Cromley v. Board Of Education Of Lockport Township High School Distric

17 F.3d 1059 (1994)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

P has been a high school reading instructor at D. Two students complained to her of sexual misconduct by a male teacher in her department. Interviews with the students and with the teacher established that the allegations were basically true. A written summary of a reprimand was placed in the District office file, but no report was included in the teacher's personnel file or sent to the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS). P reported the incident to DCFS. P also gave the teacher a harsh written evaluation, in which she noted the students' allegations. P fell out of favor with the authorities to be, and P filed suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The complaint alleged that Ds had retaliated against her because she had complained to DCFS about the sexual misconduct. After two years of pretrial litigation, P's attorney, Larry Weiner, accepted a partnership in the law firm of Scariano, which was representing Ds. The district court granted Weiner's oral motion to withdraw as P's attorney. P moved for the disqualification of the Scariano firm from representation of Ds. The district court denied the motion on the ground that the 'barriers erected between the attorney and his new law firm with respect to this case are sufficient to rebut the presumption of shared confidences.' The district court granted Ds' motion for summary judgment. The parties did not dispute that P's call to DCFS was protected speech. The court held that P's written annual evaluation of the offending teacher several weeks later was private communication that was not protected speech. It held that P's campaign of complaints was a persistent re-raising of a closed issue rather than protected speech pertaining to matters of public concern. It held that P's supervisors could take into account the impact of that harsh evaluation on continuing relationships in the school when deciding whether to allow her to continue in a supervisory capacity. P appealed.