Hill v. City of Long Beach, B077373

• Decision Date: 14 March 1995
• Docket Number: No. B077373,B077373
• Citation: 33 Cal.App.4th 1684,40 Cal.Rptr.2d 125
• Court: California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals
• Parties: Leland R. HILL, Plaintiff, Respondent, and Cross-Appellant, v. The CITY OF LONG BEACH, et al., Defendants, Appellants, and Cross-Respondents.

Page 125

40 Cal.Rptr.2d 125

33 Cal.App.4th 1684

Leland R. HILL, Plaintiff, Respondent, and Cross-Appellant, v. The CITY OF LONG BEACH, et al., Defendants, Appellants, and Cross-Respondents.

No. B077373.

Court of Appeal, Second District, Division 5, California.

March 14, 1995.

Review Denied June 14, 1995.

Adams, Duque & Hazeltine, Richard R. Terzian and Remy Kessler, Los Angeles, for defendants, appellants, and cross-respondents.

Mathews and Evans, Charles Theodore Mathews, William D. Evans, and Eileen M. O'Hare, Pasadena, for plaintiff, respondent, and cross-appellant.

GODOY PEREZ, Associate Justice.

The City of Long Beach, the Long Beach Harbor Department, and the Long Beach Board of Harbor Commissioners (collectively "the City") appeal a judgment entered after a jury trial ordering the City to pay $913,425 in damages to Leland R. Hill for breach of contract. Leland R. Hill cross-appeals the sustaining of the demurrers of the City and the individual defendants to his non-contract causes of action. For the reasons discussed below, we reverse the judgment against the City and direct the trial court to enter judgment for the City as to Hill's contract causes of action. Further, we dismiss Hill's cross-appeal without reaching its merits.

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

Because this appeal comes to us after judgment in Hill's favor, we must view the evidence in the light most favorable to Hill. We must not reweigh the evidence, but rather must defer to the jury's factual findings if there is any substantial evidence to support them. (Hauter v. Zogarts (1975) 14 Cal.3d 104, 111, 120 Cal.Rptr. 681, 534 P.2d 377 ["appellate court is bound to view the evidence in the light most favorable to the party securing the verdict"].) However, we independently review all questions of law, and are not bound by the trial court's rulings in that regard. (Stratton v. First Nat. Life Ins. Co. (1989) 210 Cal.App.3d 1071, 1083, 258 Cal.Rptr. 721 ["We also conduct independent review of the trial court's determination of questions of law. We are not bound by the trial court's stated reasons, if any, supporting its ruling; we review the ruling, not its rationale."].) With these principles in mind, we review the facts in this case.

In 1977, Hill was hired by the Long Beach Harbor Department as an Environmental Specialist. Under the City's two-tier civil service system of "classified" and "unclassified" employees, environmental specialist was a classified position, meaning Hill could be terminated only for good cause.

Hill was a highly valued employee, and starting in 1979 his superiors rewarded his ability and effort with a succession of pay raises and promotions into various unclassified management positions. ¹

Hill's rights under the City's civil service system changed when he became an unclassified employee. No one disputes one of the changes was he gained the right, if removed from an unclassified position, to revert to the classified position he had held before becoming unclassified. What is disputed, however, and the central issue on appeal, is whether Hill held his unclassified position at the City's pleasure and could be removed without good cause, or whether, like a classified employee, good cause was required.

In February 1989, Hill was promoted to the unclassified position of Managing Director for Planning and Engineering in the Harbor Department. He was one of three managing directors who served directly under the Executive Director of the Harbor Department.

In July 1991, newly appointed Executive Director Dillenbeck proposed, and the Commission approved, a reorganization of the Harbor Department's management structure. The three managing director positions were abolished and replaced with the position of one assistant executive director, which was filled by Managing Director Brown. The reorganization thus left Hill without a management position in the Harbor Department.

Hill's employment status after the reorganization is disputed. He contends he was fired. The City argues he was merely demoted. Regardless of whether Hill was told he was fired, ² our review of the record shows he continued to work and draw his managing director salary for two months after the reorganization, and then drew on his accrued vacation pay for one month. At the end of that three-month period, he exercised his right to revert to his last classified position, which was Environmental Specialist, and remained in that position until trial. His employment by the City was thus never interrupted or terminated. ³

In November 1991, Hill filed his complaint against the City of Long Beach, the Long Beach Harbor Department, the Long Beach Board of Harbor Commissioners, Steven Dillenbeck, Ernest Kell, Joel Friedland, David Hauser, Alex Bellehumeur, C. Robert Langslet, and George Talin. ⁴ The complaint alleged contract, tort, and civil rights causes of action.

The defendants filed a number of demurrers to the complaint in its original and amended versions, the details of which are unnecessary to our analysis. The end result of the demurrers was that all non-contract causes of action against the City were dismissed, ⁵ and all causes of action against the individual defendants were dismissed. ⁶ Thus, Hill and the City went to trial on the fourth amended complaint alleging two contract causes of action--straight breach of contract, and breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing.

In April 1993, the case was tried before a jury. After hearing all the evidence, the jury found the City's removal of Hill from the position of Managing Director was without good cause and thus in breach of contract and the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. The jury awarded him $913,425.00 in damages.

The City filed a timely appeal from that judgment.

THE CITY'S APPEAL OF JUDGMENT FOR HILL

I.

In California, the terms and conditions of public employment are determined by law, not contract. As our Supreme Court stated in Miller v. State of California (1977) 18 Cal.3d 808, 135 Cal.Rptr. 386, 557 P.2d 970: "[I]t is well settled in California that public employment is not held by contract but by statute and that, insofar as the duration of such employment is concerned, no employee has a vested contractual right to continue in employment beyond the time or contrary to the terms and conditions fixed by law. [Citations.]" (Id. at pp. 813-814, 135 Cal.Rptr. 386, 557 P.2d 970.) Thus, as a matter of law, Hill was not entitled to contract remedies against the City for his removal from the position of managing director. ⁷ His remedies, if any, were confined to those provided by statute or ordinance.

Trying to distinguish Miller, Hill claims it applies only to civil service employees and he was not such an employee. ⁸ Hill, however, misreads Miller in two ways.

First, the court's statement is phrased as a general principle of law. Nothing in its language suggests it is limited to civil service employees.

Second, the very next sentence in Miller after the one we cite above signals the court considered, and rejected, any distinction between civil service and non-civil service government employees: "Nor is any vested contractual right conferred on the public employee because he occupies a civil service position since it is equally well settled that '[t]he terms and conditions of civil service employment are fixed by statute and not by contract.' [Citations.]" (Id. at p. 814, 135 Cal.Rptr. 386, 557 P.2d 970, emphasis added.) The juxtaposition of these two statements of law by the court--the first more general, the second more specific--joined by the word "Nor," shows the court intended its first pronouncement to apply to all government employees without exception. If the court had intended, as Hill argues, that the principles it was enunciating were to apply only to civil service employees, its first sentence would have been surplusage. We, of course, read our Supreme Court's opinions so as to avoid surplusage, and therefore Hill's interpretation of Miller must be rejected. (See Dyna-Med, Inc. v. Fair Employment & Housing Com. (1987) 43 Cal.3d 1379, 1386-1387, 241 Cal.Rptr. 67, 743 P.2d 1323 [in interpreting statutes, "[a] construction making some words surplusage is to be avoided"]; Brewer v. Patel (1993) 20 Cal.App.4th 1017, 1021, 25 Cal.Rptr.2d 65 [in interpreting regulations, "[t]he fundamental rule of interpretation is to ascertain the intent of the agency issuing the regulation so as to effectuate the purpose of the law. [Citation.] To determine that intent, ... [we must] avoid[ ] an interpretation which renders any language mere surplusage."].)

Hill further attempts to escape Miller's ruling by citing a number of cases ostensibly supporting his contention that the terms and conditions of public employment in a charter city with a civil service system ⁹ can be defined by contract. None of these cases is apposite.

Of the cases Hill cites, Walker v. Northern San Diego County Hospital Dist. (1982) 135 Cal.App.3d 896, 185 Cal.Rptr. 617, comes closest to supporting his position. Walker's precise holding was that it was a factual question for the jury, as opposed to a legal question for the judge, whether a public hospital had promised an employee she would be fired only for good cause. (Id. at p. 905, 185 Cal.Rptr. 617.) Walker's significance here is that the court was willing to submit such a question to a jury even though a statute made the employee an at-will employee. (Id. at p. 900, 185 Cal.Rptr. 617.) Hill presumably hopes we will similarly disregard controlling legal authority, ¹⁰ and decide it is a jury question whether Hill was terminable only for good cause. However, we decline to adopt Walker's reasoning given that it ignores the law and does not even attempt to reconcile its holding with Miller.

Hill also cites Read v. City of Lynwood (1985) 173 Cal.App.3d 437, 219 Cal.Rptr. 26. Read allowed a city employee who was fired under...