Sportique Fashions, Inc. v. Sullivan

• Decision Date: 21 March 1979
• Docket Number: No. 76-3264,76-3264
• Parties: SPORTIQUE FASHIONS, INC. and Sportique II Fashions, Inc., Plaintiffs- Appellants, v. William SULLIVAN, Lim P. Lee, Lee Stalard, William H. Lawrence, Wilmer Bennett, William D. Chronert, Thomas E. Brennan, Manuel Maldonado, Dudley Wakefield, Jr., and Does 1-100, Defendants- Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

Page 664

597 F.2d 664

SPORTIQUE FASHIONS, INC. and Sportique II Fashions, Inc. Plaintiffs- Appellants, v. William SULLIVAN, Lim P. Lee, Lee Stalard, William H Lawrence, Wilmer Bennett, William D. Chronert Thomas E. Brennan, Manuel Maldonado Dudley Wakefield, Jr., and Does 1-100, Defendants- Appellees.

No. 76-3264.

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

March 21, 1979.

William T. McGivern, Jr., Asst. U. S. Atty., San Francisco, Cal., for defendants-appellees.

Roger J. Marzulla, Matthews & Marzulla, San Jose, Cal., for plaintiffs-appellants.

Before TRASK and HUG, Circuit Judges, and DICK YIN WONG, ^* District Judge.

TRASK, Circuit Judge.

The nature of this case was well-put by the district judge in his Findings of Fact:

"Inscribed on the Main Post Office in New York City is the famous quotation:

Not snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.

The issue before this court is whether a negligence action for damages lies against individual United States Postal Department officials when mail is Not delivered swiftly, or at all." Findings of Fact at 1.

The district court entered judgment against plaintiffs, and they filed a timely notice of appeal. Jurisdiction in the district court was based on the removal statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1442(a)(1). Jurisdiction here is based on 28 U.S.C. § 1291.

Plaintiffs were, at the time of filing this suit, separate corporations which have since been merged into a single corporation, Sportique Fashions, Inc. Defendants are various employees of the United States Postal Service. All are supervisory officials; none of them actually handles mail.

Sportique operates two retail women's clothing stores located respectively in Los Altos and San Jose, California. Each store is run as a "promotional" business, securing the majority of its sales from announcements mailed to customers.

On June 25, 1975, Sportique delivered 25,100 pieces of mail to the San Jose, California, postal facility. These mailers contained announcements of Sportique's forthcoming July clearance sale, to begin on July 1, 1975. All of these mailers were sorted according to zip code, bundled, placed in postal sacks, labeled and in all other respects complied with postal regulations. Each mailer was stamped with the legend, "Postmaster: Deliver before June 20." Attached to each sack was a yellow "Time Value Mail" tag. Postal regulations provide for the use of these tags only for second class mail, such as weekly magazines. When appended to sacks of third class mail, as here, they serve merely as a request to expedite.

Of the 25,100 mailers, a large portion of them, perhaps as many as 8,000 to 10,000, were not delivered by July 1, 1975. Approximately 2,070 of the mailers were not delivered at all.

Sportique filed suit in a California Superior Court, claiming to have suffered losses as a result of the lost and late mail. The defendants moved for, and were granted, removal to the federal district court under 28 U.S.C. § 1442(a) (1), which permits removal of suits against "any officer of the United States . . . or person acting under him, for any act under color of such office . . .." ¹

The case was tried before a judge sitting without a jury and, after a four-day trial, judgment was entered for the defendants. The trial judge filed extensive Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law explaining the reasons for his judgment.

Plaintiffs appeal the decision only as to two of the defendants, appellees Lawrence and Bennett. Appellee Lawrence is the Sectional Center Manager, or Postmaster, of the San Jose Sectional Center, Sacramento District, the facility where the mailers were delivered. Appellee Bennett is the Director of Mail Processing in the San Jose Sectional Center.

We affirm.

We note at the outset that if appellants had sued the Postal Service itself that suit would be prohibited by 28 U.S.C. § 2680(b). That section bars a suit against the United States as a defendant for "(a)ny claim arising out of the loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission of letters and postal matter." ²

Appellants attempt to circumvent this prohibition by suing individual defendants rather than the Postal Service. However, none of their proposed theories would allow a successful suit against these defendants.

Appellants have made no showing that defendants were negligent in any way. As the trial court found:

"Plaintiffs have now sought to narrow the focus to defendants Lawrence and Bennett, each affiliated with the San Jose facility where the undelivered mailers were found . . . . (H)owever, neither of these defendants had anything to do with the daily receipt, processing or delivery of mail, nor did their jobs include such functions. Plaintiffs argue that defendants Lawrence and Bennett were lax in their follow-up investigation of the incident, but that is irrelevant to plaintiff's damage claim, since by then the sale was finished and plaintiff's claimed damages had already accrued.

"Nor can plaintiffs succeed by holding the defendants for negligent supervision of their employees, for nothing in the record supports a conclusion that such was the case."

Findings of Fact at 9-10.

Moreover, as appellants themselves concede, defendants Bennett and Lawrence may not be held vicariously liable for the torts of their subordinates under the doctrine of Respondeat superior. Since the allegedly negligent lower level employees are not the "employees" or "agents" of these defendants, but "both are fellow servants of the (United States), an immune governmental agency," Boettger v. Morse, 483 F.2d 86, 87 (9th Cir. 1973), defendants' liability can only be predicated on their actual behavior.

Finally, appellants' failure to show that defendants were negligent means that defendants clearly fall under the immunity rule for public officials. Defendants Lawrence and Bennett, as representatives and employees of an agency of the United States, the Postal Service, have at least a qualified immunity for their acts. ³ The qualified immunity rule protects such officials from damage actions if (1) at the time and in the light of all the circumstances there existed reasonable grounds for their belief that the action they took was appropriate, and (2) the officials acted in good faith. Mark v. Grott, 521 F.2d 1376, 1379 (9th Cir. 1975); Shelton v. U.S. Customs Service, 565 F.2d 1140, 1141 (9th Cir. 1977); Omnibus Financial Corp. v. United States, 506 F.2d 1097 (1977); See Scheuer v. Rhodes, 416 U.S. 232, 247, 94 S.Ct. 1683, 40 L.Ed.2d 90 (1974). The trial judge found that "(e)ach defendant herein was clearly acting within the scope of his duties at all...