Cornelius v. Town of Highland Lake, Ala.
| Citation | 880 F.2d 348 |
| Decision Date | 10 August 1989 |
| Docket Number | No. 88-7238,88-7238 |
| Parties | Harriet CORNELIUS, Plaintiff-Appellant v. TOWN OF HIGHLAND LAKE, ALABAMA, a municipal corp., Doug Adams, Ind. and in his official capacity as the Mayor of Highland Lake; W.D. Faust, Ind. and in his official capacity as a member of the city council of the Town of Highland Lake and as supervisor of the community work squad; Larry Spears, Ind. and in his official capacity as Warden of the St. Clair Correctional Facility; Carl Cain, Ind. and in his official capacity as Sergeant of the St. Clair Correctional Facility; David Mixon, Ind. and in his official capacity as Classification Officer, Alabama Department of Corrections; Craig McCoy, Ind. and in his official capacity as Psychologist, Alabama Department of Corrections; Ricky N. Fox, Ind. and in his official capacity as a member of the Central Classification Review Board, Alabama Department of Corrections; John Michael Shavers, Ind. and in his official capacity as a member of the Central Classification Review Board, Alabama Department of Corrections; James DeLoach, Ind. and in his official capacity as warden/representative Central Classification Review Board, Alabama Department of Corrections; Elaine Lewis, Ind. and in her official capacity as a member of the Central Classification Review Board, Alabama Department of Corrections; Freddie Smith, Ind. and in his official capacity as Commissioner of the State of Alabama, Department of Corrections, Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit |
M. Jack Hollingsworth, Jerry O. Lorant & Associates, Birmingham, Ala., for Harriet Cornelius.
John T. Harmon, Harry A. Lyles and Andrew Redd, Alabama Dept. of Corrections, Montgomery, Ala., for Carl Cain, David Mixon, Craig McCoy, Ricky Fox, John Shavers, James DeLoach, Elaine Lewis, Freddie Smith.
James S. Lloyd, Clark & Scott, P.A., Birmingham, Ala., for Town of Highland Lake, Doug Adams and W.D. Faust.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.
Before FAY and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges, and HENDERSON, Senior Circuit Judge.
The plaintiff-appellant, Harriet Cornelius, appeals the district court's order granting summary judgment in favor of the defendants-appellees, Town of Highland Lake, Alabama, several of its city officials, and various members of the Alabama Department of Corrections. Two prison inmates, while assigned to a community work squad program in Highland Lake, abducted Mrs. Cornelius from the town hall and terrorized her for three days. She brought this action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 (1982) alleging that the defendants violated her constitutionally protected liberty interests. In granting summary judgment, the district court ruled that the plaintiff failed to present a genuine issue of material fact regarding whether the defendants owed Mrs. Cornelius a duty to protect her from the criminal actions of work squad inmates in the Alabama correctional system. The court found that no special relationship existed between Mrs. Cornelius and the defendants or between her and the inmates which would create such a duty. Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Mrs. Cornelius, we find that the evidence presented establishes a genuine issue as to whether a special relationship existed between the defendants and Mrs. Cornelius and whether the defendants were aware that she faced a special danger from the work squad inmates. Thus, we hold that there is a triable issue regarding whether the defendants' conduct deprived Mrs. Cornelius of her fourteenth amendment rights in violation of Sec. 1983. We therefore reverse the district court's grant of summary judgment.
The record reflects the following facts. In March, 1984, the Mayor of the Town of Highland Lake requested that the Alabama Department of Corrections provide the city with inmate labor for general maintenance, clearing and public works purposes. 1 Beginning in May, 1984, the St. Clair Correctional Facility in Odenville, Alabama provided the inmates for this community work program. According to the record, many community residents in Highland Lake opposed the use of inmate labor within the town and repeatedly voiced their concern to the town's officials. See R1-45 (Cornelius and Stedman affidavits). One method of opposition was the circulation of a petition in the community calling for an end to the unsupervised use of inmate labor. See R1-45 (Stedman affidavit).
St. Clair Prison's operational guidelines for community work squad supervisors provided that only inmates who were nonviolent property offenders and who were classified as minimum custody were to be assigned to work squads. The prison was to provide to the person transporting the inmates an inmate work card with a picture identification specifying each inmate's name, crime, prison term and custody status. The prisoners were picked up from St. Clair each work day at 7:00 a.m. and returned by 5:00 p.m.
An unarmed civilian member of the community employed by the town supervised the inmates while they were in Highland Lake. While working, the inmates had access to tools used for maintenance including axes, picks, machetes, knives and saws. The plaintiff asserts that the squad supervisor received no training in handling the prisoners and that he possessed neither the requisite skills nor the physical abilities to control them. See R1-45 (Lucas affidavit). The defendants however, maintain that the squad supervisor knew and understood the procedures for handling the inmates.
Newburn Ray Wilson was an inmate at the St. Clair prison in 1985 serving a sixty-six year sentence 2 for two separate counts of armed robbery. In January 1985, an institutional classification committee conducted a progress review on Wilson and reduced his custody status to minimum security I. The defendants state that the custody reduction was in accord with Department of Corrections policy and manuals, and was unanimous among the classification committee. According to the plaintiff, Wilson's custody status should not have been reduced. He had an extensive history of violent crimes, including assault and battery, as well as drug related and property crimes. See R1-45 (McCarthy and Parsons affidavits). Additionally, Wilson had at least four institutional misconduct entries in his prison records.
In August 1985, the prison Central Review Board denied Wilson's request to be transferred to either a minimum security honor farm or the state cattle ranch. The plaintiff asserts that Wilson was also denied participation in the Department of Corrections' external community service program and work release program. See R1-45 (McCarthy affidavit). However, in September, 1985, Wilson was approved for minimum security road squad work. See R1-45 (inmate interview record). He was then assigned to the community work squad in Highland Lake.
In 1985, Harriet Cornelius worked at the town hall as Highland Lake Town Clerk. On November 8th of that year, work squad inmates Wilson and Timothy Townsend 3 abducted Mrs. Cornelius at knife point from the town hall. 4 The inmates forced Mrs. Cornelius to surrender her car to them and accompany them in their flight across three states. They held Mrs. Cornelius hostage for three days during which time they terrorized her. The inmates threatened to sexually and physically abuse Mrs. Cornelius as well as kill her. Finally, they left her tied to a tree outside Columbus, Georgia. The authorities eventually apprehended Wilson and Townsend. The inmates pleaded guilty and were each convicted of two counts of first degree kidnapping.
Mrs. Cornelius brought this suit under Sec. 1983 against the Town of Highland Lake, its Mayor, a member of the City Council who supervised the community work squad, the Warden of the St. Clair prison, a Sergeant of the prison, the Commissioner of the Alabama Department of Corrections, and six members of that Department who allegedly approved Wilson's custody reclassification and recommended that he be assigned to a community work squad. The plaintiff claims that these officials acted with gross negligence and deliberate indifference in violation of her constitutionally protected liberty interests under the fourteenth amendment.
Mrs. Cornelius alleges that the inmates were able to abduct her because the town and its officials, although aware that dangerous inmates were participating in the community work squad, failed to provide adequately trained and skilled officers to supervise the work squad inmates and failed to insure that only nonviolent property offenders worked in the community. She claims that the prison officials knew or should have known that inmate Wilson should not have been assigned to the work squad due to his prison record, that the prison was regularly assigning inmates convicted of violent offenses to the community work squad, and that the work squad supervisors had no training in corrections yet were supervising the violent criminals assigned to them by the prison.
The district court granted the defendants' motion for summary judgment holding that the defendants owed Mrs. Cornelius no duty to protect her from the criminal acts of the work squad inmates because no special relationship existed between Mrs. Cornelius and either the defendants or the inmates. Because the court found that the plaintiff failed to present sufficient evidence of a genuine issue as to whether a duty existed, it concluded that Mrs. Cornelius possessed no constitutionally protected right under the due process clause, and thus, no claim under Sec. 1983. In our review, we examine the issues of whether a special relationship or a special danger to the plaintiff could be found to have existed under the evidence as presented in this case and whether that relationship or danger would impose a duty...
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