Jones v. Reynolds

• Citation: 438 F.3d 685
• Decision Date: 27 February 2006
• Docket Number: No. 04-2320.,04-2320.
• Parties: Dorothy JONES, as personal representative of the estate of Denise Michelle Jones, deceased, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Aaron REYNOLDS; Mustapha M. Atat; City of Lincoln Park; William Kish, III; Joseph Lavis; Douglas Muncey; Mohamed Nasser, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (6th Circuit)

438 F.3d 685

Dorothy JONES, as personal representative of the estate of Denise Michelle Jones, deceased, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Aaron REYNOLDS; Mustapha M. Atat; City of Lincoln Park; William Kish, III; Joseph Lavis; Douglas Muncey; Mohamed Nasser, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 04-2320.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued: November 2, 2005.

Decided and Filed: February 27, 2006.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

ARGUED:

Joseph Dedvukaj, Southfield, Michigan, for Appellant. Michelle A. Thomas, Thomas, DeGrood & Witenoff, Southfield, Michigan, Rosalind Rochkind, Garan Lucow Miller, Detroit, Michigan, for Appellees.

ON BRIEF:

Joseph Dedvukaj, Southfield, Michigan, for Appellant. Michelle A. Thomas, Thomas, DeGrood & Witenoff, Southfield, Michigan, Rosalind Rochkind, John J. Gillooly, Garan Lucow Miller, Detroit, Michigan, for Appellees.

Before: MOORE and SUTTON, Circuit Judges; BUNNING, District Judge.^*

SUTTON, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which BUNNING, D.J., joined.

MOORE, J. (pp. 699-707), delivered a separate dissenting opinion.

OPINION

SUTTON, Circuit Judge.

At 1:45 a.m. on October 8, 2001, Aaron Reynolds and Mustapha Atat began a drag race on a public street on the outskirts of Detroit. After roughly one-sixth of a mile, Reynolds lost control of his car and it veered into a crowd of spectators, striking Denise Jones and killing her. What separates this calamity from many others is that police officers from the City of Lincoln Park, a suburb of Detroit, arrived at the scene before the race and had an opportunity to prevent it from beginning. Not only did they fail to stop the race but, so far as this summary-judgment record shows, they also expressly allowed the participants to proceed with the race. For their part in this incident, the officers faced separate state-law criminal charges, a separate state-law civil lawsuit and eventually this § 1983 action, which claimed that the misconduct of the officers and the City of Lincoln Park violated Jones' substantive due process rights.

When a claimant attempts to hold public officials responsible for private acts of violence under the Fourteenth Amendment, as this § 1983 action does, the depravity of the fact pattern often is enough to make "a devil[] sick of sin." Wilfred Owen, Dulce Et Decorum Est (1918). This case is no exception. And when a claimant argues that government officials failed to prevent private individuals from causing another injury, as this § 1983 action does, DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, 489 U.S. 189, 109 S.Ct. 998, 103 L.Ed.2d 249 (1989), and its progeny rarely permit the claim to go forward. This case is no exception. Because the officers did not have custody of Denise Jones at the time of the accident, because the officers' actions did not place Denise Jones in any more danger than she voluntarily undertook before they arrived and because the officers' participation in this tragedy did not specially place Denise Jones at any more risk than the 150-300 people attending the drag race, all relevant precedent requires us to uphold the judgment of the district court summarily rejecting this constitutional claim.

I.

In the early morning hours of October 8, 2001, four Lincoln Park police officers—William Kish III, Joseph Lavis, Douglas Muncey, Mohamed Nasser—came upon a crowd of individuals at the intersection of Fort Street and Outer Drive in the City of Detroit, which borders Lincoln Park. The crowd of individuals, as it turns out, were spectators awaiting the beginning of a drag race.

While the officers claim that they arrived at the scene five to ten minutes before the race, others claim that they arrived up to an hour before the race started. Several individuals saw officer Nasser approach the drag racers, speak briefly with Mustapha Atat, then return to his police car. Aaron Reynolds, the other drag racer, stated that he intended to abandon the race when the police arrived but proceeded with the race when officer Nasser told Atat that they could "go ahead and race." JA 1041. One spectator claimed to have seen officer Nasser place a bet on the race after he talked to Atat. After the officers returned to their two police vehicles in the parking lot on the Lincoln Park side of the street, several bystanders heard one of the officers announce over his car's public address system that "[w]e are not [here] to arrest anyone, go ahead with the race," JA 1046, and then heard the officer play rap music over the public address system. The officers claim that they made no such announcement and played music for just "two seconds" and, even then, only to alert the crowd that they were watching and intended to break up the gathering. Spectators estimated that the crowd ranged in size from 150-300 people and noted that the intersection of Fort Street and Outer Drive, which is in Detroit, was completely blocked by the race participants and spectators, preventing traffic into and out of Lincoln Park.

At about 1:45 a.m., the two cars raced north on Fort Street, which is in Detroit, away from the officers. Despite having been at the scene before the race began, the officers did not notify the Lincoln Park police dispatcher, as was department procedure, or attempt to break up the crowd aside from playing music over their public-address system, which was not department procedure. The cars proceeded north at 130 or so miles per hour before Reynolds lost control of his car about one-sixth of a mile from the start of the race. He veered into the crowd, and his car struck several spectators, including Denise Jones, who died from injuries suffered from the collision. After the accident, the officers contacted their dispatcher, who contacted Detroit police. Once the Detroit police arrived, the Lincoln Park police left without giving statements. The Lincoln Park Police Department learned that its officers had been at the scene of the accident only through subsequent media coverage.

The accident prompted several criminal and civil actions. Reynolds pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter, failure to stop at the scene of an accident resulting in death, two counts of felonious driving, and drag racing. Atat faced similar charges but fled the country before he could be prosecuted. Officers Nasser, Muncey and Lavis pleaded no contest to criminal charges of neglect of duty. On March 28, 2003, the Michigan circuit court granted a $25 million default judgment to Dorothy Jones, suing on behalf of the decedent, against the drivers. The court granted summary judgment against Jones on her state tort claims against the officers and the City of Lincoln Park, concluding that "the proximate cause" of the death was Reynolds alone. See Jones v. Reynolds, No. 250616, slip op. at *6 (Mich.Cir. Ct. Apr. 7, 2005); see also Mich. Comp. Laws § 691.1407(2); Robinson v. City of Detroit, 462 Mich. 439, 613 N.W.2d 307 (2000).

Pursuing further legal remedies, Dorothy Jones filed this § 1983 action against the officers and the City of Lincoln Park in federal district court. The district court granted summary judgment to the City and the officers on all of Jones' claims. As to the officers, the court held that Jones "offered no evidence that they knew or had reason to know that the decedent specifically was in any more danger than any other citizen in the area that evening." D. Ct. Op. at 19 (emphasis omitted). As to the City of Lincoln Park, the court held that there was "no evidence of an affirmative act by the City" or that the City knew or should have known of the risk. Id. at 24. Jones challenges both conclusions on appeal, where we apply a de novo standard of review, Beecham v. Henderson County, 422 F.3d 372 (6th Cir.2005), view the evidence in the light most favorable to the non-moving party, Cox v. Ky. Dep't of Transp., 53 F.3d 146 (6th Cir.1995), and will affirm a grant of summary judgment if the record evidence does not establish a genuine issue of material fact, Beecham, 422 F.3d at 374.

II.

Section 1983 provides a federal cause of action for civil damages against an individual acting under color of state law who deprives another of "rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws." 42 U.S.C. § 1983. In this case, Jones argues that the officers violated the substantive due process guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment when they failed to protect Denise Jones from the perils of an illegal drag race organized by private citizens on the streets of the City of Detroit. To overcome the officers' qualified immunity from this individual-liability action, Jones must make two showings: that the officers violated the decedent's constitutional rights and that those rights were "clearly established" at the time of the incident. Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 201, 121 S.Ct. 2151, 150 L.Ed.2d 272 (2001). The Court has told lower courts that they "must" address the "initial inquiry" before reaching the "clearly established" question. Id.

A.

"[N]othing in the language of the Due Process Clause itself," the Court has instructed, "requires the State to protect the life, liberty, and property of its citizens against invasion by private actors." DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dep't of Soc. Servs., 489 U.S. 189, 195, 109 S.Ct. 998, 103 L.Ed.2d 249 (1989). While "[a] State may, through its courts and legislatures, impose such affirmative duties of care and protection upon its agents as it wishes," the Court has reasoned that such duties will not be "thrust upon them by this Court's expansion of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment." Id. at 202-03, 109 S.Ct. 998. The Court has recognized one exception to the DeShaney rule: When the State has so restrained the liberty of the individual that it renders him unable to care for himself, the State has a special relationship with the individual and thus an affirmative duty to protect him. Id. at 200, 109 S.Ct. 998. "The affirmative duty to protect arises not...