Cooney v. Park County

• Decision Date: 18 April 1990
• Docket Number: No. 88-174,88-174
• Citation: 792 P.2d 1287
• Parties: Thomas Russell COONEY and Lora John Cooney, Appellants (Plaintiffs), v. PARK COUNTY, Wyoming; The State of Wyoming; The Wyoming Department of Probation and Parole; Chris J. White; and Robert Mayor, Appellees (Defendants).
• Court: Wyoming Supreme Court

Page 1287

792 P.2d 1287

Thomas Russell COONEY and Lora John Cooney, Appellants (Plaintiffs), v. PARK COUNTY, Wyoming; The State of Wyoming; The Wyoming Department of Probation and Parole; Chris J. White; and Robert Mayor, Appellees (Defendants).

No. 88-174.

Supreme Court of Wyoming.

April 18, 1990.

Lawrence B. Cozzens, Billings, for appellants.

Joseph B. Meyer, Atty. Gen., Sylvia Lee Hackl, Sr. Asst. Atty. Gen., Cheyenne, for appellee Chris J. White.

Edward G. Luhm of Scott, Shelledy & Luhm, Worland, for appellees State of Wyo., Dept. of Probation and Parole, and Robert Mayor.

Before THOMAS, URBIGKIT, MACY, GOLDEN, JJ., and GRANT, District Judge.

GOLDEN, Justice.

Appellants Thomas Russell Cooney and Lora John Cooney (Cooneys) appeal from the district court's W.R.C.P. 12(b)(6) dismissal of their complaint against appellees Deputy Park County Attorney Chris J. White, the State of Wyoming, the Wyoming Department of Probation and Parole (Department), and probation officer Robert Mayor, (appellees) alleging a civil rights claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (1982), and various state claims under the Wyoming Governmental Claims Act, W.S. 1-39-101 through 1-39-108 (Cum.Supp.1985) (Claims Act) ¹, arising out of probation revocation proceedings. The trial court dismissed all counts in the Cooneys' complaint against White on the basis that he, as a deputy county attorney, had absolute prosecutorial immunity from civil liability. It further dismissed the Cooneys' counts alleging liability under the Claims Act against the State of Wyoming, the Wyoming Department of Probation and Parole, and Robert Mayor, because it found no waiver of immunity under the Claims Act as to those parties.

The Cooneys challenge both of these rulings. We are asked to decide (1) what level of immunity under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 will we extend to a deputy county attorney who performs activities associated with those proceedings and (2) whether under the Claims Act there has been a specific waiver of sovereign immunity as to the state claims.

We affirm.

I. FACTS

In 1985, Thomas Cooney pled guilty to writing bad checks in Park County, Wyoming. The district court accepted his guilty plea and sentenced him to five years of supervised probation, which required him to stay in regular contact with officers of the Wyoming Department of Probation and Parole. When sentenced, Mr. Cooney lived in Riverton, Wyoming, where his parole officer was Cindy Johnson. In September 1985, Mr. Cooney requested permission from the Department to move with his wife and child to Baroil because of a change in his job. Johnson granted Mr. Cooney permission to move and told him that he would be contacted by a Department officer in Rawlins for continued supervision under the terms of his sentence.

The Cooneys moved to Baroil in October 1985, and Johnson forwarded Thomas Cooney's file to Tracy Reinke, a Department officer in Rawlins. Unknown to the Cooneys, however, Johnson erroneously advised Reinke that Thomas Cooney and his family were now living in La Barge, Wyoming, instead of Baroil. Because of this erroneous advice, Reinke returned the Cooney file to Johnson in Riverton and instructed Johnson to forward it to the Department office in Evanston, Wyoming, the Department office with jurisdiction over probationers living in La Barge. On October 21, 1985, Johnson mailed the Cooney file to the Department office in Evanston where it was assigned to appellee Robert Mayor. After receiving the file, Mayor made unsuccessful attempts to locate Mr. Cooney in La Barge because the Cooneys were in Baroil.

In the meantime, Mr. Cooney, still unaware of the Department's foul-ups, contacted Johnson several times by telephone inquiring about the contact he expected to receive from a Department officer in Rawlins. Based on those calls, Johnson filed reports verifying Mr. Cooney's compliance with the terms of his probation in October and November of 1985. During December 1985, Mr. Cooney telephoned the Department office in Rawlins to contact Reinke about his probation.

In mid-January, 1986, Mayor contacted Johnson to inform her that he could not locate Mr. Cooney in his area. Unexplainably, Johnson told Mayor that Mr. Cooney had relocated to La Barge, Wyoming, in October 1985, and that she had not heard from him since his move. This incorrect information prompted Mayor on January 24, 1986, to call appellee Chris White, who was then deputy county attorney for Park County, Wyoming; Mayor told White that Mr. Cooney had not been in contact with his probation officers as required by the terms of his sentence and that he had moved from Riverton without Department permission. White asked Mayor to prepare a petition revoking Mr. Cooney's probation.

On January 29, 1986, Johnson telephoned Mayor and told him that the Cooneys lived in Baroil, had permission from the Department to be there, and that Mr. Cooney had been in contact with her office during October and November 1985. Mayor then telephoned White and relayed those facts to him. Despite this information, White reiterated his request that Mayor draft the petition to revoke Mr. Cooney's probation. Mayor followed White's instructions and prepared a document entitled "Petition for Revocation of Probation and Bench Warrant" dated January 29, 1986. In that document, and despite his contrary knowledge, Mayor swore under oath that Mr. Cooney changed his address without the Department's permission and failed to maintain contact with the Department after he moved. Mayor then forwarded the petition to White who presented it to the district court. Based on the petition, the district court issued a bench warrant for Mr. Cooney's arrest on February 7, 1986.

On February 10, 1986, Mr. Cooney sent a letter to Reinke in an effort to comply with the terms of his probation. Similar contacts between Mr. Cooney and Reinke occurred during February and March 1986. In early March, Mr. Cooney requested permission from Reinke to move to Glasgow, Montana, to accept permanent employment. On March 11, 1986, Reinke sent Mr. Cooney written permission to move. Having received this permission, the Cooneys packed their belongings and prepared to move to Montana. On March 15, 1986, a highway patrol officer stopped Mr. Cooney, his wife, and child and arrested him pursuant to the bench warrant issued because of the information provided to the district court by Mayor and White. Mr. Cooney was taken to the Park County jail; Mrs. Cooney and their child were left stranded in Baroil with all of their belongings.

Mr. Cooney remained in the Park County jail until April 21, 1986, when the district court released him after denying the petition to revoke his probation. During his incarceration White and Mayor did nothing to inform the district court of their knowledge concerning Mr. Cooney's compliance with the terms of his probation. They also did nothing to help get Mr. Cooney out of jail. In fact, during the time that Mr. Cooney was incarcerated, an attorney with the Park County Public Defender's office requested that Mr. Cooney be released from jail until a hearing could be held to determine the accuracy of the information underlying the arrest warrant. White refused to honor that request.

After the Cooneys filed the necessary claim ² under the Claims Act, they filed suit. The defendants responded with motions to dismiss under W.R.C.P. 12(b)(6). The district court granted the motions. The Cooneys appealed.

II. ANALYSIS

A. Standard of Review

When reviewing a W.R.C.P. 12(b)(6) dismissal, we accept the facts alleged in the complaint as true and view them more favorably toward the party opposing the motion below. Mummery v. Polk, 770 P.2d 241, 243 (Wyo.1989). A motion under this rule tests the legal sufficiency of the complaint, should be granted sparingly by the district courts and generally is not favored on appeal. Id. We recognize that a § 1983 action should not be dismissed upon the pleadings "unless it appears beyond doubt that plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief." Joseph v. Patterson, 795 F.2d 549, 551 (6th Cir.1986) (citing Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 45-46, 78 S.Ct. 99, 1001-02, 2 L.Ed.2d 80, 84 (1957)).

B. Absolute Immunity for White

1. Imbler and Blake

The district court dismissed the § 1983 claim against White under W.R.C.P. 12(b)(6) after ruling that White's status as a prosecuting attorney made him absolutely immune from suit, regardless of whether his actions actually deprived Mr. Cooney of a constitutional right, privilege, or immunity. The district court relied on Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U.S. 409, 96 S.Ct. 984, 47 L.Ed.2d 128 (1976) and this court's application of Imbler in Blake v. Rupe, 651 P.2d 1096 (Wyo.1982), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 1208, 103 S.Ct. 1199, 75 L.Ed.2d 442 (1983). It interpreted both of those cases as granting prosecutor White absolute immunity from civil liability under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for public policy reasons. ³ The plain language of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 is deceptively simple because it makes no mention of immunity from liability. ⁴ The appellate history of the provision, however, reveals that its application necessarily invokes traditional common-law defenses of official immunity which extend absolute immunity to prosecutors in certain situations. Imbler, 424 U.S. at 418, 96 S.Ct. at 989, 47 L.Ed.2d at 136 (citing Tenney v. Brandhove, 341 U.S. 367, 71 S.Ct. 783, 95 L.Ed. 1019 (1951)). See also Yaselli v. Goff, 275 U.S. 503, 48 S.Ct. 155, 72 L.Ed. 395 (1927).

Imbler involved a § 1983 action in which Imbler, an exonerated criminal defendant, sought damages against a prosecuting attorney for the prosecutor's alleged knowing use of false testimony and suppression of material evidence to obtain an illegal conviction. Imbler, 424 U.S. at 415-16, 96 S.Ct. at 987-88, 47 L.Ed.2d at 134-35. The prosecutor successfully moved for dismissal under F.R.C.P. 12(b)(6) on the ground that he was...