Opinion ID: 556612
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Denial of Judgment n.o.v. as to Liability

Text: 37 The First Amendment protects speech by public employees that touches on matters of public concern. See, e.g., Pickering v. Board of Education, 391 U.S. at 574, 88 S.Ct. at 1737; Connick v. Myers, 461 U.S. 138, 142, 103 S.Ct. 1684, 1687, 75 L.Ed.2d 708 (1983). In Pickering, however, [b]ecause of the enormous variety of fact situations in which critical statements by ... public employees may be thought by their superiors ... to furnish grounds for dismissal, the Court declined to lay down a general standard against which all such statements may be judged. 391 U.S. at 569, 88 S.Ct. at 1735. Rather it ruled that a balancing test must be used. Under this approach, the burden is on the public employer to show that its interests in the efficient performance of its duties outweigh the employee's speech interest, see id. at 568, 88 S.Ct. at 1734; the employer's burden in justifying a particular discharge varies depending upon the nature of the employee's expression, Connick v. Myers, 461 U.S. at 150, 103 S.Ct. at 1691; Giacalone v. Abrams, 850 F.2d 79, 86 (2d Cir.1988). An employee's charge of unlawful conduct, for example, is given far greater weight in the balancing exercise than is a complaint as to the fairness of internal office operations. See Connick v. Myers, 461 U.S. at 150-54, 103 S.Ct. at 1691-94; compare Giacalone v. Abrams, 850 F.2d at 85-86 (complaint about tax law interpretation carries little weight in the balancing process), with Rookard v. Health and Hospitals Corp., 710 F.2d 41, 46 (2d Cir.1983) (complaint of fraudulent and corrupt practices carries great weight). 38 Defendants' contention that the trial court should have granted their motion for judgment n.o.v. or a directed verdict on the ground that, under the Pickering balancing approach, Vasbinder failed to prove a violation of his First Amendment rights is meritless. In reviewing the denial of either motion, we are to apply the same standard that is to be applied by the trial court in ruling on the motion. That standard is that [b]oth courts must determine whether the evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to the party that secured the verdict, was sufficient to allow a reasonable juror to arrive at the verdict rendered. Schwimmer v. SONY Corp. of America, 677 F.2d 946, 952 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 1007, 103 S.Ct. 362, 74 L.Ed.2d 398 (1982). In making that determination, the court must give deference to all credibility determinations made by the jury and to all reasonable inferences from the evidence that the jury might have drawn in favor of the nonmoving party, Auwood v. Harry Brandt Booking Office, Inc., 850 F.2d 884, 889 (2d Cir.1988); Bohack Corp. v. Iowa Beef Processors, Inc., 715 F.2d 703, 712 (2d Cir.1983); the court may not itself weigh[ ] the credibility of the witnesses or otherwise consider[ ] the weight of the evidence, Simblest v. Maynard, 427 F.2d 1, 4 (2d Cir.1970). Judgment n.o.v. may not be granted unless, within this framework,  'there is such a complete absence of evidence supporting the verdict that the jury's findings could only have been the result of sheer surmise and conjecture, or ... there is such an overwhelming amount of evidence in favor of the movant that reasonable and fair minded men could not arrive at a verdict against him.'  Aaron Ferer & Sons Ltd. v. Chase Manhattan Bank, N.A., 731 F.2d 112, 121-22 (2d Cir.1984) (quoting Mattivi v. South African Marine Corp., Huguenot, 618 F.2d 163, 168 (2d Cir.1980)). See also Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 250-51, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 2511, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986) (same standard applies to review of disposition of motion for directed verdict). 39 In the present case, the court properly rejected any suggestion that the state's efficiency interests outweighed Vasbinder's First Amendment rights. Scott and Switzer conceded that the matters of which Vasbinder spoke, i.e., potential fraud, theft, and misallocation of public funds, were matters of serious public concern. Defendants made little effort to show that Vasbinder's going to the FBI in any way impeded the efficiency of OVR operations. Rather, Scott and Switzer testified that their evaluations and personnel decisions against Vasbinder had, in the words of Switzer, absolutely nothing to do with Vasbinder's having gone to the FBI. The court did not err in ruling that defendants failed to show that Vasbinder's exercise of his rights so intruded on OVR operations as to outweigh his right to report suspected wrongdoing to the authorities. 40 We note in passing that Scott and Switzer have consistently treated the balancing issue here as turning solely on questions of law, not on any question of fact. Thus, they asked the district court to grant them judgment as a matter of law; they did not ask that the jury be instructed on this issue or that any interrogatories relating to it be submitted to the jury; and they ask this court to direct the entry of judgment in their favor. We can envision cases in which the question of the degree to which the employee's speech could reasonably have been deemed to impede the employer's efficient operation would properly be regarded as a question of fact, to be answered by the jury prior to the court's application of the Pickering balancing test. In the present case, however, given the Scott-Switzer defense that Vasbinder's contact with the FBI had nothing to do with their decisions, we agree that there was no such fact issue for this jury. 41 As to the issue of whether the actions of Scott and Switzer were taken in retaliation for Vasbinder's contact with the FBI, the jury plainly accepted Vasbinder's version of the events. Although Scott and Switzer denied that version, the jury was free to disbelieve their testimony, and the evidence discussed in Part I.A. above was ample to permit it to find that Vasbinder revealed his FBI contact in October 1982 and that Scott and Switzer promptly began to give him bad evaluations, soon stripped him of his principal duties, and eventually demoted him, because of his report to the FBI. The evaluations of credibility, together with the inferences to be drawn from the contrast in evaluations before and after Vasbinder's revelation that he had gone to the FBI, were entirely within the province of the jury, and neither the district court nor this Court may overturn them. 42 In sum, we conclude that the district court properly denied defendants' contention that they were entitled to a directed verdict or judgment n.o.v. on the theory that Vasbinder had failed to establish a violation of his First Amendment rights. 43