Court Opinion

ID: 9474061
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:46:55.178893+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:52.948968
License: Public Domain

MURNAGHAN, Circuit Judge
dissenting.
The law follows (or perhaps leads) the practice of other professions in the affectionate use of recondite terms of little apparent sense, standing solely on their own. Regrettably, lawyers sometimes use legal terms possessed of technical meanings imprecisely, if not inaccurately, which leads to obfuscation and confusion. Unfortunately the result is frequently one of frustration amounting to helplessness on the part of laymen confronted by the incomprehensible phraseology. Perhaps I have been as guilty as others in my off-hand resort to res judicata, collateral estoppel (offensive collateral estoppel and defensive collateral estoppel) and issue preclusion to describe a phenomenon quite capable of expression in *665terms readily comprehensible by the ordinary layman.
Here particularly is a case where it helps to peel away the needless veneer of those terms of art, and get down to what, in plain English, is really intended. It is a cardinal principle of the law that everyone involved in a dispute should have his day in court — a full day in court.3 A corollary exists, however, that a litigant is entitled to but one full day.4 The question here is simply whether Stall already had his one full day in state court to resolve a vital factual issue common both to a state claim for unemployment compensation and to an assertion of damage for violation of his first amendment rights,5 sufficient to preclude his claim in federal court under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.
To answer that question necessitates a detailed review of the pleadings, the evidence presented, and the actions, both administrative and judicial, taken by the state agency and the state court.
1. Following his March 1, 1982 discharge, on March 3, 1982, Stall, acting on his own behalf, requested of the South Carolina Employment Security Commission a determination of his insured status. On March 8, 1982, the employer statement of the North Charleston Public Works Department was filed, reading:
Employee has expressed his dissatisfaction with his status for approximately two years. On more than one occasion employee made known his intention to return to school. The employee notified his department head that he would leave by 1 March 1982. On 15 January 1982 the department head requested a firm date for planning purposes. On 18 January 1982 the employee stated he had again changed his mind and did not desire to leave his employment at this time. The employee was informed that it was impossible to maintain a functional operation with a state of uncertainty, therefore his last day of employment would be 1 March 1982.
On or about March 12, 1982, Stall’s Claimant’s Statement, prepared and presented pro se, was submitted to the effect that:
March 1 was the last day I worked with City of N. Chas. Ross Walker, Dir. of Public Works told me I was being discharged. I did not state in January that I intended to leave by March 1st. I was never dissatisfied with my position. I was interested in my future and the possibility of promotion within that department or another area of work with the City. I feel I was terminated for political reasons.
I am able, available, and looking for work.
Thereupon, on March 18, 1982 a claims adjudicator filed a report in which she alluded to Stall’s position that “he was terminated for political purposes,” but concluded that “the claimant voluntarily quit his job with the above employer when he advised his employer that he was leaving on 3-1-82.”
2. On March 5, 1982, Stall had instituted the instant action in federal court asserting the above mentioned invasions of his first amendment rights as well as associated denials of due process.6
3. On March 25, 1982 Stall took an administrative appeal from the order of a claims adjudicator for the South Carolina *666Employment Security Commission denying him unemployment compensation on the grounds that he was terminated and did not resign. The appeal reached the South Carolina Employment Security Commission only on April 14, 1982, because it had been wrongly addressed. The appeal, on April 16, 1982, was dismissed as untimely. Counsel representing Stall in the federal case sought reconsideration of the dismissal of the state administrative appeal. The Employment Security Commission decided to allow Stall’s appeal as timely.
4. An evidentiary hearing in the state administrative proceeding followed on July 1, 1982. Evidence was adduced before a hearing examiner concerning the assertions of constitutional violations.7
5. On August 25, 1982, the Commission held a nonevidentiary hearing, after which a Decision, based on the testimony adduced at the July 1,1982 evidentiary hearing, was promulgated on August 27, 1982. The Commission found Stall was discharged for “misconduct connected to his work.” The decision stated, in summary form, evidence of statements by Stall that he would be leaving his job. It mentioned also that Stall maintained “that he was discharged by his employer for other reasons.” The “other reasons” were never elucidated in the Decision of August 27, 1982.
The conclusion on the point of principal concern addressed in the Decision of August 27, 1982 was that Stall had no intent to resign his job when he was separated by his employer. As for any earlier intention to resign, the Commission observed that Stall had changed his mind. The Commission concluded, therefore, that Stall’s departure from his job was involuntary, i.e., he was discharged by his employer.
The Commission then addressed the question of whether the discharge was for misconduct which would disqualify Stall from unemployment compensation benefits. It went on to conclude that there was misconduct in the form of “substantial disregard of the behavior which the employer has the right to expect of its employees” in Stall’s vacillation over whether he intended to resign. The Commission added that disqualification for benefits was justified because of the misconduct, and because of the employer’s dissatisfaction with Stall’s *667work performance, which indicated “that he was at fault for his unemployment.” The grounds for employer dissatisfaction were not spelled out in any way in the Decision of August 27, 1982. The reference earlier to Stall’s assertion of “other reasons” can only be to his claim of politically motivated discharge. There was no attempt to dispose of Stall’s politically motivated contentions in the August 27, 1982 Decision.
It is for me difficult to read that Decision as dispositive one way or the other of the contention that there had been termination for exercise of protected first amendment rights.8 The reference to Stall’s constitutional claims is altogether cursory, and no analysis is offered. While it may perhaps be inferred that a claim of interference with first amendment rights may have been considered and rejected, nothing in the Decision so states. Indeed, it could be convincingly argued that the only “other reasons” leading to employer dissatisfaction mentioned in the Decision besides the expression of an intent of Stall to leave his job were the asserted first amendment violations. It is difficult to conclude, as the defendants must argue to make their point, that, therefore, his exercise of his constitutional rights was why “he was at fault for his unemployment.” A state agency should not lightly be assumed to have disregarded so totally the first amendment to the Federal Constitution. The assumption, moreover, would lead to the inevitable conclusion that the state agency resolution of the crucial issue of fact was favorable—not unfavorable—to Stall. Accordingly, I am not satisfied that the issue was even addressed, much less disposed of. However, for present purposes we may assume that the issue was considered and decided adversely to Stall.
Yet, even if the Decision of August 27, 1982 can be stretched out of shape to constitute a determination that the evidence did not support the contention that Stall had been fired for exercise of constitutionally protected rights, it, nevertheless, would not be the product of a full day in court because Stall did not accept the Decision of August 27, 1982. Instead he took an appeal to the Charleston County South Carolina Court of Common Pleas. In the appeal, the South Carolina court, in an opinion dated December 21, 1982, outlined only those facts relating to the remarks of Stall that he might resign, concluding that he “did not resign and informed the employer in writing that he did not intend to resign.” The court further determined that “[t]he sole reason for the termination was that [Stall] had given and then rescinded his resignation.”
The issue before the court was “whether or not the Commission made a legal error in concluding that the giving of a resignation and the rescinding of it prior to the time of resignation constitutes ‘misconduct’ under the South Carolina Employment Security Law.” The resulting determination was “that the Commission erred as a matter of law in its decision of August 27,1982 and that this decision must be reversed. The Plaintiff is entitled to the relief sought.”
Nowhere in the opinion of the Charleston County Court of Common Pleas is the matter of first amendment violation assertions by Stall mentioned. The defendants seek to raise another negative inference, arguing that if the vacillation over resignation was the “sole reason for the termination” the asserted political motivations must have been rejected. I, however, do not read the opinion, which never alludes, in any way, to the assertions of political motivation in the way that the defendants assert. They would expand the statement to read: “The sole reason for the termination, all other asserted ones having been considered and found to be without merit, was that [Stall] had given and then rescinded his resignation.” The proper reading, *668however, I submit, should be: “The sole reason for the termination on which a disqualification for unemployment compensation purposes could be asserted by the employer was that [Stall] had given and then rescinded his resignation.” On that reading, the asserted first amendment violations are not implicated in any way whatsoever.9 For application of the doctrine of issue preclusion, there must have been actual litigation and direct determination of the issue in the prior action. Beall v. Doe, 281 S.C. 363, 315 S.E.2d 186 (Ct.App.1984). Cf. Lowe v. Clayton, 264 S.C. 75, 212 S.E.2d 582 (1972). The judicial proceedings of any state court shall have the same full faith and credit in any federal court action as they have by law or usage in the courts of such state. 28 U.S.C. § 1738. Given the cursory (or perhaps non-existent) review which the Commission and state court gave Stall’s first amendment claim, it can hardly be said that the issue was actually litigated, that it was essential to the Commission’s or the court’s judgment,10 or that Stall had a full and fair opportunity to present his claim.
Even assuming, for the sake of discussion, that the reading urged by the employer as to what the Employment Security Commission and the state court undertook to decide is the correct one, still a full day in court on the question has not been accorded to Stall. His victory in the litigation before the South Carolina Employment Security Commission and the Charleston County Court of Common Pleas was ultimately total.11 The court ordered:
that the South Carolina Employment Security Commission is directed to pay to the Plaintiff all benefits due him under the Employment Security Act and any extended benefits or other benefits thereunder; that the records of this state shall reflect that the Plaintiff was not guilty of any disqualification under the South Carolina Employment Security Law, Section 41-27-10 et seq. and that the Plaintiff was not guilty of misconduct under said law.
Stall, as the winner, could take no appeal.12 There was nothing for him to appeal *669from.13 The employer elected not to appeal, allowing Stall’s complete victory to become final.14 Consequently, Restatement (Second) Judgments § 28(1) (1982) applies:
Although an issue is actually litigated and determined by a valid and final judgment, and the determination is essential to the judgment, relitigation of the issue in a subsequent action between the parties is not precluded in the following circumstances:
(1) The party against whom preclusion is sought could not, as a matter of law, have obtained review of the judgment in the initial action____
*670Since South Carolina has specifically accepted the law of Restatement (Second) Judgments §§ 27 and 29 (see Beall v. Doe, supra, 315 S.E.2d at p. 190), it is to be expected that § 28 will, when the occasion arises, be accepted as an accurate representation of South Carolina law. It makes eminent good sense and commends itself to one’s sense of fairness.15
An examination of the judicial and administrative proceedings on the state side of the street makes it readily apparent that, upon the facts of the present case, Stall never received his one full day in court to litigate his first amendment claims. It is doubtful that the Employment Security Commission resolved the factual issue at all. It is clear that the state court did not, and, even if it had done so, by deciding for Stall on other grounds it rendered unavailable the right of appeal necessary to make the decision complete. By achieving complete victory in the state court, Stall had rendered moot, i.e., not amenable to appellate review, the issue of Stall’s constitutional claims. Now to hold Stall precluded from litigating a question in federal court which played no part whatsoever in the state decision is to render his day in court empty, not full. The district court’s grant of defendant’s motion for summary judgment was erroneous.16 I respectfully dissent.

. See Township of Hopewell v. Volpe, 446 F.2d 167, 170 (3rd Cir.1971) ("Every litigant is entitled to a full and fair day in court.”).

. See Hooper v. United States, 326 F.2d 982, 985 (Ct. of Cl.1964), cert. denied, 377 U.S. 977, 84 S.Ct. 1882, 12 L.Ed.2d 746 (1964) (“... application of res judicata and collateral estoppel ... is a judicially developed restriction invoked in the name of public policy requiring that a litigant be given only one day in court.”).

. The rights asserted were freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and the right to seek elective office and serve therein free from threats and intimidation of public officials.

. Stall was apparently covering all of his legal bases by bringing both a federal § 1983 action and a state claim for unemployment compensation at approximately the same time. His intention from the commencement of the suit apparently was to treat the two claims separately.

. For example, Stall described a January 8, 1982 conversation between himself, as a school board member, and the Mayor of the City of North Charleston:
A: The conversation involved his dissatisfaction with the fact that he said that I was representing the people in the north area poorly, improperly; therefore, my actions on the School Board were relative or ran parallel with my job with the City, and that fact that he indicated that there was a possibility that, you know, was probably making the City look bad. And he was basically ... The whole conversation was centered around what he perceived as my inability to get anything done on the School Board, and the fact that several people from the disc ... (sic) Constituent Board, and also from school officials had come to him and related the same information to him. And he was more or less trying to tell me I needed to be a team player. I needed to vote for a fellow named John Graham Altman with (sic) one of the major topics ... He was up for reelection for chairman of the School Board, and he was seeking my support to vote for him again in January of 1981. And the whole conversation from the time I got there until the time we left after having lunch was centered around, you know, my performance on the School Board as he perceived it.
Q: Did you discuss any business as far as public works of the City of North Charleston was concerned?
A: No sir.
I mean I was told by the Mayor that I had stopped the north area from getting bond money, when, in fact, I’m the one that got $6.5 million for bonds ... and that I was not repre ... He was a constituent of mine, and he felt like he had a right to tell me ... Even when I walked in, he said, "I’m going to tell you ... I want you to prepare yourself right now because some of the things I’m going to say to you are very hard, so I want to let you know in advance.” And I stopped him right then, and I said, "No.” I said, “If you’re going to say anything like that to me, then I want to know whether or not you’re going to respect my right to answer them.”
Stall left the meeting with the impression that the Mayor did not like the positions he had taken, and concluded that he "was going to end up losing my job.” Asked by the employer’s attorney whether the Mayor had threatened his job. Stall replied affirmatively citing a sense of intimidation as a result of the Mayor’s demands.

. Such a conclusion is reinforced when one considers that the South Carolina Employment Security Commission’s primary function is the review of claims for the award of unemployment compensation insurance and not the adjudication of first amendment rights. See Anderson v. Babb, 632 F.2d 300, 306 n. 3 (4th Cir.1980).

. That reading is borne out by an order dated March 1, 1984 of the Charleston County Court of Common Pleas construing and clarifying the December 21, 1982 opinion by stating that it was one involving only a legal issue, the proceeding being exclusively legal, not factual in nature. Moreover, § 41-35-750 of the South Carolina Code of Laws (1976) precludes a state court from reviewing the Commission’s findings of fact and confines the court’s inquiry to questions of law.

. Restatement (Second) of Judgments, § 27, comment j (1982).

. Consequently, it cannot be gainsaid that a decision on the constitutional issues, whichever way it went or might have gone was altogether unnecessary to the outcome of the unemployment compensation litigation. See Parklane Hosiery Co. v. Shore, 439 U.S. 322, 326 n. 5, 99 S.Ct. 645, 649 n. 5, 58 L.Ed.2d 552 (1978) ("Under the doctrine of collateral estoppel, on the other hand, the second action is on a different cause of action and the judgment in the prior suit precludes relitigation of issues actually litigated and necessary to the outcome of the first action.”) (Emphasis supplied).

. The South Carolina court’s decision gave Stall everything he was seeking. The decision in Stall’s favor was that ”[t]he Plaintiff is enti-tied to the relief sought." If the court had explicitly found that Stall’s Fourteenth Amendment rights had been violated, he, nevertheless, would have received no other or further relief whatsoever. He could, in short, have achieved no greater victory by appealing. A busy judicial system cannot frivolously indulge a plaintiff who has named $10,000 in his ad damnum clause and proceeded to win a judgment for the full $10,000, although only one of two theories advanced has been accepted by the lower court and he is determined to prove he was right twice times over. It would be a pointless, time-consuming and costly violation of the requirement of a true case or controversy to allow him to prosecute an appeal because he wants to win the other way and not just the way he has in fact won. “The function of appellate courts is not to give opinions on merely abstract or theoretical matters, but only to decide actual controversies injuriously affecting the rights of some party to the litigation.” Wallace v. City of York, 276 S.C. 693, 694, 281 S.E.2d 487, 488 (1981).
Had the employer appealed, what the majority has concluded arguably could have had some substance, for then it might have been expedient for Stall to cross-appeal. But he was afforded no chance to appeal. The employer instead accepted complete defeat.
I emphatically disagree with the majority’s conclusion that Stall might, nevertheless, have *669appealed the finding supposedly made by the state court that his discharge was not politically motivated. Even had there been such a finding, which I seriously doubt, an appeal is taken from the holding — the decree or judgment — itself, not from a reason set forth in an opinion to justify it. Annot., Formal Requirements of Judgment or Order as Regards Appealability, 73 A.L.R.2d 250, 291-92 (1960):
It has generally been held that no appeal lies from a court’s findings, findings of fact, conclusions, or conclusions of law.

. See Right of Winning Party to Appeal from Judgment Granting Him Full Relief Sought, 69 A.L.R.2d 701, 742, § 19(a) (1960). A host of cases appears in § 19(a) ("As to adverse findings on specific issues. Generally”) of that Annotation and in the Later Case Service thereto in support of the general rule "that a party who has obtained full relief in the court below is not entitled to appeal for the purpose of attacking a finding on a specific issue made by the court below in connection with the judgment in his favor.” In § 19(b) ("Limitations on general rule”), on the other hand, the sole case arguably reaching the contrary result is Partmar Corp. v. Paramount Pictures Theatres Corp., 347 U.S. 89, 74 S.Ct. 414, 98 L.Ed. 532 (1954), which is readily distinguishable in an important, indeed controlling respect. Partmar did not, as is the case here, involve two separate and distinct proceedings. Rather a point was asserted by the plaintiff and the same issue was introduced by the defendants in counterclaims pleaded by them. The two proceedings, one of which was claimed to bar the other on a res judicata or collateral estoppel basis hence arose in the very same litigation. When one of the two became final, the refusal to permit relitigation with respect to the other was understandable, though perhaps the litany is more properly one "of the law of the case”, than it is of res judicata or collateral estoppel.
Even so, Partmar was seriously criticized by Chief Justice Warren, joined by Justice Black. See Partmar, 347 U.S. at 109 n. 8, 74 S.Ct. at 425 n. 8:
There is yet an additional reason for not applying the doctrine of collateral estoppel here. Petitioner, as the successful party in the eviction suit, could not appeal the District Court’s finding that there was no evidence of conspiracy. Lindheimer v. Illinois Bell Telephone Co., 292 U.S. 151, 176 [54 S.Ct. 658, 668, 78 L.Ed. 1182]; New York Telephone Co. v. Maltbie, 291 U.S. 645 [54 S.Ct. 443, 78 L.Ed. 1041], The adverse finding was not included in the Court’s decree, as in Electrical Fittings Corp. v. Thomas & Betts Co., 307 U.S. 241 [59 S.Ct. 860, 83 L.Ed. 1263]. Because of this inability to appeal, the finding cannot bind petitioner in a subsequent action between the parties based upon a different cause of action. See Restatement, Judgments § 69(2); Scott, Collateral Estoppel by Judgment, 56 Harv.L.Rev. 1, 15-18.
The Court’s opinion (footnote 6) concedes that inability to appeal precludes a subsequent application of collateral estoppel, but contends that petitioner could have appealed here because the trial court’s finding in the eviction suit (as to the absence of proof of conspiracy) was material to the decree in the eviction suit. The Court’s opinion cites no case, in this Court or any other, holding that a successful party can appeal findings which are not inserted as part of the decree. Indeed, the opinion overlooks the very holdings of this Court on which it relies for support. In both Lindheimer v. Illinois Bell Telephone Co., supra, and New York Telephone Co. v. Maltbie, supra, the findings which the public utility sought to appeal related to the value of its property for rate-making purposes; in each case, the trial court had held that the rates fixed by a state commission were confiscatory on the basis of those findings. Yet this Court held that the public utility, as the successful party, could not appeal those findings. Surely in this case the trial judge’s finding as to conspiracy was no more “material” than the findings which this Court refused to review in Lindheimer and Maltbie.

. Under South Carolina law one must be aggrieved to appeal. S.C.Code of Laws § 18-1-30 (1976). Ordinarily, a judgment in one’s own favor cannot be appealed. Wilson v. Southern R. Co., 123 S.C. 399, 115 S.E. 764, 766 (1923). Under federal law, a party who receives total relief is not aggrieved and therefore cannot appeal from a judgment in his favor. Deposit Guaranty National Bank v. Roper, 445 U.S. 326, 333, 100 S.Ct. 1166, 1171, 63 L.Ed.2d 427 (1980); Public Service Commission v. Brashear Freight Lines, Inc., 306 U.S. 204, 206, 59 S.Ct. 480, 481, 83 L.Ed. 608 (1939). There simply is no case or controversy if such an appeal is attempted.

. A holding that a state unemployment compensation decision was not entitled to collateral estoppel effect in a federal Title VII employment discrimination case brought by the same party, even though the unemployment compensation result fully favored the employer and was finally affirmed by the Circuit Court of Baltimore City, was made in Ross v. Communications Satellite Corp, 759 F.2d 355, 360-62 (4th Cir.1985). Stall’s case is even stronger, of course, since, in his case, the unemployment compensation decision was finally fully favorable to him. Stall, the victor, could not appeal, while the losing plaintiff in Ross could have done so but did not. Md.Code Ann. art. 95A § 7(h) (1979). I perceive no reason why the law of South Carolina should differ from that of Maryland on the principle of general application that one who achieves total victory is in no way precluded by an adverse finding on an issue which did not affect the outcome of the case.

. It hardly needs emphasizing that the position I have taken in no way intimates that Stall will win in federal court. It only assures that he will be able to present his case and have it judicially addressed and decided. The employer would be accorded every opportunity to establish that, on the merits, it had not invaded Stall’s first amendment rights. The burden of proof would remain on Stall.