Arnaud v. Odom
| Decision Date | 19 April 1989 |
| Docket Number | 88-4099,Nos. 88-4053,s. 88-4053 |
| Citation | 870 F.2d 304 |
| Parties | Dwayne ARNAUD and Ellen Arnaud, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Charles B. ODOM, Jr., Defendant-Appellee. Mary Ann TOLLIVER and Paul Felix, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Charles B. ODOM, Jr. and Robert B. Thompson, Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
J. Minos Simon, Lafayette, La., for Dwayne and Ellen Arnaud.
Elwood Clement Stevens, Kleinpeter, Schwartzberg & Stevens, Morgan City, La., for Mary Ann Tolliver and Paul Felix.
Timothy J. McNamara, Richard J. Petre, Jr., Onebane, Donohoe, Bernard, Torian, Diaz, McNamara & Abell, Lafayette, La., for Charles B. Odom, Jr.
James R. Shelton, Lafayette, La., for Thompson.
Appeals from the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana.
Before BROWN, JOHNSON, and DAVIS, Circuit Judges.
In the instant two appeals, the plaintiff parents of two deceased infant children assert deprivations by the State of Louisiana of constitutional property and liberty interests in the bodies of their dead children pursuant to 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983. The district court dismissed the claims of both the parents of Christina Arnaud and the parents of Kendall Felix for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6). Persuaded that available state post-deprivation remedies exist which satisfy constitutional procedural due process concerns for any deprivations of property or liberty interests suffered by the parents in the instant appeals, we affirm the district court. Further, in so affirming, we decline to create from the substantive parameters of the due process clause a liberty interest in next of kin to be free from state-occasioned mutilation of the body of a deceased relative and to possess the body for burial in the same condition in which death left the body.
The instant appeals stem from a tragic and disturbing sequence of events beginning in October and December of 1986 with the deaths of two infants, Kendall Felix and Christina Arnaud, in their sleep from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (S.I.D.S.), commonly referred to as crib death. Pursuant to Louisiana law, when an infant under the age of one year dies unexpectedly and without explanation, local authorities are required to secure the corpse of the infant for a mandatory autopsy. La.Rev.Stat.Ann. Sec. 33:1563(C) (West 1988). Accordingly, immediately following their deaths from S.I.D.S., the bodies of Kendall and Christina were delivered to defendant Dr. Charles Odom, the Deputy Coroner of the Parish of Lafayette, Louisiana, so that Dr. Odom could perform the mandatory autopsies on the bodies of the infants.
At this point, some background information regarding Dr. Odom is necessary to fully understand the subsequent actions of Dr. Odom in performing the autopsies on Kendall and Christina. Dr. Odom, prior to serving as Deputy Coroner for Lafayette Parish, served as the Chief Medical Examiner for the City and County of Honolulu, Hawaii. In his capacity as Chief Medical Examiner in Honolulu, Dr. Odom performed an autopsy on the corpse of an infant reportedly dropped on his head by his father. After conducting the autopsy Dr. Odom concluded that the father accidently dropped the infant on his head; however, another forensic pathologist determined that the infant died of intentional abuse. As a result of this disagreement between the pathologists on the cause of the death of the infant, Hawaiian authorities commenced a grand jury investigation to ascertain the actual cause of death of the infant--accidental dropping or intentional abuse. In this connection, Dr. Odom anticipated providing expert testimony to the grand jury relating to whether a fall by an infant from a height of one meter, while causing no external injuries, is sufficient to cause a fracture of the skull.
Prior to providing the above testimony in the Hawaii criminal investigation, however, Dr. Odom assumed the position of Deputy Coroner of Lafayette Parish. It was in his position as Deputy Coroner of Lafayette Parish that Dr. Odom, in an effort to gather empirical data to support his expert opinion at the grand jury proceedings in Hawaii, performed the grisly controlled experiments on the bodies of Kendall Felix and Christina Arnaud following their deaths from S.I.D.S. which form the basis of the instant appeals. These experiments conducted by Dr. Odom consisted of taking the corpse of the infant to the rear of the laboratory and, holding the corpse by the feet, dropping the corpse head-first from a predetermined height of one meter onto a surface of virtually smooth concrete. Dr. Odom would then x-ray the skull of the infant and record the results. Thereafter, Dr. Odom performed the mandatory autopsy.
The above experiments on the bodies of Kendall and Christina were not conducted simultaneously, but were performed in October and December of 1986 respectively following the deaths of the infants. The final of the two experiments conducted by Dr. Odom occurred on December 22, 1986, on the body of Christina Arnaud. In both the instance of Kendall and Christina, the body of the infant was returned to the parents promptly following the experiment and autopsy procedure. Apparently, the parents, while noticing the disfigurement in the bodies of the children resulting from Dr. Odom's experiments, did not immediately become aware of the deviant actions of Dr. Odom.
Four days after Dr. Odom conducted his experiment on the corpse of Christina, on December 26, 1986, an employee of the Lafayette Parish Coroner's Office informed the Coroner of Lafayette Parish, Dr. Robert Thompson, of the experiments by Dr. Odom on the bodies of the infants. Immediately upon learning of this aberrant behavior by Dr. Odom, Dr. Thompson suspended Dr. Odom from his duties as Deputy Coroner and further instructed Dr. Odom to vacate his office at the Lafayette Parish Forensic Laboratory. Dr. Thompson subsequently referred the matter to the Lafayette Parish District Attorney's Office for possible criminal proceedings against Dr. Odom. In so informing the District Attorney of Dr. Odom's actions, Dr. Thompson characterized the conduct of Dr. Odom as "highly unprofessional, repulsive, and debasing."
Approximately two months later, in February 1987, Dr. Thompson informed the parents of Christina, Dwayne and Teresa Arnaud, and the parents of Kendall, Mary Tolliver and Paul Felix, of the experiments of Dr. Odom. Thereafter, in separate actions, the Arnauds and Tolliver and Felix filed the instant suits against Dr. Odom pursuant to 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 seeking damages for the unauthorized medical experimentation by Dr. Odom on the corpses of their infant children. In addition to suing Dr. Odom, Tolliver and Felix also named as defendants in their action, Dr. Thompson and Lafayette Parish.
The section 1983 complaints of the Arnauds and Tolliver and Felix are in most respects similar but do differ slightly in the theory of recovery asserted in the complaints. In their complaint, the Arnauds assert a deprivation without procedural due process of a constitutional property or liberty interest in the body of their child after death created primarily by virtue of Louisiana state law. Similarly, Tolliver and Felix allege a deprivation of a constitutionally protected liberty or privacy interest in the body of their child after death; however Tolliver and Felix maintain that such a liberty or privacy interest is created by the substantive parameters of the due process clause in the Constitution. Thus, Tolliver and Felix assert a deprivation of substantive, not procedural, due process. Nevertheless, the parents in both complaints are alleging constitutional deprivations of virtually the identical interest--that interest being the right to possess the body of one's next of kin in the same condition as death left that body, free from unwarranted state-occasioned mutilation. The parents are, however, asserting different sources of authority from which such an interest is derived.
Thereafter, the same district court presided over both of the instant cases and recognized that both actions, despite their differences regarding a theory of recovery, involved the same threshold issue of whether or not the parents enjoyed constitutionally protected interests in the bodies of their deceased infants. Accordingly, the district court ordered briefing on the above constitutional issue. After considering the briefs of the parties on this issue, the district court, in separate orders, dismissed the claims of the Arnauds and Tolliver and Felix pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. In doing so, the district court concluded that the parents had failed to establish a constitutionally protected interest in the bodies of their dead infants. The Arnauds and Tolliver and Felix now appeal the orders of the district court. Because of the factual and legal similarity of the two appeals, we address both of them jointly in this opinion.
This Court has previously enunciated the necessary criteria which a plaintiff must set forth in a complaint to state a claim upon which relief may be granted under section 1983 as follows:
To survive a motion to dismiss [pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6) ], a pleading that raises a section 1983 claim must allege both that someone violated a right that the Constitution or laws of the United States secures and that the offender did so under color of state law.
Auster Oil & Gas, Inc., v. Stream, 764 F.2d 381, 386-87 (5th Cir.1985), cert. dismissed, --- U.S. ----, 108 S.Ct. 2007, 100 L.Ed.2d 237 (1988). "A district court should refrain from granting a motion to dismiss pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6) unless it appears, from a reading of the plaintiff's complaint, that the plaintiff has failed to set forth facts which, if proven, would establish...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Payne v. Fontenot
...the issue, that freedom of intimate association discussed in Roberts, supra, is protected by the first amendment). 8 Arnaud v. Odom, 870 F.2d 304, 307 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 493 U.S. 855, 110 S.Ct. 159, 107 L.Ed.2d 117 (1989) (citing Auster Oil & Gas, Inc. v. Stream, 764 F.2d 381, 386-87......
-
Tafoya v. Bobroff
...liberty interest in the treatment of a relative's corpse and found that the plaintiffs had no such interest. See Arnaud v. Odom, 870 F.2d 304, 311 (5th Cir.), cert. denied sub nom. Tolliver v. Odom, 493 U.S. 855, 110 S.Ct. 159, 107 L.Ed.2d 117 (1989).4 This Court will therefore "refrain fro......
-
Coleman v. Tanner
...1994); Schultea v. Wood, 47 F.3d 1427, 1433 (5th Cir. 1995); Biliski v. Harborth, 55 F.3d 160, 162 (5th Cir. 1995); Arnaud v. Odom, 870 F.2d 304, 307 (5th Cir. 1989)). Coleman's "allegations have been and remain insufficient to establish that defendant officials were aware of facts from whi......
-
Culberson v. Doan
...claim for the deprivation of property without due process of law, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment."); Arnaud v. Odom, 870 F.2d 304, 308 (5th Cir.1989) ("Louisiana has indeed established a `quasi-property' right of survivors in the remains of their deceased relatives."); Fuller v. M......
-
Victims in Life, Victims in Death - Keeping Burial Rights Out of the Hands of Slayers
...v. Cleveland, 923 F.2d 477, 480 (6th Cir. 1991) (citing In re Estate of Moyer, 577 P.2d 108, 110 n.5 (Utah 1978); Arnaud v. Odom, 870 F.2d 304, 308 (5th Cir. 1989); Fuller v. Marx, 724 F.2d 717, 719 (8th Cir. 1984)). However, some courts have abandoned the quasi-property theory in favor of ......
-
Genetic Test Results and the Duty to Disclose: Can Medical Researchers Control Liability?
...a property interest exists in a dead body have found that a quasi-property right exists. Brotherton, 923 F.2d at 481; Arnaud v. Odom, 870 F.2d 304, 308 (5th Cir. 1989), cert, denied sub nam. Tolliver v. Odom, 493 U.S. 855 (1989); In re Estate of Moyer, 577 P.2d 108, 110 (Utah 153. Venner v.......
-
Considering a Market in Human Organs
...1145. 193 See State v. Powell, 497 So. 2d 1188, 1191 (Fla. 1986). 194 Id. at 1193-94. 195 Id. 196 Id. at 1192. 197 Id. 198 Arnaud v. Odom, 870 F.2d 304, 309 (5th Cir. 199 Id. at 306. 200 Id. 201 Id. 202 Id. at 309. 203 Id. at 304-09. 204 See Brotherton v. Cleveland, 923 F.2d 477, 477-82 (6t......
-
Redefining stewardship over body parts.
...relatives" private property because the next of kin possesses no property right in the body). (220) Id. (221) See, e.g., Arnaud v. Odom, 870 F.2d 304, 309-11 (5th Cir. 1089) (holding that there is no constitutional property or liberty interest in bodies of dead children, although recognizin......