DeSisto College, Inc. v. Line, 88-3333

• Decision Date: 15 November 1989
• Docket Number: No. 88-3333,88-3333
• Citation: 888 F.2d 755
• Parties: , 15 Fed.R.Serv.3d 54 DeSISTO COLLEGE, INC. and Loren E. Horner, Plaintiffs-Appellants v. Thomas P. LINE, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 755

888 F.2d 755

58 USLW 2358, 15 Fed.R.Serv.3d 54

DeSISTO COLLEGE, INC. and Loren E. Horner, Plaintiffs-Appellants v. Thomas P. LINE, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 88-3333.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

Nov. 15, 1989.

Roderick MacLeish, Jr., Richard J. Landau, Fine & Ambrogne, Boston, Mass., Stephen H. Durant, Martin, Ade, Birchfield & Mickler, P.A., William E. Kuntz, Jacksonville, Fla., for plaintiffs-appellants.

J. Stephen McDonald, John M. Robertson, Keith R. Mitnik, Robertson, Williams, Mitnik & McDonald, P.A., Orlando, Fla., for defendants-appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida.

Before FAY and HATCHETT, Circuit Judges, and ALLGOOD ^*, Senior District Judge.

FAY, Circuit Judge:

This appeal involves the propriety of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 ("Rule 11") sanctions imposed on counsel for Plaintiffs-Appellants ("Counsel") for signing pleadings without having first made reasonable inquiry into the facts and the law of the case. The district court found, first, that Counsel neglected to follow the court's instructions on restructuring the Second Amended Complaint to form the Third Amended Complaint, and instead signed and filed a Third Amended Complaint which violated the court's order. Second, the court found that Counsel, in signing the Second Amended Complaint and its predecessors, had subjected two defendants to unwarranted litigation to which they would not have been exposed had counsel sufficiently researched this Circuit's precedent on legislative immunity. For those reasons, the district court ordered Counsel to pay the attorneys for Defendants $6000 as a sanction. Counsel challenges the above findings and the sanction of the trial court. We hold that the district court did not err in sanctioning Counsel and therefore AFFIRM the action taken by the district court.

FACTS

On January 2, 1987, Plaintiffs-Appellants, DeSisto College ("the College" or "DeSisto"), an institution created to serve students with learning disabilities and emotional disturbances, and Loren Horner, a DeSisto student, filed a complaint through their attorney, Roderick MacLeish, against Defendants-Appellees, Paul Mazade and Thomas Line. ¹ Also included as defendants were Arthur Pratt, Alan Mills, Rodney Griffin, John Purser, and Carlin Washo, who are not involved in this appeal. Defendants were sued both individually and in their official capacities as members of the Howey-in-the-Hills Zoning Commission or Town Council. The twenty-five page complaint alleged two counts of deprivation of protected rights under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in violation of 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 and one count of discrimination against the handicapped in violation of Sec. 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, 29 U.S.C. Sec. 794. In essence, Plaintiffs accused Defendants of unconstitutionally and illegally manipulating and deliberately misconstruing Howey-in-the-Hills' zoning ordinances, as well as abusing their official positions, to deny Plaintiffs the opportunity to establish DeSisto College in the town of Howey-in-the-Hills.

Plaintiffs exercised their right to amend their pleadings as a matter of course, filing a First Amended Complaint with the district court on January 15, 1987. This complaint comprised twenty-eight pages. In it, Plaintiffs joined the town of Howey-in-the-Hills ("the Town" or "Howey") as a defendant, added a fourth count alleging facts making a declaratory judgment necessary, and appended a request for a declaratory judgment stating that Town officials' enforcement of the old zoning ordinances against the College and passage of new zoning ordinances affecting the College were unconstitutional.

Two weeks later, defendant Line made a motion to dismiss the First Amended Complaint for failure to state a claim under either 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 or Sec. 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. Upon stipulation by Plaintiffs of dismissal of the Rehabilitation Act count, the district court granted Line's motion to dismiss that count in the First Amended Complaint. The court otherwise denied Line's motion, finding that Plaintiffs had sufficiently stated causes of action for violations of due process and equal protection in the other counts of the complaint. Subsequently, the other defendants made a motion to dismiss the First Amended Complaint. While that motion was pending, however, the magistrate ordered Plaintiffs to file a second amended complaint, which was done on July 10, 1987. Consequently, Defendants' motion to dismiss the First Amended Complaint was denied by the court as moot.

The Second Amended Complaint expanded the previous complaint to fifty-one pages containing 174 paragraphs, ten counts and ten separate requests for relief. The first forty-one pages comprised 139 sizable paragraphs of factual allegations concerning various actions of the College and College personnel, the Defendants, and persons uninvolved in the lawsuit, from 1971 through 1987. In the succeeding thirty-eight paragraphs, Plaintiffs alleged that Defendants, by their actions in the preceding 139 paragraphs, had violated Plaintiffs' due process and equal protection rights under the United States and the Florida Constitutions. ²

Defendants thereupon filed a motion to dismiss the Second Amended Complaint for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. Defendants Pratt, Griffin, Mazade, Purser, Line and Washo moved to have the suit dismissed against them both in their individual and official capacities; defendant Mills moved for dismissal of the suit against him in his official capacity only.

In their memorandum of law supporting their motion to dismiss, Defendants enumerated five grounds for their belief that Plaintiffs had failed to state a cause of action against Defendants. First, Defendants claimed that the complaint violated Fed.R.Civ.P. 8(a) and (e) ("Rule 8") ³ in that the complaint did not make a "short and plain statement of the claim" and was not "simple, concise, and direct." Further, Defendants averred that the complaint contained many allegations which were extraneous, immaterial, irrelevant, and/or derogatory. Because of these defects in the complaint, Defendants could not figure out without excessive sifting which allegations pertained to which count or theory of liability. Moreover, the complaint did not specify which defendants were liable for the various wrongs alleged by Plaintiffs. On this basis, Defendants requested that the court dismiss or strike the complaint.

Second, Defendants maintained that a Sec. 1983 cause of action required Plaintiffs to have first exhausted all state administrative and judicial remedies, and that Plaintiffs had failed to do so.

Third, Defendants argued that Plaintiffs had no cognizable cause of action against Defendants in their individual capacity, as Plaintiffs alleged wrongs involving Defendants' performance of legislative and administrative functions regarding zoning and Town management. In such activities, Defendants contended, the law grants persons carrying out legislative duties absolute immunity and persons executing administrative tasks qualified immunity from suit.

Defendants then declared that no cause of action existed against them in their official capacities, asserting that the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure discouraged the naming of officeholders in pleadings, preferring that the office be sued, and that the real remedy lay against the Town of Howey and not the Defendants in their official capacity.

Finally, Defendants stated that Plaintiffs had failed to allege any violation of Plaintiffs' due process or equal protection rights, contending that the zoning ordinances challenged by Plaintiffs were all lawfully and constitutionally created and enforced and that no discrimination occurred.

Plaintiffs in response refuted the assertions of Defendants. Specifically, they maintained that the complaint did in fact fully comport with the Federal Rules governing pleadings. They justified the length of their complaint on the ground that the case was complex, with multiple parties on both sides and involved several transactions over a substantial period of time. Plaintiffs further asserted that the material which Defendants described as extraneous was in fact relevant to the case even if such allegations did not all directly involve parties to the suit. In addition, Plaintiffs denied that the manner in which the complaint was pled affected the liability of Defendants in their official capacities. Plaintiffs argued that Defendants were incorrect about the need to exhaust all other remedies before bringing a Sec. 1983 action, and that due process and equal protection violations had taken place which should be remedied under Sec. 1983. Finally, Plaintiffs claimed that an exception to absolute legislative immunity that exists for legislators acting in an administrative fashion applied to Plaintiffs' case, and that Defendants lacked the good faith necessary to benefit from the qualified privilege accorded administrative functionaries.

The district court in considering Defendants' motion to dismiss and Plaintiffs' opposition decided for Plaintiffs on most of the alleged grounds for dismissal. The court flatly rejected Defendants' exhaustion argument as an incorrect statement of the law. The court also implicitly refused to dismiss the complaint for failing to allege any infringement of Plaintiffs' constitutional rights, although the court's order nowhere expressly denies Defendants' motion on such grounds. The court further allowed Plaintiffs to sue Defendants in both individual and official capacities.

Regarding individual capacity, however, the court found that the law of this Circuit entitles local legislators to absolute immunity unless the legislators act outside of their legislative role. While the court recognized three...