Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca10-90-06109/USCOURTS-ca10-90-06109-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Richard Burst
Appellant
City of Guthrie, Oklahoma
Not Party
Tom DeArman
Appellant
Don Johnson
Not Party
Tom Ledington
Appellant
Deb McGuire
Appellee

Document Text:

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS 

FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT 

DEB MCGUIRE, an individual, ) 

) 

Plaintiff-Appellee, ) 

) 

PIL D 

United States Couu of Appeals 

Tenth Cirruit 

JAN 2 8 1991 

ROBERT L. HOECKER 

Clerk 

v. ) 

) 

CITY OF GUTHRIE, OKLAHOMA, a municipal ) 

corporation; DON JOHNSON, individually ) 

No. 90-6109 

(D.C. No. 88-1534-R) 

( W. D. Okla. ) 

and as Personnel Director, City of ) 

Guthrie, ) 

) 

Defendants, ) 

) 

and ) 

) 

TOM DEARMAN, individually and as City ) 

Manager, City of Guthrie, Oklahoma; ) 

TOM LEDINGTON, individually and as ) 

former Chief of Police, City of ) 

Guthrie, Oklahoma; RICHARD BURST, ) 

individually and as City Attorney, ) 

City of Guthrie, ) 

) 

Defendants-Appellants. ) 

ORDER AND JUDGMENT* 

Before MOORE, BARRETT, Circuit Judges, and SPARR,** District 

Judge. 

**Honorable Daniel 

District Court for 

designation. 

* 

B. Sparr, District Judge, 

the District of Colorado, 

United States 

sitting by 

This order and judgment has no 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. 

36.3. 

Appellate Case: 90-6109 Document: 010110080468 Date Filed: 01/28/1991 Page: 1 
.. 

After examining the briefs and appellate record, this panel 

has determined unanimously that oral argument would not materially 

assist the determination of this appeal. See Fed. R. App. P. 

34(a); 10th Cir. R. 34.1.9. The case is therefore ordered 

submitted without oral argument. 

Tom DeArman, Ted Ledington, and Richard Burst (together, 

defendants) appeal from an order of the district court which 

denied their motion for summary judgment on the basis of qualified 

immunity. See Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 530 (1985). Deb 

McGuire (plaintiff) brought this action under 42 u.s.c. § 1983 

challenging the events surrounding his discharge as a police 

officer with the City of Guthrie, Oklahoma, in January 1988 for 

allegedly stealing four magazines from a residence during the 

execution of a search warrant in September 1987. In his 

complaint, plaintiff alleged that his termination resulted in the 

deprivation of procedural and substantive due process rights 

guaranteed by the fourteenth amendment and constituted retaliation 

for the exercise of free speech in violation of the first 

amendment. 

Our prior decisions make clear that we review summary 

judgment decisions involving qualified immunity somewhat 

differently than other summary judgment rulings, and we impose a 

"very heavy" burden on a plaintiff. Hannula v. City of Lakewood, 

907 F.2d 129, 130 (10th Cir. 1990). To carry this burden a 

plaintiff must come forward with facts and allegations sufficient 

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Appellate Case: 90-6109 Document: 010110080468 Date Filed: 01/28/1991 Page: 2 
to show both that the defendant's conduct violated the law and 

that the law was clearly established at the time of the alleged 

violation so that a reasonable official would have understood that 

what he was doing was unlawful. Pueblo Neighborhood Health 

Centers, Inc., v. Losavio, 847 F.2d 642, 645 (10th Cir. 1988). 

Once a plaintiff has met his or her burden, a defendant must 

demonstrate that no material issues of fact remain as to whether 

his or her actions were reasonable in light of the existing law at 

the time of the alleged violation. Zuchel v. Spinharney, 890 F.2d 

273, 274 (10th Cir. 1989). In order to properly assess the 

district court's denial of qualified immunity in this case, we 

will review each of plaintiff's alleged constitutional violations 

and the applicable law. 

I. 

Plaintiff first alleged that he had a constitutionally 

protected property interest in his continued employment which was 

deprived without due process of law. However, the only source 

cited by plaintiff for this alleged property interest is the 

Guthrie City Charter. In our view, the pertinent language cited 

in the charter, as set forth in the district court opinion, is 

equivocal, at best. Therefore, plaintiff's claimed property 

interest based on the charter is equally uncertain. Under these 

circumstances, defendants could not have violated a clearly 

established statutory or constitutional right of which a 

reasonable person would have known. See, e.g., Hopkins v. Stice, 

916 F.2d 1029, 1033 (5th Cir. 1990); Lucero v. Hart, 915 F.2d 

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Appellate Case: 90-6109 Document: 010110080468 Date Filed: 01/28/1991 Page: 3 
1367, 1371 (9th Cir. 1990). Therefore, defendants are entitled to 

qualified immunity on the deprivation of property claim. 

II. 

Plaintiff next alleged that defendants made certain 

statements about him during the course of his termination and 

failed to give him an opportunity to rebut the statements before 

an impartial tribunal thereby depriving him of a liberty interest 

without due process of law. Under this court's current view of 

the concept of liberty, a public employee may make out a 

successful liberty deprivation claim by establishing that his 

termination was accompanied by the (1) public dissemination of (2) 

false information that (3) stigmatized his reputation or 

foreclosed future employment opportunities. Harris v. Blake, 798 

F.2d 419, 422 n.2 (10th Cir. 1986), cert. denied, 479 U.S. 1033 

(1987); Walker v. United States, 744 F.2d 67, 69 (10th Cir. 1984); 

Miller v. City of Mission, 705 F.2d 368, 373 (10th Cir. 1983); see 

also Codd v. Velger, 429 U.S. 624, 627-28 (1977). If an employer 

creates and disseminates a false and defamatory impression about 

an employee in connection with his termination, the remedy 

mandated by due process is an opportunity to refute the charges 

before an impartial tribunal. Miller, 705 F.2d at 373. 

In this case, the district court, in denying defendants' 

claim of qualified immunity, recognized the following statements 

alleged by plaintiff as implicating a liberty interest: (1) 

disclosure of the magazine stealing charges, i.e., the grounds for 

plaintiff's termination, to the Guthrie City Council and the 

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Appellate Case: 90-6109 Document: 010110080468 Date Filed: 01/28/1991 Page: 4 
Oklahoma Employment Security Commission; (2) a statement by 

Ledington in September 1987 to an "OSBI agent" that plaintiff was 

a dirty cop; and (3) a statement by Burst in February 1988 to a 

local attorney that plaintiff belonged in prison. See District 

Court Order pp. 12-16. On appeal, our review is limited to only 

these statements. 

With respect to the disclosure of the magazine stealing 

charges, as we understand the record, there is no dispute that 

plaintiff did in fact remove four magazines from a residence 

during the execution of the search warrant in September 1987. 

However, there is a dispute over why plaintiff removed the 

magazines. Because this is an appeal from a summary judgment we 

will accept as true plaintiff's assertion that the magazines were 

not taken for personal use but, instead, were seized as evidence 

for a criminal prosecution. Given this view of the record, we 

agree with the district court that plaintiff has demonstrated a 

violation of clearly established law through the undisputed 

disclosure by defendants of the presumably false magazine stealing 

charges, and the evidence in the record indicating defendants' 

participation in plaintiff's pretermination hearing and 

post-termination review notwithstanding their bias toward 

plaintiff. See, e.g., Walker v. United States, 744 F.2d at 67; 

Miller v. City of Mission, 705 F.2d at 368. Furthermore, 

defendants have failed to demonstrate that their conduct, 

established by the record, was objectively reasonable in light of 

the then-extant clearly established standards. Consequently, 

qualified immunity does not protect defendants from that aspect of 

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Appellate Case: 90-6109 Document: 010110080468 Date Filed: 01/28/1991 Page: 5 
plaintiff's liberty deprivation claim premised on the disclosure 

of the magazine stealing charges. 

As guidance for the district court, we point out that before 

plaintiff can ultimately prevail on his liberty claim based on the 

disclosure of the magazine stealing charges, the district court 

must resolve, as a threshold matter, the factual dispute regarding 

why plaintiff took the magazines. As previously noted, an 

employee is deprived of a liberty interest protected by due 

process only if an employer disseminates a false impression about 

an employee in connection with his termination. Codd, 429 U.S. at 

628. Therefore, in this case, if the district court finds that 

plaintiff did in fact steal the magazines, then plaintiff has 

failed to establish the critical falsity element of a liberty 

deprivation claim. Under these circumstances, dismissal of that 

aspect of plaintiff's liberty claim based on the disclosure of the 

magazine stealing charges would be warranted. 

With respect to the other statements relied on by the 

district court as implicating a liberty interest, the statement by 

Ledington to an "OSBI agent" and the statement by Burst to a local 

attorney, we need not reach the issue of qualified immunity. 

Plaintiff has established these statements only through 

self-serving answers to interrogatories. Plaintiff's hearsay 

account is entitled to no weight. Brennan v. Hendrigan, 888 F.2d 

189, 196 n.6 (1st Cir. 1989). 

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. ' 

Plaintiff next alleged 

rights were violated by 

III. 

that his substantive due process 

the arbitrary and capricious manner in 

which he was discharged. However, plaintiff, as we understand his 

position, premises his substantive due process claim, like his 

procedural due process claims, on the ground that the participants 

in his pretermination hearing and post-termination review were 

biased against him. In our view, a biased tribunal is strictly a 

matter of procedural, not substantive, due process. Plaintiff has 

cited no cases existing at the time of his termination indicating 

that the impartiality of a tribunal is a matter of substantive due 

process. Therefore, plaintiff has failed to demonstrate a 

violation of clearly established law, and defendants are entitled 

to qualified immunity on plaintiff's substantive due process 

claim. 

IV. 

Finally, plaintiff alleged that he was discharged in 

retaliation for the exercise of first amendment rights. The 

district court, in reviewing this claim, did not expressly address 

the balancing test required under Pickering v. Board of Educ. of 

Township High School Dist. 205, 391 U.S. 563, 568 (1968). There 

is insufficient evidence in the record to permit us to perform the 

balancing test in the first instance. Under these circumstances, 

we are constrained to conclude that defendants are not entitled to 

summary judgment based on qualified immunity with respect to 

plaintiff's first amendment claim at this stage in the proceedings 

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. ' 

and the district court's denial of summary judgment based on 

qualified immunity must be affirmed. See, e.g., Considine v. 

Board of County Comm'rs, 910 F.2d 695 (10th Cir. 1990). We note 

that we only speak to the record as it now is before us. 

Accordingly, for the reasons set forth above, the decision of 

the United States District Court for the Western District of 

Oklahoma, which denied defendants' claim of qualified immunity on 

plaintiff's first amendment claim and plaintiff's deprivation of 

liberty claim premised on disclosures to the Oklahoma Employment 

Security Commission and the Guthrie City Council, is AFFIRMED. In 

all other respects, the decision of the district court is 

REVERSED. 

ENTERED FOR THE COURT 

PER CURIAM 

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