Sloan v. Jasper County Community Unit School Dist. No. 1

• Decision Date: 15 April 1988
• Docket Number: No. 5-87-0145,5-87-0145
• Citation: 522 N.E.2d 334,167 Ill.App.3d 867,118 Ill.Dec. 879
• Parties: , 118 Ill.Dec. 879, 46 Ed. Law Rep. 666 Elmer L. SLOAN, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. JASPER COUNTY COMMUNITY UNIT SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: United States Appellate Court of Illinois

Page 334

522 N.E.2d 334

167 Ill.App.3d 867, 118 Ill.Dec. 879,

46 Ed. Law Rep. 666

Elmer L. SLOAN, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. JASPER COUNTY COMMUNITY UNIT SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 Defendant-Appellee.

No. 5-87-0145.

Appellate Court of Illinois Fifth District.

April 15, 1988.

Leahy Law Offices, Springfield (Cheryl R. Jansen, Mary Lee Leahy, of counsel), for plaintiff-appellant.

James F. Jarrett, Schniederjon, Weber & Jarrett, Effingham, for defendant-appellee.

Presiding Justice HARRISON delivered the opinion of the court:

Plaintiff, Elmer L. Sloan, was employed as a custodian by defendant, Jasper County Community Unit School District No. 1. He was injured on the job during the 1980-81 school year. After plaintiff filed a workers' compensation claim, defendant refused to renew his contract for the following year. Plaintiff responded by filing a two-count complaint against defendant in the circuit court of Jasper County. Count I asserted a State law claim for retaliatory discharge. Count II sought recovery pursuant to 42 U.S.C.A. § 1983 (West 1981) on the grounds that defendant had deprived plaintiff of his rights under the fourteenth amendment to the United States Constitution. The circuit court sustained objections to certain of plaintiff's document requests, struck certain allegations from plaintiff's amended complaint, and then granted summary judgment for defendant. Plaintiff now appeals. We reverse and remand.

Under authority of Supreme Court Rule 214 (107 Ill.2d R. 214) plaintiff made a written request to defendant to produce documents relating to other employees who had filed workers' compensation claims against it between 1975 and the date of the request. Defendant objected to this request, and its objection was sustained. Plaintiff subsequently submitted a more detailed document request covering the same time period, which concerned not only employees who had filed compensation claims, but also employees with work-related injuries who had used vacation days, personal leave or "sick time" instead of seeking workers' compensation benefits. This second request elicited further objection from defendant, and once again the objection was sustained.

On appeal, plaintiff first argues that the circuit court erred when it restricted plaintiff's discovery in this way. We agree. Through his complaint plaintiff seeks to establish, inter alia, that defendant's decision not to renew his contract was made pursuant to an ongoing and unlawful pattern or practice of discharging injured employees who file for workers' compensation benefits, while retaining injured employees who do not. The documents sought by plaintiff in the foregoing requests are relevant to this issue. Plaintiff's requests are limited only to a period beginning approximately five years prior to his termination and extending up to the date on which the requests were submitted, a reasonable period of time. We do not believe that the description of the requested documents is so inadequate as to leave defendant with any real uncertainty as to what is and what is not included. (See Monier v. Chamberlain (1966), 35 Ill.2d 351, 356, 221 N.E.2d 410, 415.) Moreover, none of the documents requested is claimed to be privileged from disclosure.

In denying plaintiff's discovery requests, the trial court expressed concern that the non-party employees whose records are being sought "have some reasonable right to expect confidentiality in their personnel files" and that this confidentiality would be breached if disclosure of the requested documents were permitted. This is not a trivial consideration. Nevertheless, we do not believe that the solution is to bar plaintiff absolutely from access to materials relevant to his claim. Pursuant to Supreme Court Rule 201(c)(1) (107 Ill.2d R. 201(c)(1)), the trial court could have issued an appropriate protective order to prevent the identity of the employees in question or confidential information about them from being disseminated to the public, yet still have permitted plaintiff the full disclosure to which he is entitled. Under all of the circumstances present here, we must therefore conclude that the trial court abused its discretion when it sustained defendant's objections to plaintiff's document requests.

Plaintiff next argues that the circuit court also erred when it struck from each count of his amended complaint allegations regarding the type of damages he had sustained. Those allegations, contained in amended paragraph 26 of count I and amended paragraph 17 of count II of plaintiff's second amended complaint, indicated that defendant's decision not to renew plaintiff's contract had caused plaintiff to suffer not only loss of income and employment, but also "stress, pain, suffering, embarrassment and humiliation." Defendant contends, and the trial court believed, that such "emotional distress" is really an element of the separate tort of "intentional infliction of emotional distress" which should have been pleaded in a separate count.

We cannot accept this view. Pain, suffering, embarrassment and humiliation are simply among the elements of damage plaintiff claims to have suffered as a result of the retaliatory discharge and violation of his constitutional rights. Plaintiff does not purport to assert that defendant has committed the independent tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress. The United States Supreme Court has clearly held that the compensatory damages available in § 1983 actions include not only out-of-pocket loss and other monetary harms, but also injuries such as impairment of reputation, personal humiliation, and mental anguish, suffering and distress. (Memphis Community School District v. Stachura (1986), 477 U.S. 299, 307, 106 S.Ct. 2537, 2543, 91 L.Ed.2d 249, 259. In addition, we note that retaliatory discharge, like an action brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C.A. § 1983 (West 1981), is a species of tort. (See Johnson v. World Color Press, Inc. (1986), 147 Ill.App.3d 746, 748, 101 Ill.Dec. 251, 252, 498 N.E.2d 575, 576.) Although we have found no authority on point, we know...