Staveley v. City of Lowell
| Decision Date | 14 March 2008 |
| Docket Number | No. 06-P-1192.,06-P-1192. |
| Citation | 882 N.E.2d 362,71 Mass. App. Ct. 400 |
| Parties | Kevin STAVELEY v. CITY OF LOWELL. |
| Court | Appeals Court of Massachusetts |
Maria Sheehy, Assistant City Solicitor, for the defendant.
Peter J. Perroni, Bangor, ME, for the plaintiff.
Present: LENK, BROWN, & McHUGH, JJ.
Lowell police Captain Kevin Staveley sued the city of Lowell (city) after the city refused to allow him to participate in an evaluation process necessary for promotion to deputy superintendent. In his suit, Staveley claimed that the city's action violated his rights under G.L. c. 31, § 74, as well as his right to due process of law. A judge of the Superior Court allowed Staveley's motion for summary judgment on liability and a second judge awarded him damages in the amount of $68,200. The city appeals. We reverse.
The plaintiff's motion for summary judgment, and the city's cross motion, were argued on a statement of agreed facts.1 The essential facts are these. In April, 1997, Staveley and the city entered into an agreement settling Staveley's then-pending claim before the Civil Service Commission (commission). That claim alleged that the city had improperly bypassed Staveley, then a Lowell police lieutenant, for promotion to captain in favor of a person below him on the promotion list. As part of the settlement, Staveley was promoted to captain but agreed to "forgo the opportunity to apply for promotion to the rank of Deputy Superintendent in the Lowell Police Department for the next available promotion after the execution of this agreement."
When Staveley and the city executed the agreement, one deputy superintendent position was available, but there was no outstanding civil service list for that position. In August, 1997, however, the city council enacted an ordinance creating a second deputy superintendent position effective as of July 1, 1997. Lowell police Captains Dennis Cormier and Kenneth Lavallee were provisionally appointed to fill the new and pre-existing positions pending permanent appointments.
About the time it created the new deputy superintendent position, the city, acting under a "Delegation Agreement" with the Massachusetts Human Resources Department (HRD), began an "assessment center" process to fill both positions permanently.2 Under the delegation agreement, city manager Brian Martin became the "Delegation Administrator" and assumed responsibility "for all matters relative to [the] delegation agreement."3
In June, 1998, Staveley submitted an application and paid a fee for the assessment center evaluation, then scheduled for September, 1998. In July, Martin, citing the 1997 settlement agreement, rejected Staveley's application and returned his fee. Staveley resubmitted his application, but Martin again rejected it for the same reasons.
The assessment center evaluation took place as scheduled, without Staveley's participation. Lavallee and Cormier were listed first and second on the resulting civil service list and were appointed permanently. Staveley did not file an administrative claim, but instead commenced this action in June, 2000, some twenty months after the September, 1998, evaluation, claiming that, by refusing to allow his participation in the assessment center process, the city had violated his right to due process of law and had violated the provisions of G.L. c. 31, § 74, a statute carrying criminal penalties for those who interfere with an applicant's pursuit of certain rights under the civil service laws.4
In allowing Staveley's motion for summary judgment on liability the first judge ruled that the settlement agreement did not bar Staveley from applying for the second deputy superintendent position the city created in August, 1997. Rejecting the city's claim that Staveley had failed to exhaust administrative remedies, the judge stated, in effect, that no administrative remedy existed. He concluded by ruling that the city had violated G.L. c. 31, § 74, and Staveley's right to due process of law by barring him from the assessment center process, and that his claim was not barred by laches. Having found liability, the judge scheduled the question of the appropriate remedy for resolution at a later proceeding.
At the subsequent proceeding before a second judge, the city, among other things, presented testimony from the Lowell police superintendent, who said that he had bypassed Staveley for appointment to captain and would likely have bypassed him again had he emerged at the top of a deputy superintendent list.5 The judge concluded that because Staveley was "not allowed to be considered for the position of Deputy Superintendent[,]" and because it was "highly unlikely that [he would] ever be put on equal footing with other candidates for the position of Deputy Superintendent[,]" the appropriate remedy was damages measured by the difference in the salaries of a captain and a deputy superintendent. Accordingly, he awarded Staveley $68,200.6
On appeal, the city first argues that Staveley is barred from recovering because he failed to exhaust available administrative remedies.7 Secondarily, the city urges that, even if Staveley is entitled to recover something, he is not entitled to an award based on the salary differential the second judge utilized. On both counts, we agree.
Our conclusion that Staveley was required to exhaust administrative remedies is informed by the familiar principle that "[w]here the Legislature has provided an administrative process for the resolution of disputes in the first instance, the courts must respect that choice." Puorro v. Commonwealth, 59 Mass.App.Ct. 61, 64, 794 N.E.2d 624 (2003). Here, by enacting G.L. c. 31, § 2(b),8 the Legislature created an administrative process that was available to Staveley, his claims to the contrary notwithstanding, and that was important for smooth operation of the civil service laws.
Viewed together, several components of the civil service laws reveal both the availability and the importance of the process § 2(b) created. By virtue of G.L. c. 31, § 5, the personnel administrator has general responsibility for administration of the civil service laws. Included among the administrator's responsibilities are the tasks of creating and administering the process that produces civil service eligibility lists.9 See G.L. c. 31, § 5. Acting in accordance with G.L. c. 31, § 5(l), however, the administrator may delegate those functions to State agencies, cities, and towns.10
The delegation agreement in this case, which neither party challenges, embodies the administrator's delegation of authority to the city pursuant to § 5(l). Under the agreement, Martin, the city manager, became the delegation administrator, responsible, as noted earlier, "for all matters relative to [the] delegation agreement." More specifically, Martin, as delegation administrator, was responsible for "acceptance and processing of examination applications[ and] verification of examination eligibility." He was also responsible for a broad range of duties normally performed by the administrator, including establishing and maintaining eligibility lists, certifications from those lists, ensuring public access to all public records, providing a mechanism for ensuring that candidates have an opportunity to review their standing on eligible lists, and other like duties. By virtue of the delegation agreement, then, Martin acted as the personnel administrator with respect to the delegated functions the agreement contained.
Neither the personnel administrator nor the delegation administrator has final and unlimited decision-making authority. Instead, those who are aggrieved by the administrator's actions and decisions have a right of appeal pursuant to G.L. c. 31, § 2(b), which broadly empowers the commission "[t]o hear and decide appeals by a person aggrieved by any decision, action, or failure to act by the administrator." See note 8, supra.
To be sure, § 2(b) does not explicitly mention appeals from a "delegation administrator,"11 and Staveley therefore urges that appeals from decisions of a delegation administrator, as opposed to those of the personnel administrator, are impermissible. We do not agree, for acceptance of Staveley's argument would be fundamentally inconsistent with the central role the Legislature intended the commission to have in overseeing operation of the civil service laws.
Our decisions and those of the Supreme Judicial Court have noted that the commission brings to disputes arising out of the civil service laws a substantial body of expertise, see Massachusetts Assn. of Minority Law Enforcement Officers v. Abban, 434 Mass. 256, 262-263, 748 N.E.2d 455 (2001), on which the smooth and sound administration of those laws is dependent. The commission's expertise relates not only to the way in which various statutes affect the substantive rights of civil service applicants and employees but also the appropriate remedy for cases in which individual rights have been violated. In the remedial category, the commission's powers are broad and its expertise particularly helpful. See generally Mulhern v. Civil Serv. Commn., 57 Mass.App.Ct. 920, 921, 785 N.E.2d 1272 (2003).
Acceptance of Staveley's argument that § 2(b) does not permit appeals to the commission from decisions of a delegation administrator would mean that the personnel administrator, by exercising the powers of delegation contained in § 5(l), could remove from the commission's oversight and expertise significant decisions made in many areas covered by the civil service laws. Indeed, the broad responsibilities the administrator delegated to Martin in this case show how large an area of his statutory responsibility he could remove from the commission's oversight were we to accept Staveley's argument.
Statutes, of course, are to be construed in a manner designed to carry out the Legislature's manifest intent. See, e.g., Anderson St. Assocs....
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