Waybright v. Frederick County, Md

• Decision Date: 02 June 2008
• Docket Number: No. 07-1289.,07-1289.
• Parties: James WAYBRIGHT, as personal representative and co-executor of the estate of Andrew Waybright (deceased); Shirley Waybright, individually and as personal representative and co-executor of the estate of Andrew Waybright (deceased), Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. FREDERICK COUNTY, MARYLAND, Department of Fire & Rescue Services; Walter F. Murray, in his official capacity as Fire Emergency Director for the Frederick County Department of Fire & Rescue Services; Jeffrey Coombe, in his official capacity as training officer for the Frederick County Department of Fire & Rescue Services; Stanley Poole, in his official capacity as a member of the Frederick County Department of Fire & Rescue Services; Frederick County; Jan H. Gardner, in her individual and official capacity as a member of the Frederick County Board of Commissioners; David Gray, in his individual and official capacity as a member of the Frederick County Board of Commissioners; Andrew Marsh, in his individual and official capacity as an officer in the Frederick County Department of Fire & Rescue Services; Mark McNeal, in his individual and official capacity as an officer in the Frederick County Department of Fire & Rescue Services; Terre Rhoderick, in his individual and official capacity as a member of the Frederick County Board of Commissioners; John L. Thompson, JR., in his individual and official capacity as a member of the Frederick County Board of Commissioners; Richard Welden, in his individual and official capacity as a member of the Frederick County Board of Commissioners, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

528 F.3d 199

James WAYBRIGHT, as personal representative and co-executor of the estate of Andrew Waybright (deceased); Shirley Waybright, individually and as personal representative and co-executor of the estate of Andrew Waybright (deceased), Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. FREDERICK COUNTY, MARYLAND, Department of Fire & Rescue Services; Walter F. Murray, in his official capacity as Fire Emergency Director for the Frederick County Department of Fire & Rescue Services; Jeffrey Coombe, in his official capacity as training officer for the Frederick County Department of Fire & Rescue Services; Stanley Poole, in his official capacity as a member of the Frederick County Department of Fire & Rescue Services; Frederick County; Jan H. Gardner, in her individual and official capacity as a member of the Frederick County Board of Commissioners; David Gray, in his individual and official capacity as a member of the Frederick County Board of Commissioners; Andrew Marsh, in his individual and official capacity as an officer in the Frederick County Department of Fire & Rescue Services; Mark McNeal, in his individual and official capacity as an officer in the Frederick County Department of Fire & Rescue Services; Terre Rhoderick, in his individual and official capacity as a

member of the Frederick County Board of Commissioners; John L. Thompson, JR., in his individual and official capacity as a member of the Frederick County Board of Commissioners; Richard Welden, in his individual and official capacity as a member of the Frederick County Board of Commissioners, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 07-1289.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued: March 21, 2008.

Decided: June 2, 2008.

ARGUED: Peter Tyler Enslein, Law Office of Peter T. Enslein, P.C., Washington, D.C., for Appellants. Thomas Vincent McCarron, Semmes, Bowen & Semmes, Baltimore, Maryland; Scott M. Hartinger, Ethridge, Quinn, McAuliffe, Rowan & Hartinger, Rockville, Maryland, for Appellees. ON BRIEF: Kenneth M. Berman, H. David Leibensperger, Berman, Sobin & Gross, L.L.P., Gaithersburg, Maryland; Patrick S. Guilfoyle, Law Office of Peter T. Enslein, P.C., Washington, D.C., for Appellants. Christopher J. Lyon, Semmes, Bowen & Semmes, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellees.

Before WILKINSON, KING, and GREGORY, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded by published opinion. Judge WILKINSON wrote the opinion, in which Judge KING and Judge GREGORY joined.

OPINION

WILKINSON, Circuit Judge:

Andrew Waybright died by accident while training to join the Frederick County Fire Department in Maryland. His parents brought suit on state constitutional and tort law grounds — but also, with the same conduct in view, under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and substantive due process. The § 1983 claims overreach; nothing defendants did rises to the level of a due process violation, and accidents in the main are a matter of state law. As to the state constitutional and tort law claims, we remand them to state court, where this case began and where it still belongs.

I.

A little before seven on the morning of July 3, 2002, new recruits for the Frederick County Fire Department assembled for outdoor physical training. A firefighter named Jeffrey Coombe was supervising, and he drove the recruits hard. He had told the group that he didn't like quitters and didn't like to hear "I can't." That morning, for an hour, with temperatures rising to eighty-four degrees and a heat index rising to ninety-six, recruits ran 4.3 miles, did squats, pushups, and other calisthenics, and ran wind sprints. Coombe did not bring water, or communications, transportation, or first-aid equipment. Many of the recruits struggled during the session and some experienced disorientation and pronounced exhaustion. One told Coombe that he was dizzy, and Coombe told him to rest.

A 23-year-old recruit named Andrew Waybright started looking sick and pale during the workout. Another recruit asked if Waybright wanted to say something to Coombe, but Waybright said no. Just before 8:10 A.M., as the session was concluding and everyone was heading back to the Training Center, Waybright collapsed in the grass. He tried to crawl back to the Training Center, saying "I want to finish with my class," and was able to get up briefly. But his legs were shaky and Coombe told him to rest where he was.

As Waybright lay there, two bystanders came by and offered to call 911, but another firefighter, Eckhardt (who was also an emergency medical technician), said that Waybright was "just played out," no need to call. Coombe stayed with Waybright briefly, but did not administer first aid. Before leaving, Coombe assigned Eckhardt to watch over Waybright. At the Training Center, Coombe told a second firefighter, Grossnickle, to get a pickup truck to pick Waybright up.

While Eckhardt waited with him, Waybright lost consciousness. Eckhardt had no phone or radio, but when Grossnickle arrived in the truck, Eckhardt told him to call 911. Grossnickle returned to the Training Center, told another firefighter to call 911, and brought a paramedic back to the scene. He returned to the Training Center to look for medical equipment, which he couldn't find.

At about 8:15, Waybright went into cardiac arrest. The paramedic administered CPR, and soon thereafter an ambulance arrived and took Waybright to the emergency room — where, at 9:22, he died. An autopsy revealed that he had no preexisting conditions and died of hyperthermia (heat stroke).

A Frederick County Board of Inquiry was impaneled and, after considerable investigation, issued a report in January 2003. With respect to Coombe, the report found that he failed to bring water to the training session (contrary to protocol), overlooked the recruits' distress during the session, and failed to recognize the emergency situation that occurred when Waybright collapsed. With respect to Frederick County's recruiting school, the report found that its staff was overloaded and undertrained (Coombe, for example, had no certification in physical fitness), and that the school simply could not be run safely without substantial reform. It also found that at least one supervisor knew about these problems to some extent. In response to the incident and report, the recruiting school was shut down for several years and training outsourced to other jurisdictions.

In March 2004, Andrew Waybright's parents filed a tort suit in state court against Jeffrey Coombe, various co-workers in the Frederick County Fire Department, and the Department itself. The complaint alleged wrongful death, loss of solatium, and survival, all premised on negligence. At a hearing in mid-November, the court dismissed the survival claim.

Before the state court could rule on the remainder of the case, plaintiffs filed an amended complaint adding new defendants and new causes of action, some of which were federal. Defendants, invoking federal question jurisdiction, removed to federal district court — where over the next two-and-a-half years, the case ballooned, swelling in complexity to such an extent that the second amended complaint, at seventy-nine pages, was almost six times the original state complaint's length, and the district court needed a chart to keep track of the claims and defendants. See Waybright v. Frederick County Md. Dep't of Fire & Rescue Servs., 475 F.Supp.2d 542, 548 (D.Md.2007). When all was said and done, plaintiffs had lodged three types of claims against four types of defendants.

First was a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (2000) claim, premised on Waybright's substantive due process right to life and directed against Coombe, various supervisors at the Fire Department, various members of the Frederick County Board of Commissioners, and Frederick County itself. With respect to Coombe, the claim stemmed from his conduct on that July 3d morning; as to the others, it stemmed from their supervisory role in creating the conditions that allegedly led to Waybright's death. See Monell v. Dep't of Soc. Servs., 436 U.S. 658, 690-91, 98 S.Ct. 2018, 56 L.Ed.2d 611 (1978); Carter v. Morris, 164 F.3d 215, 220-21 (4th Cir.1999). Second was a state constitutional claim, based on Article 24 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights ("no man ought to be . . . deprived of his life, liberty or property, but by . . . the Law of the land"), and directed against Coombe, the supervisors at the Fire Department, and the commissioners of the Board. Third were the original state tort claims, based on wrongful death, loss of solatium, and (despite the state court's ruling) survival, and directed against Coombe, the supervisors at the Department, and Frederick County.

Defendants moved for summary judgment, and, in March 2007, the district court granted it with respect to plaintiffs' federal and state constitutional claims, but remanded the tort claims to the Circuit Court for Frederick County. Waybright, 475 F.Supp.2d 542. First, the district court rejected plaintiffs' § 1983 due process claim, holding that Coombe's conduct was not egregious enough to "shock the conscience" as a constitutional matter because the harm Coombe did was not intentional. See County of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833, 846-49, 118 S.Ct. 1708, 140 L.Ed.2d 1043 (1998). The district court reasoned, second, that the federal due process analysis should control the state Article 24 analysis, citing the Maryland Court of Appeals for the proposition that the two are "in pari materia, such that the interpretations of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment provided by the United States Supreme Court serve as persuasive authority for Article 24." Pickett v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 365 Md. 67, 775 A.2d 1218, 1224 (2001). Finally, as to plaintiffs' state tort claims, the district court declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction and remanded them to state court. Plaintiffs timely appealed.

II.

The § 1983 claim against Jeffrey Coombe is the gateway to all the other § 1983 clai...