Collins v. Marina-Martinez

• Decision Date: 08 December 1989
• Docket Number: MARINA-MARTINE,No. 89-1448,D,89-1448
• Citation: 894 F.2d 474
• Parties: 58 Ed. Law Rep. 471 Delwood C. COLLINS, Plaintiff, Appellee, v. Manuelefendant, Appellant. . Heard
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

Page 474

894 F.2d 474

58 Ed. Law Rep. 471

Delwood C. COLLINS, Plaintiff, Appellee, v. Manuel MARINA-MARTINEZ, Defendant, Appellant.

No. 89-1448.

United States Court of Appeals First Circuit.

Heard Dec. 8, 1989.

Decided Jan. 24, 1990.

Nilda M. Navarro, with whom Ruben T. Nigaglioni and Ledesma, Palou & Miranda, Hato Rey, P.R., were on brief, for defendant, appellant.

Maria H. Sandoval, for plaintiff, appellee.

Before BREYER, TORRUELLA and SELYA, Circuit Judges.

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

Alleging monkey business of a nonscientific sort, plaintiff-appellee Delwood C. Collins, quondam director of the Caribbean Primate Research Center (Center) at the University of Puerto Rico (U.P.R.), brought suit in federal district court against a coterie of defendants. Collins asserted a wide variety of claims (some under federal law, some not) stemming from his abrupt ouster as head of the Center. The case was tried to the bench. The court ruled that Collins, having been denied procedural due process, was entitled to redress against defendant-appellant Manuel Marina-Martinez (Marina) under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 (1982). Collins v. Martinez, 709 F.Supp. 311, 317-19 (D.P.R.1989). The court did not grant reinstatement or other equitable relief, but awarded Collins $3000 in compensatory damages. ¹ Id. at 321. It found against plaintiff on his other statements of claim, id. at 319-21, and in his favor on a permissive counterclaim, id. at 320-21. Marina appeals. We affirm.

I. AN OVERVIEW

The district court has set forth the pertinent facts with particularity and in a manner generally responsive to the record evidence, id. at 312-17, and it would be pleonastic to rehearse them in extenso. Rather, we refer the reader who may thirst for detail to the opinion below. For our purposes, it is enough to limn the nub of the controversy:

1. At the instance of Dr. Norman Maldonado, chancellor of the Medical Sciences Campus (MSC), plaintiff--a renowned researcher and full professor at Emory University--came to U.P.R. in 1983 as director of the Center and a faculty member at the School of Medicine. He retained his Georgia connections, worked at U.P.R. on a part-time basis, and was paid under a series of professional service contracts. The parties envisioned that a Division of Comparative Medicine would eventually be created at the School and that Collins would chair the division. For a variety of reasons, the plan never came fully to fruition.

2. In March 1983, the MSC's Administrative Board (Board) issued 1982-83 Certificate No. 114 to plaintiff, granting him academic rank as a full professor of biochemistry at the School of Medicine. See Appendix A (English translation).

3. On June 11, 1984, anticipating start-up of the Division of Comparative Medicine, Collins wrote to the dean of the School of Medicine, requesting inter alia that he be granted tenure as a professor of biochemistry and comparative medicine. Maldonado formed the division that summer and Collins, still working parttime, undertook plenary supervision of it. In an apparent response to this event and to Collins' June 11 letter, the Board granted him tenure as of August 14 by means of 1984-85 Certificate No. 33. See Appendix B (English translation).

4. In the November 1984 general election, Puerto Rico's voters ousted the party in power. Shortly after the new government took office, the winds of change wafted to U.P.R. Among other things, Marina replaced Maldonado as chancellor on July 1, 1985. Collins' last professional services contract expired at about the same time. Although he continued to work at U.P.R. for a spell, his contract was not further renewed.

5. Marina created an ad hoc committee (Committee) to investigate the feasibility of the Division of Comparative Medicine. Within a matter of weeks, the Committee debunked the division and questioned the validity of Collins' tenure. ²

6. Marina welcomed the Committee's recommendations, disbanded the division, asserted that Collins did not have tenure and offered him transient full-time employment on unpalatable terms. When plaintiff did not accept defendant's offer, he was, in the district court's phrase, "summarily terminated from his relationship with U.P.R." Collins, 709 F.Supp. at 321.

II. THE ISSUE

The only question properly before us is whether the district court erred in finding that Marina should respond in damages for violating rights constitutionally assured to Collins. The question has two principal parts: (1) Did plaintiff possess an interest in his employment at U.P.R. which deserved the prophylaxis of procedural due process? (2) If so, did Marina's actions transgress due process? Unless both of these sub-queries are answered in the affirmative, the judgment below is unsupportable.

The two-part question has a further gloss. In a federal civil rights suit, a government official is entitled to qualified immunity for discretionary acts undertaken within the scope of his authority. Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 638, 107 S.Ct. 3034, 3038, 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987); Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 2738, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982). In determining the applicability of such immunity, we focus on the "objective legal reasonableness" of an official's conduct to ascertain whether the conduct infracted clearly established constitutional rights. Harlow, 457 U.S. at 818-19, 102 S.Ct. at 2738. As we have said before:

In this context, the phrase "clearly established" has a precise definition: "The contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right."

Domegan v. Fair, 859 F.2d 1059, 1063 (1st Cir.1988) (quoting Anderson, 483 U.S. at 640, 107 S.Ct. at 3039).

In this case, Marina raises the qualified immunity defense as to both prongs of the bifurcated question. He contends that, at the very least, it was not "clearly established" that Collins had a constitutionally protected property interest in his tenure at U.P.R. Marina also contends that his handling of Collins' situation was not unreasonable. Because these assertions (and hence, the entire issue of qualified immunity) are imbricated with the merits and the district court's factfinding in respect thereto, we discuss this special defense in connection with our discussion of the merits. See Unwin v. Campbell, 863 F.2d 124, 136-37 (1st Cir.1988) (declining to grant Rule 56 motion raising qualified immunity defense because factual disputes existed); Domegan, 859 F.2d at 1064-65 (similar).

III. WHETHER PROCESS WAS DUE

A. The Nature of Plaintiff's Interest.

It is crystal clear that plaintiff's entitlement to procedural due process hinges, in the first instance, on whether he had a property interest in his tenured status at U.P.R. See Cleveland Board of Education v. Loudermill, 470 U.S. 532, 538, 105 S.Ct. 1487, 1491, 84 L.Ed.2d 494 (1985); Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 576-78, 92 S.Ct. 2701, 2708-09, 33 L.Ed.2d 548 (1972). Such property rights as Collins possessed arose under Puerto Rico law, not by virtue of the federal Constitution. That is to say, "[t]he sufficiency of a claim of entitlement to a property interest in public employment must be measured by, and decided with reference to, local law." Rosario-Torres v. Hernandez-Colon, 889 F.2d 314, 319 (1st Cir.1989) (en banc).

The district court, applying this yardstick, found specifically that, by virtue of the tenure grant, "Dr. Collins obtained a protectible property interest which the University could confiscate only after affording [him] due process of law." Collins, 709 F.Supp. at 319. Appellant demurs. He claims that Collins, as a part-time administrator, ³ did not qualify for tenure under U.P.R.'s rules, and thus, could not have received it. We have set out the pertinent portions of U.P.R.'s general regulations relating to faculty tenure (Regulations) in Appendix C. The district court reviewed the Regulations and found that, although plaintiff was not eligible to receive "regular" tenure under section 50.3 (he had not "work[ed] full time ... for a period of five (5) years" at U.P.R.), he was eligible to receive--and did in fact receive--"special" tenure under section 50.5.5.1. Collins, 709 F.Supp. at 318-19. Defendant attacks the finding on both legal and factual fronts. Neither sortie is effective.

As a legal matter, the district court's construction of section 50.5.5.1 as dispensing with any requirement that the recipient of special tenure be employed full time, Collins, 709 F.Supp. at 318-19, is unimpugnable. For one thing, it comports with the plain language of the regulation. For another thing, since special tenure can, by the terms of section 50.5.5.1, be granted without any probationary or trial period at all, it is difficult to fathom how the sort of historical full-time requirement applicable to regular tenure, see Regulations, Sec. 50.3, might attach.

As a factual matter, the district court's finding that special tenure was duly conferred on Collins must also be sustained. Appellant contends that, to be effective, the grant of tenure required both (a) proof of Collins' tenured status at Emory University, and (b) approval by the president of U.P.R. But, the district court found that these requirements were fulfilled and labelled appellant's contrary contention "nothing more than an invention ex post facto." Collins, 709 F.Supp. at 318; see also id. at 313 n. 4; cf. Loudermill, 470 U.S. at 539 n. 5, 105 S.Ct. at 2704 n. 5 (employer "cannot escape its constitutional obligations by rephrasing the basis for termination as a reason why [plaintiff] should not have been hired in the first place"). At any rate, there was adequate proof that the requirements were satisfied.

As to the first, Collins testified, without contradiction, that in his "original submission for tenure in 1984," he furnished the Board proper documentation verifying his tenure at Emory. ⁴ Perhaps more to the point, ...