Cummings v. Morton

• Decision Date: 06 February 2023
• Docket Number: 1:21cv716
• Parties: JOHN D. CUMMINGS, Plaintiff, v. C.M. MORTON, et. al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Middle District of North Carolina

JOHN D. CUMMINGS, Plaintiff,
v.
C.M. MORTON, et. al., Defendants.

No. 1:21cv716

United States District Court, M.D. North Carolina

February 6, 2023

ORDER AND RECOMMENDATION OF UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE

L. Patrick Auld United States Magistrate Judge

Plaintiff submitted a pro se complaint under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and requests permission to proceed in forma pauperis pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a). (Docket Entries 1-2.)^[1] Plaintiff names a North Carolina Small Claims Magistrate Judge, the Clerk of the Superior Court of Guilford County, several attorneys and law firms, and a real estate partnership as Defendants in the case and seeks damages based on alleged civil rights violations and state law tort claims. (See Docket Entries 2, 6.) Because Plaintiff seeks to proceed in forma pauperis, the Court must review his pleadings, and “shall

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dismiss the case . . . if the court determines that . . . the action . . . [1] fails to state a claim on which relief may be granted; or [2] seeks monetary relief against a defendant who is immune from such relief.” 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B)(ii) & (iii). For the reasons that follow, the Court will grant Plaintiff's Application to proceed in forma pauperis for the limited purpose of recommending dismissal of this action.

Applicable here, a plaintiff “fails to state a claim upon which relief may be granted,” 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B)(ii), when the complaint does not “contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face,” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009)(quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007)) (internal citations omitted).^[2] “Where a complaint pleads facts that are merely consistent with a defendant's liability, it stops short of the line

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between possibility and plausibility of entitlement to relief.” Id. (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 557) (internal citations omitted). This standard “demands more than an unadorned, the-defendant-unlawfully-harmed-me accusation.” Id. In other words, “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.” Id.

Another ground for dismissal under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B) generally applies to situations in which doctrines established by the United States Constitution or at common law immunize governments and/or government personnel from liability for monetary damages. See, e.g., Pennhurst State Sch. & Hosp. v. Halderman, 465 U.S. 89 (1984) (discussing sovereign immunity of states and state officials under Eleventh Amendment); Pierson v. Ray, 386 U.S. 547 (1967) (describing interrelationship between 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and common-law immunity doctrines, such as judicial, legislative, and prosecutorial immunity); cf. Allen v. Burke, 690 F.2d 376, 379 (4^th Cir. 1982) (noting that, even where “damages are theoretically available under [certain] statutes . . ., in some cases, immunity doctrines and special defenses, available only to public officials, preclude or severely limit the damage remedy”). For the reasons that follow, the Court should dismiss this action pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B) because it fails to state a claim on which

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relief may be granted and because it seeks monetary damages from defendants with immunity from such relief.

BACKGROUND

The Complaint's allegations focus on ejectment proceedings Defendants commenced during the fall of 2020, which they carried out through fraud, exposing Plaintiff, a “DISABLED HANDICAPPED 74 YEAR OLD ADULT . . . TO THE DEADLY COVID-19 VIRUS.” (Docket Entry 2 at 3.) In that regard, the Complaint makes a series of specific allegations, including that the state judge made “[p]rocedural errors” which delayed the proceedings (id. at 4), certain Defendants used a forged document in the ejectment proceedings (id. at 5), the Defendants filed a “false” complaint against Plaintiff (id. at 6), Defendants “[r]efus[ed]” to provide notice of the proceedings to Plaintiff (id.),^[3] and Defendants conspired to deprive Plaintiff of due process during the ejectment proceedings through a variety of procedural machinations (id. at 6-9). The Amended Complaint goes on to assert that certain Defendants evicted Plaintiff subsequent to the ejectment proceedings (and the filing of the original Complaint), and that the eviction perpetuated Plaintiff's previously-asserted civil rights violations. (See Docket Entry 6 at 3-9.)

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DISCUSSION

I. PLAINTIFF'S CLAIMS AGAINST C.M. MORTON AND LISA JOHNSON-TONKINS

Plaintiff has asserted a variety of constitutional and tort claims against C.M. Morton, a state court judge, and Lisa Johnson-Tonkins, the Clerk of the Superior Court of Guilford County. (See Docket Entry 2.) Both state and federal judges, including magistrates, enjoy judicial immunity, i.e., “an immunity from suit, not just from ultimate assessment of damages.” Mireles v. Waco, 502 U.S. 9, 11 (1991) (citing Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 526(1985)); see also King v. Myers, 973 F.2d 354, 356 (4th Cir. 1992) (“Magistrates are judicial officers, and are thus entitled to absolute immunity under the same conditions as are judges.”). Judicial immunity protects judges from suit, even for actions based on allegations of bad faith or malice. See id. A plaintiff can only overcome judicial immunity when the allegations concern acts of a nonjudicial nature, or if the judge acted “in the complete absence of all jurisdiction.” Darling v. Falls, 236 F.Supp.3d 914, 927 (M.D. N.C. 2017) (citing Mireles, 502 U.S. at 11); see also Stump v. Sparkman, 435 U.S. 349, 359-62 (1978) (holding that judicial immunity applies even when judge's “exercise of authority [was] flawed by the commission of grave procedural errors” and that judicial act encompasses any “function normally performed by a judge”). Clerks of a court, who assist in carrying out judicial functions, enjoy derivative absolute judicial immunity. See

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Hamilton v. Murray, 648 Fed.Appx. 344, 345 (4th Cir. 2016); Jackson v. Houck, 181 Fed.Appx. 372, 373 (4th Cir. 2006).

The Complaint describes Morton as a “small Claims Magistrate Judge” and Johnson-Tonkins as “the Clerk of Superior Court of Guilford County.” (Docket Entry 2 at 2.) As a result, absolute judicial immunity defeats any claim against them unless either engaged in some non-judicial action or acted without any jurisdiction. See Mireles, 502 U.S. at 11. But nowhere does Plaintiff state that either Morton or Johnson-Tonkins took any nonjudicial actions; on the contrary, Plaintiff's allegations against Morton and Johnson-Tonkins focus on actions they took during Plaintiff's ejectment proceedings, such as that Morton regularly “ordered [Plaintiff] to appear before the court,” including shortly after a surgery (Docket Entry 2 at 4), and that Johnson-Tonkins failed to timely send an...