Wilson v. UT Health Center
| Decision Date | 06 October 1992 |
| Docket Number | No. 91-4618,91-4618 |
| Citation | 973 F.2d 1263 |
| Parties | 60 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. (BNA) 88, 60 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 41,825, 61 USLW 2299, 77 Ed. Law Rep. 65, 7 IER Cases 1513 Marilyn WILSON, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. UT HEALTH CENTER, UT System Police Department, Etc., et al., Defendants-Appellees. Summary Calendar. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
Larry Robert Daves, San Antonio, Tex., for Marilyn Wilson.
Kathlyn Clare Wilson, Asst. Atty. Gen., Dan Morales, Atty. Gen., Austin, Tex., for UT Health Center, et al.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.
Before REAVLEY, HIGGINBOTHAM and BARKSDALE, Circuit Judges.
Marilyn Wilson contends that officials of the University of Texas Health Center (UTHC) demoted and discharged her from her position as a sergeant in retaliation for her reports of sexual harassment within the UTHC police force. At the close of Wilson's case-in-chief, the district court granted all defendants a directed verdict on Wilson's First Amendment and due process claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and on her defamation claim under Texas law. After considering both sides' evidence, the district court entered judgment against Wilson on her claim under 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq. (Title VII). 773 F.Supp. 958. We affirm in part and reverse in part to allow a jury to consider Wilson's First Amendment and defamation claims against some defendants.
The events that occasioned this controversy occurred on UTHC's Tyler, Texas campus between August 1986 and March 1987. During that time, uncontroverted evidence establishes that UTHC police officers commonly used sexually suggestive language in communicating with one another. Wilson claims that UTHC officials disciplined her for reporting various incidents of sexual harassment. The officials claim that they disciplined Wilson because she made several misrepresentations in reporting those incidents to her immediate supervisor, police chief and defendant John Moore, and in appealing from disciplinary action that Moore took against her.
Wilson's troubles began in August 1986 when she brought a camera lens to the UTHC campus so that her co-worker and subordinate, defendant Chester Davis, could evaluate it. 1 Wilson claims that, instead of going to a hilltop to view the lens, Davis took her to a secluded place, grabbed her and kissed her on the neck despite her protestations and said that he would have his way with her. Davis denies any such contact or statement.
Almost one month later, Wilson reported the incident to UTHC's Acting Director of Personnel, Sharon Briery, who advised that she see Chief Moore. According to Moore's instructions, Wilson prepared a written report of the incident and also detailed incidents of Davis's verbal sexual misconduct toward three other UTHC employees. Davis admitted harassing one of these employees and Moore suspended him three days without pay for making sexually suggestive comments to women. 2 Moore also issued a letter of reprimand to Wilson for waiting so long to report Davis's conduct, stating:
You, as a supervisor and an officer, have a duty to speak out. You cannot unclothe yourself of duty at your convenience. In this matter, you undressed yourself of responsibility both mentally and administratively by alleging intimidation and by waiting twenty-eight days before taking any action and/or reporting the incident to me.
Meanwhile, on October 30, 1986, Wilson went to Moore and said that she had hearsay evidence that Officer Bill Glover had been harassing two other UTHC employees, including Nancy Simms. Moore asked Wilson to investigate further, and he testified that he immediately reprimanded Glover. Wilson submitted a letter to Moore concerning Glover's requests that Simms spend time with him outside work and Glover's expenditure of inordinate amounts of time at Simms's place of work. Glover admitted asking Simms out for coffee, but denied many aspects of Wilson's report, including that he flirted with Simms. At a subsequent meeting with Moore and Wilson, and later at trial, Simms agreed with Glover's version of events and identified several exaggerations in Wilson's report.
On February 5, 1987, Moore issued Wilson a letter of reprimand, suspended her for ten days without pay, and reduced her in rank from sergeant to police officer. In his letter, Moore cites several incidents beginning in 1984 and concluding with the Glover incident in which he understands Wilson to have lied and maliciously maligned her fellow officers. Wilson indicated that she had read and understood Moore's letter by signing it, and then she signed a Personnel Disciplinary Report (PDR) form that Moore prepared concerning the matter for submission to the University System Police in Austin, Texas.
The PDR that Wilson signed for Moore (Moore's PDR) references attached documentation. Wilson asked to see the attachments and to have a copy of the PDR. Moore refused, but he allowed Wilson to copy the sparse information from the PDR by hand. She then paraphrased this information on a new PDR form (Wilson's PDR). Wilson gave Wilson's PDR to her attorney. At a subsequent hearing that constituted part of Wilson's appeal of her demotion, Wilson's attorney demanded the attached documentation from Moore's supervisor, defendant Ron Mays. Wilson's attorney presented Mays with Wilson's PDR without stating that it was not an exact duplicate of Moore's PDR.
Mays took Wilson's PDR to Moore and asked for the attached documentation that it referenced. Moore did not recognize Wilson's PDR as the one he prepared. He and Mays compared the PDRs and discovered that they did not match. Two days later, on March 5, 1987, Moore presented Wilson with a letter of termination, citing Wilson's continued misrepresentations in the PDR incident as the reason for her discharge.
Wilson appealed her termination through UTHC channels and ultimately sued Davis, Moore, Mays, Henry Jackson (UTHC's Director of Equal Employment Opportunity), and George Hurst (UTHC's Director), among others, for, inter alia, depriving her of constitutional rights to free speech and due process, defamation, and retaliatory discharge in contravention of Title VII.
After Wilson's case-in-chief, 3 the district court directed a verdict against Wilson 1) on her First Amendment claim after holding that Wilson's speech regarded a matter of insufficient public concern to merit protection, 2) on her due process claim after holding that Wilson received constitutionally sufficient process, and 3) on her defamation claim after holding that Wilson produced insufficient evidence of malice on the defendants' part. The court then continued the trial to resolve Wilson's Title VII retaliatory discharge claim and entered judgment against Wilson after hearing the evidence. The court found that Wilson made misrepresentations in her report about Glover and that Moore demoted her because of those misrepresentations, and then terminated her because she misrepresented the authenticity of the PDR that her attorney handed to Mays.
Wilson tried her Title VII claim to the court as required by statute before Congress permitted jury trials of these cases in the Civil Rights Act of 1991. Our precedent precludes us from heeding Wilson's suggestion that we accord retroactive effect to the jury trial provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1991. See Landgraf v. USI Film Products, 968 F.2d 427, 432-33 (5th Cir.1992).
Wilson argues that the district court applied the wrong legal standard in deciding that she was not discharged in retaliation for reporting sexual harassment as prohibited by 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-3(a). First, she claims that the court ignored the distinction between the truth of her charges and her belief in the truth of her charges. See De Anda v. St. Joseph Hosp., 671 F.2d 850, 853 n. 2 (5th Cir.1982) (); Berg v. La Crosse Cooler Co., 612 F.2d 1041, 1045-46 (7th Cir.1980) (). But the court found the opposite of good faith on Wilson's part; it found that she knowingly made several misrepresentations to Moore, which caused her demotion and termination.
The court's findings also destroy Wilson's contention that she is entitled to recover under Title VII even if the defendants discharged her for both legitimate and illegitimate reasons. See Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U.S. 228, 241, 109 S.Ct. 1775, 1785, 104 L.Ed.2d 268 (1989) (). The court concluded that Wilson did not prove that her reports of sexual harassment caused her termination and that her misrepresentations did.
Wilson next argues that the fact findings on which the court based its Title VII judgment are clearly erroneous. Our review of the record convinces us that ample evidence supports both Wilson's and the defendants' opposite positions concerning the reasons for the disciplinary action taken against Wilson. We are bound in such cases to defer to the credibility determinations of the trier of fact.
Finally, Wilson argues that Pettway v. American Cast Iron Pipe Co., 411 F.2d 998 (5th Cir.1969), requires a different standard than that applied by the district court to decide whether the defendants disciplined her for legitimate or illegitimate reasons. She claims that Pettway interprets Title VII to prevent an employer from making a disciplinary decision based on its evaluation of the veracity of an employee's allegations that concern an activity that Title VII protects, such as complaints about sexual harassment. No court has read Pettway so broadly, and we see no...
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