Court Opinion

ID: 9568742
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:07:08.978687+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:47:47.187969
License: Public Domain

*641Justice WHICHARD
dissenting.
I concur, essentially, in Justice Martin’s dissenting opinion and in the “issue preclusion” portion of Justice Meyer’s dissenting opinion. I write separately because I would rely upon somewhat different reasoning and . authorities.
A single, identical issue arising from the same circumstances has been decided twice —once by a judge, and once by a jury— contradictorily. As both dissents and the majority recognize, plaintiff twice alleged in his 9 July 1984 complaint and petition for judicial review of the Board hearing that the Board’s consideration of his case and its action dismissing him were affected by bias:
[T]he action of the Board of Education in dismissing plaintiff was biased, arbitrary and capricious, lacking substantial basis in fact and being substantially disproportionate to the offense, thus denying to plaintiff both the protections of the Tenure Act and of the Due Process provision of the U.S. and N.C. Constitutions. . . .
[M]embers of the Board of Education were biased on their consideration of the issues, had determined beforehand what action they would take at the hearing, and did not afford plaintiff-petitioner the fair and non-prejudicial hearing to which he was entitled.
An amended complaint and petition for judicial review, filed 14 August 1984, reiterated these allegations.
The record includes defendants’ 4 September 1984 motion to separate plaintiff’s appeal of the Board’s administrative action from his complaint alleging violations of his constitutional rights. Among the reasons cited by defendants in support of separation was that proceeding with both actions concurrently “would be ... prejudicial in that a determination of the appeal will decide the issues raised in the civil action. A prior determination of the appeal is necessary to a proper disposition of the civil action.” There is no indication in the record of the trial court’s ruling on this motion, but the Court of Appeals, the majority, and one dissent all note a subsequent, de facto severance. See Crump v. Board of Education, 93 N.C. App. 168, 177, 378 S.E.2d 32, 37 (1989).
The only trial court ruling of record is a judgment filed 29 November 1984 in which the trial court indicated that it had applied *642the “whole record test” and had considered “all matters submitted by both sides.” The trial court found and concluded not only that the Board’s decision had been “supported by competent, material, and substantial evidence in view of the entire record as submitted” and had “a rational basis in the evidence,” but also that “the action of the Board to dismiss Mr. Crump was not biased, arbitrary or capricious.”
Plaintiff excepted separately to each of these findings and conclusions. His first assignment of error cited these two exceptions and stated:
The Superior Court’s Findings and Conclusions that the findings, inferences and conclusions of the Board of Education are supported by substantial evidence and are not biased and capricious or substantially disproportionate to the offenses proved on the grounds that there is not substantial evidence in the whole record to support these Findings and Conclusions. (Emphasis added.)
Despite the opacity of its syntax, this assignment of error clearly includes the issue of bias within its statement of the issue whether substantial evidence underlay the Board’s action. Nevertheless, in his brief to the Court of Appeals plaintiff did not mention bias at all, but rested his argument chiefly upon the trial court’s failure to apply the proper standard of review to the evidence. Defendants’ brief denied the inference that plaintiff had been “railroaded,” but made no other allusion to the issue of bias. Accordingly, the opinion of the Court of Appeals did not address the issue of Board bias. See Crump v. Board of Education, 79 N.C. App. 372, 339 S.E.2d 483, disc. rev. denied, 317 N.C. 333, 346 S.E.2d 137 (1986).
Plaintiff’s § 1983 action proceeded to trial in 1987 and culminated in a jury’s verdict that defendants had failed to provide plaintiff a fair hearing before an unbiased hearing body and in an award of compensatory damages. This action is now before us on appeal.
Of the two issues addressed by the majority, in my opinion only one is necessary to the disposition of this case: whether plaintiff’s separate § 1983 action was precluded by the “companion principle” of res judicata, collateral estoppel by judgment. King v. Grindstaff, 284 N.C. 348, 356, 200 S.E.2d 799, 805 (1973). This principle bars parties from retrying fully litigated issues that were necessary to and have been decided in any prior determination. Id.
*643Res judicata, or “claim preclusion,” bars absolutely subsequent action upon the same “claim or demand in controversy, concluding parties and those in privity with them, not only as to every matter which was offered and received to sustain or defeat the claim or demand, but as to any other admissible matter which might have been offered for that purpose.” Thomas M. McInnis & Assoc., Inc. v. Hall, 318 N.C. 421, 427, 349 S.E.2d 552, 556 (1986) (quoting Cromwell v. County of Sac, 94 U.S. 351, 352, 24 L. Ed. 195, 197 (1877)). See also State v. Lewis, 63 N.C. App. 98, 102, 303 S.E.2d 627, 630 (1983), aff’d, 311 N.C. 727, 319 S.E.2d 145 (1984). In collateral estoppel by judgment, or “issue preclusion,” “the judgment in the prior action operates as an estoppel only as to those matters in issue or points controverted, upon the determination of which the finding or verdict was rendered.” Thomas M. McInnis & Assoc., Inc. v. Hall, 318 N.C. at 427, 349 S.E.2d at 556 (quoting Cromwell v. County of Sac, 94 U.S. at 353, 24 L. Ed. at 198). Collateral estoppel applies only where the parties are identical or in privity in the former and the latter actions and where the issues are the same. Although in this case the first requisite is plainly met, the second requisite requires a scrutiny of the record to determine not only that the issues are identical, but also that the issues were actually raised and litigated in the prior action, that they were material and relevant to the disposition of the prior action, and that the determination of those issues in the prior action was necessary and essential to the resulting judgment. King v. Grindstaff, 284 N.C. at 358, 200 S.E.2d at 805-06.
The issue of Board bias was clearly raised by allegations in plaintiffs original and amended complaints and denied in defendants’ answer concurrent with their motion to separate plaintiff’s civil action from his administrative appeal. The issue of bias was also one basis articulated in the trial court’s finding and conclusion that the Board’s action had been based on substantial evidence, viewing the record as a whole. The record included a voir dire of the Board members at the hearing, in which plaintiff’s attorney specifically examined each member for foreknowledge of the charges brought against plaintiff and for any resulting bias. This evidence indicates the issue of bias was indeed pleaded, debated and determined, or “litigated.” See Black’s Law Dictionary 841 (5th ed. 1979).
The issue of bias was not merely material and relevant to the trial court’s disposition of the action, but it was essential to that disposition insofar as the issue was inseparable from the court’s *644assessment of the substantiality of the evidence. This is apparent in the specific words of the judgment itself that the Board’s action “was not biased, arbitrary, or capricious; . . . but . . . was based on substantial evidence viewing the record as a whole.” (Emphasis added.)
The plain words of the judgment aside, it is unimaginable that the trial court, knowing from plaintiff’s complaint that the Board may have been biased against him, could have considered such bias so separable from the Board’s assessment of the evidence before it as to have had no effect upon that assessment. The court had no choice but to consider the question of bias as integral to its appraisal of the substantiality of the evidence in the whole record. Despite the fact that the same trial judge presided over plaintiff’s administrative appeal, apparently allowed separation of his actions, and presided over plaintiff’s § 1983 action, the judgment in the administrative appeal necessarily incorporated the pervasive issue of bias. To know that bias had been alleged and to consider voir dire testimony addressing that very question, yet not to consider the effect of bias on the Board’s conclusions, would have been to affirm Board findings, inferences, and conclusions that were fundamentally suspect. The essential character of the bias issue in plaintiff’s first action is thus manifest.
In addressing the question whether “the issue of bias was res judicata at the time of trial,” the Court of Appeals concluded that there was no such bar because of the separation of plaintiff’s actions: “None of the evidence . . . presented at trial to support his charge of bias existed in the record reviewed by the courts.” Crump, 93 N.C. App. at 177-78, 378 S.E.2d at 37. This may have been true, but it is not the appropriate test of whether a party is estopped from relitigating an issue that has already been adjudicated. It is incumbent upon a plaintiff to proffer some evidence in support of his case; the judgment will properly go against him if he has failed, by the greater weight of the evidence, to persuade the fact finder that facts supporting bias are more likely than not to exist. See 2 Brandis on North Carolina Evidence §§ 203, 212 (1988).
Moreover, if plaintiff, anticipating the issue of bias to figure only in his § 1983 action, deliberately withheld evidence that the Board had been less than candid on voir dire, he made not just a tactical error, but one that threatened to vitiate the integrity of the proceedings. This is particularly so in this case, where *645withholding such evidence supporting proof of bias resulted not only in a failure to persuade the trial court, but also in a record that the verdict in plaintiff’s § 1983 action suggests was a mere charade, superficially sound but actually riddled with the effects of prejudice.
If, given separation of plaintiff’s actions, the trial court erroneously addressed plaintiff’s allegations of Board bias, then plaintiff failed to alert the appellate court to such error. Plaintiff did in fact except to the trial court’s specific findings and conclusions that the Board’s decision had a rational basis in the evidence and that its action was not biased, arbitrary or capricious. These two exceptions were grouped as plaintiff’s first assignment of error in his first appeal to the Court of Appeals. As that assignment is phrased, however, the issue of bias is confounded with the question of the substantiality of the evidence. Plaintiff must except and assign error separately to each finding or conclusion that he contends is not supported by the evidence, or he waives his right to challenge the issue on those grounds. Concrete Service Corp. v. Investors Group, Inc., 79 N.C. App. 678, 684, 340 S.E.2d 755, 759-60 (1986). In not assigning error to the trial court’s consideration of bias and caprice separate from the court’s finding substantial evidence to support the Board’s conclusions, plaintiff waived his opportunity to challenge the trial court’s conclusions regarding Board bias.
In addition, plaintiff dropped any reference to bias in his brief before the Court of Appeals and stated the issue concerning this first assignment of error incompletely, if more succinctly: “Whether there is substantial evidence in the whole record which would support the termination of career teacher Eddie Ray Crump.” The body of plaintiff’s brief likewise fails to mention bias, arguing only the question of the substantiality of the evidence, as if bias, had it existed, could have had no effect upon that evidence. As Justice Martin notes in his dissent, the Rules of Appellate Procedure plainly state that “[questions raised by assignments of error in appeals from trial tribunals but not then presented and discussed in a party’s brief, are deemed abandoned.” Rule 28(a), Rules of Appellate Procedure. The trial court implicitly recognized in its judgment that the question of bias was inseparable from the issue of the substantiality of the evidence before the Board. In failing to flag on appeal arguable trial court error in basing judgment in part upon that issue, plaintiff abandoned the issue, and, as Justice *646Martin accurately observes, the trial court’s determination that the Board’s action was not biased but based on substantial evidence became the law of the case.
Given that adjudication of the issue of bias in plaintiff’s § 1983 action was foreclosed by its prior determination in his appeal of the Board’s administrative action, severance and separate determination of defendants’ § 1983 claim was inappropriate, and this appeal, including its focus on the applicability to these facts of the “one person bias rule,” is not properly before us.