Hayes v. City of Wilmington

• Decision Date: 26 May 1978
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 75-75.
• Citation: 451 F. Supp. 696
• Parties: James HAYES, Plaintiff, v. CITY OF WILMINGTON, Delaware and Thomas B. Maloney, Individually and as Mayor of the City of Wilmington, Delaware, Department of Public Safety of the City of Wilmington, Delaware and Norman Levine, Individually and as Commissioner of the Department of Public Safety of the City of Wilmington, Delaware, Wilmington Bureau of Fire and James P. Blackburn and Walter Williams, Francis T. Savage, and Paul A. Hanley, Individually and as Officers of the Wilmington Bureau of Fire, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Delaware

451 F. Supp. 696

James HAYES, Plaintiff, v. CITY OF WILMINGTON, Delaware and Thomas B. Maloney, Individually and as Mayor of the City of Wilmington, Delaware, Department of Public Safety of the City of Wilmington, Delaware and Norman Levine, Individually and as Commissioner of the Department of Public Safety of the City of Wilmington, Delaware, Wilmington Bureau of Fire and James P. Blackburn and Walter Williams, Francis T. Savage, and Paul A. Hanley, Individually and as Officers of the Wilmington Bureau of Fire, Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 75-75.

United States District Court, D. Delaware.

May 26, 1978.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

John S. Grady, of Bader, Dorsey & Kreshtool, Dover, Del., for plaintiff.

Jeffrey S. Goddess, City Sol. and Charles H. Toliver, IV, Asst. City Sol., Wilmington, Del., for defendants.

OPINION

LATCHUM, Chief Judge.

Plaintiff James Hayes has been employed by the defendant City of Wilmington ("City") as a member of the defendant Bureau of Fire since 1960. In March 1973, Hayes was suspended without pay for allegedly violating three of the Bureau of Fire's rules. The suspension lasted approximately four and one-half months and ended immediately after a departmental Trial Board held a hearing on the three charges and found Hayes guilty on all of them. In accordance with the Trial Board's recommendation, Hayes received a sanction of one thousand hours of penalty time and five years of probation.

In 1975, Hayes instituted this action for injunctive and declaratory relief and damages against the City, the Bureau of Fire, the Wilmington Department of Public Safety, and various officers of those three defendants in both their individual and official capacities.¹ He claims (1) that defendants effected his suspension in violation of his constitutional right to procedural due process, (2) that one of the rules he allegedly violated is unconstitutionally vague and overbroad, and (3) that the penalties defendants imposed upon him violated his rights under federal and state law. The parties have filed cross-motions for summary judgment;² this opinion disposes of the issues raised by those motions.

I. BACKGROUND FACTS

On the evening of March 21, 1973, plaintiff Hayes was arrested by a Delaware state policeman and charged with driving under the influence of alcohol in violation of 21 Del.C. § 4176 (1970 Supp.). The police detained Hayes overnight at a state police barracks and took him before a magistrate the following morning, March 22, 1973.³ At approximately 1:15 p. m. that same day, Hayes reported to work. Because he arrived five hours and twenty minutes after his scheduled reporting time of 7:55 a. m., Hayes was asked by his immediate supervisor, Lieutenant Donald Donovan, to fill out a statement indicating why he was not at roll call.⁴ Hayes then made the following statement:

I respectfully wish to report that on this date I was unavoidably detained on personal business and could not report for duty on time.

I did report at the earliest possible time.⁵

Lieutenant Donovan told Hayes that his statement did not provide sufficient detail to meet the requirements of the Bureau's general orders, but he refused to say anything more.⁶ Donovan then informed Hayes that he intended to file charges against him for being late in violation of Rule 170, Section 2 of the Rules and Regulations of the Bureau of Fire⁷ and for failure to provide a complete statement of the reasons for his lateness as required by General Order Z-17.⁸ Donovan forwarded the charges through the departmental mail to the Chief of the Bureau of Fire, James P. Blackburn, who is a defendant in this action.

Blackburn received the charges on March 23, 1973, and, with the concurrence of the Commissioner of the Department of Public Safety, Norman Levine,⁹ another defendant herein, he sent a hand-delivered letter to the plaintiff placing him "on suspension without pay, effective 12:01 A.M. Saturday, March 24, 1973."¹⁰

On March 26, 1973 Hayes submitted another statement to Chief Blackburn in which he admitted being stopped on March 21, 1973 and held overnight by the state police for refusing to take an alcoholic content test.¹¹ Whether that statement was sufficient to satisfy the requirements of General Order Z-17 is a matter of dispute between the parties. On March 30, 1973 Hayes sent another memorandum to Chief Blackburn, informing him that he had appeared in the Court of Common Pleas and refused to waive his right to a jury trial and that he was scheduled to be arraigned in Superior Court on April 6, 1973.¹²

During approximately the same time period, Assistant Chief Barrett Conner conducted an independent investigation of the events that caused Hayes to be late. Based on his review of the police file on the incident and an interview with the arresting officer, Conner determined that Hayes had been stopped because he was observed driving in an erratic manner, that the arresting officer detected a strong odor of alcohol on his breath, that he had refused to submit to any test designed to determine the amount of alcohol in his system, that he had been "loud, abusive and used profane language toward the Trooper," and finally that he had been detained overnight and arraigned the next day in magistrate's court on a charge of driving under the influence of alcohol.¹³ These findings led Conner to file an additional charge against Hayes on April 2, 1973,¹⁴ alleging a violation of Rule 169, Section 23 of the Rules and Regulations, which requires firemen, under pain of suspension or other penalties, to

23. Be governed by the customary rules of good behavior observed by law abiding and self-respecting citizens. Regardless of the time or place, whether in uniform or not, members shall conduct themselves in a manner that will not bring discredit to themselves or to the Department.

Hayes was scheduled to appear before a departmental Trial Board on the two original charges on April 4, 1973, but on April 2, 1973 Chief Blackburn postponed the hearing indefinitely. A factual dispute exists about the reason for the postponement; plaintiff attributes it to the filing of the third charge, while defendants assign the delay to the Bureau of Fire's general practice of postponing Trial Board hearings until after final disposition of any related criminal charges pending against the accused. Another factual dispute concerns whether the plaintiff requested a prompt hearing after his suspension. In this respect, the only clearly established facts are that the plaintiff pleaded guilty to a charge of reckless driving in violation of 21 Del.C. § 4175 on June 21, 1973, that he reported that fact to the Bureau of Fire the same day, and that he appeared before a Trial Board on August 7, 1973.¹⁵

Plaintiff's suspension lasted four and one-half months from March 24, 1973 to August 7, 1973.¹⁶ At his hearing, plaintiff pleaded "guilty with explanation" to the lateness charge and "not guilty" to the other two charges. The Trial Board found him guilty on all three and ordered that he be given fifty penalty hours for being late, 100 penalty hours for failing to provide a complete statement, and 850 penalty hours for conducting himself in a manner which brought discredit on the Bureau of Fire. In addition, Hayes was placed on probation for a period of five years.¹⁷

As to the 1000 penalty hours, Hayes had an option: he could go on suspension for that length of time or work that number of hours overtime without pay on a schedule left to the discretion of the Bureau of Fire. Hayes decided to work off the penalty time¹⁸ and he completed it on March 25, 1974.¹⁹

In Count I of the complaint plaintiff asserts that defendants have violated his constitutional rights in essentially three ways. First, he challenges his suspension on procedural due process grounds. Next, plaintiff claims that Rule 169, Section 23, which requires firemen to conduct themselves as "law abiding and self-respecting citizens," is unconstitutionally vague and overbroad. The third and final federal claim relates to the penalty imposed on the plaintiff. He argues that both the magnitude of the penalty and the option to work 1,000 hours without pay were unreasonable and therefore violative of substantive due process.²⁰

In addition to his federal claims, plaintiff has asked the Court to exercise its pendent jurisdiction over two state law claims, both of which pertain primarily to the penalty imposed upon Hayes. Count II of the complaint alleges that during the relevant time period plaintiff was a third party beneficiary to a collective bargaining agreement entered into by the defendant City and the union that was the exclusive bargaining agent for the employees of the Bureau of Fire. Plaintiff claims that the penalties imposed upon him violate several articles of the agreement and therefore seeks relief on breach of contract grounds.²¹ In Count III the plaintiff argues that, by requiring him to work 1,000 hours without pay, the defendant City violated the Delaware Minimum Wage Law, 19 Del.C. § 902.²²

Defendants have moved for summary judgment on all issues while the plaintiff has requested summary judgment on the following issues only: (1) whether Rule 169, Section 23 is vague and overbroad and therefore violative of plaintiff's due process rights; (2) whether defendants violated plaintiff's procedural due process rights by failing to provide him with a hearing prior to his suspension or "at the very minimum a hearing immediately after his suspension"; and (3) whether the penalty of working without pay violates either substantive due process, Article III, Section B of the collective bargaining agreement, or the Delaware Minimum Wage Law or all three. Having reviewed the salient facts, the Court now turns to the merits of the parties' contentions.

II. FEDERAL CLAIMS AGAINST DEFENDANT CITY

It is well settled that a municipality and its agencies are not "pe...