Opinion ID: 740391
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Negligent Hiring, Training, and Supervision Claims.

Text: 41 WMATA also urges that we reverse the judgment of the district court as to the negligent hiring, training, and supervision claims. 42
43 WMATA argues that the district court erred in denying its motion to dismiss the claim for negligent hiring, training, and supervision. According to WMATA, permitting Burkhart to present claims against the Authority both for assault and battery, and negligent hiring, training, or supervision was duplicative. WMATA conceded that Smith was acting within the scope of his employment. Thus, the negligent hiring claim created no additional liability. It did, however, allow for admission of otherwise inadmissible evidence of prior unrelated passenger complaints involving Smith. See FED.R.EVID. 404 (evidence of prior bad acts is inadmissible in order to show action in conformity therewith). WMATA therefore contends that it was error to allow both claims to go to the jury. 44 The magistrate judge denied WMATA's motion to dismiss the negligent hiring claim as untimely. Local Rule 108(l) provides that [a] dispositive motion in a civil action shall be filed sufficiently in advance of the pretrial conference. It is undisputed that WMATA's motion was filed one week prior to trial, well after the pretrial conference. Instead, WMATA argues that Rule 108(l) is inapplicable in that its motion to dismiss was not a dispositive motion. According to WMATA, only those motions that obviate[ ] the need for a trial are dispositive. Since dismissal of the negligent hiring claim would not have eliminated the need for a trial on the other claims, WMATA contends that its motion was not dispositive and thus not governed by Rule 108(l). This argument is plainly without merit. 45 A motion need not obviate the need for a trial to be dispositive. The term dispositive motion includes a motion that, if granted, would result either in the determination of a particular claim on the merits or elimination of such a claim from the case. For example, a court may grant a partial summary judgment as to fewer than all the claims in a case. A grant of partial summary judgment often leaves necessary a trial to resolve the remaining claims. See FED.R.CIV.P. 56(d). We, however, have referred to partial motions for summary judgment as dispositive motions. E.g., Nixon v. Freeman, 670 F.2d 346, 364 (D.C.Cir.), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 1035, 103 S.Ct. 445, 74 L.Ed.2d 601 (1982). 46 In this case, WMATA's motion, if granted, would have eliminated the negligent hiring claim from the case. It was, therefore, clearly a dispositive motion for purposes of Rule 108(l). WMATA conceded at trial that its motion to dismiss was untimely. As a result, [324 U.S.App.D.C. 250] we cannot say that the trial court abused its discretion in denying the motion as untimely. 4 The fact that the trial court alternatively rejected WMATA's motion on the merits in no way undermines the timeliness ruling. United States v. Sobin, 56 F.3d 1423, 1427 & n. 4 (D.C.Cir.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 116 S.Ct. 348, 133 L.Ed.2d 244 (1995). We therefore reject WMATA's claim despite serious reservations concerning the trial court's alternative denial of the motion on the merits. See Hackett v. WMATA, 736 F.Supp. 8 (D.D.C.1990). 47
48 Because WMATA waived its duplicity claim, we are forced to consider WMATA's claim that it is immune from suits challenging its hiring, training, and supervision practices. This argument was raised below in the same untimely motion in which WMATA moved for dismissal of the negligent hiring claim as duplicitous. However, sovereign immunity claims are jurisdictional and thus cannot be waived by failure to present the defense to the trial court. See Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651, 678, 94 S.Ct. 1347, 1363, 39 L.Ed.2d 662 (1974) (holding that Eleventh Amendment claim cannot be waived as it is jurisdictional). 49 WMATA was created as the result of a compact signed by Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia and consented to by Congress (the WMATA Compact). Pub.L. No.89-774, 80 Stat. 1324 (1966) (codified as amended at D.C.CODE § 1-2431 et seq.). The WMATA Compact provides that [t]he Authority shall be liable ... for its torts and those of its Directors, officers, employees and agents committed in the course of any proprietary function ... but shall not be liable for any torts occurring in the performance of a governmental function. D.C.CODE § 1-2431(80). 50 We have developed two alternative tests for identifying governmental functions under the WMATA Compact. Dant v. District of Columbia, 829 F.2d 69 (D.C.Cir.1987). If an activity is a quintessential[ ] governmental function, such as police activit[y], it is within the scope of WMATA's sovereign immunity. Id. at 74. For those activities that are not quintessential governmental functions, immunity will depend on whether the activity is discretionary or ministerial, id., a dichotomy employed by the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), 28 U.S.C. § 1346(b) et seq. Only those activities considered discretionary are shielded by sovereign immunity. See Dant, 829 F.2d at 75. 51 Appellees cite our opinion in Biscoe v. Arlington County, 738 F.2d 1352 (D.C.Cir.1984), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 1159, 105 S.Ct. 909, 83 L.Ed.2d 923 (1985), for the proposition that supervising and instructing employees is a ministerial function. In Biscoe, we held that, under D.C. law, the activities of supervising and instructing police officers are ministerial in that they involve day-to-day operational matters, not planning and policy. Id. at 1363. However, in United States v. Gaubert, 499 U.S. 315, 323, 111 S.Ct. 1267, 1274, 113 L.Ed.2d 335 (1991), the Supreme Court held that discretionary activity, for purposes of the FTCA, can include operational activities and is not confined to the policy or planning level. Thus, the foundation upon which we based our discretionary/ministerial distinction in Biscoe was repudiated as a matter of federal law in Gaubert. We do not mean to imply that Biscoe is no longer binding precedent as to the definition of ministerial and discretionary activities under District of Columbia law. However, the question of whether an activity is a governmental function for purposes of the WMATA Compact is one of federal law. Sanders v. WMATA, 819 F.2d 1151, 1154 (D.C.Cir.1987). Therefore, Gaubert, not Biscoe, must guide our determination of whether hiring, training, or supervising employees are discretionary functions for purposes of the WMATA Compact. 52 In Gaubert, the Supreme Court stated that a discretionary function is one that involves choice or judgment exercised based on considerations [324 U.S.App.D.C. 251] of public policy. See 499 U.S. at 322, 111 S.Ct. at 1274. A two-part test flows from this definition of a discretionary activity. Cope v. Scott, 45 F.3d 445, 448 (D.C.Cir.1995). First, a court must determine whether a  'federal statute, regulation, or policy specifically prescribes a course of action for an employee to follow.'  Id. (quoting Gaubert, 499 U.S. at 322, 111 S.Ct. at 1273). If so, sovereign immunity does not bar suits based on an employee's failure to follow the prescribed course of conduct. Id. If, however, the governing statutes leave room for choice, an exercise of such choice is exempt from suit under the FTCA if the decision is  'susceptible to policy judgment' and involve[d] an exercise of 'political, social, [or] economic judgment.'  Id. (quoting Gaubert, 499 U.S. at 325, 111 S.Ct. at 1275). 53 Applying this test, we hold that decisions concerning the hiring, training, and supervising of WMATA employees are discretionary in nature, and thus immune from judicial review. The parties have pointed to no law or policy specifically prescrib[ing] guidelines for the hiring, training, or supervision of WMATA employees. The WMATA compact confers upon WMATA broad power to [c]reate and abolish ... employments and provide for the qualification, appointment, [and] removal ... of its ... employees without regard to the laws of any of the signatories, D.C.CODEs 1-2431(12)(g); [e]stablish, in its discretion, a personnel system based on merit and fitness, id. § 1-2431(12)(h); and [c]ontrol and regulate ... the service to be rendered, id.s 1-2431(12)(j). These provision hardly constrain WMATA's determination of whom it will employ or how it will train and supervise such employees. Thus, WMATA has choices to make. 54 The hiring, training, and supervision choices that WMATA faces are choices susceptible to policy judgment. The hiring decisions of a public entity require consideration of numerous factors, including budgetary constraints, public perception, economic conditions, individual backgrounds, office diversity, experience and employer intuition. Tonelli v. United States, 60 F.3d 492, 496 (8th Cir.1995). Similarly, supervision decisions involve a complex balancing of budgetary considerations, employee privacy rights, and the need to ensure public safety. The extent of training with which to provide employees requires consideration of fiscal constraints, public safety, the complexity of the task involved, the degree of harm a wayward employee might cause, and the extent to which employees have deviated from accepted norms in the past. Such decisions are surely among those involving the exercise of political, social, or economic judgment. See, e.g., Kirchmann v. United States, 8 F.3d 1273, 1277 (8th Cir.1993) (holding that supervision of government contractors is a discretionary function); Tonelli, 60 F.3d at 496 (stating that issues of employee supervision and retention generally fall within the discretionary function exception); K.W. Thompson Tool Co. v. United States, 836 F.2d 721 (1st Cir.1988) (holding that failure to properly train and supervise EPA personnel falls within the discretionary function exception). 55 As a result, we conclude that the hiring, training, and supervision of WMATA personnel are governmental functions. WMATA is therefore immune from suit for negligence in the performance of such functions. The district court erred in refusing to dismiss Burkhart's negligent hiring, training, and supervision claims against WMATA.