Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-alnd-2_03-mc-00069/USCOURTS-alnd-2_03-mc-00069-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 999
Nature of Suit: 
Cause of Action: Civil Miscellaneous Case

---

1The Board since has been restructured, and the position formerly occupied by Dr. Seaman

no longer exists.

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ALABAMA

SOUTHERN DIVISION

JOHN SEAMAN, )

)

Petitioner, )

)

vs. ) Civil ActionNo. CV-03-Y-69-S

)

JEFFERSON COUNTY )

PERSONNEL BOARD, )

)

Respondent. )

MEMORANDUM OPINION

This matter is before the court for review of the decision of the court-appointed

Receiver of the Jefferson County, Alabama, Personnel Board (“Personnel Board” or

“Board”), Ronald R. Sims, Ph. D., to terminate the employment of John E. Seaman,

Ph. D., as manager of the Board’s Research and Validation Division. 

An evidentiary hearing was conducted by United States Magistrate Judge

Harwell G. Davis, III, pursuant to the terms of the order and memorandum opinion

entered by this court on July 8, 2002, in United States v. Jefferson County, Alabama,

et al., Civil Action No. 75-S-666-S, imposing a receivership upon the Board. The

magistrate judge issued a report and recommendation concluding that the decision of

the Receiver should be reversed, and that Dr. Seaman should be reinstated.1 For the

FILED

 2005 Feb-07 PM 03:37

U.S. DISTRICT COURT

N.D. OF ALABAMA

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 1 of 84
2Section 1 of the Board’s Enabling Act has never been amended, and defines the terms

“appointing authority” or “appointing Power” as meaning a

person, officer, board, council, commission or other body including the County

Board of Health whose lawful jurisdiction or powers are confined wholly or primarily

within the territorial limits of such county and who or which possesses final power

to appoint persons to services, jobs, offices or positions, the compensation of which

is paid in whole or in part from the public funds of such county or from the public

funds of a municipality in such county subject to this Act. . . .

Act No. 248, 1945 Acts of Alabama, at 376-77.

3Section 22 of the 1945 re-enactment of the Board’s Enabling Act subsequently was amended

five times. See Act No. 562, 1947 Acts of Alabama; Act No. 670, 1953 Acts of Alabama; Act No.

1600, 1971 Acts of Alabama; Act No. 679, 1977 Acts of Alabama; and Act No. 684, 1977 Acts of

Alabama. 

2

reasons stated herein, this court reviews the Receiver’s decision de novo, and

concludes that termination of Dr. Seaman’s employment should be sustained.

I. STANDARD OF REVIEW

This courtreviewed the disciplinary appeals process for Jefferson County merit

system employees in the July 8, 2002 memorandum opinion entered in conjunction

with the order appointing Ronald R. Sims, Ph. D. (“Dr. Sims”) as Receiver of the

Personnel Board. That opinion observed, in part, that:

section 22 of Act No. 248 [the “Enabling Act”] governs the dismissal

and suspension of merit system employees. An “appointing authority”2

may dismiss or demote an employee for just cause “whenever [the

appointing authority] considers the good of the service will be served

thereby, for reasons stated in writing, served on the affected employee,

and a copy furnished to the Director [of the Board], which action shall

become a public record.”3

 The affected employee has ten days to appeal

the action by filing an answer to the charges with the Board. The Board

must conduct a public hearing, either before the Board, or before a

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 2 of 84
4Part of the Board’s role is to ensure system-wide consistency for disciplinary actions. See

Personnel Board of Jefferson County’s Response to Show Cause Order (doc. no. 890 in Civil Action

No. CV-75-S-666-S), at 8.

5Defendant’s Ex. 68 (a copy of the memorandum opinion entered by this court in United

States v. Jefferson County, Ala., et al., No. CV-75-S-666-S (N.D. Ala. July 8, 2002), as doc. no.

934), at 80-81. 

3

hearing officer appointed by the Board. If a hearing officer is appointed,

that person must take testimony from the employee and the appointing

authority, and submit to the Board within five days findings of fact and

conclusions of law, and a recommended decision. The Board then must

consider the hearing officer’s report and recommendation during its next

regular meeting, and may modify, alter, set aside, or affirm. If theBoard

hears the appeal, it must make findings of fact and law and issue a

decision. In either case, the Board certifies its findings to the appointing

authority to effectuate the decision.4

 Either party may appeal the

Board’s decision to the Circuit Court of Jefferson County for review by

a three-judge panel. The circuit court reviews questions of law, and

whether the Board’s decision is supported by substantial evidence.5 

The Order imposing a Receivership upon the Personnel Board did not abrogate

the foregoing provisions of state law, except with respect to disciplinary actions

against employees of the Board during the duration of the Receivership: i.e.,

Consistent with the powers vested in the Receiver by paragraph

2(b) above, however, the members of the Jefferson County Personnel

Board shall not perform the [Board’s quasi-judicial functions] with

respect to employees of the Personnel Board. Instead, for the duration

of the Receivership imposed by this order, (i) any employee of the

Jefferson County Personnel Board holding permanent status, and who

is subject to demotion, suspension, discipline, or termination at the

instance of the Receiver, shall be entitled to a due process hearing

before a magistrate judge of this court randomly drawn, who shall apply

the same standards of review as would otherwise be applied by the

Personnel Board in such matters, but for the existence of this court’s

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 3 of 84
6That statute provides: “A magistrate may be assigned such additional duties as are not

inconsistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States.” 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(3).

7Section 1651 provides as follows:

(a) The Supreme Court and all courts established by Act of Congress may

issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and

agreeable to the usages and principles of law.

(b) An alternative writ or rule nisi may be issued by a justice or judge of a

court which has jurisdiction.

28 U.S.C. § 1651.

8United States v. Jefferson County, Ala., et al., No. CV-75-S-666-S (N.D. Ala. July 8, 2002),

doc. no. 935 ¶ 11, at 11-12 (emphasis in original) (bracketed footnotes added).

4

order. See 28 U.S.C. §§ 636(b)(3),[6]

 1651.[7]

 Any employee wishing to

avail himself of this procedure shall notify the Receiver in writing, and

file a copy with the Clerk of this Court, within ten (10) calendar days

after notification of the contested employment action. Within ten (10)

calendar days thereafter, the Receiver shall file with the Clerk of this

Court a copy of the written notice of the contested employment action

and a written statement of the reasons for the action taken with respect

to the employee. The Clerk shall draw at random a magistrate judge of

the court, who shall conduct a hearing on the matter within ten (10)

working days after the Receiver’s statement of reasons. The hearing

may be continued for not more than thirty (30) days on agreement of the

parties or on motion for good cause shown. Upon completion of the

hearing, the magistrate judge shall file his written findings and

conclusions of law, together with a recommendation for disposition of

the appeal. Either party may file objections to the magistrate judge’s

finding and conclusions within ten (10) calendar days after they are

entered, and this court shall thereafter enter such orders as may be

appropriate. . . .8 

The July 8, 2002 order appointing the Receiver did not specifically identify the

standard of review to be applied by this court when reviewing a magistrate judge’s

findings of fact, conclusions of law, and recommendation with respect to disciplinary

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 4 of 84
9Doc. no. 9 (Report and Recommendation), at 87 (emphasis supplied). 

10In legal usage, the word “shall” is construed as imposing a mandatory duty on the subject

of the sentence. See Black’s Law Dictionary 1497 (8th ed. 2004) (“Has a duty to; more broadly, is

required to . . . . This is the mandatory sense that drafters typically intend and that courts typically

uphold.”); see also Bryan A. Garner, A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage 939-41 (2d ed. 1995)

(discussing “Words of Authority”).

5

appeals. Thus, an analysis of the appropriate standard is in order. 

At the outset, the court observes that, in his report and recommendation,

Magistrate Judge Davis stated: “[p]ursuant to the Order of Judge Smith, this matter

is being reviewed by the undersigned Magistrate Judge as if sitting as a three-judge

state circuit court appellate panel hearing a Jefferson County Personnel Board

appeal. Thus, the evidence will be considered de novo.”9

 This statement is erroneous

on two levels. First, this court’s July 8, 2002 order clearly states that the assigned

magistrate judge “shall [i.e., must10] apply the same standards of review as would

otherwise be applied by the Personnel Board in such matters, but for the existence

of this court’s order” —not the standard that would be applied by a three-judge state

circuit court appellate panel hearing an appeal from the Personnel Board. Second, the

standard of review employed by a three-judge state circuit court appellate panel is

whether substantial evidence supports the decision of the Personnel Board, not the

“de novo” standard adopted by the magistrate judge. 

With regard to the standard of review to be applied by this court, Dr. Seaman’s

primary position is that this court should not review the magistrate judge’s report and

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 5 of 84
11Doc. no. 14 (Objection of Plaintiff to Portions of the Report and Recommendation of

Magistrate), at 6.

6

recommendation at all; instead, he argues that “[t]he parties are entitled as a matter

of law to review of the magistrate’s decision by certiorari to the [Alabama] Court of

Civil Appeals.”11 Alternatively, Dr. Seaman urges this court to review the magistrate

judge’s report and recommendation as though the court were sitting as a three-judge

state circuit court appellate panel reviewing a decision of the Personnel Board. As

noted above, in such circumstances the Board’s decision must be affirmed if

substantial evidence supports it. See City of Birmingham v. Personnel Board of

Jefferson County, 464 So. 2d 100 (Ala. Civ. App. 1984). “Substantial evidence is

relevant evidence that a reasonable mind would view as sufficient to support the

determination.” Ex parte Personnel Board of Jefferson County, 440 So. 2d 1106,

1109 (Ala. Civ. App. 1994) (citing Ex parte Morris, 263 Ala. 664, 83 So. 2d 717

(1955)). That standard also accords substantial deference to decisions of the threemember Personnel Board — the duties and powers of which were transferred by this

court to the Receiver — for such reasons as the following:

Agencies tend to develop a recognized competence or expertise

in the specific fields of operation entrusted to them by the legislature,

and judicial deference to the administrative agency in the first instance

tends to insure uniformity and consistency of decisions in these special

areas. Initial review of a matter by an agency can do more than merely

assist a court in its consideration; it might alleviate entirely any need to

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 6 of 84
7

invoke the court’s aid. However, if judicial review is ultimately

necessary, the special competence of the agency lends great weight to

its reasoning and decision. When the legislature delegates a

discretionary function to an agency to be exercised in light of the

agency’s special competency, a court frustrates legislative intent and

usurps that discretionary role by stepping in when the agency’s choice

is not clearly unreasonable or arbitrary.

Ex parte Personnel Board of Jefferson County, Alabama, 440 So.2d 1106, 1109 (Ala.

Civ. App. 1983) (citations omitted). Here, however, the report and recommendation

of the magistrate judge is not entitled to the same deference accorded “special

competence” or “expertise” in public employment, such that narrow, limited review

under the “substantial evidence” standard would be appropriate. 

On the other hand, the Receiver correctly suggests that the magistrate judge

assumed the role of a hearing officer appointed by the three-member Personnel Board

when taking evidence in this action, and that the proper role of this court is to

consider his findings of fact and conclusions of law de novo, and modify, alter, setaside, or affirm his recommendation, as appropriate, consistent with the Personnel

Board’s Enabling Act. The Receiver argues that such review also comports with the

provisions of 28 U.S.C. § 636, which provides, in pertinent part, that

a judge may also designate a magistrate judge to conduct hearings,

including evidentiary hearings, and to submit to a judge of the court

proposed findings of fact and recommendations for the disposition, by

a judge of the court . . . .

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 7 of 84
12Defendant’s Ex. 66 (Rules & Regulations of the Personnel Board of Jefferson County, rev.

Nov. 1995), Rule 6.6.

8

Within ten days after being served with a copy, any party may

serve and file written objections to such proposed findings and

recommendations as provided by rules of court. A judge of the court

shall make a de novo determination of those portions of the report or

specified proposed findings to which objection is made. A judge of the

court may accept, reject, or modify, in whole or in part, the findings or

recommendations made by the magistrate judge. The judge may also

receive further evidence or recommit the matter to the magistrate judge

with instructions.

28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(B).

The court finds that the standard for reviewing the magistrate’s

recommendation advocated by the Receiver is consistent with the Enabling Act, as

well as the federal statutory scheme governing referral of the matters addressed in this

action to a magistrate judge. Therefore, the court will review de novo the magistrate

judge’s report and recommendation, addressing the Receiver’s decision to terminate

Dr. Seaman’s employment. According to the Rules and Regulations of the Personnel

Board that were in effect on the date of the hearing, the scope of the inquiry is

“whether or not the employee, by reason of his act or acts as charged and his record

of service, merits retention in the service or should be removed therefrom.”12 

II. FACTUAL BACKGROUND

This matter is collateral to the enduring controversies of United States v.

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 8 of 84
13See Defendant’s Ex. 68. 

14“Selection procedure” generally refers to any measure, combination of measures, or

procedures used as a basis for any employment decision, including the full range of assessment

techniques from traditional paper and pencil tests, performance tests, training programs, or

probationary periods and physical, education, and work experience requirements through informal

or casual interviews and unscored application forms. See Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection

Procedures, 29 C.F.R. § 1607.16(Q). 

9

Jefferson County, Alabama, et al., Civil Action Nos. CV-74-S-12-S, CV-74-S-17-S,

and 75-S-666-S — a cluster of consolidated and intervening class actions whose

remote and recent history is well documented in Ensley Branch,N.A.A.C.P. v. Seibels,

31 F.3d 1548 (11th Cir. 1994), and in this court’s July 8, 2002 memorandum opinion

and order imposing a Receivership upon the Personnel Board.13 To provide context,

however, a summary of the factual background and procedural history relevant to

disposition of this matter is necessary.

For decades, the Jefferson County Personnel Board — both the entity itself and

its three-member Board — abdicated the Board’s Constitutional, statutory, and

professional obligations by failing to establish lawful employee selection

procedures,14 as the Board had agreed to do in the consent decree first entered in

1981, then modified in 1995, and extended in December of 2000. This abdication

was due to an ignorance of (or indifference to) the Board’s legal responsibilities on

the part of those charged with directing the Board, and staff incompetence, among

other factors.

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 9 of 84
10

These controversies were reassigned to the undersigned judicial officer during

April of 2000, upon the retirement of former Chief United States District Judge Sam

C. Pointer, Jr. At that time, Ben Payton was Personnel Director of the Board, and the

Board’s staff was organized into four divisions: Employment and Administration;

Classification and Compensation; Employee Relations; and Research and Validation.

The plaintiff, John Seaman, then was Manager of the Research and Validation

Division (“R&V Division”), which was responsible for recruitment, screening, and,

development and administration of employee selection procedures: i.e., the “heart”

of these clustered class-actions. 

During a status conference conducted on October 30, 2000, the court asked the

parties to report on the status of “the case,” and to submit a schedule for completing

the work remaining to be done in accordance with, e.g., the Board’s 1981 consent

decree and 1995 modification order. Another status conference was conducted on

November 20, 2000, during which counsel for the Board presented a proposed

schedule for development of selection procedures for the fifty-eight job

classifications remaining under federal court scrutiny. Counsel for the Board also

provided to the court, shortly before the status conference commenced, a document

entitled “Consent Decree Strategic Plan — Detailed Version.” In pertinent part, that

“Strategic Plan” called for an increase in staffing, temporary reassignment of staff

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 10 of 84
15A “provisional appointment” is used to temporarily fill a vacancy when there is no register

of eligible candidates in place for a particular classification. Under the Rules and Regulations of the

Personnel Board in effect at the time of Dr. Seaman’s termination, 

[i]n the absence of an eligible list, the Board may authorize the filling of a

vacancy by provisional appointment. Any such candidate for provisional

appointment must meet education, experience and related requirements set forth by

the Director. Provisional appointments shall be for a period of not more than four

(4) months. No provisional appointment shall be continued for more than ten (10)

days after the establishment of any eligible list for the class. Any provisional

employee failing to qualify by examination shall be separated from the service after

the appropriate eligible list is certified. The provisional appointment of any

individual shall not confer on the appointee any rights of status, appeal or related

rights set forth under these Rules.

Defendant’s Ex. 66, Rule 4.9(c). In other words, provisional appointments should have been made

for no more than four months, but it was the Board’s practice prior to imposition of the receivership

to extend such appointments. Doc. no. 6 (transcript of hearing, Feb. 27, 2003), at 122-23. This, of

course, simply was an expedient means of circumventing the Board’s responsibility to devise and

administer selection procedures that complied with federal Constitutional and statutory

requirements.

11

from other divisions to the R&V Division, and temporary restructuring of the

division. With respect to the latter initiative, the plan called for assignment of most

of the R&V Division’s staff to work exclusively on “consent decree” job

classifications. The division’s remaining staff — consisting of Dr. Seaman, four

personnel analysts and other, temporarily assigned, staffmembers—wasresponsible,

under Dr. Seaman’s direction, for “non-consent decree” classifications. The plan also

called for implementation of certain“business method oriented strategies,” including:

requiring jurisdictions to fill vacancies from existing registers; using so-called

“related lists” to fill vacancies; continuing the use of provisional appointments;15

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 11 of 84
16According to Dr. Seaman, a “training and experience qualifying” selection procedure is one

in which the applications of all applicants who meet the minimum qualifications established for the

job classification are given a numerical score of “70” and the names of the qualifying applicants are

placed on a register of persons eligible for employment without differentiation. A “training and

experience” questionnaire selection procedure is one in which the applications of all applicants who

meet the minimum qualifications are further rated based on established criteria, and are assigned a

differentiated numerical score. Doc. no. 6 (transcript of hearing, Feb. 27, 2003), at 39-43.

17Plaintiff’s Ex. 58.

18See generally doc. no. 707 in Civil Action No. CV-75-S-666-S (transcript of November 30,

2000 status conference).

19Doc. no. 919 in Civil Action No. CV-75-S-666-S (Affidavit of Mary Beth Vrabel), Ex. 1

12

expanding the use of personal services contracts; expanding the use of “training and

experience qualifying examinations”;16 and closing “open-continuous” and “openuntil-filled” job announcements.17 Although the court adopted,withmodification, the

Personnel Board’s proposed compliance schedule in the order entered December 18,

2000, the court was not asked to — and, in fact, did not — approve the Board’s socalled “Strategic Plan.”

18

 

The ensuing events ultimately culminating in the court’s appointment of a

Receiver to assume control of the Personnel Board, and to assume responsibility for

discharging the Board’s federal Constitutional and statutory responsibilities, were

described in the memorandum opinion of July 8, 2002, a portion of which recorded

the following facts: 

The Board conceded that its existing selection procedures for

fifty-eight job classifications (police/deputy sheriff sergeant,firefighter,

and fifty-six non-public safety classifications) had adverse impact on the

basis of race or sex (or both), and could not be defended as lawful.19

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 12 of 84
(deposition of James Johnson), deposition exhibit 1 (contained in supplemental filing of exhibits

(doc. no. 924)).

20See doc. no. 708 in Civil Action No. CV-75-S-666-S (Order Extending 1981 Consent

Decrees and 1995 Modification Orders, entered December 18, 2000).

21See doc. no. 763 (Notice ofCommencement of Criminal Contempt Proceedings, and, Order

to Show Cause).

13

Even so, the Board confidently assured this court that it could

develop new, lawful selection procedures for all fifty-eight

classifications in short order. The Board submitted a detailed schedule

supporting its proposal, which allocated twelve months for the Board to

develop and administer selection procedures meeting the requirements

of paragraph 12 of the 1995 Modification Order, and three additional

months for party and court review. The Board proposed to extend the

1995 Modification Order until March of 2002. In essence, the Board

proposed to complete in twelve months the work it had failed to

accomplish during the preceding five years. For that reason, this court

viewed the Board’s proposal with a jaundiced eye, and perceived it as

being, at best, incongruously optimistic.

Accordingly, when extending the Board’s 1981 Consent Decree

and 1995 Modification Order, this court established a more realistic set

of time limits for the Board to complete its remaining tasks. This court’s

December 18, 2000 order required the Board to develop lawful

employee selection procedures in accordance with a detailed schedule,

specifying position-by-position, step-by-step, deadlines for each task.20

Significantly, each deadline specified in the order either had been

proposed by, or was more generous than the schedule requested by, the

Board.

The Board still failed to meet many deadlines.

Worse, within three months of entering the December 18, 2000

order, the Board moved the court to extend the deadlines for forty-one

of the fifty-six non-public safety job classifications.21

Based on the foregoing facts, among many others discussed in the opinion, the

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 13 of 84
14

court instituted criminal contempt proceedings against the Board, the individual

members of the Personnel Board (James Johnson, Temple W. Tutwiler III, and Robin

Burrell), the Board’s Personnel Director (Ben Payton), and its

Industrial/Organizational Psychologist (Michael Blair) on June 1, 2001. Birmingham

attorney Charles A. Powell, III, was appointed Special Prosecutor to investigate

whether prosecution of criminal contempt charges was warranted for the Board’s

numerous failures to comply with the court’s orders. Following a thorough

investigation, the Special Prosecutor determined that there was not sufficient

evidence to support the prosecution of criminal contempt charges against the

individual defendants, and recommended dismissal of defendants Johnson, Tutwiler,

Burrell, Payton, and Blair. Ultimately, the Special Prosecutor also recommended

dismissal of the criminal contempt proceedings against the Board itself. 

Even the threat of criminal contempt proceedings proved insufficient to

impress upon the Board, its individual Board members, or the Board’s staff the

imperative of complying with the consent decree, because, following dismissal of

criminal contempt proceedings, the Board failed miserably in the development and

administration of a lawful selection procedure for the police and deputy sheriff’s

sergeant promotional examination. That debacle also is recounted in the court’s July

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 14 of 84
22See Defendant’s Ex. 68, at 43-56.

23Doc. no. 884 in Civil Action No. CV-75-S-666-S. By that time, Payton had retired from

his position as Executive Director, and the three-member Board named Greg James as Acting

Director of the Personnel Board. James continued to function in that role until the Receiver was

appointed on July 8, 2002.

24Doc. no. 886 in Civil Action No. CV-75-S-666-S.

15

8, 2002, memorandum opinion,22 and will not be repeated here. It is sufficient to state

that the Board’s failure to develop and implement lawful selection procedures for

promotion to the rank of police and deputy-sheriff sergeant — more than five years

after the deadline established in its 1995 Modification Order — was, metaphorically

speaking, “the last straw.” 

On April 4, 2002, the Wilks Class, joined by the Martin plaintiffs and Bryant

intervenors (“the Martin/Bryant parties”), moved the court to hold the Personnel

Board in civil contempt for failure to comply with its 1995 Modification Order and

the December 18, 2000 order extending the Personnel Board’s consent decree.23 The

court directed the Board to show cause why it should not be held in contempt and, if

so adjudged, why a receiver should not be appointed to assume control of all

functions of the Board.24 In its response, the Board conceded that it had failed to

comply with the court’s orders, but insisted that it “had tried its best.” 

Thus, more than twenty-eight years after this litigation was commenced, this

court concluded that the Board’s “best” was not good enough. Based upon an

extensive evidentiary record, this court adjudged the Personnel Board to be in civil

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 15 of 84
25Dr. Sims’s qualifications were detailed in the July 8, 2002 Memorandum Opinion and

attachments to the accompanying order, but the following is a summary:

Dr. Sims is Floyd Dewey Gottwald Senior Professor in the Graduate School of

Business at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. He teaches,

among other subjects, organizational behavior, leadership, change management,

human resources management, and business ethics. He has published extensively in

the area of organizational behavior, including recent papers on change in publicsector organizations and team-building. He previously served on the executive board

of the Academy of Management’s Organizational Development and Change

Division. Dr. Sims has successfully consulted on organizational development and

change for over twenty-one years. None of the fifteen other persons suggested or

considered by this court as candidates for Receiver possess Dr. Sims’s combination

of practical experience in, and systematic research on the means and methods of

effecting, organizational change.

Defendant’s Ex. 68, at 99-100.

16

contempt on July 8, 2002, for violating the terms of the December 18, 2000 order

extending the Board’s 1981 consent decree and 1995 Modification Order, and

appointed Ronald R. Sims, Ph. D., as Receiver.25

 

When the Receiver first arrived at the Board’s offices on July 8, 2002, he

addressed all staff members who were present, and made available copies of both the

order appointing him as Receiver, as well as the accompanying memorandum

opinion. The Receiver told staff that he had been charged by the court with reforming

the Board, and that he would need their assistance in accomplishing that goal. The

Receiver gave the following account of his initial meeting with the Board’s staff:

[I told the Board’s employees that] I had been given a charge,

accepted responsibility of reforming the Board, that I intended to — my

words were to fix the Board; that the only way that I could fix the Board

was with their help. That I expected that we would do this together, that

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 16 of 84
26Doc. no. 8 (transcript of hearing, Mar. 13, 2003), at 434-35.

17

I would assure them that I would be their advocate.

I would make sure it was clear what rules we were supposed to

follow, and that the rules and regulations that were in effect were the

ones that we were going to follow, that I expected everybody to do the

right things and do the right things well. That I did not want to spend

time harping on what had happened in the past. No fingerpointing, no

blaming.

I expected people to be honest, bring problems to my attention,

and also to make sure that I — they understood I had an open door

policy. That, under no circumstances, would I expect somebody to feel

as if they were going to be penalized for yesterday as far as I was

concerned.

My approach in this situation is always a clean slate. You start

from scratch. They would be held accountable for anything they did

from there on in.

26

Later that same day, the Receiver met with the Board’s division heads,

including Dr. Seaman. During the meeting, the Receiver told Dr. Seaman and the

other division managers that: 

I needed their assistance in this process, that in a leadership role that

they were going to be the ones that on a day-to-day basis had to make

sure that, if we were going to right the ship and do the right things, that

they would have to accept some responsibility for helping to move

things forward.

They should not perceive me as, in my words, a lone ranger or I

referred to Mighty Mouse, here I come to save the day. That was not

something they could expect any outsider to do. They knew the

situations better than I did. They knew where the potential problems

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 17 of 84
27With respect to the work performed by the R&V Division, the applicable professional

standards are the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (“Uniform Guidelines”),

which have been described as follows:

The Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (1978) represent

a joint statement of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Civil

Service Commission, the Department of Labor, and the Department of Justice as to

the characteristics of acceptable selection procedures. . . .

. . . .

The Uniform Guidelines are not concerned, except with respect to record

keeping, with selection programs that do not demonstrate adverse impact. For those

selection programs that do have adverse impact, the options of the organization are

specified. First, the organization may cease use of the selection device(s) under

question and adopt other devices that do not result in adverse impact. If this is not

acceptable, the organization may defend its practices [by demonstrating the validity

of the selection procedure]. If validation evidence is used, it should specifically

address the use of the selection instrument with all groups for whom the test is to be

used. At a minimum this means that statistical validation should include a

representative number of women and minorities. . . . A large portion of the Uniform

Guidelines is in fact devoted to the steps, data, and procedures of validation

strategies. An added provision, however is that the organization should demonstrate

there are no other alternative selection programs that are both valid and have less

adverse impact.

Robert D. Gatewood & Hubert S. Feild, HUMAN RESOURCE SELECTION 51, 52 (5th ed. 2001).

28Doc. no. 8 (transcript of hearing, Mar. 13, 2003), at 435-36 (emphasis supplied).

18

were.

I’m sure they had solutions and suggestions for those problems

and that I looked forward to hearing from them. That I expected them

to also . . . be honest, bring problems to my attention.

I was there to work myself out of a job. That my goal was to help

create an organization where we exceeded customer expectations. That

I expected them to follow the rules and regulations and any professional

guidelines that applied to their areas.[27] Under no circumstances would

I allow anything less than doing things differently than they had in the

past.28 

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 18 of 84
29Id.

30Id. at 437.

31Id. 

32Id. 

33Id. at 438.

19

The Receiver thus instructed division managers that “business as usual” was no

longer acceptable — in other words, that change was in order.29 The Receiver also

asked each division manager to provide him with his or her division’s operations

manual. Only Greg James, who had been head of the Employment and

Administration Division, complied with that request.30 Although Dr. Seaman did not

provide an operations manual for his division, he gave the Receiver a copy of a 1977

(i.e., a twenty-five-year old) job analysis guide.31 The Receiver did not consider Dr.

Seaman’s submission to be responsive to his request, and told him that he needed to

develop a standard operating procedures manual for the R&V Division, in view of the

critical importance of Dr. Seaman’s division to the development and administration

of lawful employee selection procedures.32

 Three months later, on October 7, 2002,

when Dr. Seaman was placed on verbal notice that disciplinary action was

contemplated, he still had not provided the Receiver an operations manual for his

division.

33

 

The Receiver again met with division managers, including Dr. Seaman, on July

10, 2002. During this meeting, the Receiver shared concerns expressed by Board

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 19 of 84
34Id. at 439.

35Id.

36Id.

37Id. at 441.

38Mr. James served in an interim capacity during the gap between the resignation of Ben

Payton as Personnel Director and the appointment of Dr. Sims as Receiver.

39Doc. no. 8 (transcript of hearing, Mar. 13, 2003), at 444; see also Plaintiff’s Ex. 13.

20

employees that the division managers seemed unwilling to make the changes

necessary to reform the Board.34 Dr. Seaman responded by opining that the Receiver

“did not understand” the situation, that the Board was understaffed, and that Dr.

Seaman had been following directions.35 The Receiver explained that he was in the

process of identifying critical issues, so that resources could be dedicated to resolve

them.36 The Receiver also directed each division manager to complete assessments

of themselves, as well as of all employees working within their respective divisions.37

The Receiver met individually with Dr. Seaman on July 17, 2002, to follow up

on his directive that each division manager conduct a self-assessment and evaluation

of all employees within his or her division. Dr. Seaman presented the Receiver with

a copy of a memorandum he had written to Acting Personnel Director Greg James38

on July 1, 2002 — i.e., a document that had not been generated in response to the

Receiver’s July 10th directive, but instead addressing the R&V Division’s activities

and Dr. Seaman’s assessment of the division’s staffing and resource needs.39 During

the meeting, the Receiver raised concerns about employee morale within Dr.

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 20 of 84
40Doc. no. 8 (transcript of hearing, Mar. 13, 2003), at 441-42.

41Id. at 442.

42Id. at 443.

43See text preceding note 17 supra.

44Id.

21

Seaman’s division, ongoing use of selection procedures that did not comport with

professional standards, inequitable work assignments, and test security issues.40 The

Receiver also asked Dr. Seaman to describe his method of forecasting, but Dr.

Seaman said that he did not forecast. The Receiver found this troubling, and

indicative of a lack of planning and organization.41 Dr. Seaman responded in a

manner that became a constant refrain when he was challenged: he was understaffed

and he was just doing what he had been told to do.42 The Receiver told Dr. Seaman

that his concerns were not based on past events, but instead were based on feedback

from former “Consent Decree team”43 members who recently had been reintegrated

into the R&V Division. The Receiver said:

And I told him . . . whether their perceptions were correct or not,

it was an issue that he needed to be concerned about and he needed to

try to . . . address. Because if they didn’t have confidence in his ability

to provide the leadership there, then we weren’t going to be able to

move forward in such a critical area.44

The Receiver and Dr. Seaman met again the following day, July 18, 2002, to

discuss work assignments within the R&V Division. The Receiver explained:

My concern [was] about how jobs were being assigned, [and] not

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 21 of 84
45Id. at 443-45 (emphasis supplied).

22

assigned. I had — as I had done during my first weeks, I went around

and continued to meet with employees to ask them about what they were

working on.

I knew that with the people moving downstairs from the consent

decree team that they were perceived as being much more competent

than the people upstairs. So I was looking to see what they were

working on, what kind of assignments they had.

You know, part of what was coming up in my discussions with

them is that they weren’t getting assignments. They weren’t doing

things except . . . sitting around, other than what time they were

spending on the task force.

I explained to John [Seaman] that I was concerned about it. How

was he staying on top of it? How was he — again, I think that’s the first

time I brought up the issue of kind of tracking the progress, forecasting.

Again, this whole thing about how you most effectively utilize the

resources you have. Because, again, in the past and even at that

meeting he [talked] in terms of his being understaffed.

I think, also, the day before as part of that, that July 17th meeting,

he did give me a copy of the July 1st document that he had initially

presented to Greg James, which was his assessment of his area, which

laid out his staffing needs.

We talked about that again and my saying that, all right, you have

these staff now . . . you told me you had a plan in place before they came

downstairs, how come these people aren’t being utilized? If it’s so

critical, if we are under so much pressure, then people should have

multiple assignments now. If these are your best people, then you need

to get them to working.45

The Receiver also discussed his concern about the continued use of Training and

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 22 of 84
46Doc. no. 8 (transcript of hearing, Mar. 13, 2003), at 445. See also supra note 16.

47Successful applicants for employment or promotion are placed by the Personnel Board on

“registers of eligibles.” Once a register for a particular job classification has been established, a

governmental entity served by the Board may request a “certificate of eligibles” when vacancies

occur. The certificate contains the names of the highest ranked candidates on the register who have

indicated a desire to work for that particular employer. The number of names certified to the

appointing authority is a function of the number of vacancies to be filled. Under the so-called “Rule

of Ten,” “[t]he director shall . . . certify to the appointing authority the ranking eligibles, correlating

to the 10 highest test scores from the appropriate register, and if more than one vacancy is to be

filled, the ranking names of the next highest test score for each available vacancy or all the names

on the register if there are fewer than 10.” 1994 Ala. Acts 564.

23

Experience (“T & E”) questionnaires, and T & E qualifying registers, as selection

procedures, stating:

As I looked in terms of the way that the T & Es were being used in the

research and validation division, it was clear that it was nothing more

than a ten-minute checklist of looking at the training, experience, and

they also in some situations used TEQs or qualifications, and that wasn’t

an in-depth enough, you know, investigation of what was required to be

able to actually assess or rate an applicant.46

Dr. Seaman responded that his continued use of such “quick-and-dirty” selection

procedures was due to a shortage of personnel, and he had been instructed to use

those methods prior to the Receiver’s appointment. The Receiver told Dr. Seaman

that he could not continue to use the same “shortcuts” that had been employed prior

to his appointment. The Receiver also asked whether any registers of persons eligible

for employment47 had expired. Dr. Seaman said “no.” Other events established that

this response was, at best, disingenuous.

For example, in his July 1, 2002 memorandum to Greg James, Dr. Seaman had

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 23 of 84
48Plaintiff’s Ex. 13, at 2 (emphasis supplied).

49Doc. no. 6 (transcript of hearing, Feb. 27, 2003), at 127 (emphasis supplied).

50Plaintiff’s Ex. 11.

24

noted the R&V Division’s very high priority of “prepar[ing] for, coordinat[ing] &

administer[ing] Public Safety promotional & entry level testing to replace aging

registers.”48 During the evidentiary hearing, he further testified that “[w]e needed to

devote, and particularly since there had not been registers for several of these, we

had to — we had to re-administer some of the public safety testing.”49 Additionally,

just six weeks earlier, on May 15, 2002, Dr. Seaman had advised Greg James in

another memorandum of the need for a new register for the firefighter classification

for the City of Birmingham, stating, in pertinent part, that:

Gordon Graham [the City’s personnel director] contacted me

today about the need for a new register of eligible candidates for

Firefighter to meet current and impending staffing needs for the City of

Birmingham. The current register which has been purged is

approximately 18 months old, and contains approximately 26-30

candidates who have already been certified to the city. 

Gordon informed me that it is perceived that the city will need to

fill up to 40 vacancies; a level of hires that cannot be met using the

current register. He informed me that the city plans to employ (over

strength) up to 25 Firefighters to accommodate the need for personnel

in the absence of 20 incumbents who have been called up to active

military duty, and that normal attrition will account for another 15 or

more vacancies needing to be filled.50

Moreover, the Receiver attended a meeting in Washington, D.C., on July 23, 2002,

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 24 of 84
51Doc. no. 8 (transcript of hearing, Mar. 13, 2003), at 446-47. Prior to the Receiver’s

departure for the meeting, Dr. Seaman approached the Receiver and asked him to inquire of Dr.

Veres whether, in certain cases, fewer than all of the components of a selection procedure could be

administered. The Receiver did so, and was advised by Dr. Veres that he previously had told Dr.

Seaman that such a practice was not acceptable. Id. at 448.

52Id. at 449-50.

53Id. at 453.

54Id. at 450.

25

with counsel for some of the parties to the litigation and John G. Veres III, Ph. D., the

court’s special master.51 During that meeting, the parties advised the Receiver that

certain public safety registers had expired, and that the Board should quickly take

action to establish new registers.52

 

During the Washington meeting, the Receiver also spoke with Shane Pittman,

Ph. D., an industrial/organizational psychologist who had served as a consultant to

the Board since March of 2002, and the consultant the Receiver had asked to assess

the work performed by Dr. Seaman’s R&V Division. According to the Receiver, 

[Dr. Pittman] expressed concern that [the R&V Division] still [was]

taking shortcuts in testing. That the procedures they were following

were ones that, from her interaction with the parties, had already been

communicated were unacceptable. And at that point . . . she advised that

I consider putting a halt to some of the exams that were scheduled, and

that I needed to get somebody else to take a more in-depth look at the

process.53 

Upon the Receiver’s return to Birmingham on July 24, 2002, he again asked

Dr. Seaman whether any registers had expired, and, again, Dr. Seaman stated there

were no expired registers.

54

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 25 of 84
55Id. at 604-05.

56Id. at 605.

57See text accompanying note 50 supra.

58See supra note 15.

59Defendant’s Ex. 61.

26

During the evidentiary hearing, Dr. Seaman justified the incorrect information

that he had provided the Receiver about public safety registers by claiming that he

was not responsible for monitoring registers after they had been established. He said

that after a register was created, and the period for appeals had elapsed, maintenance

of the register was the responsibility of the Certification Division.55 He

acknowledged, however, that he could have obtained the information requested by

the Receiver.56 Even if monitoring the register was not Dr. Seaman’s responsibility,

he clearly knew, as early as May of 2002, that the firefighter register for the City of

Birmingham was no longer viable.57

During August of 2002, the Receiver asked Greg James to conduct a review of

the R&V Division. James’s report criticized Dr. Seaman’s job performance, citing

lengthy delays in establishing registers, failure to prioritize work assignments,

excessive reliance on provisional appointments,58 lack of an operational manual or

standard procedures, and low staff morale.59 James based his conclusion upon a

“close examination of Research and Validations [sic] Division assignment reports,

Provisional Appointment reports, Personnel Board Annual and Semi-AnnualReports,

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 26 of 84
60Id. No supporting documentation was attached to the report introduced into evidence

during the hearing before the magistrate judge, however.

61Doc. no. 8 (transcript of hearing, Mar. 13, 2003), at 496.

62Id. at 453.

63Id. at 453-54.

64Id. at 454-55.

27

Board Minutes, and employee files and general complaints.”60 The Receiver stated

that he considered the information contained in James’ report merely as corroborating

information he gathered from other sources, and that the report did not form the sole

basis for Dr. Seaman’s termination.61

The Receiver next met with Dr. Seaman on August 5, 2002, at which time he

reiterated his concern that Dr. Seaman had inequitably distributed the workload

among employees in the R&V Division.62 Additionally, the Receiver stated:

In too many situations, [R&V Division employees] were talking

about those that did have assignments, they weren’t getting supervision.

As I looked in terms of what people were doing, that there was still too

much of an emphasis upon T & Es, and that I couldn’t get my arms

around exactly what was happening in terms of addressing the concerns

we had in the testing area.63

The Receiver met with all employees of the R&V Division on August 30, 2002.

During the meeting, the Receiver expressed his dissatisfaction with the staff’s failure

to adhere to professional standards for performing job analyses, and with the poor

quality of the division’s work in general.64 He asked each employee to provide him

with a detailed description of his or her work assignments, the status of each

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 27 of 84
65Id. at 456.

66Doc. no. 6 (transcript of hearing, Feb. 27, 2003), at 35.

28

assignment, and a plan to complete each assignment. He also told the staff that a

consultant, Lorren Oliver, had been retained to work with the R&V Division. During

the meeting, Dr. Seaman complained that the Receiver did not understand test

development, and again told the Receiver that the staff was doing what they had been

directed to do prior to the Receiver’s appointment. The Receiver told the staff that

professional guidelines for test development were to be followed without exception,

and that “shortcuts” were unacceptable. He stated: 

Again, I reminded everybody, to include [Dr. Seaman] at that point, that

they were on notice that I had told them for the third, fourth, or fifth

time that they were . . . not to do anything other than follow the rules

and the professional guidelines in completing all their work.65

The message was not lost on Dr. Seaman, who stated that: “Dr. Sims was very clear

in laying out his assessments of what he had perceived as going on in the testing

section and very critical of a lot of things that had transpired.”66

Later in the day, the Receiver and Dr. Seaman met privately to discuss the

issues raised in the Division meeting. The Receiver recounted their conversation as

follows:

[Dr. Seaman yet again said] [t]hat I didn’t understand . . .what was

going on in terms of testing, all that was entailed. That he was

understaffed. That he didn’t have enough staff.

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 28 of 84
67Doc. no. 8 (transcript of hearing, Mar. 13, 2003), at 457 (emphasis supplied).

68Id.

69A “job analysis” is defined as “the gathering of information about a job in an organization.

This information should describe the tasks or activities, the results (products or services), the

equipment, material, and individuals, and the environment (working conditions, hazards, work

schedule, etc.) that characterize the job.” Robert D. Gatewood & Hubert S. Feild, HUMAN

RESOURCE SELECTION 18 (5th ed. 2001).

29

I explained to him that, as I looked at the work assignments and

what people actually had on their plates, that he had more than enough

staff. That even if he said some of the staff weren’t competent, he had

. . . the staff that were brought down from upstairs, and that he needed

to more effectively and efficiently use that staff.

He said . . . I’ve just been doing what I’ve been told. And I told

him, you were not told that by me. I’ve made it straight and clear from

the day I got here what the rules are.

67

The Receiver told Dr. Seaman that he was on notice that his performance as R&V

Division manager was deficient, and directed him to provide a detailed plan to

address the Receiver’s concerns.68 Dr. Seaman testified:

Later that evening, you know, I just told Dr. Sims, I stopped in his

office and I told him, look, we had some things in progress, some of the

very things he was talking about, they are on their way, and a goodly

portion of the examinations were now being processed and would not

move forward without the best practices effort, even though the consent

decree group had not identified, even at that late juncture, an acceptable

job analysis,[69] test development methodology that was supposed to be

institutionalized throughout the whole agency.

We still had some good idea how — you know, what the

difference between more robust assessment approaches, and I informed

him of that. From that point on, we were putting in place some of the

very things that he was — which had already been in the process, but

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 29 of 84
70Doc. no. 6 (transcript of hearing, Feb. 27, 2003), at 37.

71Subjectmatter experts(“SMEs”) are incumbents in the classification for which the selection

procedure is being developed. See Gatewood & Feild, supra note 69, at 330-31.

30

that he was upset about.

70

Dr. Seaman provided the Receiver with two documents in an attempt to address

the Receiver’s criticism of his management of the R&V Division. The first, dated

September 5, 2002, and entitled “Factors Historically Considered in Assigning

Testing Projects to Staff,” read as follows:

For the most part, the factors I’ve considered when making assignments

in the testing section have included:

-staff members’ workloads

-project difficulty (e.g., previous problems incurred for a class;

scope of a project; potentially uncooperative SMEs71; timeframe

in which register is desired; research and documentation needs)

-staff members’ prior experience with a class or job family

-staff members’ interest for given projects

-staff members’ ability to move projects forward efficiently

-staff members’ ability to work compatibly with SME personnel,

exert the proper levels of control as needed necessary [sic] to stay

on task (assertiveness, interpersonal skills; levels of confidence)

-staff members’ ability to follow instructions and carry them out

efficiently

-staff members’ ability to work independently and to keep the

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 30 of 84
31

supervisor informed of any problems, difficulties, needs, etc. that

may arise

-staff members’ written and oral communication skills

-staff members’ work attendance records

-staff members’ ability to accept responsibility for their work

Some efforts were made in the past to make testing project

assignments based on staff members’ identified strengths and interests,

and in consideration of their area(s) of formal academic preparation.

The attached sheet (Attachment 1) was used for a limited period of time

in the 1990s to make such assignments. Whereas the numbers on the

sheet are a bit out of alignment currently, they served at the time to

indicate the primary and secondary occupational areas from which the

Analysts’ assignments were made. Due to the volume of work, the

strategy subsequently was not maintained. Attempting to do so would

have resulted in clearly inequitable workloads between the Analysts.

More recently, efforts were taken to make some assignments

based on a recurring need for the registers, and problems persisting with

the testing in place. Attachment 2 details some of these assignments.

They were identified and assigned to the consent decree project work

group at a time when they were no longer working on consent decree

projects (i.e., the consent decree project work had been completed, the

relevant reports had been submitted, and the decree team members were

waiting for responses from the parties). Unfortunately, due to attorneys’

concerns, all work on these projects was curtailed in somewhere near a

month after the assignments had been made.

Finally, assignments have typically been made when the need for

a register was determined upon receipt of a request for certification.

Whereas some forecasting was done insofar as public safety testing

programs (i.e., putting new registers in place approximately every 24

months) and some of the clerical positions, no systematic, forecasting

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 31 of 84
72Defendant’s Ex. 22. The exhibit does not contain the referenced attachments.

73Attachment 1, consisting of four pages, lists steps and the average number of days required

to perform each step for “T&E Exam Development Timeframes,” “Written Exam Development

Timeframes,” “Panel T&E Exam Development Timeframes (i.e., outside experts brought in to

review/evaluate candidates following structured procedures),” and “Multi-Component/Assessment

Center Type (Includes Behavioral Exercises) Exam Development Timeframes.” Defendant’s Ex.

38.

74Attachment 2, consisting of four pages, is entitled “Steps for Conducting Job Analyses &

Developing Testing Procedures Consistent with the Provisions Set Forth in the [Uniform

Guidelines],” and Attachment 3, consisting of one page, is entitled “Protocol for Conducting Small

32

practices have been in place.72

The following day — i.e., September 6, 2002 — Dr. Seaman again attempted

to address the Receiver’s concerns in a memorandum entitled “Practices and

Timeframes Historically Marking Test Development Workflow,” which read as

follows:

In the past we’ve followed various rules of thumb for moving

forward with different types of projects. The projects typically

proceeded by first obtaining SME input about the appropriateness of the

job content information contained on the job class specs in defining the

content of the jobs, and then moving on through a number of steps as

shown in Attachment 1.73 Inasmuch as several of the projects we

pursued were accompanied by more stronger [sic] efforts in conducting

job analysis inquiries, the job analysis procedures typically pursued left

much to be desired toward suggesting that all relevant job tasks

representative of the job task domain had been identified. This

deficiency was the product of a formula where timeliness was prized

over quality.

As of 09/05/02, when I met with the testing staff, pursuant to your

concerns on 8/30/02, job analysis and test development activities will

now be pursued in accordance with procedures outlined in Attachments

2 and 3.[74]

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 32 of 84
Group Job Analysis Procedures as Developed by John Hicks and Presented at the 23rd Annual

[International Personnel Management Association Assessment Council] Conference in 1999.” Id.

75Defendant’s Ex. 38 (emphasis supplied).

76See Defendant’s Ex. 19 (emphasis supplied). Dr. Seaman reiterated this approach in his

response to the notice of contemplated disciplinary action: “I informed staff that I would assign to

the returning [Consent Decree team] staff all new projects as requests for new registers were

received. The new projects would require returning staff to apply to their new assignments the job

analysis and test development technologies they had utilized in developing testing for the consent

decree projects.” Plaintiff’s Ex. 2, at unnumbered page 7.

33

I’m also in the process of putting together a work product tracking

system which should go a long way to providing detailed information

about the status of testing projects. It will be set up so as to allow staff

to input information about the status of their projects, and to facilitate

the availability of reports to track the work and evaluate the time taken

to complete it.75

Notwithstanding the foregoing assurances, and despite the Receiver’s very

clear instructions, Dr. Seaman directed his staff to use “best practices” — i.e., to

comply with the Uniform Guidelines — only for new selection procedures: “For all

of your current assignments for which draft announcements have not yet been sent

out, and for all new assignments, please make note of the fact that job analysis, test

development and documentation procedures consistent with the provisions set forth

in the [Uniform Guidelines] must be employed and maintained.”76

Priorto the appointment of the Receiver, and continuing thereafter, Dr. Seaman

submitted weekly reports of his division’s activities to Greg James, who had served

as Acting Personnel Director following Ben Payton’s retirement, and who was

Interim Deputy Director during the period in which the events complained of

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 33 of 84
77Plaintiff’s Exs. 17, 18, 19 & 21. 

78“Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities.” “The term KSA is shorthand for the job-related factual

information and the ability to perform job activities possessed by the individual.” Gatewood &

Feild, supra note 69, at 4.

34

occurred. The reports contained the following information: the number of standard

testing assignments,standard assignments on hold, open-continuous assignments, and

open-until-filled assignments; a listing of director, department head, and division

manager vacancies; the number of provisional appointments; the number of registers

established during the week; and sections captioned “problems,” “issues to monitor,”

and “other issues.” In view of the Receiver’s concerns about the R&V Division,

following the August 30th meeting, the Receiver asked James to provide him with

copies of Dr. Seaman’s weekly reports. Accordingly, the Receiver reviewed Dr.

Seaman’s reports for the weeks of September 1, 14, 23, and 29.77 The September 1st

report contains the following narrative under the heading “other issues”:

-based on concerns raised by Dr. Sims in a meeting on 8/30/02, for all

current assignments that have not thus far entered the draft

announcement phase, and for all new assignments, staff will be required

to employ task analysis, KSA78 development, test development and

documentation procedures that are designed to be in accord with the

provisions set forth under the [Uniform Guidelines] for demonstrating

content validity.

-I’ve recently been involved in discussions with testing staff on how

best to revise the method for tracking the test development projects in

the division; I’m in the process of putting together procedures through

which the staff members themselves will be required to update

electronic records that chart their progress on their test development

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 34 of 84
79Plaintiff’s Ex. 17.

80Plaintiff’s Ex. 18.

35

assignments, and through which reports on the status of the work can be

readily obtained.79

In his September 14th report, Dr. Seaman made the following remarks in the

sections captioned “problems,” “issues to monitor,” and “other issues,” respectively:

[W]e will incur some delay in getting some standing projects out of the

way; Lorren [Oliver] & I discussed what needs to be done in the

division, & what I need to do in terms of evaluating the quality of

projects before testing is given; thus, rather than going ahead & giving

tests that are already in place or T & E assessments for approx 10

assignments which we’re currently recruiting or recruitment has just

closed, no testing will be done until valid procedures are judged to be in

place; many of these projects will have to be reassigned (i.e., all were

assigned to the staff in the division prior to the return of the 16th floor

group [the “Consent Decree team”]); these delays incurred now will pay

off in the future when effective testing procedures are in place.

[W]e’re updating the manner in which testing projects are tracked in the

division; the new application will allow Analysts to track and update the

status of their projects, and facilitate the availability of reports indicating

where projects are in their developmental stages, and dates upon which

the necessary steps are completed[.]

[A]s of 9/13/02, we’ve closed out over 40% of the work projects we’ve

been carrying on an open ‘til filled (OTF) basis; we’re awaiting

responses to our efforts to close out a number of others at this time[.]

[T]he same efforts to close out OTF projects will also be directed to

several of those currently carried on an open-continuous (OC) basis.80

Dr. Seaman’s September 23rd report contained the following statements:

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 35 of 84
81Plaintiff’s Ex. 19.

36

[I]n addition to the projects we’ve held up recently which were ready to

close or had closed (applications are in hand), 4 new projects (2 with

provisional appointments in place) need to be assigned, and a new

request for 2 upper level IT [information technology] positions with the

County came in Friday; based on my experience, we can expect new

assignments will come in on an average of 1.5-3 a week; the difficulty

of the workload is compounded by the fact that not all staff are at a level

of capability that allows them to work independently.

[T]he new database to track testing projects is nearly in place; the staff

will be shown how to use ACCESS database for updating their work and

obtaining reports; the database facilitates obtaining reports about the

general status of each project assigned, as well as detailed information

about the status of each specific project

[E]fforts to close open-continuous (OC) assignments have resulted in 3-

4 projects being closed, with some few additional ones expected to

close; we will continue to monitor these (as well as open ‘til filled

projects — OTF) in order to close out as many as possible.81

On September 29th, Dr. Seaman reported the following under the headings of

“issues to monitor,” “other issues,” and “concerns,” respectively:

[W]e will continue to monitor OTF and OC assignments with the goal

of closing as many down as possible.

[S]taffing necessary to deliver, across the board, valid testing programs

in desirable periods of time is not in place; a review of the work shows

that for the standard testing assignments listed above that are not on

hold (i.e., 31 projects) 65% are just in the job analysis phase of the

projects, with the remainder in test development or administration

phases, or waiting for feedback on moving forward; in addition, another

7-10 new projects need to be assigned.

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 36 of 84
82Plaintiff’s Ex. 21.

83Doc. no. 8 (transcript of hearing, Mar. 13, 2003), at 493.

84Doc. no. 6 (transcript of hearing, Feb. 27, 2003), at 90; 185-86.

85Id. at 90.

86Id.

87Id. at 188.

88Id.

37

[L]ow staff morale; ratio of staffing to test development workload.82

The Receiver described the foregoing reports as “appropriate,” but not

informative.83

During the middle part of September of 2002, Andy Douglas, an employee

assigned to the R&V Division, informed Dr. Seaman that he had discovered that

Cynthia Dowe (another employee assigned to the R&V Division, and working under

Dr. Seaman’s supervision) had failed to assign a score to several employment

applications for which she was responsible.84 Douglas suggested that Dr. Seaman

advise the Receiver of the problem.85 Instead, Dr. Seaman asked Douglas to provide

him with “more information,” so that he could determine the best way to address the

situation.86 According to Douglas, he provided the requested information, which Dr.

Seaman accepted.87 Dr. Seaman said that he “had a folder on” Cynthia Dowe, and

that there was nothing he could do about it.88

 

According to Douglas, after speaking with Dr. Seaman about the matter, he

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 37 of 84
89Id. at 189.

90Doc. no. 7 (transcript of hearing, Mar. 12, 2003), at 211, 212.

91Doc. no. 6 (transcript of hearing, Feb. 27, 2003), at 189.

92Doc. no. 8 (transcript of hearing, Mar. 13, 2003), at 460. 

93Id. at 461.

94Id.

95Doc. no. 7 (transcript of hearing, Mar. 12, 2003), at 216.

96Doc. no. 8 (transcript of hearing, Mar. 13, 2003), at 461.

38

also told Greg James about the incident, without identifying the employee by name.89

James said “let’s give John two weeks to talk to Dr. Sims about it,” and told Douglas

not to tell Dr. Seaman about their conversation.90 Within the next day or two, James

told Douglas that he knew that the employee was Cynthia Dowe.91

On September 26, 2002, Greg James told the Receiver that Douglas had

informed him that Ms. Dowe had failed to score several applications.92 According to

the Receiver, James said that he had told Douglas to bring the matter to Dr. Seaman’s

attention, and to tell Dr. Seaman that he needed to address the issue with the

Receiver.93 The Receiver talked to his assistant, April Hunter, who previously had

been assigned to the R&V Division, to verify the significance of failing to score

employment applications.94 The Receiver then spoke to Douglas, who confirmed that

he had brought the issue to Dr. Seaman’s attention.

95 Douglas told the Receiver that

Dr. Seaman’s response was, “leave the past in the past.”96 According to Douglas, the

Receiver was upset that Dr. Seaman had not told him about the unscored

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 38 of 84
97Doc. no. 7 (transcript of hearing, Mar. 12, 2003), at 216.

98Doc. no. 8 (transcript of hearing, Mar. 13, 2003), at 463-64.

99Id. at 464.

100Id.

101Id. at 465.

102Doc. no. 7 (transcript of hearing, Mar. 12, 2003), at 247-50.

103Id. at 248.

39

applications.97

The Receiver testified that, shortly following his conversation with Douglas,

he addressed the matter of unscored applications with Dr. Seaman, as well as the fact

that Dr. Seaman had not brought it to his attention.98 Dr. Seaman told the Receiver

the same thing he told Douglas: he did not bring the matter to the Receiver because

there was nothing he (Seaman) could do about it, and he intended to “leave the past

in the past.”99 The Receiver told Dr. Seaman: “[Y]ou could do something about it.

You could bring it to my attention. We can figure out how we can somehow address

the issue. I can’t deal with these things if I’m not aware of it, and this is serious.”100

The Receiver reassigned Dowe to another division on September 29th or 30th.101

Greg James recounted a slightly different version of these events.102 He

testified that Andy Douglas spoke to him about the unscored applications, and that

he directed Douglas to tell Dr. Seaman to make sure the applications were scored and

to advise the Receiver of the situation.103 Douglas told him that Dr. Seaman was

aware of the issue. James testified as follows:

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 39 of 84
104Id. at 269-70.

105Id. at 249.

106Id. at 249-50.

107Doc. no. 6 (transcript of hearing, Feb. 27, 2003) at 90-92.

108Id. at 90.

40

I thought that it would be a great opportunity for John to demonstrate

that he was on board, that he was listening to the Receiver. That this is

your area, you are — you are in charge, take charge, move forward,

move aggressively, get things done right. And also to come forward and

let the Receiver know what you’ve done. That’s what I did. I gave John

— I gave Andy an opportunity to get John to demonstrate that he — he

was on board.104

During their second conversation about the unscored applications, James asked

Douglas whether he had spoken to Dr. Seaman as James had suggested. Douglas

responded that he had done so, but that Dr. Seaman had indicated that no further

action would be taken.105 James did not speak to Dr. Seaman about the applications,

but told the Receiver about the discovery that some applications had not been

scored.106

Dr. Seaman testified about these events as well.107 He acknowledged that Andy

Douglas informed him that he had discovered that Cynthia Dowe had failed to score

a number of applications, and that Douglas said he believed the matter should be

brought to the Receiver’s attention.

108 Dr. Seaman told Douglas that he previously

had experienced problems with Cynthia Dowe, and asked Douglas to provide him

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 40 of 84
109Id. at 90-91.

110Id. at 91.

111Id. at 90-91.

112Oliver initially was retained to review proposals for development of the police and deputy

sheriff sergeant promotional selection procedure. Doc. no. 7 (transcript of hearing, Mar. 12, 2003),

at 325. Oliver accepted a position as Deputy Director of the Personnel Board during October of

2002. Id. at 379.

113Id. at 325.

114Id. at 327.

41

with additional information.109 Dr. Seaman testified that Douglas did not provide the

requested information.110 He further testified that he did not advise the Receiver of

the problem, and that the Receiver did not speak to him about the issue.111

Beginning in early September of 2002, the Receiver asked Lorren Oliver —

who at the time served as a consultant to the Board,112 but who now serves as the

Board’s Deputy Director — to assess the R&V Division’s procedures.113 According

to Oliver, the Receiver wanted to ensure that the work performed in the R&V

Division comported with professional standards and was legally defensible.114 In

order to conduct the assessment, on September 6, 2002, Oliver, through the

Receiver’s Executive Assistant April Hunter, requested that Dr. Seaman provide

documents and information, including: a full accounting of all testing procedures

utilized by the R&V Division; his assessment of the current status of projects; a copy

of existing job analysis and test development protocols used by the R&V Division;

a review of the “open until filled” classifications; and a copy of a certification request

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 41 of 84
42

for a senior social worker position and the rationale for posting the position. Dr.

Seaman provided the following response: 

1. Full accounting of all testing procedures assigned in Research and

Validation under your supervision. Your documentation should include

an assessment of the current status on projects.

I spoke with Lorren last week about this in terms of the database

structure we were working to get into place to provide the level

of detail needed to properly track the work. I met with each

Analyst, and subsequently updated records for their assignments

according to the criteria in place to provide the greater detail

desired. At this point, we have the database, we have a form for

Lorren’s review insofar as what data can now be in put for a

testing assignment, but we have not had the time yet to build the

report structure (or various types of structures we may wish to

have in place); what I am trying to put together is a file to e-mail

to Lorren which provides status information about each

assignment (non open continuous or open ‘til filled), but it will

not be in the form of a report, but rather a copy of each record as

it is currently reflected [in] the new database we’ve built. If I

can’t get this into place, I’ll present you with a hard copy to fax.

2. An outline of the proposed methodology for the CEO position at

Cooper Green Hospital.

I plan to present this to Lorren in the morning. I regret that I

didn’t know this and the other information desired would be

needed prior to my meeting with him.

3. Copies of the certification request for the position of CEO at Cooper

Green Hospital.

Attached is the letter confirming receipt of the CEO certification.

I do not have a copy of the actual certification request submitted.

I will contact the E/A [Employment Administration] Division to

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 42 of 84
43

get a copy for Lorren. 

4. A copy of existing job analysis and test development protocol used

by Research and Validation.

Two copies are attached. One is a detailed list of steps which,

while all would not necessarily be appropriate for any given

project, identify key elements that need to be taken to establish

content validity of the procedures. The other attachment

identifies the broad steps followed by the consent decree team in

working on those projects. 

5. A review of the current Open till [sic] filled positions with clear

indications with [sic] positions that should be closed at this time.

The review was completed over the past 2 days. We will be

closing this Friday (9/13/02) approximately 13 of the 27 projects

that have been carried on an open ‘til filled basis. We will then

direct our attention to following-up on the remaining ones that

likely can be closed, and move accordingly to close them. For

those we feel should be left open based on specific

considerations, we’ll certainly solicit Lorren’s input on the issue.

We have also reassigned several open-continuous projects in

order to more equitably distribute them among the staff now that

members of the 16th floor group have rejoined the 1st floor

group. The next step with these will be the same as done, and

continuing to be done for the open ‘til filled; that is, the necessary

contacts will be made to determine the appropriateness of closing

down as many of the open continuous projects as possible.

6. The certification request from the agency on the Senior Social

Worker position.

Attached is the letter confirming receipt of the Senior Social

Worker certification. I do not have a copy of the actual

certification request submitted. I will contact the E/A Division to

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 43 of 84
115Defendant’s Ex. 37.

116In the context in which it is used here, the term “released” is understood to mean that the

parties to United States v. Jefferson County, No. CV-75-S-666-S, have agreed that the selection

procedure satisfied paragraph 12 of the Personnel Board’s 1995 Modification Order, which states:

It shall be the Personnel Board’s responsibility to establish that each selection

procedure required or used by the Personnel Board, including each standard

(including minimum qualifications used to determine which applicants are qualified

or eligible to apply for a job or submit to a selection device), procedure, test or other

device, shall either (1) have no adverse impact on the basis of race or sex, as defined

by the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedure, 29 C.F.R. § 1607 et

seq. (1994), (hereinafter “the Uniform Guidelines”); or (2) be job related for the job

44

get a copy for Lorren.

7. The rationale for the job posting of the Senior Social Worker

position.

We posted the Senior Social Worker announcement because there

were only approximately 4 eligible candidates on the register, and

neither one of the two eligibles indicating interest in working for

the Jefferson Rehabilitation and Health Center would accept work

there when it offered to them.115

On September 10, 2002, April Hunter requested from each staff member of the

R&V Division information on each classification for which testing was scheduled

during the months of September or October of 2002. In particular, Hunter asked the

staff to provide the announcement date, number of eligible candidates, the date of

testing, and the type of selection procedure to be used.

Oliver requested additional information from Dr. Seaman, again through April

Hunter, on September 11, 2002: a list of the classifications “released” from the

consent decree;116 the number of incumbents in each position; the number of

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 44 of 84
classification(s) in question and consistent with business necessity, in accordance

with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et

seq., the Uniform Guidelines and other applicable Federal law. If a selection

procedure or combination of selection procedures is used by the Personnel Board to

rank candidates, the parties and the Court will consider the candidates’ relative

ranking and the actual effect of that ranking in determining whether the procedure

has adverse impact for that use. In accordance with the Uniform Guidelines, where

there exists adverse impact in a selection procedure, as part of its consideration of the

job relatedness and validity of any selection procedure, the Personnel Board shall

conduct a reasonable investigation of suitable alternative selection procedures and

explore suitable alternative methods of using the selection procedures which have

less adverse impact. Whenever the Personnel Board, a jurisdiction served by the

Personnel Board, or any party identifies a race-neutral selection procedure that has

less adverse impact than a selection procedure required by the Personnel Board and

that alternative procedure is also agreed by the parties to be job related for the job

classification in question and consistent with business necessity and in accordance

with applicable law, such alternative selection procedure shall be used by the

Personnel Board, absent good cause shown. [Footnote omitted.]

117Defendant’s Ex. 41.

45

certification requests; the number of provisional appointments; a review of the

selection procedures used for each classification and issues that must be addressed

before the next administration; action that has been taken to address the identified

issues for each position; and information regarding certification requests for the

positions.117 Dr. Seaman responded as follows:

1. A list of the positions that have been released, number of incumbents

in each position, number of certification requests and number of

provisional appointments

We have the information noted above (see attached list), with the

exception of the information regarding # of certifications and

provisionals which is being compiled by the Employment

Administration Division. I expect to have it later this afternoon.

I’ve done everything I could to expedite meeting Lorren’s

information needs [NOTE — certification & provisional

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 45 of 84
46

appointment information was obtained, but not for Public Safety

classes released under the decree].

2. A review of the selection procedures used for each position and

issues that must be addressed before the next administration.

The only classes released which were accompanied by concerns

by the parties insofar as future uses of the test were Fire

Apparatus Operator and Police/Sheriff’s Sergeant. Dr. Pittman is

looking at these. In the case of the Apparatus Operator class, the

question is whether or not we need to have in place a performance

driving test, vs. requiring qualified applicants to possess FAO I

(Fire Apparatus Operator Level I) credentials which they obtain

through local training/testing in their jurisdictions. For P/S Sgt,

a new test must be developed.

Insofar as our own internal review of the outcomes of the projects

released for which the parties raised no objections, we have not

pursued such activities where no certification request is in place

for these classes.

3. Action that has been taken to address the issues for each position.

As noted above, Dr. Pittman is consulting with the Board

regarding the public safety positions for which testing developed

under the decree was released.

4. Information regarding certification requests for the positions (are

there positions that need to be announced or have been announced that

are Consent Decree positions, but have been released by the parties?).

We have certification requests on hand for Gardener, Senior

Social Worker and Traffic Maintenance Worker, all which were

classes under the decree for which testing was developed,

administered and the associated registers released. I am currently

reviewing the Gardener validity report (Pittman Project); we are

currently recruiting applicants for Senior Social Worker (Pittman

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 46 of 84
118Defendant’s Ex. 42.

119See Defendant’s Exs. 23-35.

120Doc. no. 7 (transcript of hearing, Mar. 12, 2003), at 332.

121Id. at 333; see also Defendant’s Ex. 46. Becky Maze did not appear for her scheduled

meeting. Doc. no. 7 (transcript of hearing, Mar. 12, 2003), at 333.

47

Project; less than 10 applications received thus far) and will need

to make a decision on closing down, testing, and reopening later

if staffing need cannot be met, or some other approach; Traffic

Maintenance Worker was scheduled for testing 9/16/02, but the

testing date has been cancelled to allow for ensuring the adequacy

of the testing instruments.118

Oliver solicited, and received, a status report of each project from each

employee.119 Oliver described the reports as follows: “Essentially, what I received

was a kind of hodgepodge of listings of positions, dates of certain . . . activities. But

very little in terms of any kind of evaluative information that would provide at least

some feedback on the adequacy of the various stages of the work that had been

done.”

120 Additionally, Oliver met with Dr. Seaman, Libby Miller, Barbara Lee,

Kathleen Tevis, and Barry Jackson.121 Oliver formedthe following impressions based

upon the meetings with R&V Division staff:

There were a number of interesting things that surfaced in these

meetings. First of all, the night before this meeting I did receive a job

announcements report for Kathleen Tevis, and I had an opportunity to

review that work product and had extensive discussions with her about

the product.

I did have a chance to meet with [Dr. Seaman] and talk with him

about, essentially, what I sensed was a sparsity of information that was

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 47 of 84
122Id. at 333-35.

123Following administration of a selection procedure, professional practice dictates that a

validation report be prepared, documenting the development, administration, and results of a

selection procedure. “The purpose of validation is to provide evidence that data from the selection

instruments are related to job performance.” Robert Gatewood & Hubert S. Feild, HUMAN

RESOURCE SELECTION 21 (5th ed. 2001).

124Doc. no. 7 (transcript of hearing, Mar. 12, 2003), at 335.

48

available in terms of the status of projects. And John indicated he was

in the process of trying to work through a system to do that.

But what I needed was to be able to very quickly, you know, from

the perspective of someone who is, in fact, supervising the projects, and

get a clear read as to where things were at that point in time.

My concern level was somewhat elevated, particularly having

looked at the quality of the limited work products that I had at that point

been able to review, especially as it relates to traffic maintenance

worker. 

The other thing that I noted in the meetings was that there was an

apparent — and particularly in the meeting with Kathleen Tevis, an

apparent disconnect in the supervisory process, because she seemed

somewhat surprised that I would have expected her work product to be

reviewed by the division manager. 

I also discovered that the division manager had not, in fact,

reviewed the work product. And the test, at the time we were having the

meeting, was, in fact, days away from the administration of what was a

second component in the testing process.122

Based upon Oliver’s review of the traffic maintenance worker validation report,123

and because of what he perceived to be serious deficiencies in the selection

procedure, he recommended to the Receiver that the test administration scheduled for

September 16, 2002 be cancelled. The Receiver followed his advice.124 Oliver asked

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 48 of 84
125Defendant’s Ex. 49.

126Defendant’s Ex. 48.

49

Dr. Seaman to review the validation report. Dr. Seaman did so, identified a number

of deficiencies, and concluded (as had Oliver) that additional work was necessary to

satisfy professional standards.125

Oliver also asked Dr. Seaman to provide an assessment of his present staff, and

Dr. Seaman submitted a report providing his evaluation of each employee’s skills in

the areas of: “functional skills in using word-processing, database management, or

statistical analysis software”; “verbal and written expressive skills sufficient to

support the proper degree of analytical inquiry and written documentation needed

when conducting job analysis research, working with [subject matter experts] or

preparing test materials or test validation reports”; and “understanding the concept

of validity, and of how the various steps taken to develop valid testing under a

content validation strategy are related to determining, assigning, and ranking test

scores.”126 Dr. Seaman assigned scores of “-1” to represent “below average,” “0” to

represent “average,” and “+1” to represent “above average.” Oliver considered the

information in conjunction with the status report submitted by each staff member

indicating the number of assignments for which he or she was responsible. He

concluded:

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 49 of 84
127Doc. no. 7 (transcript of hearing, Mar. 12, 2003), at 338-39 (emphasis supplied).

128Id. at 372-73.

50

[T]here was significant variability in the volume and assignment

load that is evident in the — there are some individuals here who are

analysts who [were] assigned as few as one or two projects, and there

[were] some that were assigned . . . in excess of twenty projects.

But what was strange was that, when I looked at John Seaman’s

evaluation of the levels of functioning of the staff relative to the

assignment level, there was some significant inconsistency there.

For example,I noted that individuals who had been, based on Mr.

Seaman’s assessment, deemed to be deficient in performance — and to

give examples, B. Maze is uniformly rated at negative one, which

translates to below average in functional skills, database management,

written, verbal, expressive skills, analytical skills, below average in

terms of understanding of concepts of validity, and some of the areas of

knowledge germane to testing, had quite a significant load in terms of

assignments.

I noted on the other side of the continuum were individuals, like

[L.] Miller, who based on the assessment here, reflect ratings at a plus

one level, which translates to being above average on those same

dimensions I just mentioned, had two projects assigned.

So, I was curious as to why there was this evident degree of

inconsistency between levels of assessment in terms of judgments of

competence and ability to perform and actual work assignments.127

Following Oliver’s review of the foregoing, he was concerned about the lack

of information on the status of projects, and the fact that no tracking system was in

place. Oliver testified that he also reviewed the selection procedure for the Fire Chief

classification.128 He learned from the analyst responsible for the project that the oral

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 50 of 84
129Id. at 373.

130Id..

131Defendant’s Ex. 38.

51

board component of the selection procedure had been purchased, rather than

developed by Board staff or consultants retained by the Board. When Oliver asked

the analyst for the basis supporting use of the test, the analyst told Oliver that he had

spoken to the vendor by telephone and concluded the test would be appropriate.

Oliver asked the analyst whether a “transportability” study had been conducted —

i.e., a study that establishes the relationship between the selection procedure sought

to be used and the areas to be tested as determined by the job analysis — and he was

informed that no such study had been undertaken.129 Accordingly, Oliver

recommended that administration of the oral board component be postponed pending

further review.130

Oliver also was concerned about the R&V Division’s lack of standardized test

development procedures. Oliver reviewed the September 6, 2002 memorandum that

Dr. Seaman had provided to the Receiver, including “Attachment 2,” which listed

“Steps for Conducting Job Analyses & Developing Testing Procedures Consistent

with the Provisions Set Forth in the [Uniform Guidelines].”131 Oliver described the

outline contained in “Attachment 2” as follows: “essentially what this would be is

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 51 of 84
132Doc. no. 7 (transcript of hearing, Mar. 12, 2003), at 369.

133Id. at 362-63.

52

perhaps a list of ingredients to bake a cake but with no sense of how to bake it.”132

He explained why it is inadequate simply to instruct staff to “follow the Uniform

Guidelines”:

Because it is important for you to really translate that to work

practices. You can say, okay, a job analysis is necessary, fine. What

does that mean? What steps need to be taken? What critical criteria

guide the decision points that need to be made. 

When you look at ratings for a particular position, how do you

determine what you should be focused on in that testing process? How

do you determine what kinds of instruments you are to be utilizing? So

it’s not simply what component, it is a how-to aspect of it that is

important to translate.

Particularly, when you have multiple individuals working in a

division, it’s important that someone provide supervision of the work,

you know, establish standards, guides and directs the work that is taking

place, models the appropriate types of things, and also monitors the

work that is ongoing to be sure that, at the end of the day, there are

standards that are clear, that are consistent with professional practices,

that permeate the work that is done, and that ultimately places the

Personnel Board of Jefferson County in a place of competence in terms

of testing programs that are in place.133

With respect to Dr. Seaman’s failure to track the work of the R&V Division,

Oliver testified as follows:

I did, you know, express to him my concern that given the sheer

volume and complexity of testing activities that the Board is responsible

for, that it is strange that there is no mechanism involved. And his

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 52 of 84
134Id. at 392 (emphasis supplied).

53

response surprised me because what [Dr. Seaman] conveyed was his

overall philosophy, that the focus of work was not so much on the

quality of it but more we had to get it out, get the job out.134

Oliver acknowledged that Dr. Seaman had told him that he was in the process of

developing a tracking system, and recounted the following:

I recall [Dr. Seaman] raising the tracking issue. In a sequence of

a conversation that we were talking about, what other positions within

the system were, at this point in time, scheduled for administration that

we needed to — and he started talking about the tracking system. An

external difficulty I had, quite frankly, was, based on what I had seen to

that point, it was clear that there were some problem devices that were

about to be [administered].

. . . .

I had seen that based on my observations. At that point, I had not

seen tracking, but I had seen some other classifications. It was pretty

clear that there were some consistent deficiencies in the work.

What we needed at that point was to find out what other positions

were scheduled for testing, and Mr. Seaman wanted to engage me in

terms of a review of the tracking system. I shared with him candidly

that what we needed to do first and foremost was to do some damage

control in terms of the positions that were about to be released to incur

additional liabilities for the Board.

My rationale for that simply is this, you know, I think you may be

aware that the Board has had some major issues with testing. We have

indications of a fire and what I’m looking at is a sprinkler plan. And it’s

at this point in time a little bit late in the process.

We needed, first of all, to get our hands around what’s about to be

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 53 of 84
135Id. at 415-16.

136Defendant’s Ex. 52.

137This statement presumably refers to the discovery of the unscored applications.

54

tested. So that we can act, in the case, for example, as we did for traffic

maintenance worker, make some appropriate decisions.135

According to a document prepared by Dr. Seaman, there were, as of September 23,

2002, eleven classifications for which administration of the selection procedure was

scheduled for either September or October of 2002, but which were placed on hold

by the Receiver for review.136 

On September 30, 2002, Oliver sent an electronic mail message to the

Receiver, which read as follows:

The information shared with me this morning regarding the most

recent anomaly uncovered in the R&V Division can only be

characterized as gross negligence on the part of the R&V Manager.

[137]

Based on my conversation with April [Hunter, the Receiver’s executive

assistant], it is my understanding that a number of cases, dating as far

back as 1995, have been identified where no ratings were conducted for

legitimate applicants for positions posted by the board. Further, this

practice operated with the full knowledge of the R&V Manager. This

is a serious situation, because due to the negligence of the Division

Manager, applicants were denied the opportunity to compete for

positions for which they had applied. This situation is just one

additional indicator of the significant problems with the current

supervision of the R&V function.

In a less than comprehensive review of the Research & Validation

Division’s operation, a number of irregularities have surfaced that are

indicative of poor management and supervision. Over the past few

weeks, I have had the opportunity to make observations of the

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 54 of 84
138Defendant’s Ex. 77 (emphasis supplied).

55

functioning of the R&V Division. Based on my observations, I have

very serious concerns about the current manager’s ability to structure

very basic systems, policy and procedures required for a large scale

testing operation and even more grave concerns about his ability to

train, guide, direct, coach and mentor subordinates to the successful

development and implementation of JCPB testing programs. There is

tremendous variability in the work practices occurring under his

supervision and too often these varied, non-standardized approaches to

the work violate basic good professional practice for a testing function.

The Manager has developed virtually no policy, procedures, or basic

work guidelines for the division, after over a decade serving in the

capacity as a supervisor for this critical function. Further test security

measures to protect the integrity of the division’s testing activities are

virtually non-existent.

The current division manager’s supervisory approach vacillates

from a clear abandonment of basic supervisory/managerial

responsibilities to active participation in the division’s dysfunctional

[sic]. The manager often appears to have no knowledge of the quality

of job analysis and test development activities under his supervision. He

admittedly had not conducted basic technical reviews of this work.

Interestingly, his staff appeared to be equally surprised by the

suggestion that they should have technical work reviewed by the

manager.

The combination of ill prepared technical personnel and poor

management and supervision of the testing function is a dangerous

prescription for serious problems. The Board must move to address this

situation and to provide competent leadership and supervision of the

R&V Division.138

Oliver did not discuss the substance of the electronic mail message with Dr. Seaman.

During the evidentiary hearing, the Receiver explained why he decided to

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 55 of 84
139Doc. no. 8 (transcript of hearing, Mar. 13, 2003), at 466.

140Id.

141Id. at 467.

142It is unclear why the notice of contemplated disciplinary action was not issued until more

than two months after Dr. Seaman was placed on administrative leave.

56

initiate disciplinary action against Dr. Seaman:

It goes back in terms of overall, I would say, neglect of duty. His

failure on a number of occasions to bring problems, issues to my

attention that I had informed him that he had a responsibility to do so.

He was not . . . equitably making work assignments to employees which

contributed to . . . what was already low morale and continued to get

worse.

Overall, as time was going, I had serious doubts about his ability

to be able to provide the leadership that was needed in the research and

validation area that would allow me to fulfill the charges that I accepted

as the receiver.139

On October 7, 2002, the Receiver verbally advised Dr. Seaman that he was

contemplating taking disciplinary action against him, and provided Seaman fortyeight hours within which to resign, failing which the Receiver would proceed with

disciplinary action.140 The Receiver placed Dr. Seaman on administrative leave with

pay.141 Dr. Seaman did not tender his resignation on October 9, 2002. 

The Receiver issued a “Notice to Employee of Contemplated Disciplinary

Action” on December 31, 2002.142 The notice advised Dr. Seaman that disciplinary

action, including termination, was contemplated against him for violation of

Personnel Board rules relating to incompetency or inefficiency, neglect of duty, and

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 56 of 84
57

other reasons deemed to be in the best interest of the public service. The Receiver

cited four grounds for the contemplated disciplinary action:

1. Analysis of the work assignments for the former Research and

Validation (R&V) Division’s staff (Personnel Analyst I,

Personnel Analyst II, Personnel Analyst III, and Personnel

Specialist) over the past three years indicated your failure to plan,

develop and implement a strategy to produce valid selection

(examination) devices in a timely and professionally sound

manner. The average length of time used for creating a register

was unreasonably long. In addition, several registers (Chief

Court Clerk and Minute Clerk) remained assigned but not

completed for over two years.

2. Review of the R&V assignment register also revealed the

distribution of assignments among your staff to have been

unreasonable. Such assignment distribution indicates a pattern of

giving the majority of assignments to one or two Personnel

Analysts (Cynthia Dowe and Barbara Lee) while other Personnel

Analysts were given only a few. This method of distributing

assignments was unfair and created morale problems within the

Division.

3. Examination of the operations within the Division also indicated

your failure to forecast demand for creation of new registers and

take proactive measures to meet the demand when it accrued.

Further observation of the R&V operations also revealed your

failure to establish an effective method for tracking and

evaluating the work product of your staff. On several occasions,

you admitted that little or no job analysis was conducted for many

examinations because it was more important to “just get

something out.”

4. You also, for an extended period of time, failed to take

appropriate corrective measures when it was brought to your

attention that one of your staff members (Cynthia Dowe) had

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 57 of 84
143Doc. no. 1 (Request for a Due Process Hearing and Notice of Appeal of Disciplinary

Action).

144Id.

58

failed to score all applications for several registers. Many of

those applications remained unscored at the time you were placed

on administrative leave. When you were told to bring this matter

to my attention, you refused to do so, even though you knew that

it was not in the Board’s best interest to ignore the problem.

I have also preliminarily concluded, based upon observations after I

became Receiver of your work performance, attitude, and approach to

leadership and management, that it would not be in the best interest of

the Jefferson County Personnel Board, and would not be consistent with

the court-ordered institutional reform which I have been appointed to

achieve, for your employment as Personnel Manager, Research and

Validation Division, to continue.143

The Receiver provided Dr. Seaman an opportunity to respond in writing, and orally,

by January 8, 2003. Dr. Seaman submitted a lengthy written response to the

charges.144

On January 15, 2003, the Receiver notified Dr. Seaman that he had reviewed

his response to the charges, and had decided that his employment would be

terminated effective January 16, 2003. In the notice, the Receiver stated that he found

Dr. Seaman in violation of Personnel Board Rule 6.2(h) relating to incompetency or

inefficiency, Rule 6.2(k) relating to neglect of duty, and 6.2(p) providing that a merit

system employee may be disciplined for any other reasons deemed to be in the best

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 58 of 84
145Defendant’s Ex. 65.

146Id.

59

interest of the public service and not in contradiction of any rules and regulations.145

The Receiver reiterated the bases of that conclusion as follows:

1. You failed to plan, develop, and implement a strategy to produce

valid selection (examination) devices in a timely and

professionally sound manner. In addition, several registers

remained assigned but not completed for over two years.

2. You did not distribute work assignments among your staff

reasonably and fairly which caused morale problems within the

Research and Validation Division.

3. You failed to establish an effective method for tracking and

evaluating the work product of your staff. In addition, you failed

to forecast for creation of new registers and to take proactive

measures to meet demand when it accrued.

4. You failed to take corrective measures when it was brought to

your attention that one of your staff members, for months, had

failed to score all applications even though the registers had been

established. When you were told to inform the Receiver of the

problem, you refused to do so.146

III. DISCUSSION

As discussed in Part I of this opinion, Dr. Seaman objected to this court’s de

novo review of the magistrate judge’s report and recommendation. For the reasons

stated in Part I, that objection is overruled.

The Receiver’s objections take issue with the findings of the magistrate judge

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 59 of 84
147Doc. no. 9 (Report and Recommendation) at 89.

148Doc. no. 8 (transcript of hearing, Mar. 13, 2003), at 479 (emphasis supplied).

60

with respect to each of the Receiver’s grounds for terminating Dr. Seaman’s

employment.

A. Charge No. 1: Failure to plan, develop, and implement a strategy

to produce valid selection (examination) devices in a timely and

professionally sound manner. In addition, several registers

remained assigned but not completed for over two years.

The Receiver objects to the magistrate judge’s findings, asserting that the

magistrate erred by assuming that the Receiver expected Dr. Seaman to develop valid

selection procedures during a thirty-day period, and, by relying on the preReceivership “Strategic Plan” to justify Dr. Seaman’s actions. The court finds the

Receiver’s objections to be well taken.

The magistrate judge’s conclusionswith respect to the first charge conflict with

the evidence. At the outset, the court observes that, despite the clear language of the

charge, the magistrate judge characterized its “essence” as Dr. Seaman’s failure “to

produce valid examinations using uniform guidelines [sic] in a timely manner,”147

rather than his failure to plan, develop and implement a strategy to do so.

Additionally, the magistrate judge’s characterization of the charge conflicts with the

Receiver’s testimony that he expected Dr. Seaman “to plan, develop and implement

parts of a strategy [to produce valid selection procedures] within thirty days.”148 

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 60 of 84
149See text accompanying note 18 supra.

150See doc. no. 707 in Civil Action No. CV-75-S-666-S.

151In his discussion of the second ground for Dr. Seaman’s dismissal, the magistrate judge

61

The magistrate judge also incorrectly focused on events occurring before, and

instructions given to Dr. Seaman prior to, this court’s imposition of the Receivership.

In particular, the magistrate judge concluded that Dr. Seaman’s continued reliance on

the directions of the Personnel Director who preceded the Receiver (Ben Payton) to

use “expedient,” rather than professionally acceptable, selection procedures —

directions given under the so-called “Strategic Plan” developed by the Board nearly

two years prior to imposition of the receivership — was reasonable. The magistrate

judge also faulted the Receiver and Lorren Oliver for being unaware of those

directions! 

Despite the testimony of Dr. Seaman and former Personnel Director Ben

Payton to the contrary — testimony which was accepted by the magistrate judge as

true — the Strategic Plan was not approved by this court. As discussed above,149 a

copy of the plan was provided to the court for informational purposes shortly before

the commencement of the recorded status conference conducted in November of

2000,150 but the Board neither sought, nor obtained, court approval of the so-called

“Strategic Plan.” Even if that plan had been approved by the court, the plan

implemented by the Board151 during November of 2000 had no relevance whatsoever

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 61 of 84
erroneously stated that the expedient methods approved by the Board as part of the Strategic Plan

“had the blessing of the Jefferson County Commission,” a public entity separate from, and with no

control over, the Jefferson County Personnel Board. Doc. no. 9 (Report and Recommendation), at

104 (emphasis supplied).

152Defendant’s Ex. 22 (emphasis supplied). 

62

to the Receiver’s decision to initiate disciplinary action against Dr. Seaman in

October of 2002. To the extent that the magistrate judge believed that the backlog

of work that may have been created by the partitioning of R&V Division in December

of 2000 somehow excused Dr. Seaman’s failure to plan, develop, and implement a

strategy to produce lawful selection procedures, this court cannot agree that

substitution of the Receiver’s judgment is justified by this record.

The evidence adduced at the hearing establishes, unequivocally, that Dr.

Seaman had no method of forecasting, or otherwise planning for staffing needs

attendant to the creation of new registers of persons eligible for employment to the

hundreds of job classifications within the merit system. He admitted as much in his

September 5th memorandum to the Receiver, in which he stated:

[A]ssignments have typically been made when the need for a register

was determined upon receipt of a request for certification. Whereas

some forecasting was done insofar as public safety testing programs

(i.e., putting new registers in place approximately every 24 months) and

some of the clerical positions, no systematic, forecasting practices have

been in place.152

Moreover, Dr. Seaman had no procedural manual, nor even standard operating

procedures in place, for his division. Following the August 30th meeting of the

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 62 of 84
153Defendant’s Ex. 38 (emphasis supplied).

154Id., Attachments 2 & 3. 

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Receiver with employees of the R&V Division, during which the Receiver was highly

critical of the division’s performance, Dr. Seaman’s effort to describe to the Receiver

the methodology historically utilized by his division to develop selection procedures

was vague, but nevertheless explains why the underlying class action lawsuits have

perversely persisted for more than three decades:

In the past we’ve followed various rules of thumb for moving

forward with different types of projects. The projects typically

proceeded by first obtaining SME input about the appropriateness of the

job content information contained on the job class specs in defining the

content of the jobs, and then moving on through a number of steps as

shown in Attachment 1. Inasmuch as several of the projects we pursued

were accompanied by more stronger [sic] efforts in conducting job

analysis inquiries, the job analysis procedures typically pursued left

much to be desired toward suggesting that all relevant job tasks

representative of the job task domain had been identified. This

deficiency was the product of a formula where timeliness was prized

over quality.153

Despite his admission of the deficiencies of the work produced by the division he had

supervised for ten years or more, Dr. Seaman’s plan for developing new selection

procedures, that complied with all applicable federal standards, was presented to the

Receiver in no more than outline form.154 As Lorren Oliver aptly observed,

“essentially what [Dr. Seaman’s submission] would be is perhaps a list of ingredients

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 63 of 84
155Doc. no. 7 (transcript of hearing, Mar. 12, 2003), at 369.

156Defendant’s Ex. 77. The magistrate judge was concerned that Oliver did not tell Seaman

that he was asked by the Receiver to assess the division, but the significance of such an omission is

unclear. It likely was apparent to Dr. Seaman, or at least should have been, based on the information

requested by Oliver, that Oliver was reviewing the division’s operations.

157See supra note 47.

64

to bake a cake but with no sense of how to bake it.”155 In short, this record establishes

no valid basis for questioning the Receiver’s conclusion that Dr. Seaman had

woefully “fail[ed] to plan, develop, and implement a strategy to produce valid

selection (examination) devices in a timely and professionally sound manner.” 

Additionally, the Receiver’s determination that Dr. Seaman failed to plan,

develop, and implement a strategy to produce valid (“professionally sound”)

selection procedures is supported by Lorren Oliver’s report. Oliver’s report followed

a review of documentation provided by Dr. Seaman and R&V Division staff, as well

as personal meetings. Based on the foregoing, Oliver concluded: 

There is tremendous variability in the work practices occurring

under [Dr. Seaman’s] supervision and too often these varied, nonstandardized approaches to the work violate basic good professional

practice for a testing function. [Dr. Seaman] has developed virtually no

policy, procedures, or basic work guidelines for the division, after over

a decade serving in the capacity as a supervisor for this critical

function.156

The reports submitted by Dr. Seaman to Greg James during the month of

September of 2002, which the Receiver reviewed, indicate the number of registers157

that were established each week. The reports provide no meaningful information

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 64 of 84
158It is unclear why the notice of contemplated disciplinary action was not issued until more

than two months after Dr. Seaman was placed on administrative leave.

159See doc. no. 8 (transcript of hearing Mar. 13, 2003), at 553-56.

160See supra note 15. Under the Board’s rules, provisional appointments were limited to four

months. Defendant’s Ex. 66, Rule 4.9(c).

161Defendant’s Ex. 28 (emphasis added).

65

regarding each of those registers, however, and do not even indicate for which

classifications they have been established. 

As for the Chief Court Clerk and Minute Clerk classifications that were

mentioned by the Receiver in the December 31, 2002 Notice of contemplated

disciplinary action delivered to Dr. Seaman,158 there is evidence that work to establish

registers for those job classifications was put “on hold” prior to the imposition of the

receivership.159 With respect to the Minute Clerk classification, however, the status

report provided to the Receiver by Libby Miller, the assigned R&V Division staff

member, states only the following, in relevant part:

**Position is a one incumbent classification (small N) in which a

provisional appointment has been in place for 2 years.[160]

 I have

recommended to [the Classification and Compensation Division] to

reclassify this position as an Administrative Coordinator in the future

survey.

Assigned: Monday, 8/5/02

Position had previously been assigned to Doris Dawkins/Becky

Maze/John Seaman. A task analysis had already been performed,

however, KSAO’s and MQ’s had not been defined.161

There is no explanation for the two-year delay in completion of the assignment.

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 65 of 84
162Defendant’s Ex. 30.

163Id. at 7.

164Id. at 8.

165Id.

66

With respect to the Chief Court Clerk classification, Barry Jackson provided

more detailed information in his status report to the Receiver.162 He provided a time

line of activities, “because this study has taken so long.”163 His report indicates that

Becky Maze was assigned responsibility for the selection procedure on November 10,

1999, and on January 18, 2000 the certification request was cancelled by Birmingham

Municipal Court Judge Barnes.164 Gordon Graham, who at the time was the personnel

director for the City of Birmingham, requested on March 7, 2000 that the assignment

be placed on hold, and further requested the Compensation and Classification

Division to reclassify the position as “executive exempt.”165 The effect of such a

reclassification would have been to remove the position from the merit system and,

thereby, not only deprive the occupant of merit system protections, but also free the

appointing authority to hire persons without regard to qualifications. The

reclassification request was denied and, over the next year, the City continued to

challenge the denial, until the issue finally was placed before the three-member

Personnel Board at the Mayor’s request in April of 2001. The Board denied the

reclassification request on June 21, 2001. Jackson’s status report states that the file

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 66 of 84
166Id.

167Id. at 11.

67

contained no information to indicate what, if anything, occurred during the period of

June 21, 2001 through January 11, 2002.166 The project was reassigned to Barry

Jackson on July 22, 2002, and as of September 4, 2002, some fifteen months after the

three-member Board had denied the City’s reclassification request, the selection

procedure for the position still had not been developed.167

Based on the foregoing, the court concludes that the Receiver’s determination

that development of registers of persons eligible for employment in the job

classifications of Chief Court Clerk and Minute Clerk had not been completed in a

timely manner was fully supported by the evidence. 

Taken as a whole, the evidence shows that Dr. Seaman failed to apprehend the

Receiver’s sense of urgency to devise a strategy to develop valid selection procedures

that complied both with acceptable professional practices, and with the legal

requirements of the Board’s consent decree. When Dr. Seaman did provide responses

to the Receiver pertaining to his “strategy” for accomplishing the work of his

division, those responses were, although usually verbose, wholly lacking in

meaningful information. The need for the Board to change its methodology from

expediency to professionalism should have been apparent from the mere fact that a

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 67 of 84
68

receivership was imposed on the Board by this court; and if that fact were not clear

enough, then it should have been eminently clear from reading this court’s

memorandum opinion holding the Board in civil contempt, copies of which were

made available for reading by all Board employees.

Accordingly, for all of the foregoing reasons, the court concludes that the

Receiver’s charge that Dr. Seaman failed to plan, develop, and implement a strategy

to produce valid selection devices in a timely and professionally sound manner, and

that certain registers were not prepared in a timely manner, should be sustained.

B. Charge No. 2: Failure to distribute work assignments among the

R&V Division staff reasonably and fairly which caused morale

problems within the division.

The Receiver objects to the magistrate judge’s conclusion that the Receiver’s

determination thatwork assignments were inequitably distributed by Dr. Seaman, and

that such practices negatively affected staff morale, was not supported by the

evidence. The court agrees with the Receiver. 

On July 1, 2002, prior to the imposition of the receivership, Dr. Seaman

submitted to Greg James his “plan” for reincorporating former Consent Decree team

members into the R & V Division. Dr. Seaman also provided a copy of the

memorandum to the Receiver during their meeting on July 17, 2002, the second week

of the receivership. Dr. Seaman’s “plan” was woefully lacking in specificity:

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 68 of 84
168The magistrate judge observed that Dr. Seaman had complained that he was understaffed

since as early as 1999, when he addressed the issue with the court’s Special Master, Dr. Veres (who

the magistrate misidentified as “then-Director John Veres”). Doc. no. 9 (Report &

Recommendation), at 81.

69

At the time of this report, it is expected that 4-5 staff members currently

assigned to the consent decree work group will be reassigned to the non

consent decree work group. When reassigned, those staff members will

be called to assist with [establishing registers as timely as possible for

90+ standing testing projects], but will be directed to primarily work on

carrying out [preparing for, coordinating, and administering Public

Safety promotional and entry level testing to replace aging registers], as

registers are needed, and also to perform work on [projecting staffing

needs in the system and developing registers in advance to reduce

reliance on provisional appointments]. 

The Receiver first addressed the issue of work assignments with Dr. Seaman

during their July 17th meeting. By that date, the Receiver had met with division

managers and other employees in an effort to gain an understanding of their concerns.

During the evidentiary hearing, the Receiver testified that he had received feedback

from former “Consent Decree team” members who had returned to the R&V Division

that they were underutilized by Dr. Seaman. Given Dr. Seaman’s position that his

division was understaffed,168 the Receiver told Dr. Seaman that he needed to more

effectively employ his existing staff resources. The Receiver again discussed his

perception that Dr. Seaman had not effectively distributed the workload of the R&V

Division following the August 30th meeting.

Indeed, Dr. Seaman acknowledged that there was discord among his staff

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 69 of 84
70

regarding work assignments:

I explained [the rationale for work assignments] to my staff, in

fact, because there was some grumbling about the — what early on

appeared to be disproportionateness in assignments. And I made it

clear that the [former Consent Decree team members] — first of all,

some of them were continuing to look at some consent decree projects.

They were on call, if you will, to be able to respond to questions from

attorneys, parties in the case, what have you, about the characteristics of

those exams that they had worked on because there were problems with

some of those. And that’s as it should be.

Others were used to look at some of the public safety testing that

had originated — most recently originated with their group and to be

prepared to coordinate the facilitation of those testing programs again.

But I made it clear to my staff that in that regard, these people, as

they started getting assignments, they were going to be employing best

practices approaches; meaning, they were going to apply steps,

hopefully, as consistent with the standards of [the Uniform Guidelines]

as possible, develop tests that were fair, equitable, job-related, fair to

examinees consistent with the steps outlined in the guidelines to defend,

if you will, employment examinations if they result — if their use results

in adverse impact against any protected groups.

In effect then, I was telling them that, although there’s maybe a

littledisproportionate—apparent disproportionateness in assignments,

you folks over here are going to be cleaning out these things that we’ve

been doing under expedient practices.

We’re going to get those out of the way, and we’re going to bring

you into the fold by working with some of these folks that have come

downstairs in sort of a mentoring fashion to bring you along to start

doing best practices on some of the new assignments. But we’re going

to clean those things out, and those are much easier, these expedient

approaches, as we had been doing. There is a lesser degree of job

analysis involved to establish the job relatedness of the instruments we

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 70 of 84
169Doc. no. 8 (transcript of Mar. 13, 2002 hearing), at 579-81 (emphasis supplied).

170Doc. no. 7 (transcript of hearing, Mar. 12, 2003), at 405.

71

sought to employ.

There are a whole host of steps that, under a best practices

approach, would not be taken with those. I wanted to clean those out,

and also inform them that the staff carrying the best practice approaches

would be working just as hard in the sense that they may have been

carrying fewer assignments, but the degree of rigor that they needed to

apply to conducting those projects in terms of job analysis, working with

subject matter expert groups and what have you was equally demanding,

if not more demanding, than the work they were going to be doing

closing out those projects. That was my decision in balancing the work

and moving the work forward as it should be.169

Additionally, Lorren Oliver discussed this issue with Dr. Seaman during his

review of the R&V Division’s operations:

What [Dr. Seaman] communicated to me when I made the

observation that there was a significant imbalance is that he would

attempt to [redistribute the work]. He did not share with me that there

was an existing limitation to his ability to do that. I shared with him the

observation that it appeared as if functionally the consent decree folks

were still in that position.

I said, are they now under your supervision? And he said, yes,

they have been for some time. My question therefore was, why not have

them assigned projects, particularly given the fact that they appear, on

the basis of his assessment, to be very capable.170

Notwithstanding the foregoing, Dr. Seaman did not redistribute the workload among

staff working within the R&V Division. 

The record is crystal clear that both the Receiver and Lorren Oliver — after

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 71 of 84
171Doc. no. 16 (Receiver’s objections), at 55 (quoting Report and Recommendation at 109).

172Doc. no. 9 (Report and Recommendation) at 108 (emphasis supplied).

72

reviewing assignment sheets compiled by R&V Division staff members, and

discussing workload issues with R&V Division staff and Dr. Seaman — instructed

Dr. Seaman to redistribute work assignments. Dr. Seaman did not do so, but only

offered explanations for his method of assigning work.

C. Charge No. 3: Failure to establish an effective method for tracking

and evaluating the work product of the R&V Division, and failure

to forecast for creation of new registers and to take proactive

measures to meet demand when it accrued.

The Receiver objects to the magistrate judge’s conclusion that this charge

could not be sustained, because the Receiver relied on “inadequate information,

sloppyinvestigation, lack of communication between [the Receiver], Greg James, and

Lorren Oliver, and a failure to provide Dr. Seaman with sufficient time or more

specific instructions.”171

The magistrate judge found significant the fact that, “as of the time of the

hearing in this case, . . . no computerized tracking system was yet in place.”172 While

that statement is accurate, it is not relevant to the issue. The Receiver testified that

“a tracking system focuses on being able to identify critical decision points, being

able to track work progress, and supervision of work progress. . . . I don’t see that you

have to have a computerized system to track it. That’s not what I’m talking about at

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 72 of 84
173Doc. no. 8 (transcript of hearing, Mar. 13, 2003), at 484 (emphasis supplied).

174Doc. no. 7 (transcript of hearing, Mar. 12, 2003), at 395.

175Doc. no. 9 (Report and Recommendation), at 109.

73

all.”173 Moreover, Lorren Oliver clearly testified that“the work occurring is being

fully supervised.”174 

The magistrate judge also found that the Receiver did not have all of the

relevant information pertaining to Dr. Seaman’s efforts to develop and implement a

tracking system prior to initiating disciplinary action against him, and excused Dr.

Seaman’s failure to forecast the testing procedures necessary for the preparation of

new registers, stating that “[the Receiver] asked Dr. Seaman how he [forecasted] but

instructed him no further when he was advised by Seaman that he had no consistent,

uniform method of forecasting.” Finally, the magistrate judge concluded with respect

to this charge that the Receiver:

relied, again, on inadequate information, sloppy investigation, lack of

communication between [sic] [the Receiver], Greg James and Lorren

Oliver, and a failure to provide Dr. Seaman with sufficient time or more

specific instructions on how Dr. Sims desired for him to accomplish his

tasks, including this one. Under the circumstances, the termination of

Dr. Seaman under Charge III is inappropriate.175

Upon full review of the evidence, this court reaches contrary conclusions.

The Receiver testified that he was aware of Dr. Seaman’s efforts to implement

a tracking system, through his review of the memoranda that Dr. Seaman had

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 73 of 84
176Doc. no. 8 (transcript of hearing, Mar. 13, 2003), at 492 (“[T]he first [report] I got was on

[September] 14th. So the ones I read were [plaintiff’s] Exhibits 18 [September 14th report], 19

[September 23rd report], 21 [September 29th report], and 17 [September 1st report].”) (testimony

of Dr. Sims). 

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prepared for Greg James and relating to Dr. Seaman’s progress in developing a

tracking system — namely the memoranda dated September 1st, 14th, 23rd, and

29th.176 Although the September 23rd memorandum stated that the tracking system

was “nearly in place,” it was not mentioned at all in the September 29th

memorandum. The Receiver also was aware, via Dr. Seaman’s memorandum to him

dated September 6, 2002, of Dr. Seaman’s efforts to develop a tracking system.

Although the magistrate judge faults the Receiver for failing to express his

dissatisfaction to Dr. Seaman with his lack of progress in implementing a means to

track the work of the R&V Division, or to ask to see what Dr. Seaman had developed

to date, neither did Dr. Seaman take the initiative to do anything more than tell the

Receiver that he was “working” on development of a system.

The significance of Dr. Seaman’s failure to track the work of the R&V Division

became apparent when Lorren Oliver was asked by the Receiver to assess the

division. Dr. Seaman was unable to provide meaningful information pertaining to the

status of each pending selection procedure, and Oliver ultimately had to obtain the

information piecemeal, from each staff member working in the division. 

Likewise, during one of their initial meetings, Dr. Seaman admitted to the

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 74 of 84
177Id. at 442 (emphasis supplied).

178Defendant’s Ex. 22 (emphasis supplied).

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Receiver that he had no method to forecast demand for selection procedures. The

magistrate judge apparently believed that, at that point, the Receiver should have

given, but failed to give, Dr. Seaman specific instructions on how to discharge the

duties of his position. The Receiver testified, however, that, when Dr. Seaman told

him he had no method of forecasting:

I told him how could you not forecast given the fact that . . . you have an

ongoing cycle of requests for certifications, exams expiring, calls from

different jurisdictions’ appointing authorities. And that it would seem,

at the minimum, if you are doing a good job of planning and organizing

your work, you would have a process in place that allows you to be able

to be proactive.177

Dr. Seaman confirmed his reactive approach to the division’s work in the September

5, 2002 memorandum he prepared for the Receiver following the Receiver’s August

30th meeting with the R&V Division: 

[A]ssignments have typically been made when the need for a

register was determined upon receipt of a request for certification.

Whereas some forecasting was done insofar as public safety testing

programs (i.e., putting new registers in place approximately every 24

months) and some of the clerical positions, no systematic, forecasting

practices have been in place.178

Overall, the evidence shows that the Receiver appropriately believed that

“tracking” (i.e., forecasting the dates when new testing procedures would have to be

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 75 of 84
76

administered, so that registers of persons eligible for employment would be in place

when needed), and closely supervising the work of the R&V Division, were critical

components of successfully fulfilling the court’s charge of bringing the Board into

compliance with the legal requirements of its consent decree. Based on information

provided by Dr. Seaman himself, the Receiver determined that Dr. Seaman’s lack of

tracking, forecasting, and supervision was not adequate. Accordingly, the court

concludes that this charge was substantiated, and properly serves as a basis for

termination.

D. Charge No. 4: Failure to take corrective measures when it was brought to

Dr. Seaman’s attention that a staff member, for months, had failed to

score all applications even though the registers had been established, and

failure to inform the Receiver of the problem.

The Receiver asserts that the magistrate judge erred in concluding that this

charge was not substantiated, because the magistrate improperlyfocused on irrelevant

conflicts in the evidence, and also because his finding that “[t]he claim that Dr.

Seaman was told to tell the Receiver about [the] problem is lacking in merit” was

contrary to the evidence. Again, the court finds that the Receiver’s objections have

merit.

When addressing this charge, the magistrate judge focused on the conflict in

the testimony of Greg James and Andy Douglas, as to whether James had instructed

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 76 of 84
179Doc. no. 9 (Report and Recommendation) at 110, 112.

180See doc. no. 6 (transcript of hearing, Feb. 27, 2003), at 90 (testimony of Dr. Seaman); 185-

86, 188 (testimony of Andy Douglas). 

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Douglas to tell Dr. Seaman to bring the matter of Cynthia Dowe’s failure to score

applications to the attention of the Receiver. The magistrate judge wrote:

The testimony of Greg James was that he told Andy Douglas to tell Dr.

Seaman to tell [the Receiver] about this problem. Assuming Douglas

was given such an assignment, James has no personal eyewitness

evidence that he carried out this instruction. In fact, Douglas denies that

Greg James told him to speak to Dr. Seaman and further testified that

James told him to keep the information private.

. . . .

There is no credible evidence that [Dr. Seaman] was instructed to tell the

Receiver about this problem and refused to do so.179

Notwithstanding the conflicting testimony noted by the magistrate judge, there

is other, uncontroverted testimony that: (i) Andy Douglas discovered that Cynthia

Dowe had failed to score applications several months after they had been received;

(ii) Douglas informed Dr. Seaman of the problem; (iii) Douglas recommended that

Dr. Seaman advise the Receiver of the matter; and (iv) Dr. Seaman failed to inform

the Receiver about the issue prior to the date on which he was placed on

administrative leave.180 Thus, the magistrate judge’s conclusion that Dr. Seaman was

not told to bring the problem to the Receiver’s attention not only is incorrect, but

irrelevant.

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181See doc. no. 8 (transcript of hearing, Mar. 13, 2003), at 436 (“I expected [the division

managers] to also . . . be honest, bring problems to my attention.”).

182Doc. no. 6 (transcript of hearing, Feb. 27, 2003), at 188.

183There is no evidence to support these suppositions. 

184Doc. no. 9 (Report and Recommendation) at 110-11.

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The crux of this charge is that Dr. Seaman failed to address a significant

performance issue in his division, and also failed to advise the Receiver of the

problem, as the Receiver had instructed all division managers to do.181 Dr. Seaman

explained that he requested Douglas to provide “more information” about the

unscored applications, but Douglas had not done so by the time he (Dr. Seaman) was

placed on administrative leave. Douglas, however, testified that he did provide the

information to Dr. Seaman a day or two following their initial conversation, and that

Dr. Seaman simply stated that there was nothing he could do about the problem.182

The magistrate judge appeared to credit Douglas’s testimony that he provided

the information to Dr. Seaman, stating the following:

If Douglas did provide this information to Dr. Seaman, it was provided

only a few days before Dr. Seaman was placed on leave pending

termination. It would not be surprising to discover that his attention was

diverted to other matters at that time or that he simply does not

remember receiving this information.[183]

 However, whether he received

it or not is of no importance. It is clear that he took action and ordered

Douglas to provide him with further information.184

Upon review of the evidence, this court concludes that, regardless of whether

Dr. Seaman received additional information from Douglas, he failed to take

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 78 of 84
185See doc. no. 8 (transcript of hearing, Mar. 13, 2003), at 462-63.

186See doc. no. 6 (transcript of hearing, Feb. 27, 2003), at 91.

187Id. 

188Id. at 91-92.

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corrective action to address what the Receiver perceived to be a significant

performance problem185 within the R&V Division after learning of the matter.

186

Crediting Dr. Seaman’s testimony that he did not receive the information that he

requested from Douglas, there is no evidence that he followed up on the request, even

though “[i]t was on [Dr. Seaman’s] agenda,” and was “something that [he] was

waiting to deal with” as of the date that he was placed on administrative leave.187 Dr.

Seaman also acknowledged that he did not advise the Receiver that Douglas had

brought the issue to his attention, and that he was investigating the matter.188

 The

court therefore concludes that there is a sufficient basis in the evidence to support this

charge.

IV. CONCLUSION

The issues raised in this case may appear complex. The magistrate judge

obviously found them to be so. That is somewhat understandable. Technical

professionals, such as Dr. Sims, Lorren Oliver, and Dr. Seaman, are not good

courtroom communicators. Their education, and the esoteric concepts they are

trained to use, teach them to speak in an arcane jargon that is, for most persons,

Case 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 79 of 84
189W. Paul Vogt, DICTIONARY OF STATISTICS & METHODOLOGY (1999); Ray Corsini, THE

DICTIONARY OF PSYCHOLOGY (2002).

190E.g., Robert D. Gatewood & Hubert S. Feild, HUMAN RESOURCE SELECTION (5th ed.

2001); Gerald R. Ferris & M. Ronald Buckley, HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT (3d ed. 1996);

Linda Crocker & James Algina, INTRODUCTION TO CLASSICAL & MODERN TEST THEORY (1986);

Mario F. Triola, ELEMENTARY STATISTICS (8th ed. 2001); Gerald Kranzler & Janel Moursund,

STATISTICS FOR THE TERRIFIED (2d ed. 1999).

191Ensley Branch, N.A.A.C.P. v. Seibels, 31 F.3d 1548, 1573 (11th Cir. 1994) (emphasis

supplied).

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difficult to grasp. This court was required to acquire dictionaries189 and texts190 as

aids to comprehension, to better follow whatever such persons were attempting to

communicate.

Ultimately, however, this is a very simple case, in the sense of the following,

illustrative example. The subordinate officers of General Thomas J. Jackson once

recoiled from a command that Jackson’s Brigade execute a maneuver that, they

believed, would result in staggering casualties. Jackson checked the debate with one

statement: “My duty,” Jackson said, “is to obey orders.” 

In like manner, this court’s duty is that of obeying the orders communicated

through the opinion in Ensley Branch, N.A.A.C.P. v. Seibels, 31 F.3d 1548 (11th Cir.

1994) (“Ensley II”), holding (among many other things) that the decision of this court,

“declin[ing] to set deadlines for the development of valid selection procedures,”

amounted to “an abuse of discretion,”191 and ordering that the provisions of the

Board’s consent decree requiring the development and implementation of valid, nonCase 2:03-mc-00069-HGD Document 22 Filed 02/07/05 Page 80 of 84
192Id. at 1572 (emphasis supplied).

193Id. at 1577 (emphasis supplied).

194Id. at 1574, 1575. This court’s reading of the lengthy opinion in Ensley II led to these

conclusions:

In sum, the Ensley II Court clearly commanded that this court’s ultimate

objective should be that of aggressively compelling the Personnel Board and City of

Birmingham to develop “valid, non-discriminatory selection procedures” in

accordance with specific, “prompt deadlines” and “formal review mechanism[s]” to

“ensure” that the Board and City “actually did” “develop and implement valid jobselection procedures.” The Court explicitly refused to describe that objective as

“long term,” “because it should be pursued with a sense of urgency.”

United States v. Jefferson County, No. CV-75-S-666-S (N.D. Ala. July 8, 2002), at 21 (citations

omitted).

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discriminatory, job-selection procedures “be given teeth”

192 — all for the purpose of

ensuring that the Board accomplished those tasks “forthwith, not at the causal pace

the Board has passed off as progress for thirteen [now 23] years.”193

Valid tests may prove administratively burdensome to design and

validate, but minimizing inconvenience is not a constitutional value. It

certainly does not outweigh the importance of ending racial [or gender]

discrimination. If the process of approving selection procedures places

undue strain on the district court’s resources, it may appoint a special

master to assist with the task. 

. . .

Valid selection procedures are both possible in practice and

constitutionally necessary. Therefore, on remand, the district court

should set prompt deadlines for the City and the Board to develop and

implement valid job-selection procedures.194

This court faithfully sought to discharge those orders from October 2000 until July

8, 2002, when it became apparent that the Board and its employees either had no

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195Id. at 100.

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intention of complying with federal Constitutional, statutory, and court-ordered

requirements, or lacked the competence to do so (or both of the foregoing). Hence,

the imposition of a Receivership upon the Board and its employees.

This court ordered Dr. Sims to take command of the Personnel Board’s

employees, and to bring the Board into full compliance with the legal obligations

incorporated in its consent degree as quickly as possible, and “concluding this

litigation in fewer than three years.”195 

The Personnel Board obviously must employ valid selection

criteria in order to comply with its consent decree, as modified and

extended. The Board’s ability to create and then administer selection

procedures is hamstrung, however, by its lack of infrastructure and the

discord among its present management and staff. To perform its

functions lawfully and efficiently, the institution must have an

organizational structure, systems, and procedures that support its

purpose, and employees who both understand and possess the skills

necessary to perform their various roles.

Ultimately, the purpose of the Personnel Board is to deliver

efficient, professional, and cost-effective service to local governments,

their employees, applicants for employment, and the public at large.

Central to the work of the Receiver, therefore, will be the task of

refocusing the Personnel Board and its employees on the potential and

satisfaction of working in an organization that not only fulfills its

mission, but does so in an exemplary manner. Otherwise, the task of

sustaining “valid selection criteria” will prove impossible, if not

meaningless.

Accordingly, the overriding goal of the receivership imposed by

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196Id. at 98-99.

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this court is that of creating an instructive collaboration among the

Receiver and Board employees, with the advice of consultants, so that

authority and responsibility are progressively assumed by the Board and

its employees during the course of the process, resulting in the legacy of

a strong and competent Personnel Board team with a clearly defined

mission, and, the systems and skills to support that mission in a manner

that meets the requirements of the Constitution and federal law in all

respects. The cumulative effect of the protections afforded by a

well-run, efficient, and professional merit system are a sense of

procedural justice and a resultant sense of job security. The protections

foster a neutral and non-partisan career civil service, one based more on

job performance than on political affiliation. In short, the same benefits

touted in the original struggle for enactment of Act No. 284, but made

consistent with contemporary legal requirements.196

Dr. Sims accepted this court’s mission statement, and has diligently and faithfully

sought to discharge his directives. In contrast, Dr. Seaman (in Greg James’s apt

phrase) never got “on board.” Dr. Seaman was a pivotal part of the Board’s problems

for the ten or more years he served as manager of the Research & Validation

Division; and, he either refused to be, or was incapable of becoming, a part of its

solution. His duty, like that of General Jackson, was to obey the orders of his

superiors: the Receiver and, ultimately, this court. This record establishes that he

failed to do so.

Accordingly, for all of the foregoing reasons, the court rejects the findings of

the magistrate judge, and declines to adopt his recommendation. The court instead

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84

finds that each of the Receiver’s charges is sustained by the evidence, and concludes

that his decision to terminate the employment of Dr. Seaman should be affirmed. In

accordance with the rules and regulations of the Personnel Board in effect at the time

of Dr. Seaman’s dismissal, the court is not convinced that Dr. Seaman, by reason of

his acts as charged and his record of service, merits retention in the service; rather,

the evidence convinces this court that Dr. Seaman should be removed therefrom. An

appropriate order will be entered contemporaneously herewith. 

DONE this 7th day of February, 2005.

______________________________

United States District Judge

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