Maldonado v. Josey

Decision Date16 September 1992
Docket NumberNo. 91-2176,91-2176
Citation975 F.2d 727
Parties, 77 Ed. Law Rep. 702 Leroy MALDONADO, Personal Representative of the Estate of Mark P. Maldonado, Deceased, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Anne JOSEY, Personal Representative of the Estate of Margaret Berry, Deceased; Butch McGowen; Paul Malano, in their individual capacities only, Defendants-Appellees.
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit

Stephen E. Tinkler (John B. Roesler, of Caldwell, Smith & Roesler, Santa Fe, N.M., and Ernesto J. Romero, of The Romero Law Firm, Albuquerque, N.M., with him on the briefs), Santa Fe, N.M., for plaintiff-appellant.

Kevin M. Brown (Stephen M. Williams, of Miller, Stratvert, Torgerson & Schlenker, P.A., with him on the brief), Albuquerque, N.M., for defendants-appellees.

Before SEYMOUR and TACHA, Circuit Judges, and BENSON, District Judge. *

TACHA, Circuit Judge.

Appellant LeRoy Maldonado appeals an order of the district court granting summary judgment in favor of appellees. On appeal, Maldonado contends that the district court erred in granting summary judgment in favor of appellees on the basis of qualified immunity. We exercise jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and affirm on different grounds.

BACKGROUND

On March 16, 1987, Mark Maldonado, while attending Kearney Elementary School in Raton, New Mexico, became caught on his bandana in a cloakroom adjacent to his classroom and died of strangulation. Mark Maldonado was eleven years old and in the fifth grade when he died. According to the complaint, Mark Maldonado was unsupervised in the adjacent cloakroom for approximately twenty minutes. During this period, his teacher, Margaret Berry, was conducting class in the classroom and was responsible for a class of fifth grade students, including Mark Maldonado. The record does not disclose the reason for Mark Maldonado's absence from the classroom.

On August 7, 1990, LeRoy Maldonado filed an action for monetary damages under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 in the United States District Court for the District of New Mexico for the wrongful death of Mark Maldonado. The complaint asserted that the death of Mark Maldonado occurred as a direct result of Margaret Berry's failure to supervise her students and principal Paul Malano's and superintendent Butch McGowen's deliberate indifference to training and supervision requirements.

The district court granted summary judgment as to all defendants on July 8, 1991. With regard to defendants Malano and McGowen, the district court found that the plaintiff did not show "that the need for more or different training is so obvious, and the inadequacy so likely to result in the violation of constitutional rights that the school administrators can reasonably be said to have been deliberately indifferent." With regard to the teacher, the district court concluded that "[o]n March 16, 1987, the law was not clearly established as to a teacher's duty to observe every student in class for the time the students are in class." This appeal followed.

DISCUSSION

We review summary judgment orders de novo, using the same standards the district court applies. Osgood v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 848 F.2d 141, 143 (10th Cir.1988). Summary judgment is appropriate "if the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law." Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c); see Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, 477 U.S. 242, 247-48, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 2509-10, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986).

On appeal, Maldonado challenges only the district court's judgment with regard to the teacher's liability. 1 Maldonado argues that the district court erred in granting summary judgment in favor of the appellee on the basis of qualified immunity. He asserts that qualified immunity was improper because the law was clearly established on March 16, 1987. The district court concluded that it could not "find the law well established as to the supervisory duty of a teacher in a classroom." Maldonado contends that a Fourteenth Amendment liberty interest and a Fourteenth Amendment protection from deprivation of life without due process of law were implicated by the failure to provide reasonable care and safety for public grade school children and by reckless indifference to supervision requirements in a public grade school.

As a threshold inquiry to qualified immunity, we first must determine whether Maldonado's allegations, even if accepted as true, state a claim for violation of any rights secured under the United States Constitution. See Siegert v. Gilley, --- U.S. ----, ----, 111 S.Ct. 1789, 1793, 114 L.Ed.2d 277 (1991). The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment provides that no state may "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." Pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Maldonado's claim invokes the substantive component of the Due Process Clause in that he asserts that, under the circumstances, the state was under a categorical obligation to protect Mark Maldonado. The Supreme Court's decision in DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, 489 U.S. 189, 109 S.Ct. 998, 103 L.Ed.2d 249 (1989), guides our determination of whether this categorical obligation arose.

In DeShaney, the Supreme Court held that the Due Process Clause did not impose a duty on a state to protect the life, liberty, and property of citizens from deprivations by private actors absent the "State's affirmative act of restraining the individual's freedom to act in his own behalf." Id. at 200, 109 S.Ct. at 1006. In that case, a state agency repeatedly received reports of the abuse of Joshua DeShaney by his father and, even after receiving these reports, did not remove the child from his father's custody. Eventually, the child suffered permanent brain damage as a result of his father's repeated beatings. The child and his mother brought an action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the state officials alleging that the state agency's inaction deprived Joshua DeShaney of his liberty in violation of the Due Process Clause.

The Supreme Court began its analysis by noting that the Due Process Clause "forbids the State itself to deprive individuals of life, liberty, or property without 'due process of law.' " Id. at 195, 109 S.Ct. at 1003. However, the Court stated that the Due Process Clause "cannot fairly be extended to impose an affirmative obligation on the State to ensure that those interests do not come to harm through other means." Id. The Court found that only "in certain limited circumstances [does] the Constitution impose[ ] upon the State affirmative duties of care and protection with respect to particular individuals." Id. at 198, 109 S.Ct. at 1004-05.

The Court recognized that this affirmative duty has been found to exist in only a few, limited situations. The state must provide adequate medical care to prisoners, see Robinson v. California, 370 U.S. 660, 82 S.Ct. 1417, 8 L.Ed.2d 758 (1962); the state must provide involuntarily committed mental patients with services that are necessary to ensure their reasonable safety from themselves and others, see Youngberg v. Romeo, 457 U.S. 307, 314-25, 102 S.Ct. 2452, 2457-58, 73 L.Ed.2d 28 (1982); and suspects in police custody who have been injured while being apprehended by the police must be given medical care by the state, see City of Revere v. Massachusetts Gen. Hosp., 463 U.S. 239, 244, 103 S.Ct. 2979, 2983, 77 L.Ed.2d 605 (1983). The Court explicitly left open the possibility that this affirmative duty to protect could arise if "the State by the affirmative exercise of its power removed Joshua from free society and placed him in a foster home operated by its agents." DeShaney, 489 U.S. at 201 n. 9, 109 S.Ct. at 1006 n. 9. The Court indicated that such "a situation [might be] sufficiently analogous to incarceration or institutionalization to give rise to an affirmative duty to protect." Id. Since DeShaney, we have held that a child in the state's legal and physical custody who is placed in a private foster care facility is in a sufficiently analogous position to fall within this limited class of situations where an affirmative duty does exist. Yvonne L. v. New Mexico Dep't of Human Servs., 959 F.2d 883 (10th Cir.1992). 2

In declining to find an affirmative duty in DeShaney, the Court noted that the incarceration and institutionalization cases only demonstrate "that when the State takes a person into its custody and holds him there against his will, the Constitution imposes upon it a corresponding duty to assume some responsibility for his safety and general well-being." Id. 489 U.S. at 199-200, 109 S.Ct. at 1005. Most importantly, explaining the rationale behind this principle, the Court stated that "when the State by the affirmative exercise of its power so restrains an individual's liberty that it renders him unable to care for himself, and at the same time fails to provide for his basic human needs--e.g., food, clothing, shelter, medical care, and reasonable safety--it transgresses the substantive limits on state action set by the Eighth Amendment and the Due Process Clause." Id. at 200, 109 S.Ct. at 1005-06. The Court concluded that

[i]n the substantive due process analysis, it is the State's affirmative act of restraining the individual's freedom to act on his own behalf--through incarceration, institutionalization, or other similar restraint of personal liberty--which is the "deprivation of liberty" triggering the protections of the Due Process Clause, not its failure to act to protect his liberty interests against harms inflicted by other means.

Id. at 200, 109 S.Ct. at 1006 (footnote omitted). Thus, in light of DeShaney, we must decide on this appeal whether New Mexico State compulsory attendance laws 3 so restrain a school child's personal liberty that the Due Process Clause imposes...

To continue reading

Request your trial
106 cases
  • BMH BY CB v. School Bd.
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Virginia
    • September 23, 1993
    ...Tech. Sch., 972 F.2d 1364 (3rd Cir.1992) (en banc), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 113 S.Ct. 1045, 122 L.Ed.2d 354 (1993); Maldanado v. Josey, 975 F.2d 727 (10th Cir.1992), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 113 S.Ct. 1266, 122 L.Ed.2d 662 (1993); J.O. v. Alton Commun. Unit Sch. Dist. 11, 909 F.2d 26......
  • Gray v. Univ. of Colorado Hosp. Auth.
    • United States
    • United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (10th Circuit)
    • February 27, 2012
    ...rise to a constitutional duty on the part of the school to protect the student victims. We had previously held in Maldonado v. Josey, 975 F.2d 727, 732 (10th Cir.1992), that “compulsory attendance laws do not create an affirmative constitutional duty to protect students from the private act......
  • Johnson v. Dallas Independent School Dist.
    • United States
    • United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (5th Circuit)
    • November 17, 1994
    ...forecloses a constitutional claim on behalf of Andrew Gaston for affirmative protection while at school. See, e.g., Maldonado v. Josey, 975 F.2d 727, 730-33 (10th Cir.1992), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 113 S.Ct. 1266, 122 L.Ed.2d 662 (1993); Dorothy J. v. Little Rock Sch. Dist. 7 F.3d 729,......
  • Doe v. Petaluma City School Dist.
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — Northern District of California
    • August 30, 1993
    ...unrelated to the state for help on a daily basis." Id. at 1372. The Tenth Circuit came to the same conclusion in Maldonado v. Josey, 975 F.2d 727, 732 (10th Cir.1992), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 113 S.Ct. 1266, 122 L.Ed.2d 662 (1993), a case in which a child accidentally strangled himself ......
  • Request a trial to view additional results

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT