Anderson v. City of Homewood, Wal-Mart Stores E., L.P.
| Decision Date | 27 December 2016 |
| Docket Number | Case No. 2:16-cv-439-TMP |
| Parties | RANDALL COREY ANDERSON, Plaintiff, v. CITY OF HOMEWOOD, WAL-MART STORES EAST, L.P., LT. TIM ROSS, OFFICER MICHAEL JEFFCOAT, DAVID ROBERTS, Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Alabama |
This cause is before the court on motions to dismiss filed by the various defendants. For the reasons explained below, the motions are due to be granted in part and denied in part, with further proceedings with respect some of plaintiff's claims.
The plaintiff, Randall Corey Anderson, filed his original complaint in the Circuit Court of Jefferson County, Alabama, on February 11, 2016, alleging various claims under state and federal law against defendants City of Homewood ('the City" or "Homewood"), Wal-mart Stores East, L.P. ("Wal-mart"),1 and various fictitiously-named defendants.2 That action was removed to this court on the basis of federal-question subject matter jurisdiction on March 17, 2016. (Doc. 1). At the same time, the City filed its first motion to dismiss the complaint. (Doc. 3). Wal-mart followed suit, filing its motion to dismiss on March 21, 2016. (Doc. 5). After responding to the motions (see Doc. 8), plaintiff filed his First Amended Complaint on July 15, 2016,3 adding as defendants Lt. Tim Ross, Officer Michael Jeffcoat, and Wal-mart store manager David Roberts. Thereafter, renewed motions to dismiss4 were filed by the City, Wal-mart, and newly-added defendants Ross,Jeffcoat, and Roberts (see Docs. 24, 25, and 27), to which the plaintiff has responded.
The motions to dismiss assert that the First Amended Complaint is due to be dismiss because it fails to comply with Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a) and it fails to state a claim for relief under Rule 12(b)(6). In particular, the defendants argue that the complaint fails to allege sufficient facts to show that the "pleader is entitled to relief." Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2).5
Before the Supreme Court decided Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 127 S. Ct. 1955, 167 L. Ed. 2d 929 (2007), a court could dismiss a complaint only where it was clear that no relief could be granted under any set of facts that could be proved consistent with the allegations, as set forth in Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 78 S. Ct. 99, 2 L. Ed. 2d 80 (1957). The well-established Rule 12(b)(6)standard set forth in Conley was expressly rejected in Twombly when the Supreme Court examined the sufficiency of a plaintiff's complaint and determined:
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a)(2) requires only "a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief," in order to "give the defendant fair notice of what the ... claim is and the grounds upon which it rests," Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 47, 78 S. Ct. 99, 2 L. Ed. 2d 80 (1957). While a complaint attacked by a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss does not need detailed factual allegations, a plaintiff's obligation to provide the "grounds" of his "entitle[ment] to relief" requires more than labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do. Factual allegations must be enough to raise a right to relief above the speculative level.
550 U.S. at 555 (citations omitted). The Court went on to criticize Conley, stating that "[t]he 'no set of facts' language has been questioned, criticized, and explained away long enough" by courts and commentators, and "is best forgotten as an incomplete, negative gloss on an accepted pleading standard: once a claim has been stated adequately, it may be supported by showing any set of facts consistent with the allegations in the complaint." Twombly, 550 U.S. at 562-63. The Supreme Court emphasized, however, that "we do not require heightened fact pleading of specifics, but only enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face." 550 U.S. at 570.
The Supreme Court expanded on the Twombly standard when it decided Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 129 S. Ct. 1937, 1949, 173 L. Ed. 2d 868 (2009), reiterating the Twombly determination that a claim is insufficiently pleaded if it offers only "labels and conclusions" or "a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action." Iqbal, 129 S. Ct. at 1949. The Court further explained:
Two working principles underlie our decision in Twombly. First, the tenet that a court must accept as true all of the allegations contained in a complaint is inapplicable to legal conclusions. Threadbare recitals of the elements of a cause of action, supported by mere conclusory statements, do not suffice.... Rule 8 marks a notable and generous departure from the hyper technical, code pleading regime of a prior era, but it does not unlock the doors of discovery for a plaintiff armed with nothing more than conclusions. Second, only a complaint that states a plausible claim for relief survives a motion to dismiss. Determining whether a complaint states a plausible claim for relief will, as the Court of Appeals observed, be a context specific task that requires the reviewing court to draw on its judicial experience and common sense. But where the well pleaded facts do not permit the court to infer more than the mere possibility of misconduct, the complaint has alleged but it has not "show[n]"—"that the pleader is entitled to relief."
Iqbal, 129 S. Ct. at 1949-50 (citation omitted). See also Sinaltrainal v. Coca-Cola Co., 578 F.3d 1252 (11th Cir. 2009), overruled on other grounds by Mohamad v. Palestinian Authority, ___U.S.___, 132 S. Ct. 1702, 182 L. Ed. 2d 720 (2012) (). Applying these standards, the court examines the merits of the defendants' motions to dismiss in the light of the facts (not conclusions) pleaded in the First Amended Complaint.
The court assumes the following facts, taken from the First Amended Complaint, to be true for purposes of analyzing the motions to dismiss.
On December 26, 2014, the plaintiff participated in a Black Lives Matter demonstration at the Wal-mart store on Lakeshore Parkway in Homewood. After the demonstration was over, he was talking in the parking lot to a small group of people who also participated. Defendant Ross, then a lieutenant in the Homewood Police Department, approached a man with whom plaintiff was speaking. Lt. Ross6 informed the man that he was being placed under arrest for trespassing, and he ordered a subordinate officer to take the man into custody. Plaintiff began using his cellphone to video record the confrontation and arrest of the other man. Lt. Ross then ordered plaintiff to leave immediately or "you can go with him." Plaintiff complied and began walking toward his car parked in the parking lot. Ashe approached his car, he heard a voice believed by him to be Lt. Ross shout, "Too late." Defendant Jeffcoat and "other officers" then arrested plaintiff. In the process of the arrest, plaintiff was shoved against his car, bruising his wrist and putting long scratched into the paint finish of his car.
Plaintiff alleges that Officer Jeffcoat later filled out an incident/offense report in which he reported that:
Anderson was filming the encounter with his cell phone. Lt. Ross repeatedly told Anderson to stop filming and leave. Anderson refused and continued to record the encounter. Lt. Ross instructed me to take Anderson into custody for criminal trespass which I did. Anderson was asked if he had identification on him. He stated it was in his vehicle. Anderson was asked for, and gave, verbal consent to search the vehicle (GA [tag number omitted]). Anderson then spontaneously stated that he had a firearm in the vehicle. In the center console I located a Georgia license ([driver's license number omitted]). In the glove box I located a loaded Glock 26 handgun (serial # [omitted]).
Plaintiff was transported to the Homewood City Jail in a police cruiser.
Later, defendant David Roberts, as the manager of the Wal-mart store, signed a criminal complaint for third-degree trespass, in which he swore:
On July 23, 2015, plaintiff came to trial on the trespass charge against him. During the trial, Roberts testified that he did not issue a trespass warning to the plaintiff individually, contrary to his own sworn criminal complaint, and that he could not remember seeing the plaintiff inside the Wal-mart store. Plaintiff was acquitted by jury verdict at trial (Doc. 21, ¶ 58).
The First Amended Complaint consists of eleven purported claims for relief, as follows:
1. First Claim—Plaintiff's arrest violated his Fourth Amendment right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures because there was "no sufficient legal basis to support an arrest"; and the defendants' actions deprived the plaintiff of "life, liberty, and property...
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