Love v. Sessions

• Decision Date: 21 February 1978
• Docket Number: No. 76-1022,76-1022
• Parties: Pinckney V. LOVE, Jr., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. M. W. SESSIONS, Former Superintendent of the Burke County Board of Education, et al., etc., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 357

568 F.2d 357

Pinckney V. LOVE, Jr., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. M. W. SESSIONS, Former Superintendent of the Burke County Board of Education, et al., etc., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 76-1022.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

Feb. 21, 1978.

Theodore G. Frankel, David L. Ross, Atlanta, Ga., Stephen J. Pollak, Richard M. Sharp, Mary L. Fitch, David Rubin, Washington, D. C., for plaintiff-appellant.

William M. Fulcher, Augusta, Ga., for defendants-appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia.

Before BROWN, Chief Judge, GEWIN and TJOFLAT, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:

Pinckney V. Love, plaintiff, had been a nontenured principal of the Waynesboro Elementary School for one year when the Burke County Board of Education decided not to renew his contract for the 1971-72 school term. In a 1973 suit before the District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, Love claimed that this dismissal violated his First Amendment rights and deprived him of his Fourteenth Amendment due process right to a pretermination hearing. The Board of Education, in response to Love's request for a statement of reasons for his nonrenewal, cited a series of events that occurred primarily in the first two weeks of the 1970-71 term, Love's first year as principal and the first year in which the school district operated under a federal court desegregation order. Three instances of delay and confusion in implementing administrative requirements and two charges of insubordination were stated as the basis of the Board's decision. ¹ In his 1973 complaint, Love contended that these five charges were not the real reason behind the Board's action, claiming that his contract had not been renewed in retaliation for his support of desegregation. ² A jury trial resulted in a verdict for the plaintiff Love and an award of $10,000 in punitive damages. ³ In answers to special interrogatories, the jury found that Love was stigmatized by the reasons the defendants proffered for the nonrenewal and that the nonrenewal was caused by Love's "expressions of unpopular views." The District Court Judge granted the defendants' motion for a new trial, and the second jury returned a verdict for the school board. ⁴

Love appeals from the grant of a new trial and from the judgment entered on the second jury verdict. We hold that the judgment of the second trial must be vacated due to a misapplication of law in the District Court's instructions to the jury. However, we do not believe that judgment can properly be reinstated on the verdict rendered in the first trial, and therefore remand this cause for yet a third proceeding.

In a Memorandum Opinion, the District Court Judge gave four grounds for granting a new trial. ⁵ As one ground, the judge cited his failure to instruct the jury, pursuant to the defendants' request, that "proof of the truth of the charges founding the nonrenewal would constitute a complete defense to the action." Accordingly, at the conclusion of the second trial, the judge charged the jury that Love would not be entitled to a verdict unless he proved that the Board's reasons for the nonrenewal were false. ⁶ This instruction in effect declared that if the jury found the Board's charges to be true, Love could not recover. We hold that this charge was an error of law fatal to the second trial. It is the law of this Circuit that even if the reasons given for a decision not to rehire a nontenured faculty member are factually supported, the plaintiff's constitutional claim is not precluded. The critical issue in this suit is not whether the Board's charges against Love are true, but whether the charges are truly the basis for the Board's decision not to renew Love's contract. If the real reason for Love's nonrenewal is his exercise of First Amendment rights, then the Board's decision is impermissible and the truth of its asserted basis does not serve as a complete defense to the constitutional wrong. Fluker v. Alabama State Board of Education, 5 Cir., 1971, 441 F.2d 201, 209.

This is not to say that the truth or falsity of the Board's reasons is irrelevant to the First Amendment claim. If the charges are false, then the likelihood of their serving as a pretense for another, unconstitutional basis for nonrenewal is increased. On the other hand, if the Board's charges of insubordination and violation of rules are both true and a sufficient basis for the nonrenewal of Love's contract, such that the same decision would have been made in the absence of constitutionally protected expression, the Board would have established a complete defense. ⁷ Mt. Healthy City Board of Education v. Doyle, 1977, 429 U.S. 274, 287, 97 S.Ct. 568, 50 L.Ed.2d 471. However, Mt. Healthy had not been handed down at the time of the trial, and the charge given by the District Court Judge did not conform to its mandate.

Although we hold that the judgment entered on the second verdict cannot stand, we do not hold that the District Court Judge erred in granting the motion for a new trial such that judgment could properly be reinstated on the verdict of the first trial. The general rule is that a District Court's grant of a new trial is within the discretion of the Court and is ordinarily nonreviewable save for an abuse of that discretion. Spurlin v. General Motors Corporation, 5 Cir., 1976, 528 F.2d 612; Massey v. Gulf Oil Corporation, 5 Cir., 1975, 508 F.2d 92, cert. denied, 423 U.S. 838, 96 S.Ct. 67, 46 L.Ed.2d 57; Weyerhaeuser Co. v. Bucon Construction Co., 5 Cir., 1970, 430 F.2d 420; Marsh v. Illinois Central R. Co., 5 Cir., 1949, 175 F.2d 498. While recent cases in this Circuit apply a somewhat broader review to an order granting the motion for a new trial than to an order denying such a motion, and exercise the greatest degree of scrutiny when a new trial is granted on the ground that the verdict is against the weight of the evidence, see Massey v. Gulf Oil Corporation, supra, 508 F.2d at 94-95 and Spurlin v. General Motors Corporation, supra, 528 F.2d at 620, the District Court Judge's discretionary power is still given the deference required by his presence at the trial and his duty to see that there is no miscarriage of justice. The recent articulations of a somewhat closer review are directed to assuring that the District Court Judge does not merely substitute his judgment for that of the jury and thereby deprive the litigants of their right to a jury trial. We are unable to see such an infringement on the jury's function in this case, and therefore do not believe that the judge abused his discretion in granting the motion for a new trial.

Despite the lack of reversible error in the new trial grant, the significant error in the jury instructions during the second trial makes a third proceeding necessary. This third trial must, of course, be conducted in accordance with Mt. Healthy City Board of Education v. Doyle, 1977, 429 U.S. 274, 97 S.Ct. 568, 50 L.Ed.2d 471, decided during the pendency of this appeal. Mt. Healthy sets forth the procedure District Courts are to follow in cases where both permissible and impermissible grounds for a decision not to rehire a teacher are alleged:

Initially . . . the burden was properly placed upon respondent (employee) to show that his conduct was constitutionally protected, and that this conduct was a "substantial factor" or, to put it in other words, that it was a "motivating factor" in the Board's decision not to rehire him. Respondent having carried that burden, however, the District Court should have gone on to determine whether the Board had shown by a preponderance of the evidence that it would have reached the same decision as to respondent's reemployment even in the absence of the protected conduct.

429 U.S. at 287, 97 S.Ct. at 576, ...