Williams v. DeKalb County
| Decision Date | 27 July 1978 |
| Docket Number | No. 76-2998,76-2998 |
| Parties | 18 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. 1742, 17 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 8516 Johnny WILLIAMS, on behalf of himself and other persons similarly situated, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. DeKALB COUNTY, a Political Subdivision of the State of Georgia, et al., Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
Edward Lundy Baety, Atlanta, Ga., Fletcher Farrington, Savannah, Ga., for plaintiffs-appellants.
George P. Dillard, Wendell K. Willard, Decatur, Ga., for defendants-appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.
Before TUTTLE and CLARK, Circuit Judges and EDENFIELD *, District Judge.
This appeal arises from an employment discrimination case brought as a class action under 42 U.S.C. § 1981 to challenge racial discrimination in the hiring, job assignment, promotion, and discharge practices of the DeKalb County (Georgia) Sanitation Department. The district court found that appellant Williams was a proper class representative and certified three subclasses of employees composed of: (1) unknown persons whose ability to be employed is adversely affected by the defendants' educational and testing requirements; (2) current black employees whose employment opportunities are restricted on account of race; and (3) former black employees whose discharge or other termination from employment resulted from racial bias. Injunctive, declaratory, and monetary relief was sought for the class members. The case also presents Williams' individual claims of racial discrimination in his discharge and promotion attempts. After a trial on the merits of the individual and class claims, the district court entered judgment for the defendants.
The DeKalb County Sanitation Department is divided into six divisions: administration, residential collections, commercial collections, incinerator, landfill, and solid waste disposal. Although Williams presented statistics relating to the racial breakdown of employees in each of these divisions, the bulk of the evidence dealt with the residential collections division in which Williams was formerly employed, and, to a lesser extent, with the administration and commercial collections divisions.
Employees in the residential collection division are arranged in a hierarchy system resembling a pyramid. The bulk of the employees occupy low-level nonsupervisory positions as trash collectors. Supervisory personnel are divided into four classifications. The highest ranking member of the residential collections division is the sanitation collection superintendent, who organizes and directs the activities of the division's employees. Beneath him are three field supervisors II, who are each responsible for supervising refuse collection in a designated portion of the county. The next classification includes approximately 16 field supervisors I, who oversee the work of several collection teams and vehicles. The lowest supervisory position in this division is that of driver foreman. This classification includes approximately 116 persons who operate a refuse collection truck and supervise a small group of trash collectors. Each of the supervisory employees above the level of driver foreman is responsible for investigating and handling customer complaints.
A similar hierarchy system is utilized in the commercial collections division. A collection superintendent oversees the work of four field supervisors, who in turn are responsible for the vehicle operators and collectors. Administration of the entire department is in the hands of the Sanitation Director. Other positions in the administration division include an assistant director, an office manager, and a lower level supervisor.
Statistical evidence presented by Williams proved beyond any question that the top positions in these and the other divisions were occupied by whites, while the trash collectors are predominantly black. No black has ever progressed above the level of field supervisor I, the position held by Williams before his discharge.
Williams, a high school graduate with at least one year of college, was first hired by DeKalb County in 1968 as a mail clerk, a position which he held until he was drafted in 1969. Upon completion of his service in December 1970, Williams returned to a better paying position with the county as an automotive service clerk. A year later he was hired to serve as a field supervisor I in the Sanitation Department after successfully passing the required examination. Department policy required new employees to serve a six-month probationary period followed by an evaluation to determine whether the appointment would be made permanent. At the end of his six-month test period in June 1972, Williams' superiors rated him as unsatisfactory and recommended against continued employment. Their unfavorable assessments were based on what they considered Williams' unsatisfactory response to customer complaints and his inability to get along with the workers under him. However, Williams complained to the director of the Department (Humma) that his evaluators had never met with him or offered him suggestions for improvement during his probationary period. Director Humma therefore decided to keep Williams on as a permanent employee after counselling him to make a better effort to get along with others.
Both before the conclusion of his probationary period and thereafter until his discharge, Williams made three unsuccessful attempts to be promoted to higher ranking supervisory positions. His final promotion effort was cut short when he was discharged from the Sanitation Department in August 1972. He filed this suit the following December.
The district court found that Williams' evidence was sufficient to make out a prima facie case of discrimination on both the classwide and individual claims. But the court concluded that the defendants had met their burden of proof on all issues and entered judgment adverse to Williams on all counts. A careful examination of the record has convinced us that the district court erred in certain of its findings of fact and conclusions of law.
Approximately two months after the decision had been made to keep Williams on as a field supervisor I, the director of the Sanitation Department (Humma) circulated a memo on Friday, August 18, 1972, to all supervisors, requiring that a sufficient number of employees and supervisors remain available after normal route collections on Fridays to return to areas from which customer complaints had been received during the day, to pick up uncollected trash, and to handle any other valid customer complaints before the weekend. The memo was an attempt to correct a problem with the workers' leaving early on Fridays after receiving their pay, a situation which meant that customer complaints went unanswered until the next week.
The record reveals that Williams objected to the contents of the directive and attempted to voice his complaint to Bedford, the residential collections superintendent. After some initial efforts to talk to Bedford, in which Williams was told to speak to his immediate superior, Williams finally confronted Bedford in his office on the Monday after the memo was circulated. Bedford's version of the meeting was that Williams cursed and pointed a finger in his face. Williams denied any belligerent behavior. There were no witnesses, although some persons who were in the vicinity at the time testified at the trial that they had heard no loud talking. Bedford reported the incident to Humma, who then discussed the matter with Williams and dismissed him the next day. In a letter dated August 22, 1972, Humma informed Williams that he was being discharged for insubordination and failure to cooperate. 1 The sole ground specified in the letter was Williams' behavior at the August 21 meeting with Bedford:
On August 21, 1972, Mr. Bedford, your Superintendent and duly constituted superior, reported to me that you were insubordinate which involved belligerency, cursing and shaking your finger in his face.
3. I consider this action on your part as a complete failure to cooperate with me, and further your actions and words toward Mr. Bedford as insubordination.
The discharge was effective the next day, August 23, 1972. 2
In its order of December 15, 1975, the district court found that Williams had met his initial burden of making out a prima facie case of racial discrimination in his discharge. The court based that conclusion on the "undisputed statistical evidence of absence of blacks at and above the Supervisor II level," and found that the discharge "could represent a sudden change of attitude towards Williams when he sought advancement to a higher position . . . occupied only by white people." In fact, although the district court does not mention this point, Williams had sought promotion to the very position to which Bedford had recently been appointed.
We agree with the district court that Williams' evidence caused "the burden (to fall) fairly heavily upon the defendant to show that the discharge of Williams was not related to his application for promotion into that area of responsibility." The district court held then and in its subsequent order of May 17, 1976, that the defendants had met this burden. The court found in its second opinion, in which it denied Williams' motion for reconsideration and sought to clarify its reasons for upholding the discharge, that Williams had failed to work on Fridays and that Williams "was not a first time offender." Both of these findings of fact are totally unsupported by the record and, therefore, we must reverse them as clearly erroneous under Fed.R.Civ.P. 52(a). Because we are unable to find in the record any evidence offered by defendants which is adequate to rebut Williams' prima facie case, we...
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