Court Opinion

ID: 9467334
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:45:35.376724+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:17.525709
License: Public Domain

HEANEY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. The district court found:
[T]he plaintiff was deprived of property without due process because the school board was not sufficiently impartial. * * * Messrs. Vess and Mitchell had their minds made up before the hearing on August 4, 1978; there was no evidence which Dr. Barham could have presented which could have changed their minds about terminating his contract. * * *
The portions [of the record] which are determinative are as follows:
Q. Now, let me ask you, Mr. Mitchell, at that hearing, was there any evidence which Dr. Barham could have presented which have [sic] made you render a different decision than the one which you ultimately did at the conclusion of that meeting?
A. [Mr. Mitchell] I don’t think so.
Q. * * * I want you to think for a moment and tell me if there could have been any circumstances under which you would have voted to retain Dr. Barham. Tell the jury what could have been-
MR. LIGHT: Objection, Your Honor. This is the third time and the witness has answered twice that he can’t answer this hypothetical question.
THE COURT: Overruled. The witness has refused to answer the question. The Court thinks it is a proper question. Go ahead and answer, Mr. Vess.
A. [Mr. Vess] I really don’t think at that stage of the game-this is my personal opinion-would have changed anything. I sure don’t.

If two of the four participating members of the board would not under any circumstances have changed their minds regardless of the evidence presented by Dr. Barham at the hearing, the hearing was useless from Dr. Barham’s perspective.

Barham v. Welch, 478 F.Supp. 1246, 1248-1249 (E.D.Ark.1979) (emphasis added).
The majority ignores these findings and substitutes itself as the fact finder. On the basis of its conclusion that neither Mitchell nor Vess made up his mind until the August 4th meeting, it holds that no due process violation occurred. In my view, we are bound by the district court’s findings unless we are prepared to state that they are clearly erroneous, and this I cannot do.
It is clear from Hortonville Joint School Dist. No. 1 v. Hortonville Educ. Ass’n, 426 U.S. 482, 96 S.Ct. 2308, 49 L.Ed.2d 1 (1976), that “mere familiarity” with the facts of a case, gained by a member of the Board of Education in the performance of his or her statutory role, does not disqualify that *1329Board member from deciding the case; but that is not the situation here. The district court found that two Board members had rendered themselves incapable of judging the controversy by taking the position that they would not change their mind on the question of whether Barham should be dismissed regardless of the evidence presented by Barham.
Hortonville also establishes the principle that a decisionmaker is not disqualified simply because he has taken a position on a policy issue related to the dispute; but again, that is not the situation here. In Hortonville, the Board of Education had no factual issues to decide. Here, there were a number of such issues to be determined and two members of the Board closed their minds on the factual disputes before Bar-ham had a chance to give his version of the facts. In my view, the district court correctly decided the issues of fact and law presented to it and its decision should be affirmed.