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Kelly v. City of New Haven9/27/2005
against all of the defendants, he alleged that the methodology used by the defendants violates the rule of three under the charter, and he requested declaratory relief and a permanent injunction. In the remaining counts, Beckwith sought damages from the individual defendants for alleged violations of: (1) the charter provision prohibiting race-based discrimination; and (2) his federal constitutional right to due process and equal protection.
In September, 2003, the trial court, Pittman, J., conducted a consolidated hearing on the three cases solely on the claims seeking a declaratory judgment that the defendants' methodology violates the charter and requesting a permanent injunction against the continued use of that methodology. During a four day hearing, the court heard testimony from each side as to the legitimacy of using rounded scores and the effect of using score groups for examination purposes. The trial court refused to consider evidence, however, relating to whether the city, and Wearing in particular, had adopted the methodology to effectuate race discrimination, cronyism or nepotism in light of the limited scope of the issue before it.
The trial court concluded that the defendants' methodology was unlawful. Specifically, the court found that "the practice of the ity of (1) rounding off scores so that tie scores are then created, (2) grouping candidates with tie scores into one group as though they all had actually received the identical score on the exam, and (3) promoting from among any of those candidates whose scores fall into the top three score groups, violates the city charter and the civil service rules." In so holding, the trial court did "not credit the evidence of the ity that, in the administration of competitive examinations for civil service purposes, rounding of multiple decimal point scores to the nearest whole number is justified as either an administrative convenience or as a valid way to eliminate insignificant discrepancies among exam candidates." Although the court declined to make any findings of fact regarding whether the city's motivation was cronyism, nepotism or racism, the court did find that the city's purpose for adopting rounding as a methodology was to create tie scores artificially so as to increase its discretion in selecting candidates for promotion. In reaching its conclusion, the court adopted the analysis of two other trial courts that had found that the city's methodology violated its charter, one of which had resulted in a temporary injunction in the Kelly case. See Kelly v. New Haven, Superior Court, judicial district of New Haven, Docket No. CV 00 0444614 (June 11, 2002) (temporarily enjoining promotions based on city's methodology); Bombalicki v. Pastore, Superior Court, judicial district of New Haven, Docket No. CV378772 (February 28, 2001) (concluding that, although city's argument as to construction of charter "has some linguistic plausibility," its methodology nonetheless is improper because use of score groups may "lead to results that are absurd by any description"), aff'd on other grounds, 71 Conn. App. 835, 804 A.2d 856 (2002).
The trial court held that, in order to construe the charter in a manner that would not thwart its intended purpose or lead to absurd results, the pertinent language could not be parsed in such a way as to expand the discretion of the promoting authority so that he or she might chose "from among upward of forty or more candidates for each opening." The court rejected the defendants' argument that the 1993 revision to the charter, authorizing promotion of "those applicants with the three highest scores," allows for far greater discretion than the civil service rule authorizing promotion of "those applic
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