NOT PRECEDENTIAL

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT

_____________

No. 16-1221

_____________

NICO ELECTRICAL CONTRACTOR, INC.; 

MARSHALL B. WILLIAMS

 Appellants

v.

CITY OF CAMDEN; EUGENE EMENECKER; 

WILLIAM REVAITIS; JAMES RIZZO; IRAIDA AFANADOR

_____________________________________

On Appeal from the United States District Court for the 

District of New Jersey

(District Court No.: 1-13-cv-06353)

District Judge: Honorable Noel L. Hillman

_____________________________________

Submitted under Third Circuit LAR 34.1(a)

on September 15, 2017

(Opinion filed: October 4, 2017)

Before: VANASKIE, RENDELL, and FUENTES, Circuit Judges
2

O P I N I O N*

RENDELL, Circuit Judge:

Appellant Marshall B. Williams1 brings § 1983 claims against the City of Camden 

and its officials, Inspectors William Revaitis and Eugene Emenecker, their supervisor 

James Rizzo, and Iraida Afanador, the City’s former Director of the Department of Code. 

Williams, an electrical contractor, left his local electrical workers union in 1998 to start 

his own company, which did not utilize union labor. He alleges that, in four incidents 

between November 2011 and August 2013, the city violated his constitutional rights by 

taking retaliatory actions against him on account of his non-union status.2

Williams raises a number of arguments on appeal, but we need not address them 

all. We agree with the District Court that there is no evidence to support Williams’s claim 

that he was retaliated against due to non-union animus. Thus, we will affirm the District 

Court’s ruling.

 

* This disposition is not an opinion of the full Court and pursuant to I.O.P. 5.7 does not 

constitute binding precedent.

1 Williams is the sole owner and operator of Nico Electrical Contractor, Inc., the other 

plaintiff in this suit. 

2 Williams seems to argue that non-union status is an associational right guaranteed by 

the First Amendment.
3

I. Analysis3

To succeed on a § 1983 claim that a Government entity retaliated against him in 

violation of his constitutional rights, Williams must demonstrate that (1) he engaged in 

constitutionally protected conduct, (2) the state engaged in retaliatory conduct sufficient 

to deter a person of ordinary firmness from exercising his constitutional rights, and (3) 

there was a causal link between the constitutionally protected conduct and the retaliatory 

action. Thomas v. Independence Twp., 463 F.3d 285, 296 (3d Cir. 2006). Setting aside the 

first two prongs,4 we agree with the District Court that Williams has not demonstrated a 

sufficiently direct causal connection between protected conduct and alleged retaliatory 

action.

His claims arise from four incidents that occurred between November 2011 and 

August 2013. We address each in turn. First, he cites a November 2011 incident 

involving William Revaitis, a city electrical inspector. Revaitis was inspecting Williams’s 

job on a site, and allegedly told the property owner to hire a different electrician named 

George Cassidy, because Cassidy would “give [the owner] a better price, [and] his work 

is much better [than Williams’s].” App. 107a. A jury could not find a causal link between 

 

3 We review the District Court’s grant of summary judgment de novo. Fraternal Order of 

Police, Lodge 1 v. City of Camden, 842 F.3d 231, 238 (3d Cir. 2016). We view evidence 

in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party, drawing all reasonable inferences in 

the nonmovant’s favor. Id. 

Our jurisdiction comes from 28 U.S.C. § 1291. The District Court had jurisdiction 

under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331 & 1343.

4 Although we need not decide the issue, our Circuit has not weighed in on the viability 

of the expressive association rights Williams is claiming: he seems to assert that he has 

expressed himself by not being a member of a union. But the cases he cites for support 

protect union membership, not non-union membership.
4

this statement and Williams’s non-union status: Williams himself testified that George 

Cassidy was not a member of a union. Thus, there is no reason to believe that Revaitis 

retaliated on account of union status.5

Second, Williams cites a January 2012 incident where Revaitis “failed” 

Williams’s work at a different site. Williams disagreed with Revaitis’s evaluation: while 

he acknowledged there was an electrical problem at the site, he claimed that the error 

Revaitis found was not caused by Nico Electrical’s work. Two weeks after Williams 

protested the failure, Revaitis revised his evaluation and passed the job, without Williams 

having done any repairs. On review, Revaitis seems to have agreed with Williams’s 

evaluation of the situation. 

Once again, nothing in the facts indicates any preference for union versus nonunion electricians. Nor does anything suggest that Revaitis was taking actions against 

Williams on account of his non-union status. Instead, this incident evidences a 

professional disagreement, potentially based on error by Revaitis. But, ultimately the City 

of Camden approved the job.

Third, Williams cites a December 2012 incident where another inspector, Eugene 

Emenecker, allegedly temporarily “failed” his work, finding error.6 While conducting the 

inspection, Emenecker allegedly said “you know how you supposed to do it, y’all worked 

out of the local before.” App. 87a. Shortly thereafter, Williams contacted Emenecker’s 

 

5 While Williams points to conversations between Revaitis and Williams about Williams 

non-union status, these conversations occurred, at the latest, in July 2004, seven years 

beforehand. App. 87a. This wide temporal span weakens Williams’s claim that the 

remarks help contextualize Revaitis’s evaluations. 

6 Unlike the other incidents, there is no documentation of this failure in the record. 
5

supervisor, Eugene Rizzo. Eventually, Williams’s work on the project was marked 

approved. Rizzo testified that the matter was a “difference of opinion” between 

Emenecker and Williams. App. 128a. 

Again, there is no evidence in the record demonstrating that Emenecker treated 

union members any better than Williams. Even though Emenecker made a remark to 

Williams regarding union status, a reasonable juror could not find that Emenecker’s 

decision to temporarily fail contested inspections was a result of union status, rather than 

the perceived quality of the work. 

Finally, Williams points to an August 2013 inspection. There again, Emenecker 

inspected Williams’s work and temporarily failed it, on grounds that Williams claims 

were unrelated to the work Nico Electric performed on the property. Williams fixed the 

problem Emenecker found free of charge, even though he claims he had not created the 

problem. This claim, individually or combined with the others,7still fails to suggest 

Emenecker’s behavior had any root in an anti-non-union bias.8

On appeal, Williams argues that the District Court overlooked two critical pieces 

of evidence. Appellant’s Br. at 9-10. First, he says that statements by Camden’s CFO, 

even though outside the statute of limitations period, constitute a “statement of policy and 

 

7 Williams argues that the events “combine” to suggest a pattern of unconstitutional statesponsored behavior. Whether viewed individually or as a whole, we disagree that any 

jury could find that Williams’s constitutional rights were violated. 

8 Because we find no constitutional violation by individual officers, it follows that there 

is no supervisory liability for Defendants Rizzo and Afanador. The Monell claim against 

the city similarly fails because there was no underlying violation of his constitutional 

rights, Mulholland v. Gov’t Cty. of Berks, 706 F.3d 227, 238 n.15 (3d Cir. 2013), let 

alone a “custom” of such conduct.
6

direct evidence of discriminatory intent.” Appellant’s Br. at 10. Williams alleges that the 

city CFO told him that in 2002, a powerful local union official advocated that the city rebid a contract to provide electrical services, because Williams had won the first round. 

73a-53a. But the facts here cut this claim off at the pass: no such rebidding ever 

occurred.9 Second, he claims that inspectors violated state regulatory laws in how they 

treated Williams. But he has not cited any such regulatory laws in order for us to evaluate 

this claim.

II. Conclusion

Because we agree that Williams has not sufficiently alleged that the allegedly 

retaliatory conduct was linked to a non-union bias, we will not disturb the District 

Court’s grant of summary judgment.10 Thus, we will affirm.

 

9 We further doubt the relevance of this claim to any of Williams’s current allegations. 

10 We also note that an investigation by a City of Camden official also found that 

Williams’s claims lacked merit.