Opinion ID: 748844
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Alleged Oral Agreement and the Parties' Course of Conduct

Text: 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