Karr v. Townsend

• Decision Date: 01 April 1985
• Docket Number: Civ. No. 84-5100.
• Citation: 606 F. Supp. 1121
• Parties: Glen KARR, Plaintiff, v. Sheriff Don TOWNSEND, Individually and in his Official Capacity, and Benton County, Arkansas, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of Arkansas

606 F. Supp. 1121

Glen KARR, Plaintiff, v. Sheriff Don TOWNSEND, Individually and in his Official Capacity, and Benton County, Arkansas, Defendants.

Civ. No. 84-5100.

United States District Court, W.D. Arkansas, Fayetteville Division.

April 1, 1985.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Gregory T. Karber, Pryor, Robinson & Barry, Fort Smith, Ark., for plaintiff.

Xollie Duncan, Deputy Pros. Atty., Bentonville, Ark., E.E. Maglothin, Jr., Fayetteville, Ark., for defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

H. FRANKLIN WATERS, Chief Judge.

Plaintiff, Glen Karr, from the summer of 1980 to his termination in April of 1984, was a deputy sheriff of Benton County, Arkansas. On April 23, 1984, he was terminated from his employment by the acting sheriff, Don Townsend, who had been appointed pursuant to law by the Quorum Court of Benton County (the legislative body in that county). Mr. Townsend's predecessor, Donald H. Rystrom, had been removed from office for alleged violations of law and violations of the code of ethics while the Sheriff of Benton County.

Plaintiff filed suit against the acting sheriff, Don Townsend, and in his complaint and amended complaint alleges that he was wrongfully terminated, infringing certain constitutional rights. Specifically, he alleges that he was terminated for stigmatizing reasons without being given the opportunity to clear his name and in violation of certain property rights granted to him by the job without a due process hearing. In addition, he contends that Sheriff Townsend libeled him at and after the time of his termination. He seeks judgment against Sheriff Townsend in the amount of $500,000.00; for reinstatement to his job; for past and future wages at the rate of $1,100.00 per month plus all employee benefits that would have been afforded him had he not been terminated; for judgment declaring that his discharge was wrongful; for injunctive relief ordering defendant to cease and refrain from further statements "made damaging to the reputation, liberty and property interests of the plaintiff"; for attorney's fees and costs and all other proper relief.

The court has jurisdiction under the provisions of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and 28 U.S.C. §§ 1343(3) and (4). The case was tried to the court on January 24 and 25, 1985, and, at the conclusion of the evidence, the attorneys for the parties were given an opportunity to brief the issues. The briefs have been received and considered, and the court is now prepared to rule.

The court has, in the past, expressed its concern about whether federal courts should repeatedly be placed in the position of substituting the court's judgment for that of elected officials in determining who should be employed by them. See, for example, this court's discussion of that matter in Johnson v. City Council of Green Forest, Ark., 545 F.Supp. 43 (W.D. Ark.1982).

This case amply exemplifies why the court is concerned in that respect. It is only necessary to read the headlines of the various newspaper articles which were submitted as exhibits in this case to understand the court's concern in that regard. (Defendants' Ex. 14, 16, 20, 21, 22 and 23, and Plaintiff's Ex. 11 and 16.) Those newspaper articles demonstrate that there is little chance that the court can have at its disposal, after a couple of days of the structured testimony of a trial, all of the "things" which an elected official must consider to determine who shall work for him, in the interest of the public which he is elected to represent.

Those newspaper articles demonstrate that there was a great deal of controversy in Benton County at the time that this matter arose of considerable public interest. The elected sheriff, Donald H. Rystrom, had just been removed from office because of alleged wrongdoing in office, and Sheriff Townsend had been appointed his successor by the Quorum Court of Benton County, the legislative body for the county authorized by law to make such appointment. It is obvious from the testimony in the case and from a mere reading of these newspaper articles that Sheriff Townsend faced an almost impossible job when he took office because of the very substantial rift that had been created by the Rystrom matter and other matters. In fact, because the problems of the sheriff's office in Benton County are so generally known in this area, the court could probably take judicial notice of the fact that the job of sheriff in Benton County, for the last several years, has had a "checkered" history. The record reflects, and the newspaper articles indicate (for example, Defendants' Ex. 14) that the rift in the sheriff's office caused by the Rystrom matter existed to the extent that even before the incident which resulted in this lawsuit occurred, five other deputies either quit or were fired after the removal of Rystrom from office. The incident which resulted in this lawsuit not only resulted in the termination of Karr, but two other deputies, Capt. Rymer Clark and Lt. Jerry Price.

The record reflects that, after the termination of Karr, Price and Clark, there was a great deal of news media interest in the matter, and that the persons terminated tried their case in the newspapers by making rather blunt, and sometimes venomous, comments about Sheriff Townsend and the way that he was running his office. For example, the Northwest Arkansas Morning News, in an article dated April 20, 1984 (Defendants' Ex. 14), quoted Karr as saying, "As long as the office is being run by Clinger and not the Sheriff, I'd rather not work there anyway." In that same article, the reporter quotes Rystrom as saying that "a lot of taxpayers' money is going down the drain" and that the sheriff's office should be investigated. The persons terminated are also quoted in that article as indicating that it is their belief that the termination was political since one of those terminated, Jerry Price, was running for sheriff of Benton County at the time. A letter to the editor from plaintiff Karr published in the Rogers Daily News on May 6, 1984 (Defendants' Ex. 21), contains the following allegations by Karr:

Why do you suppose some officials in Benton County are trying to discredit me and my family? Is it the fact that I testified to the truth at the Rystrom trial? Is it the fact that my wife is running for justice of the peace? Do I know too much?

In addition to the outright allegations of wrongdoing by the sheriff's office headed by Sheriff Townsend, and the thinly veiled implication by Karr that he was being persecuted either because he testified for Rystrom at Rystrom's criminal trial; that his wife was running for the quorum court; or that he "knew too much," the evidence indicates that the attacks became viciously personal. A May 10, 1984, article in the Benton County Daily Democrat (Defendants' Ex. 22) indicates that questions were raised in the news media by some of those terminated about whether Sheriff Townsend had received a discharge "other than honorable" when he was discharged from the Marine Corps after serving in Vietnam 16 years before.

There is additional testimony in the record and additional evidence in the form of trial exhibits such as the news media reports which indicate that the atmosphere in the sheriff's office at the time that Rystrom was removed from office and Townsend was appointed to get control of and run the office was highly charged, to say the least. The court believes that the summarization of the circumstances set forth above is important to understand the evidence adduced in relation to the allegations of the complaint and amended complaint, and to properly set the stage for the court's analysis of the testimony and other evidence which is relevant to the allegations of the plaintiff. The court believes that these circumstances and the atmosphere created by the matters set forth above is particularly important when considering a case involving the termination of a deputy sheriff in a county such as Benton County which is largely rural in nature, with its law enforcement duties depending to a great extent upon the sheriff and his few deputies. For an excellent discussion of the need to balance individual rights perceived by some courts to be dictated by the Constitution, with the public interest, see McBee v. Jim Hogg County, Texas, et al., 703 F.2d 834 (5th Cir.1983).

The above discussion by the court of the circumstances leading to this controversy was not made to, in any way, attempt to justify any violation of plaintiff's constitutional rights at the time that he was terminated. Instead, as already indicated, the court believes that the matters recited above are relevant and necessary to a proper understanding of the evidence which this court must analyze to decide the issues before it. The court willingly accepts its responsibility to analyze that evidence to determine whether Mr. Karr's rights as delineated by courts superior to this one have, in fact, been violated by the manner in which he was terminated as a deputy sheriff of Benton County.

In that regard, plaintiff's allegations may be summarized as follows:

(a) The reasons given for his termination at the time were stigmatizing and that, thus, he was denied liberty without due process of law in that he was not provided a name-clearing hearing prior to his termination.

(b) The reasons given for his termination by Sheriff Townsend were libelous per se.

(c) He was denied property without due process of law in that he had a property right to his job and was not provided a hearing prior to termination.

The court will discuss these issues in the order listed above.

Right to Name-Clearing Hearing

There are two circumstances which are at least arguably applicable to this case in which the United States Supreme Court has found that a public employee is entitled to a hearing prior to termination. One of those is where the circumstances show that the employee was denied "liberty" without due process of law, and the other is where he has a...