Lopez v. Administrative Office of the Courts

FILED
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
June 19, 2013
PUBLISH Elisabeth A. Shumaker
Clerk of Court
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
TENTH CIRCUIT
GEORGE LOPEZ,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
No. 11-4199
ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICE OF THE
COURTS, a judicial branch of the
State of Utah; KATHY ELTON, an
individual,
Defendants-Appellees.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF UTAH, CENTRAL DIVISION
(D.C. No. 2:07-CV-00571-TC)
Kathryn Steffey of Smith Hartvigsen, PLLC (R. Christopher Preston, Smith
Hartvigsen, PLLC, with her on the brief), Salt Lake City, Utah, for Plaintiff-
Appellant.
J. Clifford Peterson, Assistant Utah Attorney General (Mark L. Shurtleff, Utah
Attorney General, and Meb W. Anderson, Assistant Utah Attorney General, with
him on the brief), Salt Lake City, Utah, for Defendants-Appellees.
Before BRISCOE, Chief Circuit Judge, HOLLOWAY and HARTZ, Circuit
Judges.
HOLLOWAY, Circuit Judge.
Plaintiff-Appellant George Lopez conducts mediations in a program created
and managed by the Administrative Office of Courts of the State of Utah (the
AO). In 2006 he was removed from the panel of mediators which the AO had
created under statutory authority to mediate certain domestic matters. Mr. Lopez
brought suit in federal district court alleging that his removal from that list of
specialized mediators violated his right to due process and his right to equal
protection of the laws in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Mr. Lopez also alleged
breach of contract, breach of implied contract, and breach of the implied covenant
of good faith and fair dealing. The Defendants in the suit and Appellees on
appeal are the AO and Ms. Kathy Elton, who was formerly the administrator of
the specialized mediation program.
The district court had jurisdiction of this matter under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331 &
1367. Defendants moved for summary judgment, and the district court granted
the motion, deciding all claims in favor of the Defendants. Plaintiff Lopez now
brings this appeal, invoking this court’s jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291.
I
The AO includes an Alternative Dispute Resolution Department. The ADR
Department manages two rosters of mediators that are relevant here. The first is
referred to by the parties in this case as simply the ADR roster. Mr. Lopez is on
this roster and has been since 1995. Mediators may apply for admission to this
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roster, which supplies mediators for civil cases in several of Utah’s judicial
districts.
The state legislature also directed the AO to create a pilot program in one
judicial district to offer special mediation services for Expedited Parent-time
Enforcement. This program was focused on disputes involving parents’ visitation
rights and was titled the Co-Parenting Mediation Program (CMP). To implement
the CMP, the AO created a separate panel of mediators, which the parties refer to
as the CMP roster. The AO did not accept applications for the CMP roster;
instead, the AO created the roster by invitation. Defendant Elton became director
of the ADR program in 2000. As the director, Ms. Elton oversaw the
administration of the CMP roster. Mr. Lopez had been a member of the CMP
roster for several years when he was removed in August 2006.
In February 2004, Ms. Elton, along with three others involved with the
CMP or the AO, created a set of guidelines for the CMP titled the “Co-Parenting
Mediation Program Best Practices” manual. This manual, according to the
affidavit of Ms. Elton, was issued as a set of recommended guidelines and not a
set of rules because of the “flexible nature of mediation generally and the ‘pilot’
nature of the program . . . .” For purposes of this appeal, the key provisions of
the Best Practices Manual are those which deal with removal of mediators from
the roster:
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The CMP Program Manager, in consultation with the Utah Court
ADR Director, reserves the right to remove a mediator from the
roster if he or she does not meet the minimum requirements for
inclusion, or in response to concerns or complaints reported to the
CMP.
II R. at 214. In October 2004, the CMP issued a revised Best Practices Manual.
which included language that at least arguably limited the discretion of the
administrators to remove a mediator from the roster. Mr. Lopez’s arguments on
appeal include references to those provisions, but Mr. Lopez did not rely on those
provisions in the district court. See II R. at 420, 423-24. 1 Accordingly, we deal
herein with only the February 2004 Best Practices Manual.
In 2006, Ms. Elton received complaints about Mr. Lopez’s performance in
mediating CMP cases. First was an allegation that Mr. Lopez had sent a letter
directly to parties seeking mediation, an act that would have violated an ethical
rule against direct contact with parties represented by counsel. Shortly after that,
Ms. Elton reviewed an unfavorable evaluation of a CMP mediation that Mr. Lopez
had conducted. Ms. Elton later discussed this evaluation with Mr. Lopez and was
satisfied with Mr. Lopez’s explanation of that mediation. But Ms. Elton
meanwhile (or shortly thereafter) had received another unfavorable evaluation
from a participant in one of Mr. Lopez’s mediations that caused her great
1
In an affidavit submitted in support of his opposition to Defendants’
motion for summary judgment, Mr. Lopez did reference the provisions that he
argued placed limits on the discretion granted to the administrators to remove a
mediator from the roster. But in the brief itself, those provisions were not argued.
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concern. This evaluation indicated that Mr. Lopez had made “findings” in the
mediation process 2 and had made a recommendation that could have caused the
participants to incur charges for additional mediation time.
There is some dispute as to what happened next. According to Ms. Elton,
she contacted Mr. Lopez to discuss these allegations. Mr. Lopez, however, denies
that he had any discussion with Ms. Elton about the allegations. In any event,
Ms. Elton consulted with the AO’s legal counsel and two other persons, the
Assistant Director of the AO and the CMP Manager, to discuss the allegations and
decide on a response. Based on these consultations, Ms. Elton sent Mr. Lopez a
letter on August 8, 2006, telling him that he was being removed from the CMP
roster. In that letter, Ms. Elton also informed Mr. Lopez that she was considering
removing him from the general roster of ADR mediators. She posed several
specific questions to Mr. Lopez about his conduct and said that she would
consider his response before deciding whether to take the additional step of
removing him from the ADR roster.
Mr. Lopez responded to Ms. Elton’s letter with a letter and memorandum
on August 21, 2006. Mr. Lopez denied having committed any ethical violations.
2
Mediation is distinguished from arbitration and some other dispute
resolution alternatives specifically by the neutral role of the mediator, a role in
which making any kind of findings or rulings is inappropriate. The parties enter
into mediation with the understanding that the mediator will have this limited
role. We note that Mr. Lopez denied breaching any ethical rules, and we express
no opinion on the validity of the allegations against him.
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Ms. Elton notified an ad hoc committee of the Judicial Council about the
complaints against Mr. Lopez and her action in response. The Committee
appointed a three-person ethics panel to review the matter. Following the review,
the ethics panel set a hearing with Mr. Lopez, which was held on October 4, 2006.
The ethics panel issued findings of fact and a decision on November 29, 2006.
The ethics panel found that Mr. Lopez had violated rules adopted by the courts to
govern alternative dispute resolution.
After the ethics panel had issued its decision, Mr. Lopez made three
requests to be reinstated to the CMP roster, all in 2007. Ms. Elton denied the first
two requests, and the Management Committee of the Judicial Council reviewed
and denied the third request for reinstatement.
II
On appeal Mr. Lopez first argues that the district court erred in holding that
there was no implied contract between him and the AO. Mr. Lopez relies
primarily on Utah cases which hold that a public employee may have rights under
an implied contract which are in addition to the terms of public employment that
are generally set in Utah by state statute. See, e.g., Cabaness v. Thomas, 232 P.3d
486 (Utah 2010); and Canfield v. Layton City, 122 P.3d 622 (Utah 2005). We
agree with the Defendant AO, however, that there is no evidence in this case to
support the premise that Mr. Lopez was a public employee. There is considerable
evidence that Mr. Lopez was not an employee. For instance, the structure of the
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program provided for the mediators’ fees to be paid by the clients, not the AO,
although the AO subsidized the fees of some impecunious clients using available
federal funds. Plaintiff’s relationship with the AO was, at most, that of an
independent contractor. Thus, the cases on which Mr. Lopez relies are not
directly applicable in this context.
The general principles of implied contract outlined in the cases cited by Mr.
Lopez nevertheless have application outside the realm of employment law, a point
raised by Plaintiff Lopez in his reply brief. We ordinarily do not review issues
raised for the first time in a reply brief. Moreover, our review of the record
reveals that, as Defendants maintained at oral argument, Mr. Lopez argued in the
district court only that he had a contract of employment. See II R. at 431 (brief
opposing Defendants’ motion for summary judgment in which Plaintiff asserts
that “controls” by the CMP, the AO, and “the State” had the legal effect of taking
“the mediator out of the independent contractor role” and making him an
employee). The argument thus appears to have been forfeited. Even if not,
however, we conclude that the argument would be unavailing.
In Utah, an implied contract “results when there is a manifestation of
mutual assent, by words or actions or both, which reasonably are interpretable as
indicating an intention to make a bargain with certain terms or terms which
reasonably may be made certain.” Heideman v. Washington City, 155 P.3d 900,
908 (Utah App. 2007) (quoting Rapp v. Salt Lake City, 527 P.2d 651, 654 (Utah
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1974)). The existence of an implied contract is a question of fact, but “the court
retains the power to decide whether, as a matter of law, a reasonable jury could
find that an implied contract exists.” Sanderson v. First Sec. Leasing Co., 844
P.2d 303, 304 (Utah 1992).
In support of his contention that he had an implied contract with the AO as
a mediator, Plaintiff relies on several facts. In the Best Practices Manual, the AO
(the AO seems to concede that the acts of the CMP are fairly attributable to the
AO) asserted the mediation assignments would be made on a rotational schedule. 3
Mr. Lopez and all other members of the mediation roster agreed to be available to
conduct a mediation session within 15 days of each referral and to charge no more
than $75 per hour.
Quoting Heideman, the district court held as a mater of law that these
commitments were not sufficient to show “‘a manifestation of mutual assent, by
words or actions or both, which reasonably are interpretable as indicating an
intention to make a bargain with certain terms or terms which reasonably may be
made certain’ as required to create an implied contract.” We agree. The
provisions are simply too vague to be enforceable promises. In particular, the
3
Because of the requirement that mediations be held within fifteen days of a
request, and because the AO wished to use mediators with specifically relevant
experience when the circumstances included risks of violence or other special
factors, the AO’s evidence showed that a strict rotational policy was never in fact
implemented.
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discretion given to the AO to remove a mediator from the list “in response to
concerns or complaints” is so broad as to belie any notion that the AO was
making an enforceable promise to the mediators on the list. Note that “concerns
or complaints” do not have to be investigated and validated before a mediator is
removed from the list. Moreover, Mr. Lopez himself viewed the arrangement that
way. In a message to Ms. Elton in response to her having removed him from the
CMP roster, Mr. Lopez wrote: “Kathy, I understand and respect your right to
remove me from the Co-Parenting Mediation Roster.” II. R. 534. Although we
do not view this statement as an authoritative legal opinion on Mr. Lopez’s
relationship with the AO, it is compelling evidence that Mr. Lopez himself did
not perceive that he had a contractual right to be on the roster, and so is
compelling evidence that the parties had not expressed mutual assent to make an
enforceable bargain.
Moreover, because of the broad discretion vested in the AO to terminate the
arrangement, even if there were a contract we would be compelled to conclude
that the contract had not been breached. And that conclusion would find strong
support in Mr. Lopez’s contemporaneous statement, just quoted, that he
recognized that the AO had the right to remove him from the roster. In short, we
conclude that the district court correctly granted summary judgment to the
Defendants on Plaintiff’s breach of contract claim.
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III
The district court also granted summary judgment on Plaintiff Lopez’s
federal civil rights claim that he was deprived of a property interest without due
process of law. The district judge concluded that Mr. Lopez did not have a
property interest in remaining on the CMP mediation roster and therefore had
suffered no constitutionally cognizable deprivation. Both in the district court and
on appeal Mr. Lopez has conceded that Eleventh Amendment immunity bars this
claim against the AO, but he contends that the district court erred in holding that
he could not maintain the claim against Ms. Elton. 4
Mr. Lopez’s argument starts from the Supreme Court’s statement that “a
property interest in employment can, of course, be created by ordinance, or by an
implied contract.” Bishop v. Wood, 426 U.S. 341, 344 (1976). His primary
argument is based on his alleged contractual rights, and because we have decided
that there is no implied contract that argument necessarily fails. Mr. Lopez
alternatively argues that he had a property interest in his position as a mediator on
the CMP Roster “because Utah law has expressly created a special classification
of mediators who are the only mediators authorized to conduct mediations
regarding parent-time disputes.” Principal Brief at 29. Our court has recognized
that “[t]he existence of a property right in such a case turns on whether the
4
Mr. Lopez’s appeal does not include any challenge to the district court’s
grant of summary judgment to the Defendants on his equal protection claim.
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alleged claim of entitlement is supported or created by state law such as a state
statute, or regulatory scheme or decisional law.” Veile v. Martinson, 258 F.3d
1180, 1185 (10th Cir. 2001) (quoting Morley’s Auto Body, Inc. v. Hunter, 70 F.3d
1209, 1216-17 (11th Cir. 1995)). But we cannot agree with Mr. Lopez that Utah’s
administration of its CMP program suffices to support his claim of entitlement to
his position on the CMP roster.
As already discussed, the Best Practices Manual was a set of recommended
guidelines, not a set of rules on which a claim of entitlement could be based. And
we have dealt with rotational policies before, with results that guide our analysis
here. In Veile, the plaintiffs were a mortuary in Worland, Wyoming, and its
owner. Worland was a town where there apparently were only two mortuaries,
and the county coroner had established a policy to refer “coroner cases” (see 258
F.3d at 1183, n.1 for explanation of the term) between the two on a rotating basis.
Alleging that his mortuary had not been assigned cases under this policy as
expected, plaintiff Veile sued the coroner, inter alia. The rotation policy was not
required by statute, ordinance, administrative rule, regulation or case law. We
held that Veile had no property interest in referrals under the rotational policy
“because any expectations arising from the rotation policy are not grounded in
Wyoming law.” 258 F.3d at 1186. In contrast, we held that a rotational policy
for assignments to wrecker services by law enforcement – a policy that was
required by state law – was sufficient to create a property interest in referrals
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under that system. Abercrombie v. City of Catoosa, 896 F.2d 1228, 1231-32 (10th
Cir. 1990).
We are also guided by our decision in Koerpel v. Heckler, 797 F.2d 858
(10th Cir. 1986). That case had been brought by a physician who sought
injunctive relief to prevent the Department of Health and Human Services from
excluding him from eligibility for reimbursement under the Medicare program.
The plaintiff doctor contended that the Medicare reimbursement program for
dialysis patients created “reimbursement expectations” on the part of both patients
and treating personnel. We held that this was insufficient to establish that the
physician had a property right in reimbursements under Medicare, quoting the
Supreme Court’s fundamental pronouncement that to establish a property right, “a
person clearly must have more than an abstract need or desire for it. He must
have more than a unilateral expectation of it. He must, instead, have a legitimate
claim of entitlement to it.” Koerpel, 797 F.2d at 863-64 (quoting Board of
Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 576 (1972)). Although Mr. Lopez has not
expressly based his claim of entitlement on his expectation of remaining on the
CMP roster and receiving appointments to mediate, we conclude that his claim
has no more solid basis. Because of the discretion vested in the AO, he cannot
claim an entitlement and thus has no property interest. See also Dickeson v.
Quarberg, 844 F.2d 1435, 1437-39 (10th Cir. 1988).
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Conclusion
The judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.
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