Young-Henderson v. Spartanburg Area Mental Health Center
| Decision Date | 20 September 1991 |
| Docket Number | No. 90-1797,YOUNG-HENDERSO,P,90-1797 |
| Parties | 57 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 41,096 Carrielaintiff-Appellant, v. SPARTANBURG AREA MENTAL HEALTH CENTER; Anne S. Willis, former Assistant Director; Anita Stoddard, Assistant Director; William S. Powell, M.D., Director, Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit |
Napoleon B. Williams, Jr., New York City, argued (Julius L. Chambers, Charles S. Ralston, Eric Schnapper, on brief), for plaintiff-appellant.
Elizabeth Leigh Mullikin, Haynsworth, Baldwin, Johnson & Greaves, P.A., Columbia, S.C., argued (Thomas A. Bright, Greenville, S.C., on brief), for defendants-appellees.
Before SPROUSE, Circuit Judge, and DUPREE, Senior District Judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina, sitting by designation, and WARD, Senior United States District Judge for the Middle District of North Carolina, sitting by designation.
Carrie Young-Henderson brought this action against her former employer, the Spartanburg Area Mental Health Center ("the Center") and various individuals alleging violations of her rights under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e, et seq.; 42 U.S.C. § 1981; 42 U.S.C. § 1983; and the first and fourteenth amendments. This appeal is from the district court's order granting summary judgment in favor of the Center; Dr. William S. Powell, the director of the Center; Anne S. Willis, former assistant director of the Center; and from the court's subsequent directed verdict on a first amendment claim in favor of Anita Stoddard, assistant director of the Center. The district court initially held that all claims other than the first amendment claim against Stoddard were barred by res judicata. After subsequent proceedings, the court found that Young-Henderson failed to establish the first amendment claim against Stoddard. We affirm in part and reverse in part.
Carrie Young-Henderson, a black woman, first began employment as a psychologist at the Spartanburg Area Mental Health Center, a community mental health program in Spartanburg, South Carolina, on April 27, 1979. Throughout her employment, Young-Henderson was allegedly denied several promotions due to her race and sex and was subjected to numerous discriminatory and retaliatory disciplinary actions including discharge on January 3, 1984. After filing a grievance, Young-Henderson was reinstated on February 6, 1984, with back pay. In April 1984, she filed a complaint with the South Carolina Human Affairs Commission alleging discriminatory suspension, discharge, failure to promote, and retaliatory disciplinary action. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC") granted her a Right to Sue Notice on July 31, 1985.
On October 28, 1985, Young-Henderson filed suit against the South Carolina Department of Mental Health ("DMH"), Powell, Willis, and Bomar Edmonds, the Center's Special Services Coordinator, alleging race and sex discrimination in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1981, 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the fourteenth amendment. (Henderson I ) The alleged discriminatory treatment included unlawful discharge during the January to February 1984 period, suspension, failure to promote, and retaliatory disciplinary actions. The complaint also included claims of discriminatory hiring and recruitment practices by the Center.
In February 1986, while Henderson I was pending, Young-Henderson was issued two concurrent three-day suspensions. While the defendants contend these suspensions were for alleged insubordination and disruption of normal Center operations, Young-Henderson alleges she was suspended as a result of her September 1985 meeting with the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ("NAACP") and subsequent posting of an article about civil rights activist Reverend Jesse Jackson on a bulletin board at the Center. On March 12, 1986, while Henderson I was still pending, Young-Henderson was terminated for abandonment of position due to sick leave absences throughout the previous month.
The district court granted partial summary judgment for the defendants on some claims on August 3, 1986. Specifically, the order dismissed the § 1981 and § 1983 claims against the DMH on the ground of eleventh amendment sovereign immunity; it also dismissed the Title VII claim against defendants Powell and Willis because Young-Henderson had failed to name them in her EEOC complaint. 1 While the court dismissed Young-Henderson's discriminatory recruitment and hiring claims for lack of standing and limited the federal claims to the granting of prospective injunctive relief, the court reserved judgment on Young-Henderson's motion to amend her complaint to add a claim for intentional infliction of emotional harm.
Subsequently, the parties settled their dispute and entered into a Consent Order of Dismissal, adopted by the court below on September 24, 1986. The Consent Order provides:
It is hereby stipulated and agreed by the parties, through their respective attorneys, that the above-entitled action be, and the same is dismissed with prejudice. It is further agreed that this Order of Dismissal only terminates the claims raised in the complaint in the above-entitled action and does not in any way affect any other charges or claims filed by the Plaintiff subsequent to the commencement of this within [sic] action.
More than two years later, the complaint in the current action (Henderson II ) was filed on January 9, 1989, and amended on May 3, 1989, against the Center, Powell, Willis, and Stoddard, who had apparently become assistant director of the Center in the interim. The complaint in Henderson II again alleged violations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e, et seq.; 42 U.S.C. § 1981; 42 U.S.C. § 1983; and the first and fourteenth amendments. Upon defendants' motion for summary judgment on the grounds of res judicata, Young-Henderson conceded that all claims arising prior to October 28, 1985 (the date the complaint was filed in Henderson I ) were barred, but she opposed the motion for summary judgment as it pertained to the harassment and retaliatory incidents which occurred after the complaint was filed as well as her suspension and termination in 1986.
In granting summary judgment on April 6, 1990, the court found persuasive the defendants' contentions that all of the claims raised for the first time in the 1989 action "might have been litigated" in the earlier case, as the new claims existed six months before final judgment was rendered on September 24, 1986. It also held that the harassment and 1986 discharge issues were litigated in the previous action because Young-Henderson referred to them in an answer to defendants' interrogatories presented in Henderson I. 2
With respect to the first amendment claims, the court held that the issue of whether these claims were barred by Henderson I was moot in light of Young-Henderson's concession that all claims against the original defendants prior to October 28, 1985, were barred. However, the court found that the first amendment claim against Stoddard in her individual capacity survived the motion for summary judgment, because Stoddard was not named as a defendant in Henderson I. A jury trial was held on June 4 and 5, 1990, on the first amendment claim against Stoddard. At the close of Young-Henderson's evidence, the district court entered a directed verdict in favor of Stoddard, finding she had not sufficiently established that either the posting of the Jesse Jackson article or Young-Henderson's political beliefs were the proximate cause of her dismissal.
On appeal, Young-Henderson contends the court erred in holding that the Consent Order in Henderson I was res judicata with respect to claims arising after the complaint's filing date. She also contests the directed verdict on the first amendment claim in favor of Stoddard.
We find no error in the court's direction of a verdict in favor of Stoddard on the first amendment claim. We agree that Young-Henderson simply failed to present any evidence that she suffered suspension as a result of her meeting with the NAACP or posting an article about Jesse Jackson on the Center's bulletin board. In our view, however, the district court erred in granting summary judgment to the defendants based on its finding that the issues raised in Henderson II were precluded because they were or could have been litigated in Henderson I.
"Under res judicata, a final judgment on the merits bars further claims by parties or their privies based on the same cause of action." Montana v. United States, 440 U.S. 147, 153, 99 S.Ct. 970, 973, 59 L.Ed.2d 210 (1979). It is well established in this circuit that the application of res judicata requires a showing of the following three elements: "(1) a final judgment on the merits in an earlier suit, (2) an identity of the cause of action in both the earlier and the later suit, and (3) an identity of parties or their privies in the two suits." Nash County Bd. of Educ. v. Biltmore Co., 640 F.2d 484, 486 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, 454 U.S. 878, 102 S.Ct. 359, 70 L.Ed.2d 188 (1981).
There is no question that the Consent Order of 1986 operated as a final judgment on the merits. See Keith v. Aldridge, 900 F.2d 736, 740 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 111 S.Ct. 257, 112 L.Ed.2d 215 (1990). Nor, with the exception of the first amendment claim against Stoddard in her individual capacity, is there any question concerning the identities of the relevant parties. Therefore, the element at issue in this appeal concerns the "identity of the cause of action in both the earlier and later suit" or, perhaps more accurately, whether by the terms of the Consent Order the parties waived any preclusive effect that the final judgment granted in Henderson I otherwise would have...
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