Kilgoar v. Colbert County Bd. of Ed., 77-3210
| Decision Date | 23 August 1978 |
| Docket Number | No. 77-3210,77-3210 |
| Citation | 578 F.2d 1033 |
| Parties | Rowena KILGOAR and Thomas Dow Mitchell, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. COLBERT COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION et al., Defendants-Appellees. Summary Calendar. * |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
Joseph E. Carr, IV, Ala. Educ. Assn., Montgomery, Ala., Faith Hanna, Staff Counsel, Nat'l Educ. Assoc., Washington, D. C., for plaintiffs-appellants.
Stanley E. Munsey, Tuscumbia, Ala., for defendants-appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.
Before THORNBERRY, GODBOLD and RUBIN, Circuit Judges.
This appeal involves the third case brought by plaintiffs Kilgoar and Mitchell against the school board which discharged them in 1971 and has not rehired them. The court below granted motions for summary judgment on two grounds: first, several individual defendants were not members of the school board at any material time; second, as to all defendants, all issues had been or could have been decided in the first two cases. We reverse and remand.
In the first suit plaintiffs sued for reemployment and damages. The suit alleged that the board's dismissal of plaintiffs and subsequent refusal to rehire them were unlawful and based on political and personal reasons. Defendants prevailed because plaintiffs were nontenured teachers who did not have a constitutional right to be reemployed. Lee v. Macon County Board of Education, 483 F.2d 242, 243 (C.A.5, 1973).
The second suit was filed approximately at the beginning of the 1973-74 school year. Plaintiffs sued for priority consideration for reemployment and damages, alleging that Singleton v. Jackson Municipal Separate School District, 419 F.2d 1211 (C.A.5, 1969) (en banc), gave them an entitlement to the first available teaching position. Plaintiffs also claimed that the board's failure to rehire them was in retaliation for their seeking legal redress, that they had an entitlement to the first available position of which they were deprived without due process of law, and that the board had published stigmatizing information to potential employers. In the second case the district court found that the claim of a right to be rehired had been alleged in the first suit. Because "the matter of reemployment could have been litigated in the prior action," res judicata barred the second suit. This court summarily affirmed in an unpublished opinion entered April 16, 1976, styled Kilgoar v. Beck, 530 F.2d 974.
In the instant case the defendants again sue for reemployment (or priority consideration for reemployment) and damages. The complaint alleges that, starting with the commencement of the 1973-74 school year, and on numerous occasions, the new and present superintendent of education has recommended the plaintiffs to the board for reemployment and that the board has rejected these recommendations based on plaintiffs' participation in litigation, participation in a professional association and support of aspirants for public office enjoying control and authority over the board. Thus plaintiffs claim that they have been the victims of impermissible retaliation. They also allege that they had an entitlement because of the recommendations, of which they were deprived without due process of law, and that the board has published stigmatizing information to potential employers. In other words the claims are of the same nature as those alleged in the second suit.
The doctrine of res judicata, or claim preclusion, establishes that a final judgment on the merits by a court of competent jurisdiction is an absolute bar to another action between the same parties or privies based on the same cause of action. The instant case raises the question of what constitutes the same cause of action. Consistent with the broad purpose of res judicata to eliminate needless repetitive litigation, the modern view regards the same cause of action to refer to all grounds for relief arising out of the conduct complained of in the original action. 1B Moore's Federal Practice P 0.410(1), at 1160-63. 1 Such a view is sensible where the procedure allows, as the Federal Rules allow, a claimant to put forward all grounds for relief in one action.
Thus plaintiffs are barred from presenting any ground for relief arising out of the defendants' conduct complained of in their first or second lawsuits. At the same time the plaintiffs are not barred from presenting any ground for relief arising out of conduct not complained of in the prior lawsuits. Subsequent conduct, even if it is of the same nature as the...
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