Herrman v. Williams
| Citation | 386 P.3d 925 (Table) |
| Decision Date | 16 December 2016 |
| Docket Number | No. 115,353,115,353 |
| Parties | Elizabeth Herrman, Appellant, v. Brandon Williams, Appellee. |
| Court | Court of Appeals of Kansas |
Elizabeth Herrman, appellant pro se.
Melissa A. Tucker Pope and Richard W. James, of DeVaughn James Injury Lawyers, of Wichita, for appellee.
Before Malone, C.J., Green and Leben, JJ.
On February 25, 2015, Elizabeth Herrman was the substitute teacher for Brandon Williams' language-arts classes at Wichita East High School. When Williams returned to work the next day, his students and some other teachers told him that Herrman had had a variety of inappropriate conversations with his students instead of following his lesson plans. Williams collected these reports and submitted a negative evaluation of Herrman's performance by email to the principal and a few others at the school. Herrman then filed a lawsuit alleging that Williams' email was defamatory and caused her to be fired. The district court granted summary judgment for Williams, finding that Herrman hadn't properly contested any of the facts in Williams' summary-judgment motion and that Williams' statements were protected under what's known as qualified privilege, which serves as a defense to a defamation claim.
Herrman raises three arguments on appeal. First, she claims that the district court abused its discretion when it ruled on the procedural failings of her response to Williams' summary-judgment motion. But her response was filed after the deadline, and it failed to provide any evidence that contradicted Williams' factual statements, so the district court reasonably found that the facts Williams presented weren't contested. Second, Herrman claims that qualified privilege doesn't apply to Williams' email. But the privilege applies to statements made in good faith by a person with a particular interest in the statement to someone else who has the same interest. Williams' email falls squarely within that privilege: in the interest of ensuring that his students have quality teachers, he sent the email to others at the school who share that interest, and the email didn't go beyond the scope of evaluating Herrman's performance in his classroom. And on the facts presented in Williams' motion, there was no evidence of bad faith on his part. Third, Herrman argues that the district judge should have recused himself, but there's absolutely no indication in our record that the judge couldn't be impartial, so it was reasonable for him to remain on the case.
We take our facts from Williams' motion for summary judgment, which provided evidence in support of each factual claim—evidence that Herrman didn't counter with evidence of her own. Williams teaches language arts at Wichita East High School. Herrman was a substitute teacher in the school district. Williams and Herrman have never met.
Substitute teachers are temporary employees who can be fired without notice for any reason. A substitute teacher's responsibility is to follow the lesson plans prepared by the teacher. On February 25, 2015, Herrman taught Williams' classes. When Williams returned to school the next day, he discovered that his students hadn't completed their assignments.
On February 27, Williams wrote an email negatively evaluating Herrman's performance as a substitute teacher and sent it to the principal, the secretary, and two other language-arts teachers. The secretary forwarded the email to Heather Kiehl, who manages the substitute-teacher office for the school district, and Kiehl's assistant. It's standard practice to evaluate a substitute's performance.
Williams said he gave Herrman's performance one star "because negative stars are not available." He said that Herrman hadn't collected assignments in his creative-writing class because, according to reports from his students, Herrman thought that he probably wasn't a good teacher and that the assignment was "stupid because it did not follow the rules of literature." The email's subject line is "Shocking Statements from My Substitute on 2/25/15," and in it Williams wrote that Herrman "either blatantly disregarded her instructions or distracted students by having conversations on a wide variety of inappropriate and shocking topics." Williams noted that "students tend to embellish their stories" but added that the students' reports were confirmed by other teachers and school employees. He wrote that his students had reported to him that Herrman had told them she'd had two abortions, though he didn't know the context in which the subject came up. He then listed, without further comment, 28 statements that Herrman made or topics she discussed in his classroom, according to his students. The list includes some basic biographical facts about Herrman (that she's a Libertarian, that she has a journalism degree, that she has cats) as well as Herrman's opinions on the death of Eric Garner, homosexuality, and President Obama.
Herrman responded to Williams' email with a personal statement, dated March 4, in which she provided her version of what had happened. (She included this document with her amended petition.) Herrman claimed that most of the statements listed in Williams' email had been taken out of context, and she attempted to provide that context in her statement. According to Herrman, the students had "a bad attitude and no interest in the assignment," so she decided to give them "a quick, five-minute, motivational speech about words and writing." She wrote that after the students broke into groups, they weren't doing the assignment and were having conversations about politics and sex and pregnancy—she said that most of the statements on Williams' list happened during these student-initiated conversations while she was trying to steer them back to the assignment. She admitted that she had discussed her abortions with the students: "I don't know why I revealed such personal information but I suppose I just got worn down by the questions." But she completely denied making some other statements attributed to her, including that she didn't want to ruin her life by having kids and that "[p]oor black people have children for welfare."
On March 9, Herrman attended a personnel conference with Kiehl, the substitute-teacher manager, to discuss the negative evaluation. According to Kiehl, substitute teachers who receive five or more negative evaluations are usually fired. A written summary of the conference said that Herrman had received seven negative evaluations in the previous 8 years and that the most recent evaluation (from Williams) had reported that Herrman had made "numerous inappropriate comments during class time." On the same day, the school district accepted Herrman's resignation in place of firing her.
In April 2015, Herrman sued Williams for defamation based on the contents of his email evaluation. After the district court denied Herrman's motion for summary judgment, she wrote a letter asking the district judge to recuse (or disqualify) himself from presiding over the case any longer because she felt intimidated by him during hearings. Williams filed a summary-judgment motion in October 2015. At a hearing in December, the district court denied Herrman's recusal motion and granted Williams' motion for summary judgment.
Herrman now appeals to this court.
Herrman argues that the district court shouldn't have granted summary judgment for Williams because the doctrine of qualified privilege—which is a defense to defamation—doesn't apply to Williams' statements.
We begin with an explanation of how summary judgment works. A motion for summary judgment asks the court to decide the case without holding a trial because none of the relevant facts are in dispute and, based on those facts, the law clearly dictates who should win. K.S.A. 2015 Supp. 60–256 ; Black's Law Dictionary 1664 (10th ed. 2014). Stated in more traditional legal terms, a district court should grant summary judgment when the pleadings, discovery responses, and affidavits show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the party who filed the motion is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Drouhard–Nordhus v. Rosenquist , 301 Kan. 618, 622, 345 P.3d 281 (2015). The district court should resolve all facts and inferences in favor of the party opposing summary judgment. 301 Kan. at 622. But the opposing party, to avoid summary judgment, must present evidence showing that the material facts—facts that determine the outcome of the case—are genuinely disputed. See 301 Kan. at 622. When the opposing party loses and appeals, we apply the same rules, and if there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and the district court correctly applied the law, we will hold that summary judgment was properly granted. 301 Kan. at 622. So there are two parts to a summary-judgment ruling: the facts and the law.
We'll start with the facts. The procedure for summary-judgment motions is set out in Supreme Court Rule 141. A summary-judgment motion should list, in numbered paragraphs, the uncontested and material facts, citing evidence to support those facts. Supreme Court Rule 141(a) (2015 Kan. Ct. R. Annot. 242). Then the opposing party has 21 days to respond. Supreme Court Rule 141(b)(2) (2015 Kan. Ct. R. Annot. 242). The response should list the numbered factual statements and state, for each one, whether it is "uncontroverted," "uncontroverted for purposes of the motion only," or "controverted." Supreme Court Rule 141(b)(1) (2015 Kan. Ct. R. Annot. 242). "Controverted" just means "contested"—to deny that something is true. Black's Law Dictionary 404 (10th ed. 2014). To controvert a factual statement, the opposing party must summarize and cite to some conflicting evidence. Supreme Court Rule 141(b)(1) (2015 Kan. Ct. R. Annot. 242). If the opposing party doesn't respond to the motion within 21...
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...2) that are communicated to someone else and (3) that injure the reputation ofthe person defamed." Herrman v. Williams, 386 P.3d 925, 2016 WL 7324446, *4 (Kan. Ct. App. Dec. 16, 2016). Defendant contends that Plaintiff cannot establish that the statement was false and that it resulted in Pl......