Haeuser v. Department of Law
| Decision Date | 24 May 2004 |
| Docket Number | No. 02-72249.,02-72249. |
| Citation | 368 F.3d 1091 |
| Parties | Alan F. HAEUSER, Petitioner, v. DEPARTMENT OF LAW, Government of Guam, Civil Service of Guam, Respondents. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit |
Mitchell F. Thompson, Maher & Thompson, P.C., Hagatna, Guam, for the petitioner.
Eric A. Heisel, Assistant Attorney General, Hagatna, Guam, for the respondents.
On Petition for a Writ of Certiorari, D.C. No. CV-A00-21.
Before: REINHARDT, THOMAS and CLIFTON, Circuit Judges.
This case requires us to consider both the timing and the nature of our review of a decision of the Supreme Court of Guam. Specifically, this case presents the following issues: (1) whether a petitioner must at that time seek our review of a decision by the Supreme Court of Guam when that decision remands the case to the trial court for further substantive determinations, and (2) whether our review of a decision of the Supreme Court of Guam under 48 U.S.C. § 1424-2 requires us to give a degree of deference to a conclusion by the Supreme Court that the trial court erred in its factual findings.
Petitioner Alan F. Haeuser seeks review of a judgment denying him back pay despite his wrongful termination from a position with the Department of Law, Government of Guam ("Department"). The trial court initially found that Haeuser fulfilled his duty to mitigate damages and awarded back pay, but the Guam Supreme Court concluded that this factual finding was clearly erroneous and reversed the award. On remand, the trial court entered a judgment denying Haeuser back pay, and this judgment was affirmed by the Guam Supreme Court.
Haeuser contends that there was sufficient evidence in the record to support a finding that he mitigated damages and that the Guam Supreme Court erred in reversing the trial court's previous award to him. The Department argues that Haeuser can contest only the Supreme Court's subsequent decision to affirm the Superior Court's actions on remand and is barred from challenging the Supreme Court's earlier decision because Haeuser did not seek review by this court at that time. We conclude that we can properly review the Guam Supreme Court's earlier decision. We further hold that because we must defer to the territorial supreme court on matters of local law, we may reverse the Supreme Court only if it commits manifest error or is inescapably wrong. Because we hold that the Guam Supreme Court committed manifest error in this case in reversing the Guam Superior Court's findings of fact without completing a review of the evidence upon which those finding were based, we reverse and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
This is the second visit by this case to our court. See Haeuser v. Dep't of Law, 97 F.3d 1152 (9th Cir.1996). Alan Haeuser obtained a position as an assistant attorney general with the Department in February 1990. Pursuant to 4 Guam Code Ann. § 6208.1, assistant attorneys general were placed in the "unclassified" service and had a two-year probation period during which they could not appeal an adverse employment action to the Civil Service Commission.1 After fourteen months of employment, the Department terminated Haeuser, citing unsatisfactory job performance. Haeuser timely appealed his dismissal to the Civil Service Commission of Guam, but the Commission refused to hear the matter based on Haeuser's "unclassified" status under § 6208.1.
Haeuser petitioned the Superior Court of Guam, a trial-level court, for a writ of mandate contending, among other things, that the exemption of assistant attorneys from "classified" status violated Guam's Organic Act.2 The Superior Court denied Haeuser's petition, and the District Court of Guam, Appellate Division affirmed. We reversed that decision and remanded for further proceedings. See Haeuser, 97 F.3d at 1161.
On remand, the Superior Court held that Haeuser's termination was wrongful and ordered Haeuser reinstated to his position within the Department. The Superior Court then held a four-day trial to determine whether Haeuser was entitled to back pay for the period that he was unemployed between 1991 and 1997. During these six years, Haeuser submitted eight applications for legal employment in the public sector but was never hired.3 Haeuser performed some court-appointed work during that time, but his earnings were limited due to his refusal to handle felonies and juvenile cases. Haeuser did not apply for a position either in the private sector or in the federal government, and he did not attempt to open a private practice separate from the court appointments.
The Superior Court ultimately concluded that Haeuser reasonably mitigated damages and awarded him back pay.4 With respect to Haeuser's failure to seek employment with Guam's private law firms, the Superior Court stated:
[T]he Court finds that Petitioner's failure to apply for employment with a private law firm ... did not constitute a failure to mitigate his damages which would preclude an award of back pay. The Court is convinced that it is highly unlikely that Petitioner would have been hired to work at a private law firm had he applied based upon his circumstances at the time.... Thus the Court will reject the argument presented by the Respondent herein which suggested that Petitioner intentionally took himself out of the private sector market and thus this constitutes a failure to mitigate.
The Department appealed the Superior Court's decision. By this time, Guam's judicial system had significantly changed. The appeal from the Superior Court no longer went to the District Court of Guam, Appellate Division, but rather to the recently created Guam Supreme Court.5
In its 1999 opinion, the Guam Supreme Court began by explaining that a "trial court's findings on mitigation of damages are subject to a clearly erroneous standard of review." Haeuser v. Dep't of Law ("Haeuser I") (quoting Sellers v. Delgado College, 902 F.2d 1189, 1194 (5th Cir.1990)), 1999 Guam 12, ¶ 14, 1999 WL 257611. The Haeuser I court then concluded:
The fact that Haeuser did not apply at any private law firms immediately raises serious concerns with the trial court's findings.... We are unable to find the evidentiary support for the trial court's conclusion that Haeuser would not have been hired by any private law firm. Perhaps, if Haeuser had tried to apply to just one private firm and was not hired, the trial court's conclusion would be plausible, in light of the record.... We are left with a definite and firm conviction that the trial court committed a mistake in its conclusions that Haeuser had reasonably mitigated his damages. ... We have not conducted a review of the evidence as presented to the trial court, but rather we have examined the basis of the trial court's conclusions regarding the efforts of Haeuser to mitigate his damages and we find that these conclusions were not plausible in light of the entire record.
Id. at ¶ 20-22 (emphasis added). Pursuant to its conclusion that Haeuser had, in fact, failed to make reasonable efforts to find employment, the Supreme Court reversed and remanded the case for findings consistent with its opinion.
On remand, the Superior Court, stating that it was bound by the Supreme Court's holding, reached the conclusion that Haeuser was not entitled to any back pay because he failed to mitigate damages and his failure to mitigate covered the entire period that he was unemployed. Haeuser appealed this decision to the Guam Supreme Court, which affirmed. See Haeuser v. Dep't of Law ("Haeuser II"), 2002 Guam 8, ¶ 24-26, 2002 WL 1378204. This court then granted Haeuser's petition for writ of certiorari to review the Supreme Court's final decision.
The Department argues that this court must limit its review to the Guam Supreme Court's ruling in Haeuser II because Haeuser's opportunity to seek review of the Supreme Court's ruling in Haeuser I has expired. We do not agree. Our jurisdiction to review decisions by the Guam Supreme Court is governed by 48 U.S.C. § 1424-2 which provides that we may "review by writ of certiorari all final decisions of the highest court of Guam from which a decision could be had." 48 U.S.C. § 1424-2 (emphasis added). Because our jurisdiction is limited to "final decisions" by the Guam Supreme Court, we must determine whether Haeuser I was subject to our review at that time.
Under circumstances nearly identical to the case at hand, we adopted the United States Supreme Court's analysis in Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn, 420 U.S. 469, 95 S.Ct. 1029, 43 L.Ed.2d 328 (1975), for purposes of determining "when a decision of the highest appellate court of Guam is final, although further proceedings on the merits may remain." EIE Guam Corp. v. The Supreme Court of Guam, 191 F.3d 1123, 1125 (9th Cir.1999); Kiaaina v. Jackson, 851 F.2d 287, 289 (9th Cir.1988) ().
Ordinarily, the Supreme Court refuses to review a state court judgment "where anything further remains to be determined by a state court." Cox Broadcasting Corp., 420 U.S. at 477, 95 S.Ct. 1029; Gospel Army v. City of Los Angeles, 331 U.S. 543, 546, 67 S.Ct. 1428, 91 L.Ed. 1662 (1947) () (emphasis added) (quoting Dep't of Banking, State of Nebraska v. Pink, 317 U.S. 264, 267, 63 S.Ct. 233, 87 L.Ed. 254 (1942)). The Guam Supreme Court in Haeuser I remanded the matter...
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