Whitfield v. City of New York

96 F.4th 504

John David WHITFIELD, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CITY OF NEW YORK, officially, Joseph Cardieri, individually, Kathleen Skowyra, individually, Jennifer Fellman, individually, Phoebe Rosen, individually, David A. Hansell, individually, Defendants-Appellees.

Docket No. 22-412

August Term, 2022

United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit

Submitted: December 9, 2022

Decided: March 15, 2024

John D. Whitfield, pro se, Brooklyn, NY, Plaintiff-Appellant.

D. Alan Rosinus, Jr., MacKenzie Fillow, of counsel, for Sylvia O. Hinds-Radix, Corporation Counsel of the City of New York, New York, NY, for Defendants-Appellees.

Before: Carney and Sullivan, Circuit Judges, and Liman, District Judge.^*

Judge Sullivan concurs in part and dissents in part in a separate opinion.

Carney, Circuit Judge:

Article 78 of the state's Civil Practice Law and Rules ("CPLR") authorizes New York state courts to conduct special proceedings in which a petitioner may obtain speedy review of state administrative action. Reflecting the proceeding's roots in the earlier petitions for writs of mandamus, prohibition, and certiorari to review, see CPLR 7801, the questions that may be raised in such a proceeding are limited, see CPLR 7803. If the proceeding "was brought to review [an administrative] determination," then the court's judgment "may annul or confirm the determination in whole or in part, or modify it, and may direct or prohibit specified action" by the respondent agency or officer. CPLR 7806. As to restitution and damages, however, an Article 78 court may award only damages that are "incidental to the primary relief sought by the petitioner" and that would be otherwise recoverable in a separation action or proceeding against the same agency or officer "in its or his official capacity." CPLR 7806.

This appeal requires us to consider whether a state court judgment in a proceeding initiated by a pro se litigant's Article 78 petition precludes his subsequent action for damages on the same set of facts. More specifically, we ask whether the state court here adjudicated an Article 78 petition that included claims for defamation and for civil rights-related damages as a "pure" Article 78 proceeding (in which the court could not award such damages) or as a "hybrid" proceeding (in which it could). If a damages award was not available, then res judicata does not bar the subsequent damages claims because the state proceeding did not make available the "full measure of relief" that could be awarded in the latter action. Colon v. Coughlin, 58 F.3d 865, 870 n.3 (2d Cir. 1995), abrogated on other grounds by Tangreti v. Bachmann, 983 F.3d 609 (2d Cir. 2020).

Plaintiff-Appellant John D. Whitfield appeals from a judgment entered by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Furman, J.) dismissing his amended complaint on res judicata grounds. Whitfield was convicted of second-degree murder and, consistently maintaining his innocence, he served a lengthy sentence in the New York state prisons. After his release in 2012, Whitfield worked several jobs teaching life skills to young people. In 2018, he applied for a job with the New York City Administration for Children's Services ("ACS") as a Youth Development Specialist ("YDS"). He was not hired for the position. In this suit, he alleges that ACS wrongfully declined to hire him because of both his criminal record and his views about the criminal justice system, which he had expressed publicly in The Whitfield Files, a memoir about his claims of innocence and the state criminal proceedings leading to his conviction.

After his job application was turned down, Whitfield petitioned for relief in the New York State Supreme Court, New York County, alleging that ACS's decision not to hire him was arbitrary and capricious, discriminatory, and violative of his First Amendment rights. In his petition, which he designated as brought under Article 78 of the CPLR, Whitfield sought back pay and an order directing ACS to hire him as a YDS, as well as compensatory damages for alleged constitutional violations, defamation, and emotional pain and suffering. In August 2020, the state court (Kelley, J.) denied Whitfield's petition and dismissed the proceeding.

While the state court proceeding was pending, Whitfield brought this action. Then, in October 2020, after the state court's dismissal in August, Whitfield filed his amended federal court complaint (the operative complaint here), based on the same facts. In that complaint, he sues the City of New York (the "City") and five ACS employees: Joseph Cardieri, Kathleen Skowyra, Jennifer Fellman, Phoebe Rosen, and David A. Hansell (together with the City, "Defendants"), for "selective enforcement, First Amendment retaliation, and municipal liability" under section 1983, and, under state law, for discrimination. Whitfield v. City of N.Y., No. 20-cv-4674, 2021 WL 1700592, at *1 (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 29, 2021) ("Whitfield (S.D.N.Y.)").

In April 2021, the district court dismissed the complaint on res judicata grounds. The district court concluded that the state court treated Whitfield's petition as initiating a hybrid Article 78 proceeding; Whitfield therefore (in the district court's view) could have pursued and received relief in state court on his damages claims and all causes of action arising from ACS's refusal to hire him; and the state court judgment consequently barred Whitfield's entire federal suit. After unsuccessfully seeking reconsideration and sanctions against defense counsel for pursuing the res judicata defense, Whitfield brought this appeal.

On de novo review, we must disagree with the able district court judge. That is, we are persuaded that the state court did not adjudicate Whitfield's Article 78 petition as a hybrid proceeding; rather, the state court left the Article 78 proceeding initiated by Whitfield's petition unconverted, and it limited itself to Article 78 review and remedies. It is true that, in his Article 78 petition, Whitfield sought an award of damages that opened the door to a hybrid conversion by the court. But the state court itself took no affirmative step to indicate that it exercised its discretion to treat the proceeding as anything other than one purely under Article 78; in fact, it failed to act on Whitfield's explicit request to convert the proceeding, and in its decision the court never referred to any conversion or identified the proceeding as "hybrid." Guided further by New York's presumption against applying res judicata, we conclude that the state court is best understood to have adjudicated Whitfield's petition constrained by the substantive and remedial limitations imposed by Article 78. Whitfield therefore was not afforded a full and fair chance to litigate the damages claims he asserts here. Accordingly, we vacate the district court's judgment insofar as it dismissed Whitfield's complaint on res judicata grounds.

As an ancillary matter, we further conclude that the district court acted well within its discretion in denying Whitfield's sanctions motion against defense counsel. And finally, because no reasonable observer could question the district court's impartiality in this case, we reject Whitfield's request that on remand the case be assigned to a different district judge.

VACATED IN PART, AFFIRMED IN PART, AND REMANDED.

BACKGROUND

I. Factual Background

The following facts are drawn from the allegations in Whitfield's amended complaint, which we accept as true for purposes of reviewing the district court's dismissal. TechnoMarine SA v. Giftports, Inc., 758 F.3d 493, 498 (2d Cir. 2014).

Whitfield was convicted of murder in the second degree and served a lengthy sentence before he was released in November 2012.¹ Throughout, he has maintained his innocence.

In 2003, while incarcerated, he published a memoir entitled The Whitfield Files, which he based on his claims of innocence and the related criminal proceedings. The work received an honorable mention in a competition sponsored by PEN America. From 2008 to 2012, while he was confined at Woodbourne Correctional Facility, Whitfield served as a Youth Assistant Program facilitator and coordinator.

In the years following his release in 2012, he was hired as a youth counselor by a nonprofit organization, and he worked with hundreds of students, including gang-affiliated and gang-adjacent students, in several junior high and high schools across New York City, teaching the students "life skills," including techniques for dealing with peer pressure and pressure to join gangs. First Amended Complaint ¶ 22. He also worked in community centers in Brooklyn and the Bronx, and from 2016 to 2018, he worked in Rikers Island's youth facilities, also teaching life skills to detained young people from fifteen to nineteen years of age.

In the spring of 2018, six years after his release, Whitfield applied to ACS for a position as a YDS. After passing a screening process and an interview, in June 2018 he was informed that he had been "selected" as a YDS. Id. ¶¶ 25-26. He received and completed employment documents, attended a related medical appointment, passed drug and alcohol tests, and completed an employment verification process. In July 2018, ACS informed Whitfield that—with the possible exception of concerns about his criminal history—he had been deemed fit to work as a YDS. Before he could begin work, however, he would need approval from three entities: the New York State Justice Center for the Protection of People with Special Needs (the "Justice Center"), the New York City Department of Citywide Administrative Services ("DCAS"), and ACS. The Justice Center and DCAS then approved Whitfield to work as a YDS; ACS, however, did not give its approval, and ultimately he was not hired.

The amended complaint suggests that Whitfield received no formal notification of ACS's decision until a year later, in June 2019, when Defendants answered a complaint filed by Whitfield...