Castille v. St. Martin Parish Sch. Bd.

• Decision Date: 27 April 2016
• Docket Number: No. 15–997.,15–997.
• Citation: 190 So.3d 1225
• Parties: Gerald CASTILLE v. ST. MARTIN PARISH SCHOOL BOARD.
• Court: Court of Appeal of Louisiana — District of US

190 So.3d 1225

Gerald CASTILLE

v.ST. MARTIN PARISH SCHOOL BOARD.

No. 15–997.

Court of Appeal of Louisiana, Third Circuit.

April 27, 2016.

G. Karl Bernard, G. Karl Bernard & Associates, LLC, New Orleans, LA, for Plaintiff/Appellant, Gerald Castille.

Mark D. Boyer, Boyer, Hebert, Abels & Angelle, LLC, Denham Springs, LA, for Defendant/Appellee, St. Martin Parish School Board.

Court composed of JOHN D. SAUNDERS, JIMMIE C. PETERS, and DAVID KENT SAVOIE, Judges.

PETERS

, J.

The plaintiff in this matter, Gerald Castille, appeals a trial court judgment dismissing his contractual damage claims against the St. Martin Parish School Board. For the following reasons, we affirm certain aspects of the trial court judgment, reverse certain aspects, and render judgment in favor of Mr. Castille.

DISCUSSION OF THE RECORD

Much of the factual background in this litigation is not disputed. Mr. Castille became a school bus driver for the St. Martin Parish School Board (School Board) in 1977, and worked his way through some of the most difficult routes the School Board had to offer until his seniority and tenured status gave him access to better routes.

Mr. Castille began his career on the Levee Route, which at the time traversed long and dangerous gravel roads and was known for having difficult students and parents. A few months later, the School Board moved Mr. Castille to the Portage Route, a similarly difficult route. Approximately one year later, the School Board moved him to the combined Cypress Island and Terrace Highway Route, which was also an undesirable route for a bus driver.

Two or three years later, Mr. Castille moved to the Highway 31 Route, and he remained on that route through the 2007–08 school year. Initially, this route was comparable to the more troublesome routes he had been assigned to in the past, but as the years passed, the route improved. By the end of the 2007–08 school year, he had developed a bond with his student passengers and their parents to the point that he considered them to be “family.” Additionally, his passenger population significantly decreased, and he found himself transporting a third generation of students. Because he lived in Iberia Parish, Mr. Castille parked his school bus at his mother's home in St. Martinville and drove his own vehicle to and from his home twice a day. This maintained the dead miles¹ on the Highway 31 Route to only seven per day.

This litigation has as its origin the action of the School Board in the spring of 2008. Facing increasing diesel fuel costs, the School Board instructed its Transportation Committee to adjust the school bus routes to reduce dead miles on the routes, thereby cutting diesel fuel costs.² The Transportation Committee then reconfigured all of the existing routes by adjusting some and combining others. When it came time to assign school bus drivers to the new routes, the assignments were made by assigning each newly reconfigured route to the school bus driver whose home was closest to the beginning of the route. The route closest to Mr. Castille's home and, therefore, the one assigned to him, was a new route comprised of a combination of the old Levee and Portage Routes (Levee/Portage Route).³

Mr. Castille became aware of this assignment the day before the Transportation Committee held a public meeting to confirm its actions. At that meeting, the bus drivers with complaints were told that the routes “[were] not written in stone[,]” and if adjustment became necessary, the individual driver's situation would be addressed. Mr. Castille interpreted this to mean that if he did not like his new route after a trial period, he could move back to his Highway 31 Route.⁴

Mr. Castille found the Levee/Portage Route to be as bad as he remembered, and after two weeks, he asked that he be moved back to his former route. According to Mr. Castille, the School Board supervisor, to whom he initially spoke, informed him that he would simply have to deal with his situation as no accommodation would be forthcoming. His requests for assistance from other supervisors and School Board members fell on deaf ears until 2011, when he was assigned a new route based on his seniority.

Mr. Castille's September 28, 2009 petition sought damages in both contract and tort⁵ law for the School Board's failure to comply with state tenure laws in assigning him to the Levee/Portage Route beginning in the 2008–09 school year. He later amended his original petition to include a claim for pecuniary and non-pecuniary damages, based on detrimental reliance and the School Board's failure to perform its contractual duties in good faith.

After a two-day trial beginning on May 12, 2014, the trial court took the matter under advisement. In its September 17, 2014 reasons for judgment, the trial court found that the School Board violated the school bus tenure law when it failed to assign the new school bus routes to drivers based on seniority, but dismissed Mr. Castille's claims for breach of contract and detrimental reliance. At the same time, the trial court awarded Mr. Castille damages in the form of repayment in full for any time or salary lost as a result of the School Board's actions, but dismissed his claim for non-pecuniary damages. After the trial court rejected the School Board's motion for reconsideration of the judgment and/or for new trial, Mr. Castille perfected this appeal.⁶ In his appeal, he raised three assignments of error:

1. The trial court's judgment on [Mr.] Castille's breach of contract claim should be reversed;

2. The trial court's judgment on [Mr.] Castille's detrimental reliance claim should be reversed; and

3. The trial court's judgment on [Mr.] Castille's claim for non-pecuniary damages should be reversed.

OPINION

It is well settled that an appellate court cannot set aside a trial court's findings of fact in the absence of manifest error or unless those findings are clearly wrong. Rosell v. ESCO, 549 So.2d 840 (La.1989)

. If the findings are reasonable in light of the record reviewed in its entirety, an appellate court may not reverse those findings even though convinced that had it been sitting as the trier of fact, it would have weighed the evidence differently. Id. In order to reverse a factfinder's determination of fact, an appellate court must review the record in its entirety and (1) find that a reasonable factual basis does not exist for the finding, and (2) further determine that the record establishes that the factfinder is clearly wrong or manifestly erroneous. Stobart v. State, DOTD, 617 So.2d 880 (La.1993).

It is equally well settled that when a legal error interdicts the fact-finding process, we no longer apply the manifest error standard; and with a complete record before us, we make our own independent de novo review. Evans v. Lungrin, 97–0541, 97–0577 (La.2/6/98), 708 So.2d 731

. “A legal error occurs when a trial court applies incorrect principles of law and such errors are prejudicial. Legal errors are prejudicial when they materially affect the outcome and deprive a party of substantial rights.” Id. at 735 (citation omitted).

In West v. State of Louisiana, through State Superintendent of Public Education, 324 So.2d 579, 581 (La.App. 1 Cir.1975)

, the court stated that “[w]e deem it elementary that the relationship of employer-employee is contractual in nature.” That being the case, if parties “allege an employer-employee relationship as the basis for their claims, they have alleged a cause of action in contract.” Id.

Louisiana generally classifies employees as either “at will” or “fixed term” employees. An “at will” employee is, as the name implies, one whose employment may be terminated at any time or for any reason by either the employer or the employee. La.Civ.Code art. 2747

. A “fixed term” employee is one whose term of employment is fixed and who, unless terminated for good cause, is entitled to payment for the entire term if the contract is breached by the employer. La.Civ.Code art. 2749. As explained in Thorne v. Monroe City School Board, 542 So.2d 490, 491–92 (La.1989) (footnote omitted), teachers and bus drivers employed by the state public school system fit within an exception to the doctrine of at-will employment because of the statutorily established protections given them:

The Legislature created an exception to the employment-at-will doctrine when it adopted statutes providing permanent tenured positions to teachers and bus-drivers.

The historical purpose of tenure, which originated in higher education, was the protection of academic freedom by preventing arbitrary or repressive dismissal. Quinlan, State Teacher Tenure Statutes: An Appeal for Repeal, 9 J. Legislation 144 (1982); Kerwin, The Part–Time Teacher and Tenure in California, 10 Golden Gate U.L.Rev. 765 (1980). After the acceptance of tenure in higher education, many state legislatures passed statutes providing for tenure in primary and secondary schools. The need for tenure in lower education has been justified in order to prevent school boards from abusing superior bargaining power in contract negotiation, to provide stability within the teaching profession by assurance of continued service to experienced teachers, and to prevent dismissal for unfounded, political or partisan reasons. Evans v. Benjamin School District, 134 Ill.App.3d 875, 89 Ill.Dec. 637, 480 N.E.2d 1380 (1985)

; Spiewak v. Board of Education of Rutherford, 90 N.J. 63, 447 A.2d 140 (1982) ; Reed v. Orleans Parish School Board, 21 So.2d 895 (La.App.Orl.1945) ; Quinlan, supra.

Furthermore, as with the teacher tenure laws, the school bus operator tenure laws are read into and form a part of each school bus operator's contract with their employer. See Nobles v. Bienville Parish Sch. Bd., 198 La. 688, 4 So.2d 649 (1941)

; Pizzolato v. State through Bd. of Elementary and Secondary Educ., 452 So.2d 264 (La.App. 1 Cir.1984).

It is not disputed that Mr. Castille has been a School Board school bus driver for thirty-nine years, and as such, an...