Smith v. ADM Feed Corp.

• Decision Date: 23 May 1990
• Docket Number: No. 89-519,89-519
• Citation: 456 N.W.2d 378
• Parties: 58 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. (BNA) 3, 54 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 40,231, 12 A.L.R.5th 1040, 1 A.D. Cases 1591 Daylis L. SMITH, Appellant, v. ADM FEED CORPORATION, Appellee.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

Page 378

456 N.W.2d 378

58 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. (BNA) 3, 54 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 40,231,

12 A.L.R.5th 1040, 1 A.D. Cases 1591

Daylis L. SMITH, Appellant, v. ADM FEED CORPORATION, Appellee.

No. 89-519.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

May 23, 1990.

R. Ronald Pogge of Hopkins & Huebner, P.C., Des Moines, for appellant.

Diane M. Stahle and Gene R. La Suer of Davis, Hockenberg, Wine, Brown, Koehn & Shors, Des Moines, for appellee.

Considered en banc.

SCHULTZ, Justice.

Plaintiff Daylis Smith appeals a judgment in favor of his past employer, ADM Feed Corporation (ADM), in a disability discrimination claim filed under the Iowa Civil Rights Act, Iowa Code chapter 601A (1987). We affirm.

Plaintiff began working as a truck driver for a feed mill in Baxter, Iowa, in 1969. In 1973 defendant ADM purchased the mill and retained plaintiff as a truck driver. Plaintiff primarily drove a hopper-bottom grain truck, one of three trucks then used by ADM in its farm feed business. He was responsible for driving the truck and for loading and unloading sacks of grain. This truck's design made it possible for the driver to load and unload without any heavy lifting or stooping. He was also occasionally needed to drive one of the other trucks owned by defendant. In addition, when he was not driving a truck, he helped out in the feed mill and in the warehouse.

In January 1986 plaintiff had back surgery to fuse two of his lumbar vertebrae, a procedure necessitated by an April 1984 work injury which had damaged his lower back. He was given a final release to return to his employment at ADM by his doctor in January 1987. In the release the doctor noted that plaintiff had been driving a truck since his surgery and stated: "As long as [plaintiff] does work that does not entail heavy lifting with his back or repetitive bending or stooping, then he could return to work." Had this letter been interpreted by ADM as a complete or full medical release, plaintiff would have had enough seniority to return to his previous position. Defendant believed, however, that plaintiff did not have a release to do the type of work he had been doing before his surgery and notified him that it would be unable to rehire him.

In January 1988 plaintiff received an administrative release from the Iowa Civil Rights Commission (commission), issued pursuant to Iowa Code section 601A.16(2), and subsequently filed a petition at law against ADM. He alleged that defendant refused to reemploy him because of his disability and refused to reasonably alter the job to accommodate that disability in violation of Iowa Code section 601A.6(1)(a). Defendant's motion to strike plaintiff's demand for a jury trial was sustained.

Following a bench trial, the court dismissed the action, holding that defendant had established a legitimate business reason to terminate plaintiff and could not have reasonably accommodated his disability without incurring more than a de minimus cost. On appeal plaintiff contends: (1) He was entitled to a jury trial on his civil rights claim; (2) if he was not entitled to a jury trial, then the court's review of this "equity" proceeding should be de novo; (3) the court should have found that he spent at least eighty percent of his time driving the hopper-bottom grain truck; (4) the court should not have considered changes in the work environment made subsequent to his failure to be rehired; and (5) defendant could have reasonably accommodated his disability.

I. Right to a jury trial. Plaintiff urges that we find that there is a right to a jury trial for causes of action which arise under Iowa Code chapter 601A. He claims that the legislature intended to provide a jury trial for civil rights cases tried in the district court and that to prohibit a jury trial is a violation of article I, section 9 of the Iowa Constitution. If we find there is no statutory right to a jury trial, plaintiff can prevail only if he can prove that a jury trial on a civil rights claim is mandated by the Iowa or the United States Constitutions.

A. Statutory Right. The question of whether there is a right to a jury trial is an issue of first impression for our court. ¹ The United States District Court for the Northern District of Iowa, sitting in diversity, has judicially estimated, by looking at both Iowa case law and relevant federal decisions, that we would conclude there is no right to a jury trial in a chapter 601A claim. Gray v. Nash Finch Co., 701 F.Supp. 704, 707, 709 (N.D.Iowa 1988). While we provide the ultimate interpretation of Iowa law, we agree with the district court's conclusion.

Defendant correctly asserts that the language of chapter 601A is silent on the issue of whether there is a right to a jury trial. We believe that the purpose of the chapter is inconsistent with an intent to provide a jury trial, however. It is the stated legislative purpose of chapter 601A, however, that "every complaint be at least preliminarily screened during the first one hundred twenty days." Iowa Code § 601A.16(6). A district court has no jurisdiction over a plaintiff in a civil rights action unless he first exhausts his administrative remedies. See Iowa Code § 601A.16; Northrup v. Farmland Indus., Inc., 372 N.W.2d 193, 197 (Iowa 1985). The option of seeking relief in the district court following a screening by the commission was added to relieve the backlog of cases before the commission. See Note, Implications of the Right-to-Sue Amendment to Iowa's Civil Rights Law, 65 Iowa L.Rev. 720, 725-36 (1980). The district court sits as the commission and is empowered to grant only that relief authorized by section 601A.15. See Iowa Code § 601A.16(5).

A claimant has no right to a jury trial in an administrative proceeding "where jury trials would be incompatible with the whole concept of administrative adjudication." Curtis v. Loether, 415 U.S. 189, 194, 94 S.Ct. 1005, 1008, 39 L.Ed.2d 260, 266 (1974) (citing NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U.S. 1, 57 S.Ct. 615, 81 L.Ed. 893 (1937)). Permitting a jury trial in district court would substantially interfere with a statutory scheme which delegates to the court only that limited power held by the commission. Not only would the procedure change radically, but we believe that a greater emphasis would be placed on a money recovery over other available relief. We conclude that if the legislature intended to provide a different procedure when a case was removed from an administrative hearing it would have done so.

When faced with the same question of whether jury trials are permitted under a civil rights statute with language also creating an option to proceed before the commission or in district court, the New Jersey Supreme Court stated:

A jury trial with its attendant delays and the inherent limitations of the scope of jury verdicts could be counterproductive in terms of fulfilling the explicit legislative goal ... that was to reduce the agency backlog congestion and at the same time provide a judicial alternative that would be comparable to the administrative action so that the society's war against discrimination would not slacken.

... It is reasonable to believe that if the Legislature intended to confer the right to a jury trial when ... it authorized a complainant to bring an action in Superior Court, it would have expressly so provided....

Shaner v. Horizon Bancorp., 116 N.J. 433, 442-43, 561 A.2d 1130, 1135 (1989); see also Murphy v. Cartex Corp., 377 Pa.Super. 181, 194, 546 A.2d 1217, 1223 (1988) (no right to jury trial found in statute where no specific language or legislative history indicates intent to provide for materially different proceeding in court than before agency). We therefore conclude that the legislature did not intend for civil rights claimants to have a statutory right to a jury trial in district court under chapter 601A.

This is in contradistinction to civil damage actions brought pursuant to a violation of our old civil rights statute, Iowa Code section 5008, which made it a misdemeanor to deny any person the full and equal enjoyment of certain public accommodations. These suits were tort actions for damages caused by the violation of a penal statute and as such were considered actions at law triable to juries. See Hall v. Montgomery Ward & Co., 252 N.W.2d 421, 423 (Iowa 1977); Brown v. J.H. Bell Co., 146 Iowa 89, 123 N.W. 231 (1910); Humburd v. Crawford, 128 Iowa 743, 105 N.W. 330 (1905).

We do not agree with the dissent's observation that the ruling would come as a surprise to the legislature. On the contrary, a different result would be a greater surprise. In enacting section 601A.15(8) the legislature gave the court power to provide a wide variety of relief, most of which is equitable in nature. There is no indication in chapter 601A that a claim for money damages is to be treated as an ordinary civil action. Neither do we agree that inaction on the part of the legislature since the enactment of section 601A.16 indicates its tacit approval of jury trials. We have had both jury and equitable appeals since its enactment and suggest that the inaction perhaps indicates nothing more than apathy.

B. Constitutional Right. ² The plaintiff claims that prohibiting a jury trial in district court violates article 1, section 9 of the Iowa Constitution. This provision of our Bill of Rights provides that "[t]he right of trial by jury shall remain inviolate." However, the right to a jury trial is not a fundamental right in proceedings created by statute. State ex rel. Bishop v. Travis, 306 N.W.2d 733, 734 (Iowa 1981). We look to the common law and not to present statutes to determine when the constitutional right to a jury applies. Iowa Nat'l Mut. Ins. Co. v. Mitchell, 305 N.W.2d 724, 726-28 (Iowa 1981). The right to a jury trial that is preserved by the constitution is the right that existed at common law. Id. at 728. The common law distinguishes between cases at law where juries were allowed and cases tried in...