St. Paul Police Federation, et al., Appellants, vs. City of St. Paul, et al., Respondents.
Annotate this CaseThis opinion will be unpublished and
may not be cited except as provided by
Minn. Stat. § 480 A. 08, subd. 3 (2002).
STATE OF MINNESOTA
IN COURT OF APPEALS
A03-2010
St. Paul Police Federation, et
al.,
Appellants,
vs.
City of St. Paul, et al.,
Respondents.
Filed June 22, 2004
Affirmed; motion granted
Huspeni, Judge*
Ramsey County District Court
File No. C4-02-006209
Mark W. Gehan, Christopher Wachtler, Collins, Buckley, Sauntry & Haugh, P.L.L.P., W1100 First National Bank Building, 332 Minnesota Street, St. Paul, MN 55101 (for appellants)
Manuel J. Cervantes, St. Paul City Attorney, Portia Michelle Hampton, Assistant City Attorney, 550 City Hall and Court House, 15 West Kellogg Boulevard, St. Paul, MN 55102 (for respondents)
Considered and decided by Schumacher, Presiding Judge; Kalitowski, Judge; and Huspeni, Judge.
U N P U B L I S H E D O P I N I O N
HUSPENI, Judge
Appellants, in challenging the district court's determination that they entered into an enforceable settlement agreement with respondents, argue that a term of the agreement is not sufficiently definite to render the agreement enforceable. Respondents move to strike portions of appellants' appendix. Because the agreement contains no ambiguity and is sufficiently definite to render it enforceable, we affirm the district court's order; because the challenged portions of appellants' appendix were not part of the record before the district court, we grant respondent's motion to strike.
FACTSIn 2000, appellant St. Paul Police Federation entered into arbitration proceedings with the City of St. Paul to dispute Officer Gary Minnie's 30-day employment suspension for improper driving and insubordination. Concluding that Minnie was not insubordinate, the arbitrator reduced Minnie's suspension to one day and ordered that "discipline for insubordination shall be removed from [Minnie's] record[.]"
In 2002, appellants St. Paul Police Federation, Mark Wiegel, and Gary Minnie (collectively "the union") brought an action in district court against respondents City of St. Paul, St. Paul Police Department, and William Finney as Chief of the St. Paul Police Department (collectively "the employer"), alleging that the employer engaged in unfair labor practices in violation of the Public Employees Labor Relations Act. The parties mediated this issue and ultimately entered into settlement negotiations. In a letter to the employer dated June 5, 2003, the union purported to "memorializ[e] the terms of our settlement." The letter delineated the following terms:
1. [Employer] will issue a check for $7500.00 to the St. Paul Police Federation.
2. All information contained in Gary Minnie's 1999, 2000, and 2002 evaluations, and all other information in his personnel file, including but not limited to, information contained in the disciplinary letter he received following the arbitrator's decision, which is inconsistent with the arbitrator's written decision, will be removed.
3. As to Minnie's 2001 evaluation, it cannot be found. We agree that if it turns up at a later time it will not be placed in his file. It will never appear there.
The letter also stated that "if I have omitted something we discussed, please give me a call. I will put together a proposal regarding Minnie's file to send to you for review."
Counsel for the union contacted counsel for the employer in July 2003 to advise them that their firm was no longer representing the union and that the union was no longer willing to proceed with the agreement. A week later, counsel for the union advised counsel for the employer that "efforts were underway to mend fences" with the union. In August 2003, the union sent a letter to the employer stating that the union was "no longer willing to settle this matter under the terms we discussed previously . . . [s]pecifically if Gary Minnie is not allowed to resume street duty without being required to take a fitness for duty test, we cannot agree to release any claims now pending." The record before us for review is silent regarding any mention prior to August 2003 of the issue of a fitness-for-duty test. In September 2003, the employer moved to enforce the agreement outlined in the June 5 letter.
At the hearing on the motion to enforce, the union argued that the settlement was tentative and not binding because a term of the agreement was not sufficiently definite and the settlement agreement was contingent on the parties agreeing which information would be removed from Minnie's personnel file. Specifically, the union contended that the term providing for removal of all information inconsistent with the arbitrator's decision from Minnie's personnel file was ambiguous, and therefore the agreement was unenforceable. The district court granted the employer's motion to enforce the agreement. It concluded that the provision in question was sufficiently definite to permit enforcement and that the June 5 letter did not provide that the agreement was contingent on the parties' agreement as to which information would be removed from Minnie's personnel file. The union appeals.
D E C I S I O NI.
* Retired judge of the Minnesota Court of Appeals, serving by appointment pursuant to Minn. Const. art. VI, § 10.
[1] In reviewing the challenged documents, as we must, to decide the motion to strike, we note that the documents (with the exception of a letter written by the union's attorney after jurisdiction of the district court was lost due to appeal), all appear to be from Minnie's personnel file. As noted in this opinion, there is no claim of impasse regarding any of those documents; hence, those documents would be irrelevant to our consideration of any issue on appeal.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.