, 426 U.S. 341, 343-47, 96 S.Ct. 2074, 2076-2079, 48 L.Ed.2d 684 (1976). "A person's interest in a benefit is a 'property' interest for due process purposes if there are such rules or mutually explicit understandings that support his claim of entitlement to the benefit and that he may invoke at a hearing." Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U.S. 593, 601, 92 S.Ct. 2694, 2699, 33 L.Ed.2d 570 (1976), cited in United Steelworkers of America v. University of Alabama, 599 F.2d 56, 60 (5th Cir. 1979). We look to state law to determine if Hearn had a legitimate entitlement to his continued employment with the city. Bishop v. Wood, supra at 344, 96 S.Ct. at 2077. Where a statute or ordinance lists specific grounds for discharge of a public employee or states that a public employee can only be terminated for just cause, Florida courts hold that the employee has a property right of which he cannot be deprived without due process. Laney v. Holbrook, 150 Fla. 622, 8 So.2d 465, 467 (1942). Accord, Ragucci v. City of Plantation, 407 So.2d 932, 935 (Fla.App.1981); cf. West v. Board of Commissioners, Monroe County, 373 So.2d 83 (Fla.App.1979).

Gainesville's Personnel Policy No. 19 ² provides that a permanent employee may be dismissed "only for cause as outlined in the Code of Conduct of Disciplinary Procedures...." The employee manual also states that a permanent employee may be dismissed only for cause. We conclude that Hearn had a property interest in continued employment under Florida law.

(B) The constitutional violations

We cannot resolve the causation, municipal liability and jury instruction questions without first isolating the constitutional violation at issue. Hearn's contentions run this way: His layoff was merely a pretext to fire him without just cause. Corriveau deliberately understated the workload in the personnel department to cause the city to delete Hearn's position. Corriveau took this circuitous route because he knew he had insufficient grounds to fire Hearn for cause. At the budget meeting commissioner Junior suggested that one PT position could be abolished; city manager Farmer agreed based upon the workload of the personnel department, although he objected to the suggested use of the affirmative action officer. The commissioners in turn voted to abolish a PT position on the basis of the city manager's representations since they had no independent knowledge of the department's workload. With one of the PT positions abolished, it was a foregone conclusion that Hearn would be the employee laid off because Sain was the superior worker. By this Tinkers-to-Evers-to-Chance maneuver Corriveau caused Hearn to lose his job, in the name of a contrived layoff that was based on false information concerning the workload.

Hearn's theory was accepted by the jury in its answers to the two interrogatories-he lost his employment because of Corriveau's animosity; he would not have lost it but for Corriveau's animosity. Accepting these jury findings as correct, (see part C on the issue of correctness), the layoff was a phony arrangement, carried out for an improper motive, to deprive Hearn of his job. This states a substantive due process violation-deprivation of a property interest for an improper motive and by means that were pretextual, arbitrary and capricious, and, because unrelated to the proper reasons for layoff, without any rational basis....