Opinion ID: 778327
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Property Interest in Receiving 911 Calls

Text: 15 Med Corp. contends that it does possess a protected property interest in receiving 911 calls from the City dispatch center. In Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 92 S.Ct. 2701, 33 L.Ed.2d 548 (1972), the Supreme Court elaborated upon the kinds of interests protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court explained that [t]o have a property interest in a benefit, a person clearly must have more than an abstract need or desire for it. He must have more than a unilateral expectation of it. He must, instead, have a legitimate claim of entitlement to it. Id. at 577, 92 S.Ct. 2701. The Court further explained that property interests are not created by the Constitution itself, but rather 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. Id. Applying this principle, the Roth Court found that an untenured professor, whose appointment was for only one year, did not possess a protected property interest in his continued employment after the term of his appointment expired. Id. at 578, 92 S.Ct. 2701. 16 Based upon Roth, and the cases that have followed it, the district court correctly determined that Med Corp. did not possess a protected property interest in receiving 911 dispatches from the City. We have previously recognized that a party cannot possess a property interest in the receipt of a benefit when the state's decision to award or withhold the benefit is wholly discretionary. Richardson v. Township of Brady, 218 F.3d 508, 517 (6th Cir.2000); see also Wedges/Ledges of Calif, Inc. v. City of Phoenix, 24 F.3d 56, 62-63 (9th Cir.1994) (explaining that existence of a reasonable expectation of entitlement is determined by whether language of the statute conferring the benefit is framed in mandatory terms and whether statute imposes substantive constraints on official discretion to award the benefit). If an official has unconstrained discretion to deny the benefit, a prospective recipient of that benefit can establish no more than a unilateral expectation to it. Roth, 408 U.S. at 577, 92 S.Ct. 2701. Applying this principle, we have held that no protected property interest is implicated when, under circumstances similar to those presented by the instant case, towing companies are removed from a local government's rotational dispatch list. Lucas v. Monroe County, 203 F.3d 964, 978 (6th Cir.2000); see also, e.g., Morley's Auto Body, Inc. v. Hunter, 70 F.3d 1209, 1214 (11th Cir.1995) (holding that no property interest was created where policy of rotating calls to wrecker companies was issued in the sole discretion of the ... Sheriff, and concluding after a survey of similar cases from other circuits that this reflected unanimous position of the circuits). In Lucas, 203 F.3d at 978, we affirmed the dismissal of several wrecker companies' due process claims, which alleged that the county sheriff had improperly removed the companies from the county's rotational dispatch list after owners voiced complaints charging that the sheriff was administering the list in a corrupt manner. We based this decision on the fact that the Plaintiffs c[ould] point to no ordinance, contract or other `rules of mutually explicit understandings' that support[ed] their claim of entitlement to remain on the stand-by list. Id. (quoting Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U.S. 593, 601, 92 S.Ct. 2694, 33 L.Ed.2d 570 (1972)). Although there were written policies governing eligibility for inclusion on the dispatch list, we found that these policies did not create a property interest because [t]he written policies ... — however unfair they may be — explicitly provide[d] that a wrecker company may be immediately removed from the list upon making a complaint to an unauthorized person. Id. In other words, the policies provided unconstrained discretion to remove a company upon the occurrence of a particular event. 17 Therefore, in order to assert a property interest in receiving 911 calls, Med Corp. must point to some policy, law, or mutually explicit understanding that both confers the benefit and limits the discretion of the City to rescind the benefit. Med Corp. has not made the required showing. It is undisputed that no written policy or legislative enactment establishes a procedure for maintenance of the 911 dispatch list or limits the discretion of City officials to remove ambulance companies from the list. In this sense, Med Corp.'s claim is even weaker than the one we rejected in Lucas, in which a written policy for maintaining the dispatch list did exist but did not provide for substantive limits on the sheriff's discretion to remove wrecker companies. 18 Med Corp. asserts that the provisions in the Lima Municipal Code governing eligibility for, and issuance and revocation of, ambulance licenses establish a property interest in receiving 911 dispatches. Nothing in the Code, however, even mentions 911 calls or the allocation of 911 dispatches by the City. According to the Code, receipt of a license entitles the recipient to engage in the business or service of the transportation of patients upon the streets, alleys or other public ways or places of the City. Lima Mun.Code § 840.02(a), Appellant's Br., Ex. A. By its own terms, the Code guarantees only the right to do business, not the right to receive particular business opportunities from the City. Med Corp. notes that the Code pertains to emergency 911 calls, insofar as it requires that licensees possess a certain capacity to respond to emergency calls. According to Roth and its progeny, however, it is not enough that the Code refer to emergency calls; instead, it must contain mutually explicit understandings that establish an entitlement to receive the benefit. There is no explicit guarantee in the Code that an ambulance licensee will receive 911 dispatches from the City, so the Code cannot form the basis for a property right in the continued receipt of 911 dispatches. 19 Med Corp. also asserts that a property interest in receiving 911 dispatches was created by the official, albeit unwritten, mayoral policy of alternating 911 dispatches among licensed ambulance operators. The Supreme Court has recognized that property interests may be created in some situations despite the absence of explicit contractual or legal provisions establishing a claim of entitlement. Perry, 408 U.S. at 601-02, 92 S.Ct. 2694. For example, under traditional principles of contract law, [e]xplicit contractual provisions may be supplemented by other agreements implied from the promisor's words and conduct in the light of the surrounding circumstances. Id. at 602, 92 S.Ct. 2694 (quotation omitted). Therefore, Med Corp. could establish a protected property interest if it could show that the Mayor or the City engaged in words or conduct that created an implicit, but nonetheless legally binding, obligation to continue to include Med Corp. in the City's allocation of 911 dispatches. On the record, however, Med Corp. has not adduced such facts. There is no evidence in the record, for example, that would support a claim that an implied contract was created or that would define what the terms of such a contract might have been. 1 Med Corp.'s verified complaint alleges only that Mayor Berger instituted a policy in which Plaintiff received every other 911 call. Joint Appendix (J.A.) at 5. Under prevailing law, however, the existence of a policy — written or otherwise — is not enough to create a property interest. See Lucas, 203 F.3d at 978; Morley's, 70 F.3d at 1214. The terms of that policy must constrain the discretion of the official to suspend the benefit. No evidence on the record suggests the existence of any such terms.