Abner v. Kansas City Southern R. Co.

• Decision Date: 02 January 2008
• Docket Number: No. 06-30476.,06-30476.
• Citation: 513 F.3d 154
• Parties: Elgie ABNER, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. The KANSAS CITY SOUTHERN RAILROAD CO., Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

513 F.3d 154

Elgie ABNER, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. The KANSAS CITY SOUTHERN RAILROAD CO., Defendant-Appellant.

No. 06-30476.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

January 2, 2008.

Gregory George Paul (argued), Peirce, Raimond & Osterhout, Pittsburgh, PA, Stephen Reed Morgan, Morgan & Chadick, Comfort, TX, for Plaintiffs-Appellees.

William C. Martucci (argued), Shook, Hardy & Bacon, Kansas City, MO, Bobby Stephen Gilliam, Wilkinson, Carmody & Gilliam, Shreveport, LA, for Defendant-Appellant.

Appeals from the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana.

Before HIGGINBOTHAM, WIENER, and GARZA, Circuit Judges.

PATRICK E. HIGGINBOTHAM, Circuit Judge:

I

Eight African American employees of Kansas City Southern Railway Company (KCSR, or KCS) sued the company in district court for creating an environment hostile to race. A jury found the company liable and awarded no compensatory damages, but awarded each plaintiff $125,000 in punitive damages. The district court entered judgment on the verdict, adding $1 in nominal damages. KCSR timely appealed.

II

This is a discrimination case under. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq. and 42 U.S.C. § 1981. Eight Plaintiffs, employees of KCSR, alleged that KCSR subjected them to a hostile work environment. Plaintiffs alleged that they encountered repeated instances of racially derogatory acts in KCSR's diesel shop in Shreveport, Louisiana, including, inter alia, a wire hanging near the workshop that allegedly had been bent to form the shape of a noose; racial graffiti on the workshop walls; racially derogatory comments and threats, both spoken and written; and transfers to unwanted night and weekend shifts when employees objected to these comments and to other racially motivated activity.

A first trial ended in a mistrial when the jury failed to reach a verdict. At the second trial, a jury found that Defendant had created a hostile work environment and failed to show by a preponderance of the evidence that it had corrected the racially derogatory behavior. It awarded no compensatory damages but awarded $125,000 in punitive damages to each Plaintiff. The district court's judgment incorporated the jury award and additionally awarded each. Plaintiff $1 in nominal damages. The court denied Defendant's Motion for Judgment as a Matter of Law and Alternative Motion for New Trial.

III

We are urged to upset the judgment entered upon the jury verdict of punitive damages awarded under Title VII and § 1981 because there was no award of compensatory damages. We will turn to this contention, but there is a potentially dispositive and hence antecedent question—whether there was a constitutional violation—in which case a sole award of punitive damages is permissible.¹ If there was no constitutional violation the question becomes more difficult. If we conclude that the punitive damages need not be accompanied by an award of compensatory damages, we must determine whether the amount awarded denies KCSR the due process secured by the Fourteenth Amendment.

"We review the district court's ruling on a motion for judgment as a matter of law de novo"² and a denial of a motion for new trial for an abuse of discretion.³

IV

The jury was asked, "Do you find by a preponderance of evidence that [Plaintiff] was subjected to a hostile working environment as defined in instruction number 7?" The jury answered "yes" for each Plaintiff. The jury answered "no" to the question, "Do you find by a preponderance of evidence that KCS exercised reasonable care to prevent and promptly correct any racially harassing behavior?" The court instructed the jury, in relevant part:

It is unlawful for an employer to discriminate against an employee because of the employee's race. Racial discrimination includes harassment based upon race. In order for. KCS to be found liable, the conduct complained of must have been sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the terms or conditions of that plaintiff's employment and to have created a hostile or abusive work environment .... A hostile work environment claim may consist of a series of separate acts that collectively constitute one unlawful employment practice.

The court did not instruct the jury to address whether a constitutional violation occurred.

The Supreme Court has held that "Congress has been given the unique constitutional power of legislating to enforce the provisions of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments"⁴ and that "Congress' enactment of 42 U.S.C. § 1981 pursuant to its powers under the Thirteenth Amendment ... provides to all persons a federal remedy for racial discrimination in private employment."⁵ This power arises because "Section 2 of the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery, provides that `Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.'"⁶ Furthermore, we have found that Title VII legislation is "supportable ... under the enabling clause of the thirteenth amendment to the same extent that, as the first Justice Harlan said, the Civil Rights Act of 1866 is supported by the thirteenth amendment.'"⁷

A constitutional grant of power to Congress in enacting a statute does not require that a statute directly incorporate a constitutional principle. We have distinguished between constitutional and statutory claims in cases where plaintiffs bring their claims under § 1981 and the Thirteenth Amendment.⁸ Similarly, the Eleventh Circuit has specifically defined some Title VII claims as involving "a violation of purely statutory rights,"⁹ and the Supreme Court has found that a plaintiff bringing a Title VII claim without an accompanying claim under the Constitution "does not advance a constitutional claim."¹⁰ Although § 1981 and Title VII more generally arise from the powers granted to Congress by the Thirteenth Amendment and embody its principles, the jury finding pursuant to these statutes and its instructions do not sum to a finding of a constitutional wrong. So we must decide whether the punitive damages award coupled with the district judge's grant of $1 in nominal damages can stand alone.

LeBlanc observed that "[although the goal of a federal common law of damages is to produce uniform results, so far the federal judiciary has not succeeded in this endeavor."¹¹ We further recognized our own mixed case law on the issue but attempted to add clarity by concluding that generally, we only allow independent awards of punitive damages upon a finding of a constitutional violation by a defendant.¹² Here, however, we recognize another class of cases not fully addressed in LeBlanc¹³—those involving statutes with caps on punitive damages.¹⁴

We have upheld jury awards of punitive damages without a finding of a constitutional violation or accompanying compensatory damages, while skirting the underlying constitutional question of whether such awards are permissible. In Lewis v. Parish of Terrebonne,¹⁵ we affirmed a jury verdict for "punitive damages of $6,279 (funeral costs)" without compensatory damages but remanded the case for the district court to make a finding regarding compensatory damages.¹⁶ Similarly, in Dunn Denk,¹⁷ an excessive force case, we permitted a jury award of punitive damages accompanied by a district court's award of $1 in nominal damages but also granted a partial new trial, wherein compensatory damages would potentially be awarded.¹⁸ In E.E.O.C. v. E.I. Du Pont de Nemours & Co.,¹⁹ we addressed the "first impression" issue of whether punitive damages awarded without compensatory damages under 42 U.S.C. § 1981a were permissible and concluded that they were.²⁰ In that case, however, we affirmed a jury award of backpay damages in addition to punitive damages.²¹ For Title VII cases not involving backpay, frontpay, or compensatory damages, our district courts have upheld lone punitive damages awards, accompanied by court-assigned nominal damages of $1. These courts have relied on our LeBlanc case's finding that "`there is no established federal common' law rule that precludes the award of punitive damages in the absence of an award of compensatory damages ... 9,²² and on the holding in Carey v. Piphus²³ that under § 1983, even absent a showing of actual injury a plaintiff may receive nominal damages, awarded by the judge, "not to exceed one dollar."²⁴

Other circuits have explicitly upheld punitive damages awards without an accompanying award of compensatory damages or backpay in Title VII cases.²⁵ In so doing, these circuits have found that "[i]n Title VII cases the statutory maxima capping punitive damage awards strongly undermine the concerns that underlie the reluctance to award punitive damages without proof of actual harm."²⁶ Additionally, our sister circuits have relied on a textual reading of Title VII, finding that "nothing in the plain language of § 1981a conditions an award of punitive damages on an underlying award of compensatory damages .... Extra-statutory requirements for recovery should not be invented."²⁷ Furthermore, the First and Third Circuits, similar to the Supreme Court's decision in Carey, have "approved the award of nominal damages under § 1983 where deprivations of constitutional rights are not shown to have caused actual injury."²⁸ Although in LeBlanc we have, unlike other circuits, expressly disallowed an award of punitive damages without accompanying compensatory damages,²⁹ we have since emphasized that our determination in LeBlanc was limited to the context of damages awarded under the Fair Housing Act;³⁰ we have also emphasized that our holding in LeBlanc does not cover "all civil rights cases in this circuit."³¹ At least one other circuit, however, has denied jury awards of punitive damages without accompanying compensatory or nominal damages under Title VII and § 1981.³²

We agree with the conclusion of several of our sister circuits that a punitive damages award under Title VII and § 1981...