Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca10-89-03091/USCOURTS-ca10-89-03091-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Clyde Conaway
Appellant
M. James Medin
Appellee
Edward C. Smith
Appellee
The City of Kansas City, Kansas
Appellee

Document Text:

FI LED 

United States Court of Appeals 

Tenth Circuit 

JUN 2 8 1990 

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS 

FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT 

CLYDE CONAWAY, ) 

) 

Plaintiff-Appellant, ) 

) 

v . ) 

) 

EDWARD C. SMITH, Director, Neighborhood ) 

Preservation Department of the City of ) 

Kansas City, Kansas, M. JAMES MEDIN, } 

City Administrator of the City of ) 

Kansas City, Kansas, THE CITY OF KANSAS ) 

CITY , KANSAS, a municipal corporation, ) 

) 

Defendants-Appellees. ) 

ORDER AND JUDGMENT* 

ROBERT L. HOECKER 

Clerk 

No. 89-3091 

(D.C. No. 84-2434-S) 

(D. Kan.) 

Be fo re TACHA, SETH, Circuit Judges, and BROWN,** District Judge. 

**Honorable Wesley E. Brown, Senior Judge, United States District 

Court for the District of Kansas, sitting by designation. 

Plaintiff-appellant appeals from a jury verdict for 

defendants-appellees on his claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for 

violation of his first amendment rights. Plaintiff was hired by 

the City of Kansas City, Kansas, (City) as an electrical inspector 

on July 27, 1982, and was terminated for alleged insubordination 

* This order and judgment has n9 precedential value and shall 

not be cited, or used by any court within the Tenth Circuit, 

except for purposes of establishing the doctrines of the law of 

the case, res judicata, or collateral estoppel. 10th Cir. R. 

3 6. 3 . 

Appellate Case: 89-3091 Document: 010110037490 Date Filed: 06/28/1990 Page: 1 
on June 14, 1984. 

Grievance Board 

termination; the 

After 

upheld 

a formal grievance 

the decision leading 

city administrator, defendant 

procedure, the 

to plaintiff's 

James Medin, 

subsequently upheld the Grievance Board's determination. 

Plaintiff alleged in his complaint that his termination 

depri ved him of his property and liberty interests without due 

process and violated his first amendment rights. On defendants' 

mo t i on, the district court granted summary judgment against 

plaintiff o n all his claims. We upheld the summary judgment on 

plaintiff's due process claims, Conaway v. Smith, 853 F.2d 789, 

794-95 (10th Cir. 1 988), but reversed the summary judgment on 

plaintiff's first amendment claim, id. at 799. On remand to the 

district court, the individual defendants moved for summary 

judgment on their personal liability on the basis of qualified 

immu nity. The district court granted the motion, and the case 

proceeded to trial on plaintif f's first amendment claim against 

the City and t he individual defendants in their official 

capacities. 

Aft er the jury rendered a verdict for defendants, plaintiff 

file d a motion for new trial and a motion to retax costs. The 

tria l court denied the motion for new trial and granted in part 

and denied in part the motion to retax costs. The grounds raised 

in those motions, as well as the district court's ruling on 

qualified immunity, are the subject of this appeal. Plaintiff 

a cknowledges that we need not reach the qualified immunity issue 

u nless we f ind other grounds to reverse the judgment of the 

d istrict court. 

2 

Appellate Case: 89-3091 Document: 010110037490 Date Filed: 06/28/1990 Page: 2 
Plaintiff's first three challenges on appeal concern the 

admi ssion of evidence. We review in this case under an abuse of 

discret ion standard. United States v. Alexander, 849 F.2d 1293, 

1301 (10th Cir. 1988 ). 

Plaint i ff cont ends that the district court erred in admitting 

Exhib i t No. 417, which was a memorandum from the chief building 

inspector to the assistant director of neighborhood preservation 

r ega rding plaintiff's threats to two city inspectors on 

Aug ust 9, 1985, and August 15, 1985, respectively. Defendants 

introduced the exhibit by calling plaintiff to the stand in their 

case-in-chief, asking him about the incidents, and, when he denied 

the threats, u s ing the memorandum to impeach his testimony. 

Plainti f f objected to the use of the exhibit on the grounds that 

it c oncerned a collateral matter on which defendants could not 

impeach plaintiff, that defendants could not prove character by 

evidence of specific conduct, that the memorandum was hearsay, 

tha t t he prejudicial effect of the memorandum outweighed any 

probat ive value, and that defendants had not laid a proper 

fou ndation for the exhibit's admission. 

In reviewing plaintiff's challenge to the admission of the 

Exhibit No. 417, we must bear in mind that "'error in the 

admission or exclusion of evidence is harmless if it does not 

affect the substantial rights of the parties, and the burden of 

demonstr ating that substantial rights were affected rests with the 

p ar t y asserting error."' Specht v. Jensen, 853 F.2d 805, 810 

( 1 0th Cir. 1988)(quoting K-B Trucking Co. v. Riss Int'l Corp., 763 

F . 2d 1148, 1155-56 (10th Cir. 1985)), cert. denied, 109 S. Ct. 792 

3 

Appellate Case: 89-3091 Document: 010110037490 Date Filed: 06/28/1990 Page: 3 
(1989). Based upon our review of the trial transcript, we 

conclude that even if the district court abused its discretion in 

admitting the exhibit, the admission was harmless error. 

Plaintiff next argues that the district court erred in 

excluding Exhibit No. 30, which consisted of the referee's 

decision , and the employment security board of review's affirmance 

of that decision, granting plaintiff unemployment compensation 

bene fits. Defendants argued below that the exhibit should be 

excluded because its prejudicial effect far outweighed its 

probative value. Specifically, defendants noted that the standard 

employed by the referee in determining plaintiff's entitlement to 

benefits, which was based on the state statutory definition of 

misconduct, was different than that legitimately employed by 

defendants in terminating plaintiff, which was the standard the 

jury would have to consider in evaluating plaintiff's claim for 

relief. Defendants also argued that since the district court 

quashed their motion to subpoena a transcript of the unemployment 

compensation hearings, it would be unfair to introduce the 

decisions into evidence while depriving defendants of the tools 

necessary to provide the jury with a full understanding of the 

basis of those decisions. We conclude that the district court did 

not abuse its discretion in refusing to admit Exhibit No. 30. 

Plaintiff also challenges the district court's admission of 

Exhibit No. 413, which consisted of the findings and conclusions 

of the Grievance Board, as well as a synopsis of the grievance 

procedure and the evidence considered. Plaintiff objected to the 

introduction of the exhibit on the grounds that it was similar to 

4 

Appellate Case: 89-3091 Document: 010110037490 Date Filed: 06/28/1990 Page: 4 
the u nemployment compensation decisions and that if the latter 

we r e going to be excluded then the Grievance Board decision also 

should be excluded. On appeal, plaintiff further argues that the 

exhibit should have been excluded as untrustworthy under Fed. R. 

Evid . 803(8)(c). Since plaintiff did not raise this specific 

objection at the time of trial, and we find no plain error, the 

o b j ection is waived on appeal. See Wheeler v. John Deere Co., 862 

F.2d 1404, 1409 n.l (10th Cir. 1988). 

Defendants argued below that the decisions of the Grievance 

Board and the unemployment compensation referee were not alike, so 

admission of one did not require admission of the other, and that 

the Grievance Board's decision was highly relevant to plaintiff's 

claim since it reflected the reasons for the City's final approval 

of plaintiff's termination. The district court specifically 

considered the relevancy of the exhibit in ruling it admissible. 

While we agree that the exhibit was prejudicial, we cannot say 

that the district court's determination that the probative value 

o f the exhibit outweighed its prejudicial value was an abuse of 

discretion. 

Plaintiff's next series of challenges to the lower court 

proceedings concern the jury instructions given by the district 

c o urt. 

When examining a challenge to jury instructions, we 

review t he record as a whole to determine whether the 

instructions "state[d] the law which governs and 

pr ovi ded the jury with an ample understanding of the 

issues and the standards applicable." We thus "consider 

all that the jury heard and, from the standpoint of the 

jury, decide 'not whether the charge was faultless in 

every particular but whether the jury was misled in any 

way and whether it had [an] understanding of the issues 

and its duty to determine these issues.'" 

5 

Appellate Case: 89-3091 Document: 010110037490 Date Filed: 06/28/1990 Page: 5 
Bi g Horn Coal Co. v. Commonwealth Edison Co., 852 F.2d 1259, 1271 

(10th Cir. 1988)(citations omitted). 

Plaintiff contends that the district court erred in failing 

to i nstruct the jury in accordance with an instruction he tendered 

which said: "Plaintiff need not prove the truth of his protected 

spee ch . It is sufficient if plaintiff demonstrates a good-faith 

belief in the truth of the underlying allegations." Although 

p l aintiff submitted the subject instruction to the district court 

along with his other proposed instructions, the record does not 

refl ect that plaintiff mentioned this proposed instruction during 

argument on the instructions or that he otherwise objected to the 

court 's failure to give the instruction before the jury retired. 

Ther efore, plaintiff cannot assign as error on appeal the failure 

to give the tendered instruction. Fed. R. Civ. P. 51. 

Plaintiff also argues that the court should have given an 

instruction he tendered that specifically informed the jury that 

plaintiff's spe e c h was protected a s a matter of law. A review of 

t he inst r ucti o ns as a whol e reveals that plaintiff's proposed 

instr uction would have added nothing to the instructions actually 

give n to the jury. Both Instruction No. 4 and Instruction No. 11 

des cr i bed plaintiff's speech as protected first amendment 

a c tivity. Therefore, the district court did not err in refusing 

to give plaintiff's tendered instruction. 

Plaintiff challenges the court's Instruction No. 12 and 

argues that the district c o urt should have given the instruction 

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Appellate Case: 89-3091 Document: 010110037490 Date Filed: 06/28/1990 Page: 6 
he tendered in its place. 1 

follows: 

Instruction No. 12 provided as 

If you find that the plaintiff has met his burden 

of proof, then you must determine whether the defendant 

has shown that the plaintiff would have been discharged 

from his employment regardless of the plaintiff's 

expression of protected speech, because of 

insubordination and unacceptable conduct. If the 

defendants show, by a preponderance of the evidence, 

that plaintiff would have been discharged in any event, 

then you should find for the defendant. 

Plaintiff contends that Instruction No. 12 "improperly waters down 

defendants' burden" because it "does not clearly impose the burden 

on the defendant[s], nor does it use [the] 'in the absence of' 

standard of Mt. Healthy [Mt. Healthy City School District Board of 

Education v . Doyle , 429 U.S. 274, 287 (1977)]." 

Appellant at 47 . We disagree. 

Brief of 

In Mt. Healthy, the Court said that the inquiry into the 

employer's liability for discharging the plaintiff in violation of 

his first amendment rights should not end with the factfinder's 

determination that the plaintiff's protected activity was a 

substantial or motivating factor in his discharge. 

Such a procedure, the Court explained, 

Id. at 285. 

could place an employee in a better position as a result 

of the e xercise of constitutionally protected conduct 

than he would have occupied had he done nothing .... 

[I]t would require reinstatement in cases where a 

dramatic and perhaps abrasive incident is inevitably on 

the minds of those responsible for the decision to 

rehire, and does indeed play a part in that decision 

even if the same decision would have been reached had 

the incident not occurred. The constitutional principle 

at stake is sufficiently vindicated if such an employee 

is placed in no worse a position than if he had not 

engaged in the conduct. 

l The instruction plaintiff supposedly tendered is not 

record on appeal. 

in the 

7 

Appellate Case: 89-3091 Document: 010110037490 Date Filed: 06/28/1990 Page: 7 
Id. at 285-86. Therefore, the Court held that after the plaintiff 

established that his protected conduct was a substantial or 

motivating factor in his discharge, the employer should be given 

an opportunity to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that 

it wo uld have discharged the plaintiff even if he had not engaged 

in the protected conduct. Id. at 287. Although it did not use 

the precise language of Mt. Healthy, Instruction No. 12 correctly 

set forth the law concerning defendants' burden of proof, and, 

therefore, was not erroneous. 

Finally, we address plaintiff's challenge to the district 

court's taxation of the costs incurred by defendants in taking 

plaintiff's deposition. We review the grant or denial of costs 

under an abuse of discretion standard. Willner v. Budig, 848 F.2d 

1032, 1035 (10th Cir. 1988), cert. denied, 109 S. Ct. 840 (1989). 

The district court found that plaintiff's deposition was 

"necessarily obtained for use in the case." This finding did not 

constitute an abuse of discretion. Therefore, the district court 

did not err in taxing the deposition costs against plaintiff under 

28 u.s.c. § 1290(2). 

Since we find no reversible error in the proceedings below, 

we need not reach the issue whether the district court properly 

granted qualified immunity to the individual defendants. 

The judgment of the United States District Court for the 

District of Kans as is AFFIRMED. 

ENTERED FOR THE COURT 

PER CURIAM 

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