THORNBERRY, Circuit Judge:
This interlocutory appeal follows the grant below of a preliminary injunction requiring appellant, Texas A&M University, to reinstate appellee, Dr. Eugene Van Arsdel, to his former position as a tenured associate professor. We find that the district court improperly granted the preliminary injunction. We further find that, as a matter of law, the district court erred in its conclusion that appellee resigned under duress.
On June 1, 1977, appellee learned from his department head, Dr. Howard Joham, that a female employee had lodged sexual harassment charges against him. During the course of their meeting, Dr. Joham related to appellee the nature of the charges, the name of the complaining employee, and the likelihood that the University would bring dismissal proceedings unless he resigned. On June 3, 1977, appellee met again with Dr. Joham and submitted a handwritten letter of. resignation. At Dr. Joham’s request, appellee returned the following Monday and signed a typed copy of his resignation. On February 4, 1978, some eight months after submitting the resignation, but some six months before its effective date, appellee changed his mind about the wisdom of resigning. When the University refused to accede to a rescission of the resignation, appellee brought suit, claiming that he resigned under duress.
On October 18, 1978, the district court issued a preliminary injunction requiring the University to reinstate appellee, with back pay, until it complied with its procedures for dismissal. In so ordering, the court found that appellee resigned under duress and thus would prevail at trial on the merits.
I. The Merits
In Stewart v. Bailey, 556 F.2d 281 (5th Cir. 1977), we decided that when an employee knowingly and voluntarily resigns, he waives his right to whatever procedural safeguards his dismissal would have triggered. Id. at 285-86. The district court concluded that the resignation in this instance was not voluntarily submitted because appellee resigned under duress. We disagree with the district court’s conclusion that duress is present whenever a party is confronted with a dilemma.
It is unquestioned that the University had the right to commence dismissal proceedings against appellee for moral turpitude. Dr. Joham’s “threat” consisted merely of delineating the options available to appellee and to the University. After pondering the alternatives, appellee decided to resign, choosing to obviate the embarrassment that a public, detailed dismissal proceeding would bring. Since appellee made a reasoned choice between two validly imposed alternatives, duress was absent as a matter of law. Molinar v. Western Electric Co., 525 F.2d 521 (1st Cir. 1975), cert. denied, 424 U.S. 978, 96 S.Ct. 1485, 47 L.Ed.2d 748 (1976); Cosby v. United States, 417 F.2d 1345, 189 Ct.Cl. 528 (1969); Autera v. United States, 389 F.2d 815, 182 Ct.Cl. 495 (1968); Willborn v. Deans, 240 S.W.2d 791 (Tex.Civ.App.-Austin, 1951, writ ref’d, n.r. e.).
II. The Preliminary Injunction
A preliminary injunction is an extraordinary remedy which the district court should grant only when necessary to protect the plaintiff from irreparable injury and to preserve the court’s power to render a meaningful decision on the merits after trial. Canal Authority of the State of Florida v. Calloway, 489 F.2d 567 (5th Cir. 1974). The district court in this instance, however, made no finding that the plaintiff would suffer irreparable injury if required to wait until a determination after trial that he deserved reinstatement. Since reinstatement after trial, coupled with back pay, would suffice to redress appellee’s alleged wrong, we find that the preliminary injunction must be vacated.
VACATED, REVERSED, and REMANDED.
What follows is an opinion from a United States Court of Appeals.
Intervenors who participated as parties at the courts of appeals should be counted as either appellants or respondents when it can be determined whose position they supported. For example, if there were two plaintiffs who lost in district court, appealed, and were joined by four intervenors who also asked the court of appeals to reverse the district court, the number of appellants should be coded as six.
In some cases there is some confusion over who should be listed as the appellant and who as the respondent. This confusion is primarily the result of the presence of multiple docket numbers consolidated into a single appeal that is disposed of by a single opinion. Most frequently, this occurs when there are cross appeals and/or when one litigant sued (or was sued by) multiple litigants that were originally filed in district court as separate actions. The coding rule followed in such cases should be to go strictly by the designation provided in the title of the case. The first person listed in the title as the appellant should be coded as the appellant even if they subsequently appeared in a second docket number as the respondent and regardless of who was characterized as the appellant in the opinion.
To clarify the coding conventions, consider the following hypothetical case in which the US Justice Department sues a labor union to strike down a racially discriminatory seniority system and the corporation (siding with the position of its union) simultaneously sues the government to get an injunction to block enforcement of the relevant civil rights law. From a district court decision that consolidated the two suits and declared the seniority system illegal but refused to impose financial penalties on the union, the corporation appeals and the government and union file cross appeals from the decision in the suit brought by the government. Assume the case was listed in the Federal Reporter as follows:
United States of America,
Plaintiff, Appellant
v
International Brotherhood of Widget Workers,AFL-CIO
Defendant, Appellee.
International Brotherhood of Widget Workers,AFL-CIO
Defendants, Cross-appellants
v
United States of America.
Widgets, Inc. & Susan Kuersten Sheehan, President & Chairman
of the Board
Plaintiff, Appellants,
v
United States of America,
Defendant, Appellee.
This case should be coded as follows:Appellant = United States, Respondents = International Brotherhood of Widget Workers Widgets, Inc., Total number of appellants = 1, Number of appellants that fall into the category "the federal government, its agencies, and officials" = 1, Total number of respondents = 3, Number of respondents that fall into the category "private business and its executives" = 2, Number of respondents that fall into the category "groups and associations" = 1.
Your task is to identify the state of the first listed state or local government agency that is an appellant.