Bell v. City of Demopolis, Ala., 94-7205

• Citation: 86 F.3d 191
• Decision Date: 20 June 1996
• Docket Number: No. 94-7205,94-7205
• Parties: John BELL, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CITY OF DEMOPOLIS, ALABAMA; Austin Caldwell, individually and in his official capacity as Mayor of the City of Demopolis, Alabama; Charles Avery, individually and in his official capacity as Police Chief of the City of Demopolis, Alabama, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 191

86 F.3d 191

John BELL, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CITY OF DEMOPOLIS, ALABAMA; Austin Caldwell, individually

and in his official capacity as Mayor of the City of

Demopolis, Alabama; Charles Avery, individually and in his

official capacity as Police Chief of the City of Demopolis,

Alabama, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 94-7205.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

June 20, 1996.

John A. Bivens, M. Virginia Buck, Tuscaloosa, AL, for Appellant.

Terry A. Sides, Randall Morgan, Hill, Hill, Carter, Franco, Cole & Black, Montgomery, AL, for Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama.

Before TJOFLAT, Chief Judge, and RONEY and CAMPBELL ^*, Senior Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:

In this section 1983 employment discrimination action, plaintiff, a former police officer, alleged he received constitutionally inadequate procedural due process both before and after his termination. The district court refused to set aside a grant of summary judgment for the defendants, holding that plaintiff had suffered no due process violation. We affirm.

Plaintiff John Bell was a police officer with the Demopolis, Alabama, police department. While employed by the department, Bell was disciplined and reprimanded on a number of occasions. In early June 1992, he was placed on indefinite suspension, and on July 1, 1992, he received written notice of his termination.

Bell's termination was reviewed and affirmed, first by a body comprised of the police chief, the mayor, and select members of the city council called the "police committee," and then by the city council.

Bell then brought this section 1983 action alleging violations of federal substantive and procedural due process of law and state law claims, seeking compensatory and punitive damages, as well as reinstatement.

The district court granted defendants' motion for summary judgment after Bell failed to timely respond. Bell then filed a Fed.R.Civ.P. 60(b) motion asking the court to set aside the defendants' summary judgment based on excusable neglect. After the defendants filed an opposition brief, the court directed the parties to file supplemental briefs addressing the merits of Bell's due process claims in light of this Court's recent en banc decision in McKinney v. Pate, 20 F.3d 1550 (11th Cir.1994), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 115 S.Ct. 898, 130 L.Ed.2d 783 (1995).

The district court denied Bell's motion for relief from judgment, holding that even if it were inclined to set aside the judgment based on excusable neglect, there was no need to do so because Bell could raise no genuine issue of material fact in opposition to the summary judgment motion. It held that (1) pursuant to McKinney, Bell's substantive due process claim fails as a matter of law; (2) because Alabama has available a satisfactory means by which Bell can seek redress for any procedural due process deprivation, he does not have a cognizable procedural due process claim, and (3) there was no state law wrongful discharge claim.

Bell argues that McKinney is not dispositive of his procedural due process claim. In McKinney, the plaintiff based his due process claim on the alleged bias of the decision maker at his pretermination hearing. The en banc court held that the alleged wrongful discharge of an employee by a state actor does not give rise to a substantive due process claim but instead implicates only procedural due process. The Court determined that the State of Florida's remedy for a biased decision maker, review by Florida courts, satisfied due process.

Bell attempts to distinguish McKinney in three ways. First, Bell asserts here that Alabama courts do not offer the same "thorough, almost de novo, review" of Florida's circuit courts. Alabama courts, however, like ...