Vinyard v. King

• Decision Date: 23 July 1981
• Docket Number: No. 80-1109,80-1109
• Parties: 115 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 3484, 1 Indiv.Empl.Rts.Cas. 129 Edaleen VINYARD, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Robert J. KING, in his individual capacity and as Administrator of the Clinton Regional Hospital, Eph Monroe, Charles E. Engleman, Bud Miskel, Romney M. Chaffin, David Stratton, individually and in their official capacities as members of the Board of Directors of the Clinton Regional Hospital, State of Oklahoma, their servants, agents, representatives, assigns and successors, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit

Page 1016

655 F.2d 1016

115 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 3484, 1 Indiv.Empl.Rts.Cas. 129

Edaleen VINYARD, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Robert J. KING, in his individual capacity and as

Administrator of the Clinton Regional Hospital, Eph Monroe,

Charles E. Engleman, Bud Miskel, Romney M. Chaffin, David

Stratton, individually and in their official capacities as

members of the Board of Directors of the Clinton Regional

Hospital, State of Oklahoma, their servants, agents,

representatives, assigns and successors, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 80-1109.

United States Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit.

Argued May 14, 1981.

Decided July 23, 1981.

Stephen Jones, Enid, Okl. (James Craig Dodd, Enid, Okl., with him on the brief), for plaintiff-appellant.

H. Leonard Court, Oklahoma City, Okl. (Gary L. Betow, Oklahoma City, Okl., with him on the brief), of Crowe, Dunlevy, Thweatt, Swinford, Johnson & Burdick, Oklahoma City, Okl., for defendants-appellees.

Before BARRETT and LOGAN, Circuit Judges, and O'CONNOR, District Judge ^*.

O'CONNOR, District Judge.

Plaintiff brought this action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging that her due process rights were violated when her employment at Clinton Regional Hospital was terminated by defendants. Defendants include the hospital administrator and the members of the hospital board of directors. Upon motion by defendants, the district court abstained in accordance with the Pullman Doctrine stating that Oklahoma law was unclear with respect to the existence of plaintiff's claimed property interest in continued employment with the hospital. ¹ The court below invoked the Pullman Doctrine to permit the state law issue to be litigated, thereby avoiding a premature decision on the constitutional questions presented. The sole issue before us is whether the district court properly abstained.

Plaintiff was hired as Director of Volunteer Services for Clinton Regional Hospital in November 1972 and worked in that position until her termination in January 1978. Although plaintiff concedes that she had no written or oral contract of employment for a specific number of years, she contends that Oklahoma law recognizes a general property right in employment in Nation v. Chism, 154 Okl. 50, 6 P.2d 766 (1931), and further, that she had an implied year-to-year contract with the hospital. The existence of an implied annual contract is based upon plaintiff's allegations (1) that she was not a probationary employee who could be terminated without cause or notice under the hospital rules, (2) that she had been employed at the hospital for five years, (3) that she received an annual salary, (4) that her job performance was reviewed annually, (5) that she received annual increases in salary, (6) that grievance procedures existed for the protection of non-probationary employees that were not followed in her termination, and (7) that she had given special consideration for her employment in the form of working long hours for low pay and sacrificing time that she would otherwise have spent with her invalid mother.

The District Court held that Nation v. Chism, supra, does not create a property interest for plaintiff under the circumstances of this case. The court then abstained "within the narrow exception known as the Pullman Doctrine where resolution of a federal constitutional issue is controlled by the interpretation of state law which is susceptible to a construction which would avoid or modify the necessity of a constitutional adjudication." ² In support, the court relied upon a broad statement in the concurring opinion of Chief Justice Burger in Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 92 S.Ct. 2701, 33 L.Ed.2d 548 (1972), and Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U.S. 593, 92 S.Ct. 2694, 33 L.Ed.2d 570 (1972), wherein the Chief Justice suggested that abstention would be proper in cases involving nonrenewal of teacher contracts, if relevant state contract law is unclear. Reliance was also placed upon three Western District of Oklahoma cases dealing with teacher contracts that were not renewed. Smith v. Griffith, 437 F.Supp. 18 (W.D.Okl.1977); Summers v. Civis, 420 F.Supp. 993 (W.D.Okl.1976); and Fanning v. School Board of Independent School District # 23, 395 F.Supp. 18 (W.D.Okl.1975). Thereupon, plaintiff's claims were dismissed by the court without prejudice. ³

Abstention pursuant to the Pullman Doctrine permits a federal court to stay its hand in those instances where a federal constitutional claim is premised on an unsettled question of state law, whose determination by the state court might avoid or modify the constitutional issue. Railroad Commission of Texas v. Pullman Co., 312 U.S. 496, 61 S.Ct. 643, 85 L.Ed. 971 (1941). The Supreme Court has consistently characterized abstention as

an extraordinary and narrow exception to the duty of a District Court to adjudicate a controversy properly before it. Abdication of the obligation to decide cases can be justified under this doctrine only in the exceptional circumstances where the order to the parties to repair to the State court would clearly serve an important countervailing interest. County of Allegheny v. Frank Mashuda Co., 360 U.S. 185, 188-189, 79 S.Ct. 1060, 1063, 3 L.Ed.2d 1163 (1959).

Colorado River Water Conservation District v. United States, 424 U.S. 800, 813, 96 S.Ct. 1236, 1244, 47 L.Ed.2d 483 (1976).

The mode of analysis to be applied by a district court when the issue of Pullman abstention arises was explained by the Third Circuit in D'Iorio v. County of Delaware, 592 F.2d 681, 686 (3d Cir. 1978), as follows:

The special circumstances generally prerequisite to the application of this doctrine are threefold. First, there must be uncertain issues of state law underlying the federal constitutional claims brought in the federal court. Second, these state law issues must be amenable to an interpretation by the state courts that would obviate the need for or substantially narrow the scope of the adjudication of the constitutional claims. And third, it must appear that an erroneous decision of state law by the federal court would be disruptive of important state policies. In addressing an abstention claim, a district court must first consider whether the particular case falls within the ambit of Pullman as defined by these criteria, and must then make a discretionary determination, based on the weight of these criteria and other relevant factors, as to whether abstention is in fact appropriate.

The sufficiency of a property interest triggering constitutional due process considerations is determined by state law. Bishop v. Wood, 426 U.S. 341, 344, 96 S.Ct. 2074, 2077, 48 L.Ed.2d 684 (1976). A person must have a legitimate claim of entitlement to have a property interest in a benefit; a mere unilateral expectation, abstract need or desire for the benefit is insufficient. Board of Regents v. Roth, supra, 408 U.S. at 577, 92 S.Ct. at 2709. In Perry v. Sindermann, supra, 408 U.S. at 601, 92 S.Ct. at 2699, the Court stated: "A person's interest in a benefit is a 'property' interest for due process purposes if there are such rules or mutually explicit understandings that support his claim of entitlement to the benefit and that he may invoke at a hearing."

The question of the clarity of state law is essentially legal in nature and our review is de novo. D'Iorio, supra, at 686. In the instant case, we are of the opinion that the state law of Oklahoma is not so unclear as to permit abstention.

We agree with the district court's view that Nation v. Chism, supra, does not recognize a general property right in employment under the circumstances of this case. The very broad language of Nation that purports to recognize such a right in employment cases is at most dicta. See Taylor v. State ex rel. Rutherford, 291 P.2d 1033 (Okl.1955). Furthermore, the state and federal courts in Oklahoma have given no indication that a general property right may arguably exist in teacher nonrenewal contract cases. Smith, supra; Summers, supra; Fanning, supra; King v. Board of Regents, Claremore Junior College, 541 P.2d 836 (Okl.1975).

Far more recently than Nation, the Oklahoma Supreme Court had occasion to speak to the issue of when an employee has a property right in employment. In Singh v. City Service Oil Co., 554 P.2d 1367 (Okl.1976), the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas certified the following question: "Under Oklahoma law, does a hiring at a specified sum 'per year' dictate the duration of employment, or does such language merely connote the rate of compensation for an employment agreement which is otherwise terminable at will?" The Oklahoma court answered:

In the absence of facts and circumstances which indicate that an agreement is for a specific term, an employment contract which provides for an annual rate of compensation, but makes no provision as to the duration of the employment, is not a contract for one year, but is terminable at will by either party.

Without doubt, a property interest in employment can be created by an implied contract. Bishop, supra, 426 U.S. at 344, 96 S.Ct. at 2077. In Oklahoma, if there exist indicia that the agreement is for a specific term, then the employment contract is not terminable at will and the employee has a property right therein. The Singh court offers guidance in footnotes 2 and 3 by citations to cases stating that the presence of special circumstances can indicate a specific term of employment. Although the defendants contend that the cases cited offer insufficient guidance as to the state of the law in Oklahoma, one cannot expect the courts to have considered each of the infinite factual situations that could possibly arise. ⁴ In short, the difficulty in determining whether plaintiff in the case before us has a property right in employment exists not because of an unclear standard, ⁵ but because the precise set of facts posed here has not been addressed by the Oklahoma Supreme Court. We do not in any way...