Cleveland Indus. Square, Inc. v. White
| Decision Date | 06 April 1995 |
| Docket Number | No. 94-3154,94-3154 |
| Parties | NOTICE: Sixth Circuit Rule 24(c) states that citation of unpublished dispositions is disfavored except for establishing res judicata, estoppel, or the law of the case and requires service of copies of cited unpublished dispositions of the Sixth Circuit. CLEVELAND INDUSTRIAL SQUARE, INC., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Michael R. WHITE, Mayor of the City of Cleveland; Danny R. Williams, Chief Law Director for the City of Cleveland; Kenneth G. Silliman, Chief Assistant Law Director for the City of Cleveland; Ronald Jones, Commissioner, Division of Environment for the City of Cleveland; and William Ondrey Gruber, Assistant Law Director for the City of Cleveland, Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit |
Before: MILBURN and NELSON, Circuit Judges, and JOINER, * District Judge.
Plaintiff Cleveland Industrial Square, Inc. appeals the district court's dismissal of its complaint alleging conversion and slander of title actionable under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 as a deprivation of property without due process of law. On appeal, the issue is whether the district court erred in granting defendants' motion to dismiss plaintiff's complaint pursuant to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure ("Fed.R.Civ.P.") 12(b)(6). For the reasons that follow, we affirm.
This action is part of an ongoing dispute between plaintiff Cleveland Industrial Square, Inc. and the City of Cleveland ("City"), Ohio, regarding a tract of land located at 16007 Seville Road in the City's Outerbelt Industrial Park. In 1988, the City agreed to sell plaintiff a six-acre tract of land, and on November 7, 1988, the City entered into a deed, development contract, purchase money mortgage, and security agreement with plaintiff. The deed, which was recorded in the Cuyahoga County Recorder's Office on November 29, 1988, required plaintiff to construct a 92,000 square foot building on the property within two years of the date the deed was recorded. The deed further provided that in the event such a building was not constructed, the City would have the right to reenter the property and take possession, terminate plaintiff's ownership interest in the property, and vest title in its own name.
On March 6, 1990, plaintiff submitted an application to the City for a shell building permit. Such a permit grants an applicant permission to commence construction of a building without specifying its proposed use. 1 The City approved plaintiff's request. On April 3, 1990, plaintiff applied for a use permit under the City's zoning code. However, the City denied the use permit because the intended use of the building as a trash-to-energy plant was not permitted in the area in which the property is located. The City also denied plaintiff's application for electrical permits. Plaintiff chose not to proceed with construction of the shell building, and the property remained undeveloped. 2
In compliance with the deed, the City issued plaintiff a notice of default on March 11, 1991. A second notice was issued on March 21, 1991. These notices informed plaintiff that, according to the terms of the deed, it had three months to cure its default or forfeit ownership and possession of the property. Plaintiff failed to cure the default, and the City reentered the property on October 3, 1991, to reassert its possessory rights. On April 30, 1992, pursuant to Ohio Rev.Code Ann. Sec. 5301.252(B)(3), 3 defendant Kenneth G. Silliman, the City's chief assistant law director, filed an affidavit in the Cuyahoga County Recorder's office purporting to transfer title to the property to the City by stating that the City had reentered the property and had taken possession after plaintiff's default.
Plaintiff filed this action on July 17, 1992. The complaint sets forth two claims for relief: a claim in conversion and a claim for slander of title. Plaintiff argues that these claims are actionable under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 because defendants' intentional acts "deprived the Plaintiff of its constitutional rights to due process of law." J.A. 53. Plaintiff's conversion claim alleges that on July 8, 1992, defendants removed from the Seville Road property two signs, measuring eight feet by eight feet, and some structural steel, all of which belonged to plaintiff, and thereby converted plaintiff's property. The slander of title claim concerns the affidavit purporting to transfer title filed by defendant Silliman in the Cuyahoga County Recorder's office.
Defendants filed a joint answer to plaintiff's complaint on August 31, 1992. In the answer, defendants raised for the first time the defense that plaintiff's complaint failed to state a claim on which relief could be granted. On October 2, 1992, defendants filed a motion to dismiss plaintiff's complaint, pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6), for failure to state a claim on which relief could be granted. The district court granted defendants' motion to dismiss on January 14, 1994. This timely appeal followed.
Plaintiff argues that the district court abused its discretion by granting defendants' motion to dismiss plaintiff's complaint pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6). Specifically, plaintiff asserts that the complaint complied with Fed.R.Civ.P. 8(a), which sets forth the requirements for a proper complaint, and likewise, that the complaint was sufficiently pled to establish a claim under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983. Defendants argue that plaintiff's complaint failed to allege the absence of adequate state remedies to redress the harm purportedly suffered by plaintiff and thus amounted to an inadequate pleading properly subject to dismissal.
Whether the district court properly dismissed plaintiff's complaint pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6) is a question of law subject to de novo review. Dugan v. Brooks, 818 F.2d 513, 516 (6th Cir.1987). " '[A] complaint should not be dismissed for failure to state a claim unless it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief.' " Cameron v. Seitz, 38 F.3d 264, 270 (6th Cir.1994) (quoting Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 45-46 (1957)). In considering a motion under Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6), it is not the function of the court to weigh evidence or evaluate the credibility of witnesses, Cameron, 38 F.3d at 270; instead, the court "must construe the complaint in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, accept all factual allegations as true, and determine whether the plaintiff undoubtedly can prove no set of facts in support of his claims that would entitle him to relief." In re DeLorean Motor Co., 991 F.2d 1236, 1240 (6th Cir.1993); Scheuer v. Rhodes, 416 U.S. 232, 236 (1974). A district court may not grant dismissal under Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6) merely because it does not believe the factual allegations of the complaint. DeLorean, 991 F.2d at 1240. Moreover, a court is required to examine the dismissal of a civil rights complaint with special care. Westlake v. Lucas, 537 F.2d 857, 858 (6th Cir.1976).
Plaintiff argues that the district court should not have dismissed the complaint because it complied with Fed.R.Civ.P. 8(a), which requires:
(1) a short and plain statement of the grounds upon which the court's jurisdiction depends, unless the court already has jurisdiction and the claim needs no new grounds of jurisdiction to support it, (2) a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief, and (3) a demand for judgment for the relief the pleader seeks.
Fed.R.Civ.P. 8(a). Furthermore, plaintiff argues that the district court went beyond these requirements when it dismissed the first count of the complaint on the basis that plaintiff failed to allege that the steel and signs were removed from the property in accordance with a municipal policy, and when it dismissed the second count of the complaint on the basis that the facts contained in the complaint established that plaintiff had "received all the process it was due." J.A. 57. Finally, plaintiff also argues that the district court improperly determined that plaintiff had failed to plead sufficient facts under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 after unnecessarily reaching a conclusion about the legal theory on which plaintiff was relying. We disagree.
In this case, the district court found that plaintiff's Sec. 1983 action alleged a violation of the right to procedural due process and judged the sufficiency of the pleadings on that basis. Plaintiff disputes this determination, arguing that Fed.R.Civ.P. 8(a) does not require a plaintiff to specify in his complaint the legal theory on which his claim rests and that the purpose of notice pleading is to give a defendant notice of the claims against him without requiring the plaintiff to develop his legal theories in detail before the conduct of discovery. See Evans v. McDonald's Corp., 936 F.2d 1087, 1091 (10th Cir.1991). However, plaintiff misconstrues the district court's findings following its review of the complaint. The district court did not dismiss plaintiff's complaint for failure to specifically state that its claims rested on procedural due process grounds. Rather, the district court merely reasoned, based on the allegations set forth in the complaint, that procedural due process was the nature of plaintiff's injury. Moreover, it was not necessary for the district court to go beyond the allegations of the complaint to reach its conclusion.
Plaintiff did not allege a violation of any of the rights explicitly guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, nor did it allege any arbitrary action by government officials that might constitute a violation of plaintiff's substantive due process rights. Because plaintiff's complaint referred to "no other right, privilege, or immunity secured by the Constitution or federal laws other than the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment simpliciter," Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S....
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