Court rules in favor of sheriff in legal battle with former secretary

By Jessica Stith
of The Daily Times Staff

An ongoing saga between Blount County Sheriff James Berrong and his former secretary came to a legal end on Thursday, with the U.S. Court of Appeals ruling in favor of an earlier district court decision.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit affirmed a U.S. District Court decision of summary judgement in favor of Sheriff James Berrong and Blount County.
Berrong’s former secretary, Jo Dean Nuchols and her husband, David Nuchols, had appealed the earlier decision, stating that Berrong had violated her 14th Amendment rights “when he threatened to set fire to her dog and burn her house down, killing her family in process,” according to the appeal opinion written by District Judge Boyce F. Martin Jr.

Martin wrote that the U.S. District Court found that Nuchols had not stated a constitutional violation and that Berrong was therefore “entitled to qualified immunity.” The court of appeals affirmed the grant of summary judgment in favor of Berrong and Blount County in a case that the court of appeals called “reminiscent of a soap opera.”

Berrong said on Saturday that the lawsuit, filed in May 2003, was “politically motivated.”

“We live in a society of civil ligation where anybody can sue anybody for anything, without any merits,” Berrong said.

He said that within civil lawsuits, false statements are often made and it is a “one-sided story.” He said, “ultimately the court ruled in our favor, as we knew they would.”

The court of appeals opinion states that Jo Dean Nuchols’ claims arose during an alleged affair between Berrong and a sheriff’s office employee. Nuchols’ claimed that Berrong’s former wife was suspicious of an affair and asked Nuchols to “confirm her suspicions.”

She claimed that Berrong found out about the conversation and fired her. She accused Berrong of threatening to burn her house down — killing her family in the process and threatening to set fire to her dog, according to court documents.
Nuchols claimed Berrong then repeated his threat adding, “I won’t hire it done, I will do it myself! Do you understand me?” She said she ended up in the hospital for treatment of mental and emotional distress after the threat, and still has not recovered.

She and her husband were originally asking for $2.5 million in damages.
Berrong filed a motion for summary judgment in the case, arguing his conduct “did not shock the conscience in a constitution sense and that he was entitled to qualified immunity.”

The district court granted the motion in August 2006 and agreed “Berrong’s threats did not rise to a constitutional violation because the threats did not ‘shock the conscience,’ as is required for a plaintiff to succeed on a substantive due process claim.” Nuchols appealed the summary judgement.

Nuchols submitted additional evidence including a newspaper article, depositions from herself and her husband, and an affidavit stating that “Berrong was aware of Nuchols’ fear of fire stemming from a house fire Nuchols survived several years earlier.”

Martin wrote that the court of appeals found that “Berrong’s act of threatening Nuchols, while shocking in the general sense, does not shock the conscience in a constitutional sense; the allegations of the single event do not reach the level of a constitutional rights violation.”

He wrote that a “one-time, exaggerated threat of harm made in a moment of anger does not rise to the level of a constitutional violation, even if Berrong was aware of Nuchols’ fear of fire.” Because Nuchols failed to establish a constitutional violation, he said she “cannot establish liability against Berrong.”