Opinion ID: 748844
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Absence of a Constitutionally Protected Property Right

Text: 15 In order to succeed, an action brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 must possess two elements: the conduct complained of must have been under color of state law, and it must have deprived a person of rights, privileges, or immunities guaranteed by the Constitution or laws of the United States. Bayview-Lofberg's, Inc. v. City of Milwaukee, 905 F.2d 142, 144 (7th Cir.1990). The thrust of the Larsens' claim is that the Beloit City Council's decision to discontinue its practice of paying for many of Officer Larsen's medical bills and then submitting them to Home Insurance for reimbursement deprived the couple of a constitutionally protected property interest without affording them due process of law, thereby violating rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. 16 The Larsens bear the burden of proving that a property interest entitled to the Fourteenth Amendment's procedural protection exists. Petru v. City of Berwyn, 872 F.2d 1359, 1361 (7th Cir.1989). The Supreme Court has pointed out that such property interests may take many forms. Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 576, 92 S.Ct. 2701, 2708, 33 L.Ed.2d 548. Examples of property interests the Court has found to give rise to a requirement of due process include welfare benefits under statutory and administrative standards defining eligibility for them, Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254, 90 S.Ct. 1011, 25 L.Ed.2d 287, and tenured employment in a public college, Slochower v. Board of Educ., 350 U.S. 551, 76 S.Ct. 637, 100 L.Ed. 692. 17 Property interests, of course, are not created by the Constitution. Rather, they are defined by existing rules or understandings that stem from an independent source such as state law--rules or understandings that secure certain benefits and that support claims of entitlement to those benefits. Roth, 408 U.S. at 577, 92 S.Ct. at 2709. In a companion case to Roth, the Court stressed that this formulation meant 18 that property interests subject to procedural due process protection are not limited by a few rigid, technical forms.... A person's interest in a benefit is a property interest for due process purposes if there are such rules or mutually explicit understandings that support his claim of entitlement to the benefit and that he may invoke at a hearing. 19 Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U.S. 593, 601, 92 S.Ct. 2694, 2699. The Larsens base their claim on the contention that they possessed a property interest created both by rules passed pursuant to state law--the resolutions the City Council adopted--and by a mutually explicit understanding--the agreement exchanging prepayment of medical bills for Mrs. Larsen's promise not to sue the City or go public with her grievances, evidenced by the eleven years during which both parties adhered to the bargain.
20 The district court found that the City's actions did not deprive the Larsens of any constitutionally protected property right. First, the court rejected the Larsens' argument that the City Council's resolutions were in effect ordinances that established an entitlement to the City's prepayment of medical bills for the rest of Peter Larsen's life. The court also held that even if the enactments were ordinances, they established only a method of payment rather than a substantive right to the medical benefits themselves, and therefore created no constitutionally protected property right. 21 A city ordinance can create a protected property interest if it establishes substantive criteria that, if met, entitle an individual to the property. Bayview-Lofberg's, 905 F.2d at 145. Wisconsin law, however, distinguishes between ordinances, which are of a general, permanent nature, and resolutions, which are informal enactment[s] of a temporary nature. Cross v. Soderbeck, 94 Wis.2d 331, 288 N.W.2d 779, 784 (1980) (quoting Wisconsin Gas & Elec. Co. v. Fort Atkinson, 193 Wis. 232, 213 N.W. 873, 878 (1927)). The parties seem to be in agreement that a resolution could only give rise to a protected property interest, or at least a lasting one, if it were in reality an ordinance despite its denomination as a resolution. The State's statutes provide that ordinances must be published in a prescribed manner within fifteen days of their passage, Wis. Stats. § 62.11(4)(a), and that ordinances shall take the form, The common council of the city of ... do ordain as follows. Wis. Stats. § 62.11(3)(f). The Beloit City Code, in turn, provides that [e]very ordinance or resolution in the nature of an ordinance shall have three separate readings in Council meetings before it can be passed. Beloit, Wis.Code § 2.07. 22 The parties go to great lengths to prove that the resolutions establishing the procedure for prepaying Officer Larsen's medical bills either were or were not read three times prior to passage and published after passage. It appears from the record that at least as to the first resolution-that of November 4, 1985--the Larsens may have presented enough evidence to create a genuine issue as to reading and publication. In addition, the absence of the prescribed language for an ordinance (The common council of the City of ... do ordain as follows) does not necessarily defeat the Larsens' argument. The Supreme Court of Wisconsin has held that this statutory style for ordinances is directory rather than mandatory. Cross, 288 N.W.2d at 783-784 (holding ordinance valid despite departure from statutory language). 23 But the parties' dispute over publication and reading is not determinative of the issue, for the Larsens' argument fails on two other grounds. First, the Council's resolutions simply are not the kind of general, permanent enactments that ordinances under Wisconsin law are supposed to be. The resolutions, particularly the second and third of the three, provid[e] for the disposition of a particular piece of the administrative business of [the City]. See id. Rather than setting forth any generally applicable policy with regard to benefits for injured police officers, they state how the City will deal with the administrative difficulties produced by Home Insurance's delays and refusals with respect to Officer Larsen's medical bills. If the City Council had unambiguously denominated the enactments as ordinances and passed them with all of the formalities associated with ordinances, then the informal, non-general subject matter most likely would not defeat their status as ordinances. But here the presumption is the other way: the Council denominated two of the enactments as resolutions and the other as a statement. Given this fact, the subject matter of the enactments carries great weight, and they must be considered as resolutions rather than ordinances. 24 Second, even if the resolutions were ordinances, the district court was correct to hold that they did not give rise to a protected property interest. The resolutions did not create any substantive entitlement to the payment of medical expenses. That entitlement existed already as a result of Wisconsin's Worker's Compensation Act. Because Officer Larsen was injured in the exercise of his duties, the Act required the City's worker's compensation insurance carrier to pay his reasonable and necessary medical expenses. See Lisney v. Labor & Indus. Review Comm'n, 171 Wis.2d 499, 493 N.W.2d 14, 22-23 (1992). The Council's resolutions merely established a method of payment whereby the City would prepay some bills in order to minimize the inconvenience to the Larsens. The resolutions did not establish substantive criteria for the entitlement to property and therefore did not give rise to a constitutionally protected property interest. See Bayview-Lofberg's, 905 F.2d at 142. 25 The Larsens' reliance on Cushing v. City of Chicago, 3 F.3d 1156 (7th Cir.1993), to defeat this conclusion is misplaced. In Cushing, this Court held that an injured firefighter who alleged that he was deprived of payment of his medical expenses without prior notice or an opportunity to contest the decision had stated a claim under § 1983. Id. at 1161. The case is clearly distinguishable, however, because it involved the firefighter's substantive entitlement to the payments themselves, rather than the right to a particular method of payment. 26
27 The Larsens also claim that they have a protected interest in the City's prepayment of medical expenses because the City committed to the prepayment procedure in exchange for Pamela Larsen's agreement, among other things, not to sue the City for her husband's injuries. They buttress this contractual argument by pointing to the custom and practice established over the eleven or so years during which the City paid most of Officer Larsen's medical bills. This mutually binding obligation, the Larsens conclude, created a constitutionally protected property interest in the prepayment of medical expenses. See Common v. Williams, 859 F.2d 467, 470 (7th Cir.1988) (stating that a legitimate entitlement can arise from custom and practice that embodies an expectation ... that was legally enforceable, a mutually binding obligation) (internal quotations omitted). 28 Many problems arise in connection with these arguments. The first springs from the haphazard manner in which the Larsens have advanced them. The Larsens' second amended complaint does not mention the alleged agreement with Council member William Watson anywhere in its ninety-seven numbered paragraphs setting out the nature of the claim. Nor is the argument raised in the eight numbered prayers for relief, the second of which summarizes all of the other grounds upon which the Larsens base their claim of a protected property interest. (R.53.) The complaint, though not a model of precise drafting, makes out relatively clear claims that both the City Council's resolutions and their course of conduct were sufficient to create a protected property interest in prepayment. The document is devoid, however, of any suggestion that an explicit oral agreement might also underlie the protected interest. 29 The Larsens' response to the City's motion for summary judgment, on the other hand, does argue that the November 4, 1985 resolution was part of an agreement by which Pamela Larsen agreed not to sue the City for negligent dispatching in connection with her husband's injury or to tak[e] ... her cause to the citizens of the City of Beloit and/or to the media, and pledged to cooperate in the City's efforts to recoup its expenditures from Home Insurance. (R.54, at 4, 18; R.83 pp 30-33.) Even here, the Larsens did not so much as mention the alleged oral agreement with Council member Watson. That agreement, so far as this Court can determine, is first advanced in the Larsens' briefs on appeal. Because arguments not raised below cannot be pressed for the first time in this Court, Gagan v. American Cablevision, Inc., 77 F.3d 951, 966 (7th Cir.1996); Jean v. Dugan, 20 F.3d 255, 265 (7th Cir.1994), the claim that Council member Watson and Mrs. Larsen entered an oral agreement has been waived. 30 Even were it not for the waiver, however, the argument based on the alleged agreement with Watson rests on extremely shaky ground. The Larsens' briefs to this Court, which as noted mark the first appearance of the Watson conversation in their written filings in the case, do not attempt to explain how a single member of the City Council acting alone might possess the authority, either actual or apparent, to bind the City to such an oral agreement. 31 Stripped of the alleged oral agreement, the Larsens' contractual argument boils down to two elements: the bare assertion by Mrs. Larsen and her attorneys that the November 4, 1985 resolution was the City's part of an agreement with Mrs. Larsen, and the argument that the parties' course of conduct over the succeeding eleven years reinforced or itself created the contractual relationship. 32 Yet the City denies that any agreement existed. It claims that the resolution was merely a measure that City officials took as an expression of the citizenry's gratitude to and concern for Peter Larsen. In response, the Larsens offer nothing but conclusory assertions that the resolution was part of a mutual understanding with the City. [A] plaintiff's own uncorroborated testimony is insufficient to defeat a motion for summary judgment. Weeks v. Samsung Heavy Indus. Co., 126 F.3d 926, 939 (7th Cir.1997). 33 Still further, the alleged contract, if it existed at all, would be extremely vague in its terms. Did the City undertake to pay Officer Larsen's medical bills until he either recovered or died? Or was the agreement terminable at will? Did Mrs. Larsen's promise not to plead her case to the media or the citizens of Beloit preclude her entirely from giving interviews or speaking to community groups about her husband's shooting? Exactly what did her pledge to assist the City in recovering the money it paid from Home Insurance entail? It is quite possible that a contract whose terms were so uncertain would be unenforceable. See, e.g., Westowne Shoes, Inc. v. Brown Group, Inc., 104 F.3d 994, 996 (7th Cir.1997). In any event, the vagueness of the alleged agreement causes the Larsens' argument to collapse back upon the refrain of course of conduct: if the terms are to have any certainty, it must come from the parties' actual practice over the years the agreement was supposedly being observed. 34 In this regard, it appears that Mrs. Larsen herself did not always utilize the City's prepayment procedure. Over the course of the eleven years from 1985 to 1996 she submitted a number of medical bills directly to Home Insurance. She also initiated petitions against Home Insurance before the Worker's Compensation Division, rather than leaving the City to pursue reimbursement for the amounts allegedly due. These actions suggest that the custom between the parties was an informal arrangement by which Mrs. Larsen could either pursue a given payment herself or refer it to the City for action, depending upon convenience, the family's cash flow at the moment, or any other factors she wished to consider. 35 All of this is not to suggest that in order for the parties' practice over the eleven years to have given rise to a protected property interest Mrs. Larsen would have had to refer every single medical bill, no matter how small, to the City for prepayment. Given the absence of any other source to define the parties' obligations under the alleged agreement, however, Mrs. Larsen's somewhat haphazard reliance on the City's offer to advance funds does not do much to dispel the impenetrable aura of vagueness that surrounds the supposed contract. 36 In these circumstances, the parties' course of conduct is insufficient to establish a protected property right in the prepayment of medical bills. The Larsens offer no solid evidence of an explicit agreement that would make the eleven years of prepayment by the City look like anything more than an admirable effort to take care of a fallen police officer. The City's subsequent decision to stop taking care of Officer Larsen in that way does not implicate rights protected by the Constitution, and summary judgment was therefore appropriate on the § 1983 claim. 37