Meding v. Hurd

• Decision Date: 19 April 1985
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 82-170 CMW.
• Citation: 607 F. Supp. 1088
• Parties: Richard D. MEDING, Plaintiff, v. Lester HURD, individually and in his capacity as Mayor of the Town of Blades, Delaware, Paul Burton, Joseph Barnes, James W. Hastings, Earl E. Chaffinch and William Sipple, individually and in their capacity as councilmen of the Town of Blades, Delaware, and the Town of Blades, Delaware, a municipal corporation of the State of Delaware, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Delaware

607 F. Supp. 1088

Richard D. MEDING, Plaintiff, v. Lester HURD, individually and in his capacity as Mayor of the Town of Blades, Delaware, Paul Burton, Joseph Barnes, James W. Hastings, Earl E. Chaffinch and William Sipple, individually and in their capacity as councilmen of the Town of Blades, Delaware, and the Town of Blades, Delaware, a municipal corporation of the State of Delaware, Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 82-170 CMW.

United States District Court, D. Delaware.

April 19, 1985.

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Robert C. Wolhar, Jr. and Edward C. Gill, of Wolhar & Associates, Georgetown, Del., for plaintiff.

John E. Messick and Richard F. Stokes of Tunnell & Raysor, Georgetown, Del., for defendant, Town of Blades, Del.

William M. Chasanov of Brown, Shiels & Chasanov, Georgetown, Del., for defendants, individual councilmen.

OPINION

CALEB M. WRIGHT, Senior District Judge.

This is an action for damages and equitable relief under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (hereinafter "§ 1983") brought by Richard Meding, the former Chief of Police of Blades, against the Town of Blades, and individual town officials, namely, the Mayor and members of the Town Council. The town officials are sued both in an official capacity and in an individual capacity. Meding alleges that the Town and the town officials deprived him of constitutionally protected property and liberty interests in connection with the termination of his employment as Police Chief. Both sides have completed discovery and all parties have moved for summary judgment.¹

FACTS

Blades is a small town of about seven hundred inhabitants. The Town is administered by the Mayor and the Town Council. The Town Council meets once a month and the elected officials receive a nominal salary for their services. During the events giving rise to this lawsuit, the Town employed three individuals full-time, which included the Chief of Police.

Meding was Chief of Police prior to his discharge on May 12, 1980. He had several years of experience with the police force before his elevation to Chief of Police in July of 1977. The two sides in this lawsuit dispute the quality of Meding's performance and his continued competence to serve in that position. The Court sees no benefit in repeating these allegations. For purposes of plaintiff's motion, the Court will assume that the Town Council had justifiable reasons for terminating Meding and for purpose of defendants' motion, the Court will assume that Meding was fit for service.

The train of events that form the basis of Meding's present lawsuit were brought to a head over a disagreement among the parties regarding the police department's budget. On April 14, 1980, the plaintiff submitted his resignation as Chief of Police to take effect in sixty days and conditioned the resignation on the Town's agreement to pay him certain benefits which he claimed were owed. The resignation was drafted with the advice of an attorney and submitted with the resignation was a doctor's excuse addressed "To Whom It May Concern," informing the reader that the plaintiff was in need of a two week rest for exhaustion. The plaintiff has not worked for the Town of Blades since his resignation was submitted.

The Town Council of Blades did not act on the plaintiff's resignation until May 12, 1980 (the date of the next regularly scheduled council meeting). After the regularly scheduled meeting on May 12th, the Town Council met in executive session to consider Meding's resignation. Rather than accept his resignation and implicitly agree to the plaintiff's request for payment of benefits, the Town Council chose, instead, to accept his resignation under a section from the Town Ordinances that provided that an unexcused absence for more than three days shall be deemed a resignation.² The plaintiff alleges that he received no notice of the May 12th meeting, nor was he provided with a hearing prior to his termination.³

Although Meding's termination forms the crux of the Complaint, the Complaint also contains allegations regarding three subsequent incidents involving the defendants which could serve as bases for independent claims under § 1983. The first incident concerns a newspaper article in the Seaford Leader on May 14, 1980, that reported the Town Council had accepted Meding's resignation because of unexcused absences. D.I. 31A:12. Meding claims that the article's averment that his absence was unexplained is false and that the defendants were the source of the report. Further, it is alleged that public dissemination of the purported reason for his termination damaged the plaintiff's reputation.

The second incident occurred after Meding left his post as Police Chief. The plaintiff began working for a store, Guns and Goodies, owned and operated by Robert Smith. Smith informed Meding that unidentified individuals had come to him seeking to have Meding fired. After working only a week, Meding left contending that these individuals' conduct pressured him to quit. Mr. Smith, however, maintains that Meding was welcome to stay on. D.I. 30:64.

On June 23, 1980, Meding brought an action in the Superior Court of Delaware in and for Sussex County against the Town of Blades. The initial complaint sought to recover accrued benefits from his employment as Police Chief, including pension and life insurance benefits and compensation for vacation time, sick leave, and severance. The complaint was amended in early November, 1980 to seek damages for illegal and wrongful termination. The case eventually went to trial in September of 1981 and the plaintiff received a judgment on a general verdict for nearly eight thousand dollars, a significant amount but substantially less than the amount that Meding sought.

Prior to the state court proceeding coming to trial, the Town of Blades and its Town Council asked the Attorney-General to investigate the possibility that Meding had falsified his reported overtime. This investigation was reported in the papers, and according to the plaintiff, the defendants sought the investigation and made it public solely to harass him. This represents the third incident following Meding's termination that might serve as a basis for a civil rights claim.

Plaintiff's counsel, in oral argument, expressly disavowed that the second or third incidents were meant to establish separate claims for liability under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and thus, the Court will disregard those facts with respect to the cross-motions for summary judgment now before it.⁴ What remains are two separate due process claims: one based on the termination which plaintiff contends deprived him of a constitutionally protected property interest; and the other based on the report contained in the Seaford Leader on May 14, 1980 which plaintiff alleges deprived him of a constitutionally protected liberty interest.

DISCUSSION

Actions by discharged public employees brought under § 1983 have the potential for creating complex jurisdictional questions because the facts underlying the federal cause of action will usually support a state action sounding in tort. The difficulties created by dual jurisdiction are well-known, and for the most part federal law has evolved to resolve the most significant of these. Typically, the appropriate disposition of these federal actions may involve questions of state law. And to this extent, the present action entails questions that are no different from the kinds of questions addressed by federal courts sitting in other state jurisdictions. What makes this particular case so difficult and also unusual is that Delaware is one of the few remaining state jurisdictions that continues to adhere to the traditional separation of law and equity. This fact of Delaware law gives rise to a host of special problems which the Court must address in considering the numerous issues raised by the parties' respective motions.

1. Claim Preclusion⁵

Defendant Town of Blades contends that the pending action is precluded by the plaintiff's previously obtained state court judgment. The Full Faith and Credit Statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1738, requires federal courts "to give to a state-court judgment the same preclusive effect as would be given that judgment under the law of the State in which the judgment was rendered." Migra v. Warren City School District Board of Education, 465 U.S. 75, ___, 104 S.Ct. 892, 896, 79 L.Ed.2d 56 (1984). Thus, the scope of a state court judgment's preclusive effect is ultimately a question of the law of the State in which the judgment was rendered. Marrese v. American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, ___ U.S. ___, ___, 105 S.Ct. 1327, 1332, 84 L.Ed.2d 274 (1985). Actions brought under § 1983 are no exception to the requirements of the Full Faith and Credit Statute. Migra v. Warren City School Dist., supra, 465 U.S. at ___-___, 104 S.Ct. at 897-98. Accordingly, the Court must look to the law of Delaware and its doctrines of claim preclusion to determine whether plaintiff's present action is precluded.

Delaware subscribes to the modern transactional view of claim preclusion. Maldonado v. Flynn, 417 A.2d 378, 381-82 (Del.Ch.1980); see generally Restatement (Second) of Judgments 2d §§ 24-26 (1980). Under this view, a prevailing plaintiff is not permitted to relitigate his original claim, Restatement (Second) of Judgments 2d § 18 (1980), "if the pleadings framing the issues in the first action would have permitted the raising of the issue sought to be raised in the second action." Ezzes v. Ackerman, 43 Del.Ch. 420, 234 A.2d 444, 456 (1967). Relying on a draft of the subsequently adopted Restatement (Second) of Judgments § 24, Vice-Chancellor Hartnett offered a detailed explication of the modern view of claim preclusion accepted by Delaware courts.

The modern transactional view of the doctrine ... does not require that the claim subsequently asserted be based on a same cause of action to be barred,

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