St. Louis Fire Fighters Ass'n Intern. Ass'n of Fire Fighters Local 73 v. City of St. Louis, Mo.
| Decision Date | 19 September 1996 |
| Docket Number | Nos. 95-3782,95-4011,s. 95-3782 |
| Citation | 96 F.3d 323 |
| Parties | 71 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. (BNA) 1513, 65 USLW 2255 ST. LOUIS FIRE FIGHTERS ASSOCIATION INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF FIRE FIGHTERS LOCAL 73; William Rudden; Edwin F. Libby; John F. Welch; Ralph E. Break; Michael T. Donovan; William O. Hill; William O. Smith; Irvin M. Sprous; Timothy V. Tyebo; Dwight C. Cross; Cecil E. Morris; Charles J. Zoeller; Timothy J. May; Ronald Gronemeyer; Mark R. Duffy, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. CITY OF ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI, Defendant-Appellee, Firefighters' Institute for Racial Equality; Charles Bates; Nathanial Sutherland; Joseph Jones; Gilbert Vaughn; Eugene Stanton; Roland Logan; Leroy Harris, Intervenors- Defendants- Appellees. ST. LOUIS FIRE FIGHTERS ASSOCIATION INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF FIRE FIGHTERS LOCAL 73; William Rudden; Edwin F. Libby; John F. Welch; Ralph E. Break; Michael T. Donovan; William O. Hill; William O. Smith; Irvin M. Sprous; Timothy V. Tyebo; Dwight C. Cross; Cecil E. Morris; Charles J. Zoeller; Timothy J. May; Ronald Gronemeyer; Mark R. Duffy, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. CITY OF ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI, Defendant-Appellee, Firefighters' Institute for Racial Equality; Charles Bates; Nathanial Sutherland; Joseph Jones; Gilbert Vaughn; Eugene Stanton; Roland Logan; Leroy Harris, Intervenors- Defendants- Appellants. FIREFIGHTERS' INSTITUTE FOR RACIAL EQUALITY; Charles Bates; Nathanial Sutherland; Joseph Jones; Gilbert Vaughn; Eugene Stanton; Roland Logan; Leroy Harris, Cross Claimants-Appellants, v. CITY OF ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI, Cross Defendant-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit |
Jerome A. Diekemper, St. Louis, MO, argued (Richard P. Perkins, on the brief), for appellant.
Alif A. Williams, St. Louis, MO, argued, for appellee/cross-appellant.
Michael A. Garvin, St. Louis, MO, argued, (Kathleen G. Tanner, on the brief), for City of St. Louis.
Before MAGILL and LOKEN, Circuit Judges, and GOLDBERG, * Judge.
The St. Louis Fire Fighters Association International Association of Fire Fighters Local 73 and individual plaintiffs 1 (Local 73) brought suit against the city of St. Louis (the City) under 42 U.S.C. § 1981 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e-1-2000e-17, alleging that the test results from a multiphased testing procedure for the promotion of fire captains to battalion chiefs in the City's fire department was illegally reweighted in favor of African-Americans. The Firefighters' Institute for Racial Equality and individual intervenors 2 (FIRE) intervened as intervenor-defendants/cross-claim plaintiffs in the suit, challenging different aspects of the testing procedure as having an adverse impact on African-Americans. The district court granted a preliminary injunction to Local 73, enjoining the City from promoting fire captains to battalion chiefs on the basis of the promotion test battery results. The City subsequently announced that it would abandon the beleaguered testing procedures entirely, and would develop a new procedure for promotions. The district court dismissed Local 73's claim and FIRE's cross-claim as moot, denied Local 73's motion for leave to file a third amended complaint requesting additional relief, and denied Local 73's and FIRE's motions for attorney's fees and costs.
Local 73 appeals the district court's (1) dismissal of its complaint as moot; (2) denial of its motion to file a third amended complaint; and (3) its denial of attorney's fees and costs. FIRE cross-appeals only the district court's denial of attorney's fees and costs. We affirm the district court's dismissal of Local 73's complaint as moot and its denial of Local 73's motion to file a third amended complaint. We reverse the district court's denial of attorney's fees and costs to Local 73 and FIRE as an abuse of discretion, and remand for a determination of reasonable attorney's fees for both Local 73 and FIRE.
In 1991, the City announced plans to implement a testing procedure to promote fire captains to battalion chiefs. The City communicated with both Local 73, a fire fighter labor organization, and FIRE, a civil rights organization pursuing the interests of African-American fire fighters, to create a generally acceptable testing procedure. Eventually, the City devised a three-part test battery, consisting of a written test, a fire scene test, and an assessment center test. The test battery was structured so that candidates had to pass each test in order to proceed to the next. The written test was administered in February 1992 to 54 candidates, 20 of whom were African-American. The fire scene test was administered in June 1993 to 34 candidates, 10 of whom were African-American. The assessment center test was administered in April 1994 to 23 candidates, 7 of whom were African-American.
In June 1993, after considering several schemes for weighting the multiphased test results, and after both Local 73 and FIRE objected to various formulations, the City proposed to make the written and fire scene tests pass/fail, and then to rank passing candidates solely according to their assessment center scores. 3 Of the 23 candidates who took the assessment center test, African-Americans ranked eighth, eleventh, twelfth, seventeenth, eighteenth, twenty-second, and twenty-third. Upon considering these results, and contemplating possible litigation on the basis of an adverse impact against African-Americans, the City reweighted the test battery results. While keeping the written test pass/fail, the City made the fire scene test worth 30% of the ranking score, and made the assessment center worth 70% of the ranking score. Following this reweighting, white candidates tended to drop in the ranking, 4 and African-American candidates, who now ranked third, fifth, eighth, eleventh, twelfth, eighteenth, and twenty-third, tended to improve in ranking.
Local 73 filed suit against the City on August 17, 1994, claiming a violation of employment discrimination laws on the basis of the reweighted scores. In its initial, first amended, and second amended complaints, Local 73 sought a temporary restraining order, a temporary injunction, and a permanent injunction barring the City from promoting fire captains to battalion chiefs on the basis of the disputed test procedure. FIRE intervened in the lawsuit, generally defending the City's decision to reweight the test results. See, e.g., Intervenors' Answer To Pls.' Second Am. Compl. at p 9, reprinted in II Appellant's App. at 355 (). In a cross-complaint, however, FIRE alleged that the written test and assessment center test had an adverse impact against African-Americans, and sought permanent injunctive relief barring the City from making promotions based on the disputed test procedures.
The district court granted a temporary restraining order on August 17, 1994, and a preliminary injunction on September 15, 1994, barring the City from making promotions on the basis of the disputed test procedures. On February 14, 1995, prior to trial for permanent injunctive relief, the City cancelled the entire promotion test procedure, and declared that it would not base any promotions on the disputed test battery. Instead, the City announced its intention to establish a new testing procedure. See Def.'s Motion for Summ. J. at p 3, reprinted in II Appellant's App. at 330.
Construing the City's motion for summary judgment as a motion to dismiss for mootness, the district court on March 13, 1995, held that Local 73's complaint and FIRE's cross-complaint were moot, and dismissed the actions. See Mem. Op. at 6. In reaching this decision, the district court found that, in light of the City's explicit promise to abandon the disputed test procedures and not to base any promotions on the test battery results,
the Court is persuaded that there exists no likelihood of recurrence of the use of the tests of which intervenors' pleading complains.... The injunctive relief sought is mooted by the City's cancellation of the challenged rankings. Plaintiffs' belated invocation of a number of other types of relief which might have been sought, but were not, fails to undermine the conclusion that the relief actually prayed for is rendered meaningless by the City's actions.
Id. at 4-5. The district court also found that "there exist no lingering effects of any alleged violations which are capable of redress by this Court." Id. at 6. Noting that no promotions had been made based on the disputed procedures, the district court concluded that
[t]he Court has never been asked to determine which firefighters are entitled to promotion based on some lawfully-determined application of the test results which have been attacked by all the candidates; the cancellation of those results thus clears and levels the field on which all candidates will now compete, based on whatever new testing procedures are developed by the City. Regardless of the determination of the parties' claims, the Court has never been in a position to prescribe the use of particular tests by the City, and the Court cannot pass on the legality of tests yet to be devised and implemented.
Id. In a separate order filed on October 3, 1995, the district court summarily denied a motion by Local 73 to alter or amend the order and judgment and for leave to file a third amended complaint.
Local 73 filed a motion seeking $68,090.00 in attorney's fees and $8,613.89 in costs, while FIRE filed a motion seeking $66,181.25 in attorney's fees and $22,397.57 in costs. On October 5, 1995, the district court denied these motions. Initially, the district court found that "whether plaintiffs and intervenors qualify as prevailing parties ... is questionable at best," Order at 3, because neither Local 73...
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