Price v. Brittain

• Decision Date: 31 May 1989
• Docket Number: No. 88-3342,88-3342
• Parties: James Patrick PRICE, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Thomas H. BRITTAIN, Jr., et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 252

874 F.2d 252

57 USLW 2729

James Patrick PRICE, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Thomas H. BRITTAIN, Jr., et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 88-3342.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

May 31, 1989.

James C. Ferguson, Brooks E. Hester, Baton Rouge, La., for plaintiff-appellant.

Fernin F. Eaton, Baton Rouge, La., for defendants-appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana.

Before GEE, SMITH, and DUHE, Circuit Judges.

JERRY E. SMITH, Circuit Judge:

We consider here the thin line between disruptive rumor-spreading and protected "whistle-blowing" in a civil service employee discharge case. Plaintiff, James Patrick Price, was a social worker employed at the Feliciana Forensic Facility, a Louisiana state mental health hospital, until his termination on September 15, 1982. Defendant Thomas Brittain, Jr., Assistant Secretary of the State Department of Health and Human Resources ("DHHR"), terminated Price for having spread unsubstantiated rumors, failing adequately to protect the confidential records of patients, and failing to report, to his superiors, violations of law occurring within the facility. Price brought suit against his immediate superiors and the secretary and deputy secretary of the Louisiana DHHR ¹ pursuant to 42 U.S.C. Secs. 1983 and 1997d, and the first, fifth, and fourteenth amendments to the Constitution. After a bench trial, the district court held for defendants. 684 F.Supp. 1345 (M.D.La.1988). Price appeals, contending that his termination: (1) was in retaliation for his exercise of his first amendment rights; (2) was effected without the procedural due process guarantees to which he was entitled; and (3) was in retaliation for statutorily protected "whistle-blowing." Agreeing with the district court that Price cannot recover under any of these theories, we affirm.

I. A Tempest at the Feliciana Forensic Facility.

The Feliciana Forensic Facility ("the facility") houses involuntarily-committed mental patients. Price's embattled employment at the facility began in June 1981. He served as a social worker in the drug and alcohol abuse program, leading discussion groups and providing therapy to individual patients.

A. Price's Story.

Price was reprimanded by letter in November 1981 for having sidestepped the chain of command and directly reported to state police officers a sex-for-drugs exchange between one of the facility's security officers and a patient (the "Talarsky incident"). Price claims that taking the information directly to the state police was made necessary by his promise to the patient that the information would not be reported within the facility. ² C. Murray Henderson, chief executive officer of the facility, also gave Price an oral reprimand and told Price, in allegedly angry tones, that he could tolerate stupidity but not disloyalty.

Price claims to have been aware of numerous other unlawful activities occurring at the facility, including the sale and distribution of drugs by security officers and patients, beatings of patients by security officers, and borrowing or stealing of money from patients by officers. He stated at trial that he turned this information over to his immediate superiors, i.e., Catherine Goodman, director of the social services program, and Dr. Augusto Abad, a staff psychiatrist and the coordinator of the drug and alcohol abuse program. When these individuals allegedly refused to acknowledge his information or do anything to rectify the problems he had identified, Price contacted a federal district judge, who referred him to the Federal Bureau of Investigation ("F.B.I."). Price purportedly then contacted F.B.I. agent Watson concerning drug-pushing at the facility; however, when contacted later by defendant Brittain, Watson reported that he had had no contact with Price.

In addition, Price was aware of a Justice Department suit against the facility for alleged violations of patients' civil rights. Price sent his information, including a tape, to Dan Butler of the department, and assisted patients in mailing letters and making phone calls to the department from the facility. Butler later confirmed that he had had communications with Price, though that confirmation came long after Price had been suspended, and then terminated, from his employment.

Other information which Price claims to have received from patients was even more sinister in nature. Price heard that a patient who had apparently committed suicide in the facility had in fact been murdered by two other patients, at the behest of or with the knowledge of Henderson. ³ Price also was told that Henderson allowed one of the two patients who allegedly had committed the murder to leave the facility occasionally in the company of an off-duty security officer who was paid to chauffeur the patient to various destinations.

Price maintains that at a meeting shortly after, and in connection with, the Talarsky incident, he informed Abad, Goodman, and a senior security officer, Captain Landry, of his communications to various outside officials. Thus, he contends that defendants Henderson and Brittain knew or should have known of his reports to law enforcement agencies, by virtue of the fact that Abad and Goodman, as well as Landry, all normally reported to Henderson and Brittain. In April 1982, Abad and Goodman evaluated Price's job performance as "satisfactory."

B. Defendants' Version.

Defendants depict Price's actions in a much less favorable light; they characterize Price as a rumor-monger who was playing "cops and robbers" within the facility in order to enhance his own image among patients and staff, and who breached patient confidentiality in his efforts to drum up business for his friend, Brooks Hester, an attorney and former social-service worker at the facility. They further claim that Price irresponsibly aggrandized his own position by telling patients and staff that he was working for the F.B.I. and the Justice Department, with the effect of causing the patients to mistrust both the staff and their fellow patients. The strongest allegation of malfeasance against Price concerns his alleged indiscretion in repeating to staff and patients the rumor that Henderson had arranged the murder of a patient, even though he knew that state authorities had investigated the death and ruled it an obvious suicide.

On June 24, 1982, Henderson suspended Price; Brittain, however, immediately countermanded the suspension order and arranged a meeting with Price for that afternoon. Price arrived at Brittain's office with his attorney, but Brittain refused to allow the attorney to attend the meeting and "reminded" Price that if he insisted upon his attorney's presence, his actions might be considered insubordination and just cause for termination.

Price left his attorney outside the meeting. Reports of what occurred inside conflict: Brittain maintains that he first elicited from Price any information he had about unlawful activities going on at the facility and asked him to share any specific information or documentation which Price had obtained. He then testified that Price was unable to provide any such specifics or documentation; Brittain told Price that a suspension and investigation was necessary because Price's allegations were so disruptive and inflammatory, and that Price had endangered the safety of all individuals at the facility, including his own.

Price, however, asserts that at the meeting he told Brittain about his contacts with outside law enforcement authorities and explained his reasons for those contacts. He further asserts that Brittain then summarily suspended him, without pay and without providing any justification for doing so. Brittain did, however, send Price a letter on July 8, 1982, detailing the reasons for his suspension.

Brittain then empaneled an investigating committee consisting of disinterested officials from the state DHHR. However, James Hawkes, a division director with the Office of Mental Health who chaired the committee, testified that the committee was unable to uncover sufficient factual evidence to support either side in the matter.

C. A Thick Pink Slip.

Brittain sent Price a termination letter dated September 15, 1982, and effective September 24. The letter provides, in some detail, the reasons for Price's termination. The first reason is that Price had made "flagrant, prejudicial, irresponsible, and inflammatory" statements on several occasions, to both staff and patients, concerning the purported murder at the facility and Henderson's alleged role in that murder. Goodman reported that Price had made such a statement to her, Abad reported that several of his patients complained that Price had made such statements to them, and several patients corroborated these reports.

Second, the letter cites Price's unsubstantiated statements regarding drug-pushing by senior members of the staff and security officers. The letter charges that Price continued to make these statements to staff and to patients even after Abad had warned Price not to make such unfounded accusations.

Third, the letter charges Price with engaging in activities "in conflict with [his] role as a therapist," including making unsubstantiated claims that he was working with the F.B.I. and the Justice Department, soliciting patient business for attorney Hester, and creating the impression among several patients that he could influence the outcome of proceedings pertaining to the patients' confinement or release status. The most damaging specific example within this category involves a claim that, in the process of soliciting business for attorney Hester, Price showed a patient his name, prognosis, and prescribed medication--information displayed on a list of patients named to return to court. As the list also contained the same confidential information about the other patients scheduled to return to court, Price was accused of a grave breach of...