Clayton Cnty. Bd. of Commissioners v. Murphy
| Decision Date | 05 October 2015 |
| Docket Number | No. S15A0995.,S15A0995. |
| Citation | 297 Ga. 763,778 S.E.2d 193 |
| Parties | CLAYTON COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERSet al. v. MURPHY. |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
Jack R. Hancock, Michelle Youngblood, Freeman Mathis & Gary, LLP, Forest Park, for appellant.
Steven Morgan Frey, Jonesboro, Mark W. ForslingSchreeder, Wheeler & Flint, LLP, Atlanta, for appellee.
The Clayton County Board of Commissioners and its individual members appeal from a writ of mandamus directing the County to give an unspecified job to Joseph Murphy, whom the County previously had employed as Assistant Director of its Department of Community Development. The Board contends, among other things, that the writ is premised on a misunderstanding and misapplication of the County's civil service rules and regulations. We agree and reverse the grant of the writ.
As Assistant Director, Murphy was responsible for building inspections to ensure compliance with the County housing code. On the side, Murphy owned a business that did electrical work, and the County had warned him not to inspect any work that his business had done. In 2007, the Director of Community Development terminated Murphy for failing to heed the warning. Murphy appealed his firing to the Civil Service Board (“CSB”), which found that the termination was not supported by sufficient cause, as required by the County's civil service rules. The CSB ordered that Murphy be reinstated, and the County appealed.
In the meantime, the Board implemented a reduction in force, which led to the elimination of several positions, including that of Assistant Director. The superior court then dismissed the County's appeal from the reinstatement order, and the County offered Murphy back pay for the period between his termination and the reduction in force. Murphy declined this offer, however, and demanded a job with the County. When he was refused re-employment, Murphy filed a petition for a writ of mandamus to compel the County to offer him employment. In September 2014, the trial court granted the writ and ordered that Murphy “be awarded employment as specified in the civil service rules.”
Mandamus is an extraordinary remedy that is available only where a litigant seeks to require a public official to perform an act or fulfill a duty that is required by law and where “there is no other specific legal remedy.” OCGA § 9–6–20. A writ of mandamus should only be granted where there “is a clear legal right to the relief being sought.” Hansen v. DeKalb County Bd. of Tax Assessors,295 Ga. 385, 387(2), 761 S.E.2d 35 (2014)(citations and punctuation omitted). Here, even assuming that Murphy did not have a specific legal remedy to challenge the reduction in force that eliminated his job or the Board's refusal to hire him for another position,1we cannot say that his right to either remedy is “clear” under the County's civil service rules.
We first consider whether Murphy has a clear legal right to employment in his former position as Assistant Director.2The direction given to the Board in the order of the trial court is not specific— only stating that Murphy must be provided with “employment as specified in the civil service rules”—but the order refers to Civil Service Rule 9.204, which affords certain rights to employees that have been terminated as a result of a reduction in force. And that Rule provides that such employees must be offered employment for a period of two years if there is a new or available position that is of the same “nature of that which the laid off employee had previously occupied.” But Rule 9.204 does not require the Board to recreate an eliminated position, and Murphy does not appear to argue otherwise. As a result, the trial court erred to the extent that it held that Murphy has a clear legal right under Rule 9.204 to reinstatement to his position as Assistant Director.
Although—as already noted—the writ is ambiguous about the precise job that the County was supposed to give Murphy, he claims on appeal that the writ required the Board to reinstate him to his former position as Assistant Director and not merely to offer him employment in some other position. In support of this theory, Murphy points not to Rule 9.204, but rather to Civil Service Rule 11.310, which provides that “[t]he Board ... may reinstate the employee to...
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