Court Opinion

ID: 9605297
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:33:32.412766+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:27:28.998891
License: Public Domain

Deen, Presiding Judge,
dissenting.
1. I would affirm the judgment of the trial court. In the first place, the city does not deny the pleaded allegations that the plaintiffs (detectives with the City of Atlanta police force, demoted from the trained detective Decoy Squad to the rank of patrolman and who suffered a loss of pay of $4 per day as a result) were removed from the squad as the result of an interview published by local newspaper reporters which detailed some of their activities in disguising themselves as "winos” or cripples on city streets and parks, thereby flushing out a criminal element engaged in muggings in the area.
I agree that whether or not the action lies against the city and its Bureau of Police Services (the only appellants here) depends upon whether the basic question (the pay scale of the plaintiffs) must be classified as a governmental or a municipal (ministerial) activity. Our Code early in the history of the state provided that *271municipal corporations shall be liable for the improper performance of their ministerial duties, but not for errors in performing their legislative or judicial (i.e.) governmental powers. Code § 69-301. The distinction has been long recognized. As stated in Seltenreich v. Town of Fairbanks, 103 FSupp. 319, 324, affd. 211 F2d 83, cert. den. 348 U. S. 887, the character of a municipal corporation is two-fold, one being governmental or legislative powers and the other its municipal or ministerial duties; the former being the exercise of delegated state power, and the latter being "for the private advantage of a compact community which is incorporated” as to which latter it has the rights and obligations of a private rather than a public corporation. In the absence of any law which I have been able to find to the contrary I prefer to regard the rating of these city employees (as ordinary patrolmen rather than Decoy Squad personnel) as a ministerial function in the day to day administration of a branch of the corporate enterprise. This being so, I would examine the case on its merits, and find ample evidence to support the judgment of the trial court to the effect that it was a breach of duty on the part of the city toward its employees to demote and reclassify them simply on the basis of an article (itself intended to be laudatory) appearing in the newspaper concerning them.
2. If I am wrong, and if decisions about the pay scale and duties of individual policemen are legislative and not municipal in character, then I read Monell v. Dept. of Social Services, 436 U. S. 658 (98 SC 2018, 56 LE2d 611), as a much broader holding than that acknowledged by the majority opinion. Specifically, "history confirms that local governments were intended to be included among the 'persons’ to which § 1983 applies.” 42 USC § 1983, which (Headnote 4 (d)) "unquestionably was intended to provide a remedy, to be broadly construed, against all forms of official violation of federally protected rights.” Among the civil rights of these plaintiffs as members of the police force was that of not being capriciously transferred without cause to a less attractive and lower paying job from one in which they were paid at least partly by federal funds. Whatever "official city policy” there may *272be in demoting policemen for undue relationships with newspaper reporters, it can only be surmised through the actions of the officer in charge of these departments.
Thus, if the act is indeed governmental, I believe Monell requires affirmance; if, as I am convinced, it is ministerial, Code § 69-301 requires the same result.
I am authorized to state that Judges Webb, McMurray and Smith join in this dissent.