Hughes v. Bedsole
| Citation | 48 F.3d 1376 |
| Decision Date | 15 March 1995 |
| Docket Number | No. 94-1299,94-1299 |
| Parties | 67 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. (BNA) 440, 66 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 43,518, 32 Fed.R.Serv.3d 310, 4 A.D. Cases 173, 9 A.D.D. 583, 6 NDLR P 155 Sandra K. HUGHES, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Morris BEDSOLE, both individually and in his official capacity as Sheriff of Cumberland County, North Carolina; James D. Bowser, both individually and in his official capacity as a Major of the Cumberland County Sheriff's Department; Cumberland County Sheriff's Department; Cumberland County, North Carolina; Western Surety Company, Incorporated, Defendants-Appellees. Southern States Police Benevolent Association, Amicus Curiae. |
| Court | United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (4th Circuit) |
ARGUED: Robert James Willis, Raleigh, NC, for appellant. Joseph Michael McGuinness, McGuinness & Parlagreco, Elizabethtown, NC, for amicus curiae. Craig A. Reutlinger, Van Hoy, Reutlinger & Taylor, Charlotte, NC, Bobby Grey Deaver, Fayetteville, NC, for appellees. ON BRIEF: Philip M. Van Hoy, Van Hoy, Reutlinger & Taylor, Charlotte, NC, for appellees Cumberland County, Sheriff's Dept., Bowser, and Bedsole; Larry J. McGlothlin, Fayetteville, NC, for appellee Bowser.
Before RUSSELL and HALL, Circuit Judges, and WILLIAMS, Senior United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Virginia, sitting by designation.
Affirmed by published opinion. Judge RUSSELL wrote the opinion, in which Judge HALL and Senior Judge WILLIAMS joined.
Plaintiff-Appellant Sandra K. Hughes appeals the district court's decision dismissing on summary judgment her claims that her discharge from her position as a jail shift supervisor was unlawfully motivated by her sex, her exercise of her right to free speech, and her handicapped status. We affirm.
The Sheriff's Department of Cumberland County, North Carolina (CCSD), first employed Hughes in 1976 as a matron in the Cumberland County Jail. After eight and one-half years as a matron, she became a road patrol officer. While working on the road patrol on August 5, 1986, Hughes injured her right arm when she was involved in a car accident. The accident left her with a permanent injury to her arm diagnosed as "persistent lateral epicondylitis" (or "tennis elbow"). Joint Appendix (JA) at 308, 324-25. The injury restricted the type of work that Hughes could perform, but it did not prevent her from performing the essential functions of a full-time road patrol officer.
Hughes was promoted in March 1988 and became the first female sergeant and shift supervisor in the history of the Cumberland County Jail. Apparently dissatisfied with some of the working conditions at the jail, Hughes met with Reverend Norman Mitchell, the Chaplain of the Jail, in late February or early March, 1989. At the meeting, Hughes expressed concerns regarding understaffing at CCSD and the threat that this understaffing posed to the safety of persons housed or employed at the jail. She also discussed the improper training of certain jail personnel and complaints from some female employees about derogatory remarks made to them by male employees. Hughes arranged for other jail employees to meet with Mitchell and voice similar concerns. Mitchell relayed Hughes' concerns to Cumberland County Sheriff Morris Bedsole, whereupon Bedsole requested a meeting with Hughes and Mitchell to discuss the matters.
At some point before March 16, 1989, 1 Hughes and Mitchell met with Bedsole to discuss Hughes' concerns regarding understaffing, improper training, and derogatory remarks made by male employees to female employees. Bedsole was sympathetic to Hughes' understaffing concerns, but he told her that he could not hire more employees until the Cumberland County Commission approved the new CCSD budget. Bedsole assured her he would investigate into conditions at the jail, and he accepted two of Hughes' suggestions of employees who might serve as training officers to alleviate any training deficiency.
On March 16, 1989, a member of the jail ministry team left two jail catwalk doors unlocked during Hughes' shift. Bedsole suspended Hughes for three days without pay because of the incident. After being counseled by CCSD Major James D. Bowser about this security violation, Hughes admitted telling Bowser that "he could take her job and shove it," or words to that effect. JA at 99.
On March 24, 1989, a second incident occurred when a jail employee left a jail door unlocked during Hughes' shift. On March 27, 1989, in a meeting with Bedsole, Bowser, CCSD Major Richard Washburn, and George T. Franks, the Sheriff's Legal Advisor, Washburn informed Hughes that she was discharged. Hughes received a confirmation letter from Bedsole the next day. Neither Washburn nor Bedsole informed Hughes at the time specifically why she was fired, but Hughes later learned when she applied for unemployment compensation that Bedsole discharged her because of the two security violations involving unlocked doors that had occurred during her shift.
Other evidence before the district court at summary judgment demonstrated Hughes' attitude towards her working environment. For instance, between the two incidents of the unlocked doors, Hughes went to Washburn, her immediate superior, and asked that she be transferred to some other position even if it meant surrendering her sergeant's stripes. Leroy Park, another platoon sergeant at the CCSD jail, testified that during this same time, Hughes had turned sour against the department and was continually complaining to others about the working conditions at the jail. 2
Following her discharge, Hughes filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The EEOC conducted an investigation and furnished Hughes with a right to sue letter. As part of the investigation, an EEOC investigator interviewed Bedsole. The EEOC file was destroyed, but Hughes filed in this action the affidavit of the EEOC investigator who interviewed Bedsole, in which the investigator attests to the accuracy of a copy of her handwritten notes attached to her affidavit. In her notes, the interviewer wrote that Bedsole said that CCSD "tried to get people to help [Hughes]" but that "there were problems on her shift" and that she "caused problems with some of her employees." JA at 232. The investigator also wrote that Bedsole said that Hughes "was not demoted because [he] couldn't put her back on the road (a lot of injuries) nor could she be put down into a jailer's position." Id. at 232-33.
On December 12, 1991, Hughes filed this action in the Eastern District of North Carolina against Defendants-Appellees Cumberland County, CCSD, Bedsole and Bowser, in their official and individual capacities, and the Western Surety Company, Inc., under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983, the First Amendment, the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, 29 U.S.C. Sec. 794, Secs. 1, 12, 14, and 19 of Article I of the North Carolina Constitution, N.C.Gen.Stat. Sec. 58-76-5, and the North Carolina common law of wrongful discharge. Hughes complained that her recommendation for discharge and her actual discharge were unlawfully motivated by the exercise of her right to free speech concerning a matter of public concern, by her sex, and by the handicapped status of her right arm.
To support her claim, Hughes alleged in her affidavit that no other shift sergeant had ever been fired for an incident in which a jail employee left a door unlocked during the shift supervised by that sergeant. She produced specific CCSD personnel records demonstrating six incidents in which jail employees had left doors unsecured. The evidence details the one-day suspensions of the six jailers involved in five of the incidents but does not document any punishment, or lack of punishment, for the respective sergeants on duty. Hughes, however, did state in her affidavit that she knew "for a fact" that a male shift sergeant, who the parties stipulated was the sergeant on duty with respect to one of the incidents, did not suffer any disciplinary action resulting in loss of pay. Hughes also alleged that it was her "understanding" that none of the shift sergeants who were on duty when the incidents occurred were discharged or suspended with loss of pay for the incidents. JA at 307-08. Furthermore, she stated in her affidavit that she was the only sergeant who had spoken to Mitchell and Bedsole about the mismanagement of the jail.
On September 16, 1993, Appellees filed motions for summary judgment on all claims; and the district court heard the motions on December 29, 1993. During the hearing, the district court raised a number of factual issues sua sponte that Appellees had not identified in their summary judgment motion and supporting memorandum. The district court granted Appellees summary judgment on January 4, 1994. In dismissing Hughes' claims, the court relied on the absence of certain factual evidence on three of the four areas that were raised sua sponte by the Court during the December 29 hearing.
On January 6, 1994, Hughes filed a motion under Fed.R.Civ.P. 59(e) to alter or amend the judgment of the district court. Among other things, she attached to her motion a supplemental affidavit in which she attested to the existence of jury issues with respect to certain factual issues the court had raised sua sponte. The district court denied Hughes' motion by an order filed January 31, 1994, and expressly refused to consider any evidence that was not in the record "at the time of the rendition of the judgment" entered on January 4, 1994. JA at 524.
Hughes first complains that the district court committed reversible error by reviewing factual issues sua sponte in consideration of Appellees' summary judgment motion without giving her a reasonable opportunity to submit relevant previously-obtained evidence. The Supreme Court has held that the party moving for summary judgment must demonstrate that "there is...
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