Davis v. Self

• Court: United States District Courts. 11th Circuit. United States District Court of Northern District of Alabama
• Citation: 960 F.Supp.2d 1276
• Docket Number: Civil Action No. CV–12–S–2402–NW.
• Parties: Mark D. DAVIS, Plaintiff, v. Gilbert Porterfield SELF, et al., Defendants.
• Decision Date: 25 February 2013

960 F.Supp.2d 1276

Mark D. DAVIS, Plaintiff,
v.
Gilbert Porterfield SELF, et al., Defendants.

Civil Action No. CV–12–S–2402–NW.

United States District Court,
N.D. Alabama,
Northwestern Division.

Feb. 25, 2013.

[960 F.Supp.2d 1281]

Mark D. Davis, Florence, AL, pro se.

William G. Parker, Jr., Luther J. Strange, III, Office of the Attorney General, Jennifer M. Bush, Sharon E. Ficquette, Alabama Department of Human Resources, Anne Elizabeth McGowin, State of Alabama, Montgomery, AL, Larry B. Moore, Moore Berry & Linville, Ian Michael Berry, Moore & Trousdale, PC, Lindsey Mussleman Davis, Holt Mussleman Holt & Morgan, Florence, AL, for Defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDERS
LYNWOOD C. SMITH, JR., District Judge.

This action grew out of child custody and support proceedings in the Tennessee and Alabama court systems between Mark Davis, who sues as a pro se plaintiff, and his former wife, Tonya Smith Davis (now known as Blackstock), who is the mother of the child that has become the innocent, collateral casualty of their, seemingly, never-ending marital warfare. The amended complaint filed by plaintiff contains five counts alleging violations of plaintiff's constitutional rights and of state law. The gravamen of the 59–page, 308–paragraph pleading is that Alabama's state courts lack subject-matter jurisdiction over the child custody and support disputes between plaintiff and his former wife.¹ The thirteen persons named as defendants reside in Alabama, and plaintiff alleges that they have conspired to uphold and enforce the, purportedly, unlawful decisions of the Alabama courts.² In addition to Tonya Blackstock—who, as noted above, is plaintiff's former wife and the mother of the child at the center of the dispute—the other persons named as defendants are: Brenda K. Baker, the mother of Tonya Blackstock; Gilbert Porterfield Self, a Circuit Judge in Lauderdale County, Alabama (the State's 11th Judicial Circuit); Ned Michael Suttle, a retired Lauderdale County Circuit Judge; Terry A. Moore, one of the five Judges sitting on the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals; Dr. Robert J. Bentley, Governor of the State of Alabama; Nancy T. Buckner, Commissioner of the Alabama Department of Human Resources; Cynthia L. Bratcher, Director of the Lauderdale County Department of Human Resources; Chris Connolly, District Attorney of Lauderdale County; Robert F. Smith, an Assistant Lauderdale County District Attorney; Stacey Bryant Hooper, another Assistant Lauderdale County District Attorney; Melinda Morgan Austin, an attorney engaged in the private practice of law in Lauderdale County; and Lindsey Mussleman Davis, another private attorney in Lauderdale County.³ Plaintiff seeks monetary damages from each of the foregoing defendants, as well

[960 F.Supp.2d 1282]

as injunctive and declaratory relief. The following opinion addresses motions to dismiss filed by all of the defendants. ⁴

I. STANDARDS OF REVIEW

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), which permits a party to move to dismiss a complaint for “failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted,” must be read together with Rule 8(a)(2), which requires that a pleading contain only a “short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.” While that pleading standard does not require “detailed factual allegations,” Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 550, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007), it does demand “more than an unadorned, the-defendant-unlawfully-harmed-me accusation.” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 173 L.Ed.2d 868 (2009) (citations omitted).

To survive a motion to dismiss, a complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to “state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” [ Twombly, 550 U.S.] at 570, 127 S.Ct. 1955. A claim has facial plausibility when the plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged. Id., at 556, 127 S.Ct. 1955. The plausibility standard is not akin to a “probability requirement,” but it asks for more than a sheer possibility that a defendant has acted unlawfully. Ibid. Where a complaint pleads facts that are “merely consistent with” a defendant's liability, it “stops short of the line between possibility and plausibility of ‘entitlement to relief.’ ” Id., at 557, 127 S.Ct. 1955 (brackets omitted).

Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678, 129 S.Ct. 1937 (alteration supplied).

A. Acceptance of the Plaintiff's Factual Allegations, as distinguished from His Conclusions of Law

When ruling upon motions to dismiss, the district court is required to assume that the facts set forth in a plaintiff's complaint are true. See, e.g., id.; Twombly, 550 U.S. at 570, 127 S.Ct. 1955;Anza v. Ideal Steel Supply Corp., 547 U.S. 451, 453, 126 S.Ct. 1991, 164 L.Ed.2d 720 (2006); Marsh v. Butler County, 268 F.3d 1014, 1023 (11th Cir.2001)(en banc). On the other hand, a court need not accept as either true or correct the legal conclusions that may be asserted in a complaint. Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678–79, 129 S.Ct. 1937.

B. Consideration of Matters Outside the Pleadings

The procedural history of this controversy is lengthy and complex. Given that fact, and the quality of plaintiff's pro se complaint, this court has found it necessary to supplement the facts stated by plaintiff with public ally-available copies of court opinions, and some of the 265 pages of exhibits that plaintiff filed as attachments to his original complaint.⁵ As a consequence, it might at first appear that

[960 F.Supp.2d 1283]

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(d) requires this court to treat the motions to dismiss as ones for summary judgment. That Rule provides that:

If, on a motion under Rule 12(b)(6) or 12(c), matters outside the pleadings are presented to and not excluded by the court, the motion must be treated as one for summary judgment under Rule 56. All parties must be given a reasonable opportunity to present all the material that is pertinent to the motion.
Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(d) (2012). Even so, there are several circumstances in which a court may consider matters outside the pleadings when ruling upon a 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, and not formally convert the motion to one for summary judgment. See, e.g., Harris v. Ivax Corp., 182 F.3d 799, 802 n. 2 (11th Cir.1999) (observing that there are some circumstances in which “the usual rules for considering 12(b)(6) motions are ... bent”).

One circumstance allowing deviation from Rule 12(d) occurs when, as in the present case, copies of documents are attached to a plaintiff's complaint. Id. (“Ordinarily, the full text of [a document] would not be part of the record under review for a dismissal under Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6)unless it was attached to the complaint.”) (alteration and emphasis supplied) ( citing 5 Charles A. Wright & Arthur Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure § 1356, at 590–92 (1969)); see also Hoffman–Pugh v. Ramsey, 312 F.3d 1222, 1225 (11th Cir.2002) (permitting reference to a document referenced in the complaint and central to plaintiff's claims); Brooks v. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida, 116 F.3d 1364, 1368 (11th Cir.1997) (observing that 12(b)(6) motions are “limited primarily to the face of the complaint and attachments thereto ”) (emphasis added).

Another circumstance allowing deviation from the requirement to convert a 12(b)(6) motion to one for summary judgment is when facts are subject to being judicially noticed. SeeFed.R.Evid. 201(a)-(d) (judicial notice); Tellabs, Inc. v. Makor Issues & Rights, Ltd., 551 U.S. 308, 322, 127 S.Ct. 2499, 168 L.Ed.2d 179 (2007) (permitting consideration of judicially noticed matters and documents incorporated into the complaint by reference); La Grasta v. First Union Securities, Inc., 358 F.3d 840, 845 (11th Cir.2004) (noting that, when “analyzing the sufficiency of the complaint, we limit our consideration to the well-pleaded factual allegations, documents central to or referenced in the complaint, and matters judicially noticed ”) (emphasis supplied); see also, e.g., Halmos v. Bomardier Aerospace Corp., 404 Fed.Appx. 376, 377 (11th Cir.2010) (permitting consideration of judicially noticed matters and documents incorporated into the complaint by reference).

Furthermore, “a court ordinarily may treat documents from prior state court adjudications as public records.” Boateng v. InterAmerican University, Inc., 210 F.3d 56, 60 (1st Cir.2000) (holding that “a court may look to matters of public record in deciding a Rule 12(b)(6) motion without converting the motion into one for summary judgment”) (citing Henson v. CSC Credit Services, 29 F.3d 280, 284 (7th Cir.1994)).

II. PROCEDURAL HISTORY

The history of proceedings in the state courts of Tennessee and Alabama leading to the commencement of the present action is lengthy and complex. The following discussion constitutes this court's best effort at ironing out the wrinkles in the convoluted state court pleadings.

A. Tennessee Proceedings

Plaintiff and defendant Tonya Blackstock married on November 11, 2000, but separated just four months later. They were residing in the State of Tennessee on

[960 F.Supp.2d 1284]

the date of their separation. Plaintiff's wife then was pregnant with a child. On some date that is not disclosed in the record, Ms. Blackstock commenced divorce proceedings against plaintiff in the Chancery Court for Lawrence County, Tennessee. Before that court ruled on her petition, however, both parties moved to Alabama, where Ms. Blackstock gave birth to a child, a daughter named Katie Nichole Davis, on December 27, 2001. Plaintiff disputed his paternity of the child, and a DNA test was conducted on February 11, 2002. The Tennessee Chancery Court's decree of divorce was entered just four days later, however, on February 15, 2002, before the results of that test were known. Accordingly, the court found that the child born during the parties' marriage was “the...