Hamilton v. School Committee of City of Boston

• Decision Date: 17 November 1989
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 89-01871.
• Citation: 725 F. Supp. 641
• Parties: Lorraine Frances HAMILTON, Plaintiff, v. The SCHOOL COMMITTEE OF the CITY OF BOSTON and Laval S. Wilson, Superintendent of the Boston Public School System, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Massachusetts

725 F. Supp. 641

Lorraine Frances HAMILTON, Plaintiff, v. The SCHOOL COMMITTEE OF the CITY OF BOSTON and Laval S. Wilson, Superintendent of the Boston Public School System, Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 89-01871.

United States District Court, D. Massachusetts.

November 17, 1989.

Keith S. Halpern, Silverglate Gertner Fine & Good, Boston, Mass., for plaintiff.

John S. Stadler, Boston Public Schools, Special Asst. Corp. Counsel, Boston, Mass., for defendants.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

SKINNER, District Judge.

Plaintiff, Lorraine Hamilton, filed this action to enforce an agreement between the parties that settled plaintiff's prior sex discrimination action, No. 82-3028-S (Count I of the complaint). Plaintiff also claims that defendants' alleged breach of that agreement constitutes continuing sex discrimination in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e (Count II of the complaint).

In the original action, plaintiff claimed that in 1980 defendants discriminated against her on the basis of sex, in violation of Title VII, by appointing a black man as Headmaster of Jamaica Plain High School instead of plaintiff. Plaintiff had undergone a rating and screening process required under a desegregation order from earlier race discrimination litigation against the School Committee. She alleged that she was the better qualified candidate but was denied the appointment because she was a woman.

The settlement agreement was executed in August 1987. At that time, the Title VII action was removed from the trial calendar. The settlement agreement was never filed in court, nor was I informed of its contents. The matter lay dormant until June 24, 1988, when I dismissed the case without prejudice after notification by counsel for the parties that the action had been settled. On June 28, 1988, the parties filed a stipulation purporting to dismiss the action with prejudice. This stipulation was not docketed and does not appear in the court's file of the case. Neither the agreement, the order of dismissal, nor the stipulation suggests that the court would retain jurisdiction to enforce the settlement agreement.

Under the settlement agreement, plaintiff was given the rank and salary of a headmaster. Defendants further agreed to appoint plaintiff "on a permanent basis, without going through a rating and screening process, to the first Headmaster position which becomes available and for which she expresses interest." This obligation was contingent on the parties' obtaining a federal judge's approval of defendants' waiver of the rating and screening process that normally precedes such an appointment. If judicial approval were not obtained, defendants agreed to appoint plaintiff "to the first Acting Headmaster position which becomes available and for which she expresses interest."

Plaintiff claims that defendants violated this agreement by transferring a headmaster whose school had been closed to a vacancy at the Charlestown High School instead of naming plaintiff Acting Headmaster of that school. Defendants argue that because the governing labor agreement requires them to reassign "involuntarily excessed" headmasters before making new appointments, no acting headmaster position ever became available at Charlestown High. Plaintiff responds that there is no meaningful distinction between "headmaster positions" and "acting headmaster positions." Because she expressed interest in the Charlestown vacancy, she should have been appointed to that position, albeit on an acting basis. The parties have not sought judicial approval of a waiver, and plaintiff is not asking to be appointed "on a permanent basis."

Plaintiff moved for a preliminary injunction ordering her appointment to the Charlestown position. I asked the parties to brief the issue of subject matter jurisdiction. I have determined that this court has jurisdiction to enforce the settlement agreement and that the matter should proceed to an evidentiary hearing.

Subject Matter Jurisdiction

The jurisdiction of a federal court is limited. "The fair presumption is ... that a cause is without its jurisdiction till the contrary appears." Turner v. Bank of North America, 4 Dall. (4 U.S.) 7, 10, 1 L.Ed. 718, 719 (1799). The burden of establishing jurisdiction in this case is on plaintiff. Cf. McNutt v. General Motors Acceptance Corp., 298 U.S. 178, 182-83, 56 S.Ct. 780, 782, 80 L.Ed. 1135 (1936).

A. Inherent Jurisdiction to Enforce Settlement under Count I

There are two lines of authority on whether the district court has jurisdiction to enforce a settlement agreement after the underlying federal action has been dismissed. According to Aro Corp. v. Allied Witan Co., 531 F.2d 1368 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 862, 97 S.Ct. 165, 50 L.Ed.2d 140 (1976), and cases following it, the district court has "inherent" power to enforce agreements that settle federal cases. Such an agreement cannot be viewed independently of the original lawsuit. Jurisdiction is necessary to implement the federal policy in favor of settlements. Two leading cases, Fairfax Countywide Citizens v. Fairfax County, 571 F.2d 1299 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 1047, 99 S.Ct. 722, 58 L.Ed.2d 706 (1978), and McCall-Bey v. Franzen, 777 F.2d 1178 (7th Cir.1985), state that there is no inherent jurisdiction to enforce settlements. There is agreement that while a case is pending, or whenever the court retains jurisdiction for the purpose, a district court may enforce a settlement agreement as part of its ancillary jurisdiction. But the latter cases hold that once a case is finally dismissed, the party seeking enforcement must present independent grounds of federal jurisdiction over the contract dispute.

In Aro, the parties executed a license agreement in settlement of the plaintiff's patent infringement suit. The plaintiff subsequently moved to vacate the order of dismissal under Fed.R.Civ.P. 60(b) and for specific performance of the agreement. The trial judge reinstated the case, enjoined the defendant from breaching the agreement, and again dismissed the complaint. This procedure was approved on appeal.

In Fairfax, a civil rights case, the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit rejected Aro's holding that the district court has inherent power to enforce a settlement after vacating a dismissal order under Rule 60(b):

We are of the opinion that the district court is not so empowered unless the agreement had been approved and incorporated into an order of the court, or, at the time the court is requested to enforce the agreement, there exists some independent ground upon which to base federal jurisdiction.

571 F.2d at 1303 (footnote omitted). The court distinguished the cases relied on in Aro as discussing the court's remedial power in actions over which it already had jurisdiction. "In our view, the inherent power of a district court to enforce settlement agreements, like any other power inherently vested in a federal court, presupposes the existence of federal jurisdiction over the case or controversy." Fairfax, 571 F.2d at 1304. The court further held that "derivative jurisdiction should be grounded on something more substantial than a mere showing that the settlement agreement would not have been entered into but for the existence of litigation pending in federal court." Id. at 1305. Fairfax disputes Aro's concern that settlement would become a "trap for the unwary":

We think that this is not so. As in the instant case where federal jurisdiction to sue for a breach of a settlement agreement does not otherwise exist, a plaintiff who claims a breach of his settlement agreement has available two courses of action. He may take his contract claim to state court where he may seek enforcement of the settlement agreement. Because enforceability is likely to turn on questions of state law, the state court is an appropriate forum for resolving this dispute. Alternatively, the injured plaintiff may file a Rule 60(b)(6) motion in federal court, requesting that the prior dismissal order be vacated and the case restored to the court's trial docket. This restores the litigants to the status quo ante and allows the plaintiff to prove his case and obtain his relief on the merits of the underlying claim.

Id. at 1305-06 (footnote omitted).

McCall-Bey, 777 F.2d 1178, also involved a civil rights plaintiff. The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit adopted the Fairfax analysis and held that a district court must explicitly retain jurisdiction in order to have authority over purely derivative enforcement claims:

No statute confers such a jurisdiction and we hesitate to use so formless a concept as inherent power to give the federal courts an indefinite jurisdiction over disputes in which the federal interest may be nonexistent. If the parties want the district judge to retain jurisdiction they had better persuade him to do so.

McCall-Bey, 777 F.2d at 1187. Judicial review of a settlement under McCall-Bey would presumably determine in advance that (1) specific enforcement of its terms would not be contrary to public policy and (2) there is a sufficient federal interest in the case to warrant federal, rather than local, enforcement after adjudication of the underlying claim is foreclosed by its dismissal.

The court in McCall-Bey strained to find that the district judge had intentionally, if indirectly, retained jurisdiction to enforce the settlement. The dismissal order referred to the parties' stipulation, which stated that it was made pursuant to the terms and conditions in the settlement agreement; one of those terms conferred a right to petition the district court to enforce the agreement. The court of appeals generously read this as a request that the court retain jurisdiction. Since the district court had followed the settlement negotiations and later treated the dismissal as conditional, it had retained jurisdiction over the case. No such argument is available in this case, since I was not...