Graham v. Three or More Members of the Six Member Army Reserve General Officer Selection Board of 30 November 1979

556 F. Supp. 669, 1983 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 19440
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. Texas
DecidedFebruary 8, 1983
DocketCiv. A. No. H-82-0063
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 556 F. Supp. 669 (Graham v. Three or More Members of the Six Member Army Reserve General Officer Selection Board of 30 November 1979) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Graham v. Three or More Members of the Six Member Army Reserve General Officer Selection Board of 30 November 1979, 556 F. Supp. 669, 1983 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 19440 (S.D. Tex. 1983).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER:

STERLING, District Judge.

Pending before the Court are Plaintiffs and Defendants’ counter-motions for summary judgment. This is a suit by a retired Colonel of the Army Reserve wherein he alleges that he was improperly denied promotion to the rank of brigadier general.

In November, 1979, Plaintiff was considered for promotion by the Reserve General Officer Board of the Army (Board), but was not selected. One month later he was transferred to the Retired Reserve since the Secretary of the Army acting on the Board’s recommendation “had refused [Plaintiff’s] appointment to the next higher p-ade.” See 10 U.S.C. § 3851(b). Following this Court’s Order of January 12, 1981, in Civil Action No. H-80-1321, Plaintiff exhausted his administrative remedies by applying for relief without success to the Army Board for Correction of Military Records.

After the Correction Board’s decision, Plaintiff has essentially refiled his earlier suit. He claims that the Army’s actions in this matter have been arbitrary and capricious, and have deprived him of property and liberty without due process of law in violation of the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution.

At the outset it is worthwhile to »note that although Plaintiff is represented pro se, public records indicate that he is a member of the State Bar of Texas (Texas Bar No. 08284000). Accordingly, his plead[672]*672ings and arguments are entitled to only the same treatment and deference given to the work of all lawyers who are admitted to the bar.

As a second preliminary matter the Court finds that Plaintiff’s requests for admission filed on November 24, 1980, in Civil Action No. H-80-1321 are not deemed admitted by operation of Rule 36, Fed.R.Civ.P. Defendants timely filed on November 26, 1980, a motion to stay the application of Rule 36. It would be extremely inequitable and disruptive of judicial proceedings to permit the Rule to operate during the pendency of a motion to stay that very operation. The Court holds that the requests could hot be deemed admitted before the motion to stay was decided by the Court’s Order of January 12, 1981. After that date the case was dismissed and the Rule could not apply in a cause which was no longer before the District Court. If Plaintiff disagreed with the disposition of the motion and case at that time he should have promptly appealed.

As a second ground of decision the Court holds that all of Plaintiff’s various claims, discussed infra, including but not limited to the alleged failure to find specific promotional deficiencies of the Plaintiff does not involve “conduct ... [by the Defendants which] violate[s] clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.” Harlow v. Fitzgerald, - U.S. -, -, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 2738, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982). Therefore, the Court finds the individual Defendants are immune from personal liability and should not be “subject ... to the costs of trial or to the burdens of broad-reaching discovery.” Id. Dismissal before discovery was therefore appropriate.

Returning to the merits of the fifth amendment claim, the Court notes that Plaintiff must initially establish that he has a property interest in that which was allegedly deprived by the government. The record indicates, and Plaintiff does not contest in this action that by the fall of 1979, he had completed 30 years and 30 days total commissioned service in the Army and five years service in the grade of colonel. Accordingly, under 10 U.S.C. § 3851(a), Plaintiff had “absolutely no possible claim of entitlement to [continued] re-employment,” Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 578, 92 S.Ct. 2701, 2709, 33 L.Ed.2d 548 (1972), after December, 1979, unless he was promoted to a higher grade. It is uneontroverted that the existing “rules or understandings” in the Army are that field-grade officers can be promoted only through selection by a promotion board. Plaintiff was not selected by such a board, and that fact adversely determines his property interest claim. See Woodard v. Marsh, 658 F.2d 989, 998 (5th Cir.1981), cert. denied, 455 U.S. 1022, 102 S.Ct. 1721, 72 L.Ed.2d 141 (1982), (holding that an Army Reserve commissioned officer “has no reasonable expectation of continued employment and thus no property interest protected by the due process clause.” Citing Sims v. Fox, 505 F.2d 857 (5th Cir.1974) (en banc), cert. denied, 421 U.S. 1011, 95 S.Ct. 2415, 44 L.Ed.2d 678 (1975)).

Plaintiff seeks to prevent the application of this conclusion of law by claiming that the Defendants did not follow applicable Army Regulations, thus depriving him of either a property interest or a promotion decision free of arbitrary and capricious reasoning. Plaintiff’s first claim is that no notice of his receiving a waiver of required command experience for assignment to a brigadier general’s position was included in his personnel file before the file was reviewed by the Board which considered him for promotion. Two years experience in the command of troops at battalion or higher level is a requirement for promotion to brigadier general or for assignment to a brigadier’s position. Army Regulation (AR) 135-156 ¶¶ 3-lc, 3-4e (1974). This requirement can be waived by the Secretary of the Army. Id. In August, 1979, Plaintiff was assigned to a brigadier general position. His lack of command experience was duly waived by the Secretary’s designated representative before the date of assignment. It is agreed by the parties that no record of this waiver was placed in the file that went before the Board.

[673]*673Although Plaintiff claims that this omission violated the terms of “Paragraph 3-lc and Paragraph 3-4e of AR 135-156,” he does not point to any language in the Regulation which supports his summary conclusion. As a matter of fact there is no such language. Neither AR 135-156 nor any other regulation or statute identified by the Plaintiff requires the Army to include such waivers in promotion files. Upon further examination it is clear that Plaintiffs claim is derived from the supposition in his complaint that “[i]t may be reasonable to conclude that the Board may have not recommended Plaintiff for promotion based on this lack of evidence in the file.” Original Complaint at 6. In other words, because Plaintiff unilaterally finds his proposed procedure more logical or desirable than the Army’s procedure he claims the government has violated the Regulation. He cannot point to regulatory language or other rules to support his interest, and he does not even claim that he understood that the Army would place a notice of the waiver in his file. (He cannot make the latter claim because he reviewed his file before it was submitted to the Board and made no objection to the absence of the waiver). In short, Plaintiff’s claimed property interest in the waiver is “an abstract .. . desire .. . [amounting to] a unilateral expectation . .. [not based on] existing rules or understandings that stem from an independent source....” Board of Regents v. Roth, supra, 408 U.S. at 577, 92 S.Ct. at 2709.

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Bluebook (online)
556 F. Supp. 669, 1983 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 19440, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/graham-v-three-or-more-members-of-the-six-member-army-reserve-general-txsd-1983.