Duvall v. Texas Department of Human Services

William Duvall sued the Texas Department of Human Services (“Department”) pursuant to the Whistleblower Act (“Act”) and appeals a summary judgment the trial court granted in favor of the Department. See Tex. Gov’t Code Ann. �� 554.001-.010 (West 1994 & Supp. 2002). We will affirm the judgment.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

Duvall joined the Department in 1988 as a systems analyst in the Management Information Systems division (“MIS”). In 1994, Duvall received the first in a series of subpar performance evaluations that ended with his termination in 1998. *fn1 During this period, he had varying job assignments, working under several different supervisors within the Department. At the time his whistleblower claim arose, Duvall was working as a cooperative performance standards compliance analyst. In this position, Duvall’s primary task was to compile data for the Customer Service Response Time Report, also referred to as the 95th Percentile Report. *fn2 The parties dispute the significance of the report. The Department claims the report was simply an internal measurement tool developed by MIS to identify trends and improve the response time of requests for information that go through the computer network. According to the Department, the reports provide MIS with an estimate of how long it takes for certain data retrieval transactions to occur, an example being a request for information concerning welfare benefits. Duvall claims that the report was not only for internal use, but was also sent to outside agencies.