Williams v. City of Burns
| Decision Date | 04 May 2015 |
| Docket Number | No. M2012-02423-SC-R11-CV,M2012-02423-SC-R11-CV |
| Citation | 465 S.W.3d 96 |
| Parties | Larry D. Williams v. City of Burns |
| Court | Tennessee Supreme Court |
Stephen W. Elliott and Fetlework Balite–Panelo, Nashville, Tennessee, for the defendant/appellant, City of Burns, Tennessee.
Phillip L. Davidson, Brentwood, Tennessee, for the plaintiff/appellee, Larry D. Williams.
Justin S. Gilbert, Jackson, Tennessee; Wade B. Cowan, Nashville, Tennessee; Jennifer B. Morton and Maha M. Ayesh, Knoxville, Tennessee; William B. Ryan and Bryce W. Ashby, Memphis, Tennessee; and Douglas B. Janney, III, Nashville, Tennessee, for the amicus curiae, Tennessee Employment Lawyers Association.
Holly Kirby, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Sharon G. Lee, C.J., and Cornelia A. Clar k , Gary R. Wade, and Jeffrey S. Bivins, JJ., joined.
We granted permission to appeal in this case to address whether the evidence established that the plaintiff police officer was discharged solely in retaliation for conduct protected under the Tennessee Public Protection Act, Tennessee Code Annotated section 501–304, sometimes called the Whistleblower Act. The chief of police for the defendant municipality had the plaintiff police officer “fix” a traffic ticket for a relative. After the plaintiff officer complained to the mayor that the police chief had pressured him into illegal ticket fixing, the police chief discharged the plaintiff. The defendant municipality claimed that it terminated the officer's employment because he violated the chain of command by reporting the ticket fixing to the mayor, and also because he undermined the chief's authority with the other officers in the police department. We hold that the municipality's assertion that it discharged the plaintiff for going outside of the chain of command amounts to an admission that it retaliated against the plaintiff for refusing to remain silent about illegal activities, conduct that is protected under the Tennessee Public Protection Act. After a review of the record, we also hold that the evidence preponderates in favor of a finding that the second reason proffered by the municipality for the officer's discharge, that he undermined the police chief's authority, is pretext for retaliation. Accordingly, we hold that the plaintiff was discharged solely in retaliation for conduct protected under the Public Protection Act.
By the time Plaintiff/Appellee Larry D. Williams (“Captain Williams”) met Jerry D. Sumerour, Jr. (“Chief Sumerour”), Captain Williams had worked in law enforcement for a number of years in several smaller communities in Tennessee. When they met, Chief Sumerour was employed by the Police Department of the City of Burns, Tennessee (“the Department”), a small police department with just a few officers. The two men became friends. In 2007, Captain Williams began working for the Department as the captain detective. At all relevant times, Chief Sumerour was the Chief of Police for the Department, and Captain Williams was his second in command. Captain Williams and Chief Sumerour socialized together, and Captain Williams came to know Chief Sumerour's family.
On approximately March 20, 2008, Captain Williams drafted a memorandum for Chief Sumerour that set forth a new Department policy against “ticket fixing.” The new policy stated that, once an officer in the field issues a traffic citation, the issuing officer is not permitted to cancel the ticket or convert it into a warning.1 Chief Sumerour approved the new policy, and Captain Williams' memorandum was sent to all of the City's police officers.2 The next evening, Captain Williams was on duty. At around 10:00 p.m., he stopped a vehicle traveling on Highway 47 at sixty-three miles per hour in a thirty-mile-per-hour speed zone.3 The driver of the car, as it turned out, was Chief Sumerour's sixteen-year-old stepson, Cody. Once Captain Williams realized who the driver was, he immediately called Chief Sumerour. The Chief and his wife—Cody's mother—lived close by, so both immediately came to the scene. As Captain Williams was writing Cody's traffic citations, Chief Sumerour's wife became upset and protested loudly that Chief Sumerour should not permit Captain Williams to give her son a ticket. Eventually, Chief Sumerour and his wife returned to their vehicle and left the scene. Captain Williams issued Cody two traffic citations, one for speeding and the other for reckless driving.4
Later that evening, Chief Sumerour called Captain Williams and asked him to come to the Chief's home and bring Cody's traffic citations with him. When Captain Williams arrived, Chief Sumerour walked out to his car. Citing pressure from his wife, Chief Sumerour asked Captain Williams to write “warning” on the traffic tickets and give the tickets to the Chief. Initially, Captain Williams refused, citing the new ticket-fixing policy and expressing concern that they both could lose their jobs for breaking the laws against ticket fixing. When Chief Sumerour persisted, Captain Williams took off his badge, placed it on the dashboard of the car, and asked if there would be repercussions if he refused. According to Chief Sumerour, he told Captain Williams that there would not be repercussions if he refused.5 Captain Williams relented and wrote “warning” on both tickets and handed them to the Chief.
The next day, a Saturday, Captain Williams was scheduled to go to the Department at 2:30 p.m. to go on duty. Chief Sumerour called Captain Williams and asked him to come by his residence on his way to the Department and pick up the traffic citations. Captain Williams did so.
When he arrived at the station with the citations, Captain Williams noticed that the car belonging to the mayor for the City of Burns, Jeff Bishop (“Mayor Bishop”), was parked out front. When he went inside, Captain Williams sought out Mayor Bishop and complained to him that Chief Sumerour had pressured him into “fixing” his stepson's traffic citations by converting them into warnings. He told the Mayor that he had not wanted to alter Cody's traffic tickets but was afraid that Chief Sumerour would fire him if he refused. Mayor Bishop told Captain Williams that Chief Sumerour had briefed him on the situation early that morning, but the Mayor offered no further response. After meeting with the Mayor, Captain Williams erased the “warning” notation on the tickets and placed them in Chief Sumerour's box for them to be filed with the juvenile court as actual citations.6
Chief Sumerour said that, on Monday, he met with the Mayor, City Attorney Tim Potter, and an assistant district attorney about the incident. According to Chief Sumerour, they all advised him that both tickets should remain warnings, so the Chief wrote “warning” on the tickets a second time.
That same day, Captain Williams called Chief Sumerour and asked whether he had turned in Cody's traffic citations. Chief Sumerour responded “in a very firm tone and very unfriendly tone that they would remain warnings.”
A few days later, on Thursday, March 27, 2008, Chief Sumerour informed Captain Williams that, by discussing the ticket-fixing incident with the Mayor, Captain Williams had violated the Department's rule on the chain of command. Chief Sumerour “wrote up” Captain Williams for this alleged infraction. He gave Captain Williams a copy of the police department's organizational chart, and underneath it he wrote:
Captain Williams went to Mayor Bishop's home to meet with him again. He told Mayor Bishop that Chief Sumerour had pressured him into altering the traffic citations, and that he believed that Chief Sumerour was “trying to get rid of [him] and fire [him] because of the tickets that were written.” Mayor Bishop assured Captain Williams that he would not let that happen, and that he would have Chief Sumerour turn in the original traffic citations. After consulting with the City Attorney, Mayor Bishop contacted Chief Sumerour and told him that he had concluded that Cody's traffic tickets should not be warnings but should instead be turned in to the juvenile court as citations. Chief Sumerour told the Mayor that he disagreed.
Early the next morning, Mayor Bishop called Chief Sumerour and advised him that he had until noon that day to turn Cody's traffic tickets in to the juvenile court as citations. If Chief Sumerour did not do so, the Mayor said, he would be suspended. An hour later, the Mayor contacted Chief Sumerour and enhanced the threatened punishment to termination of the Chief's employment. This prompted Chief Sumerour to summon Captain Williams to his office and direct him to reissue new traffic citations to Cody, identical to the original ones.7 Captain Williams complied “under protest,” and Chief Sumerour filed the new traffic citations in the juvenile court.
In the same time frame, Chief Sumerour issued Captain Williams a warning for not answering his department-issued cell phone while he was the on-call detective. Chief Sumerour also wrote up Captain Williams for violating a school-zone policy, but he later rescinded this write-up when it became evident that there had been no violation of the school-zone policy. Prior to the ticket-fixing incident, Chief Sumerour had never disciplined Captain Williams.
In an attempt to defuse the situation, Mayor Bishop asked Captain Williams to attend a meeting with the Mayor and Chief Sumerour. Captain Williams declined the Mayor's invitation, explaining that he felt that things between the Chief and him needed to “cool down” first. The Mayor did not insist that Captain Williams attend the meeting.
The meeting between the Mayor and Chief Sumerour took place on April 4, 2008, without Captain Williams present. Chief Sumerour would later claim that the Mayor told him...
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