A series of personal squabbles between a firefighter and his supervisor led to a $5 million-plus payout because of the severe due process violations that occurred during his firing. The defendant, the county fire protection district, tried to argue that the plaintiff was not entitled to damages because he failed to exhaust all his state law remedies. The agency claimed that public employees do not have fundamental rights of substantive due process. A California Court of Appeal disagreed, and the firefighter can now keep his large award for damages.

Plaintiff Timothy O’Hara had been working for the Liberty Rural County Fire Protection District (the District) in San Joaquin County, California, for 12 years when he was fired by Stanley Seifert, who had been the District’s fire chief for 44 years. The two got along well until 2012 when Seifert’s granddaughter asked O’Hara to help serve chili at her graduation party. Although the details of the disagreement are not provided, Seifert was obviously unhappy and told the plaintiff, “Just because you did a nice thing doesn’t mean you get a free pass around here,” and “‘Don’t get comfortable.” Sometime later, Seifert started telling O’Hara to look for another job.

In 2015 and 2016, Seifert stepped up his criticisms of O’Hara and began placing critical letters in his personnel file to which the plaintiff was not given an opportunity to respond. Seifert placed O’Hara on probation for 12 months. O’Hara objected but was not given a chance to “pursue an administrative appeal.” Seifert also froze O’Hara’s pay, reduced his opportunities for overtime pay, and refused to allow him to be a “strike team leader,” which would have also increased his salary. O’Hara’s probation was later increased by an additional six months, and again, he was denied the opportunity to appeal.

At the same time, an anonymous letter full of disparaging accusations against O’Hara was circulating throughout the County’s fire departments. In a heated conversation, O’Hara accused Seifert of writing the letter, which among other charges, said that he had been fired. The next time O’Hara reported for work, Seifert told him he could either “quit or be fired.” O’Hara said that he was not going to quit. Seifert then handed him a letter that informed him, “You no longer meet the expectations of (the District) and you are immediately released from duty.”

Fortunately for O’Hara, there were a number of local, state, and federal laws and Code sections that protected him from Seifert’s wrath. The Firefighters Procedural Bill of Rights (FPBOR), enacted in 2007 as Government Code Section 3250, gives “California firefighters the fairest, most extensive on-the-job protections enjoyed by public employees in the state,” according to the California Professional Firefighters website. This bill provides many protections, including the right to know if one is under investigation, the right to representation, the right to have questioning tape-recorded, and the right to “review and sign an adverse comment in any personnel-related file before it’s submitted.” None of these protections were given to O’Hara.

In addition, Title 42 of the United States Code section 1983 “provides an individual the right to sue state government employees acting “under color of state law” for civil rights violations.” It is meant to “enforce civil rights that already exist.” O’Hara cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1998 decision in County of Sacramento v. Lewis, which said that “substantive due process is violated by “arbitrary conduct shocking to the conscience.”

Persuaded by these protections, a jury in a court presided over by Judge Erin Castillo of San Joaquin County awarded O’Hara over $3 million in economic and non-economic damages, plus $1.3 million to “offset the adverse tax consequences of a lump sum award of economic damages in owed taxes,” along with $25,000 for violating the FPBOR and $600,000 in attorney’s fees. The District asked for a judgment notwithstanding the verdict (JNOV), and when it was denied, appealed. On December 19, a unanimous 3-0 panel of California’s Third Appellate District affirmed the trial court’s awards in an unpublished opinion by Justice Jonathan K. Renner.

The appellate court’s opinion focused solely on damages since neither party challenged the jury’s factual findings. To support his claims of economic loss, O’Hara gave details about his dismal job prospects after he was fired. He said, “My career has been destroyed. Nobody is going to take me.” He also provided information about the physical and mental tolls caused by his dismissal. At trial, Seifert acknowledged that he “lacked authority to place O’Hara on probation.” A certified public accountant testified that he believed O’Hara’s economic losses totaled $2,082,494. A witness for the District said that O’Hara had not “undertaken a reasonable job search,” so his actual damages were only $78,827.

Renner began his opinion by explaining that the standard of review of a JNOV asks “whether any substantial evidence—contradicted or uncontradicted—supports the jury’s conclusion” and whether the denial was “of such a character and weight as to leave no room for a judicial determination that it was insufficient to support a finding.” He said that “Because (the District) (did) not address the sufficiency of the evidence supporting a substantive due process claim, we have no occasion to do so either.” The appellate court rejected defendant’s argument that O’Hara failed to exhaust all his state law remedies.

Instead of focusing on whether he had a due process right to continued employment, O’Hara chose to rely on the “shocks the conscience” strand for what constitutes substantive due process. Renner cited Galland v. City of Clovis, a California Supreme Court case that defined what “shocks the conscience” means. It said that to prevail, “a plaintiff must at least show that state officials are guilty of grave unfairness in the discharge of their legal responsibilities.” Under this definition, the opinion concluded that the “motions for judgment notwithstanding the verdict were properly denied.”

Finally, because evidence established that O’Hara was an excellent firefighter who suffered both economic and noneconomic distress because of Siefert’s behavior, the appellate court concluded that there was no abuse of discretion in the trial court’s damage award. The entire judgment was affirmed.