Daniels v. Twin Oaks Nursing Home

• Citation: 692 F.2d 1321
• Decision Date: 06 December 1982
• Docket Number: No. 81-7652,81-7652
• Parties: Bob DANIELS, As Administrator of the Estate of Isaac Gaston Daniels, deceased, Plaintiff-Appellant, Cross-Appellee, v. TWIN OAKS NURSING HOME, a Corporation, and Mediplex Incorporated, a Corporation, Defendants-Appellees, Cross-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 1321

692 F.2d 1321

Bob DANIELS, As Administrator of the Estate of Isaac Gaston

Daniels, deceased, Plaintiff-Appellant, Cross-Appellee, v. TWIN OAKS NURSING HOME, a Corporation, and Mediplex

Incorporated, a Corporation, Defendants-Appellees,

Cross-Appellants.

No. 81-7652.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

Dec. 6, 1982.

Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc

Denied Jan. 26, 1983.

Powell & Powell, Andalusia, Ala., A.B. Powell, III, Champ Lyons, Jr., Coale, Helmsing, Lyons & Sims, Mobile, Ala., for plaintiff-appellant, cross-appellee.

Davis Carr, Mobile, Ala., for Mediplex, Inc.

Appeals from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama.

Before GODBOLD, Chief Judge, and ANDERSON, Circuit Judge, and HOFFMAN ^*, District Judge.

GODBOLD, Chief Judge:

Plaintiff brought suit under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 and asserted a pendent state law negligence claim as administrator of the estate of his father, Isaac Daniels, for Daniels' wrongful death. Daniels disappeared while under the care of the defendant nursing home and has not been seen since. In a trial conducted before a magistrate with the consent of the parties pursuant to 28 U.S.C. Sec. 636(c) the jury returned a verdict of $1 million, but the magistrate entered a judgment n.o.v. and granted a new trial in the alternative that the judgment is reversed. We affirm the judgment n.o.v.

I. The facts

Isaac Daniels was committed to an Alabama state mental hospital in 1970 at the age of 69 because he was senile and could not be stopped from wandering into strangers' houses. As his only mental problem was senility, Daniels was transferred in 1973 to the Twin Oaks Nursing Home, a private institution in Mobile, Alabama. After a trial period of two years Daniels was formally turned over to the nursing home on a permanent basis, under contract with the state.

Nurses' notes document that Daniels had a persistent tendency to wander off from the nursing home. During a six-month period in 1974, for example, Daniels succeeded in leaving the home five separate times. He usually was found in the neighborhood, but on one occasion in 1974 he walked into woods that were adjacent to the home and was found on the other side of a swamp located in the midst of the woods. Facts concerning the size and nature of the woods and swamp were not fully developed. All we know is that the woods were dense and that the swampy area was described as the size of a city block and as 200 yards long and the width of the courtroom. We do not know the nature of the swamp or the size of the wooded area. Other instances of leaving the home, both attempted and successful, continued to occur through 1978.

Because of Daniels' peripatetic tendency the nursing home began to restrain him regularly when he could not be watched. The means of restraint were tranquilizers and a "Posey vest," a cloth vest with straps that tie the patient to a bed or chair. On the morning of June 6, 1979, when Daniels was last seen, he was restrained in a Posey vest and was checked at hourly intervals up until 11:00. At approximately 11:45 a.m., however, it was discovered that Daniels was missing. Employees of the nursing home searched the surrounding neighborhood and the woods adjacent to the home but to no avail. Radio and television stations were notified. The next evening a team of four policemen with search dogs were called in, and they searched the woods and swamp for two to three hours. Neither Daniels nor his body was then found or has ever been found. One year later a state probate court appointed plaintiff to administer Daniels' estate, an act that plaintiff contends, and defendant does not challenge, conclusively establishes Daniels' death.

Plaintiff brought suit in federal court under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 charging that the nursing home's negligence caused Daniels' death in violation of due process and that the nursing home was a state actor. ¹ Plaintiff also brought a pendent state law negligence claim. The case was tried by a U.S. magistrate with the consent of the parties pursuant to 28 U.S.C. Sec. 636(c). The parties agreed that the state and federal theories of action were identical, and so the case was submitted to the jury under a single negligence instruction. The magistrate denied defendant's motion for directed verdict, and the jury found for the plaintiff and awarded $1 million in damages. The magistrate entered a judgment n.o.v., reasoning as to the state law negligence action that Alabama's rule of evidence against drawing an inference from an inference made the evidence insufficient to submit the case to the jury, and as to the federal claim that there was not the requisite abuse of power necessary to state a constitutional cause of action. In the alternative the magistrate ordered a new trial on the ground of excessive damages.

On appeal plaintiff objects to the three post-verdict rulings just summarized. Defendant contends that the judgment can be sustained on the ground that there was insufficient evidence under the federal standard to support the verdict. We affirm on the basis of the latter ground.

II. Sufficiency of the evidence

Plaintiff's case rested entirely upon circumstantial evidence. There is no direct evidence of negligence or of the cause of death. Plaintiff contends that the jury could be properly allowed to infer negligence from the fact that Daniels could have left the nursing home only by passing a nurses' station, and that the jury could infer that this negligence proximately caused Daniels' death because he was infirm and senile.

A. Federal or state standard

The magistrate ruled that Alabama's rule against pyramiding inferences, i.e., that one inference cannot be based upon another, see e.g., Malone Freight Lines, Inc. v. McCardle, 277 Ala. 100, 107, 167 So.2d 274 (1964), was controlling on the federal court under Erie R.R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64, 58 S.Ct. 817, 82 L.Ed. 1188 (1938), and therefore a judgment must be entered for defendant on the state law cause of action.

The magistrate erred in this ruling because Alabama's rule against pyramiding inferences is no more than a rule concerning the sufficiency of the evidence and therefore is a matter of federal law. Boeing Co. v. Shipman, 411 F.2d 365, 368-70 (5th Cir.1969) (en banc), settled that under Erie federal law controls questions of the sufficiency of the evidence in state law claims. ² According to federal law there is no prohibition against pyramiding inferences; instead all inferences are permissible so long as they are reasonable. Fenner v. General Motors Corp., 657 F.2d 647, 650-51 (5th Cir.1981), cert. denied, 455 U.S. 942, 102 S.Ct. 1435, 71 L.Ed.2d 653 (1982); Cora Pub, Inc. v. Continental Casualty Co., 619 F.2d 482, 486 (5th Cir.1980).

Defendant contends that Alabama's rule against drawing one inference from another inference is analogous to the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur in that it determines when a case can be proved by circumstantial evidence, and that because res ipsa is a matter of state law, Kicklighter v. Nails by Jannee, Inc., 616 F.2d 734, 738-40 (5th Cir.1980), so should be the rule against pyramiding inferences. State doctrines of res ipsa loquitur are respected in federal court because the doctrine has assumed the status of a substantive rule of law, affecting plaintiff's burden of proof or production of evidence, The Doctrine of Res Ipsa Loquitur in Alabama, 26 Ala.L.Rev. 433, 444-58 (1974). There is no authority or rationale to support the contention that the rule against pyramiding inferences has assumed this same substantive law status or that it is any more than a rule concerning sufficiency of the evidence. Even if there were some doubt, the issue is settled by Equitable Life Assurance Society v. Fry, 386 F.2d 239 (5th Cir.1967). There the appellants contended that a jury verdict could not be upheld because, inter alia, it necessarily involved "pyramiding of inferences." Id. at 241. The court held that "the test to be applied in diversity cases to determine the sufficiency of the evidence for submission of a case to a jury is a matter of federal law," id. at 245, and held that the inferences drawn by the jury were reasonable under federal standards, id. at 245-48.

B. The federal standard of allowable inferences

Defendant contends that the judgment can be sustained even if a federal standard is applied, because the inferences necessarily drawn by the jury were not reasonable or allowable ones. Defendant cites cases such as Smith v. General Motors Corp., 227 F.2d 210 (5th Cir.1955), and McNamara v. American Motors Corp., 247 F.2d 445 (5th Cir.1957), for the proposition that if the inference "is only a guess or a possibility, or is no more probable than one of several others," then a verdict must be directed for defendant. Smith, supra, 227 F.2d at 213. ³ There are two distinct thoughts in this statement. The first is that an inference is not reasonable if it is "only a guess or a possibility," for such an inference is not based on the evidence but is pure conjecture and speculation. This proposition is undoubtedly sound. See, e.g., Green v. Reynolds Metals Co., 328 F.2d 372 (5th Cir.1964). The second proposition is that, even though an inference supporting the verdict is a reasonable one, it cannot stand if there are other equally probable inferences; that is, where a case is proved by circumstantial evidence the court must find that the preponderance of evidence supports the plaintiff, and if there are two or more equally probable inferences only one of which supports the plaintiff a verdict must be directed for the defendant. This rule of equally probable inferences is no longer sound.

In Planters Manufacturing Co. v. Protection Mutual Insurance Co., 380 F.2d 869 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 389 U.S. 930, 88 S.Ct. 293, 19 L.Ed.2d 282 (1967), the rule of equally probable inferences was rejected. The court explained that the rule was based on the Supreme...