Dufresne v. Camden-Wyoming Fire Co.
| Decision Date | 05 May 2020 |
| Docket Number | C.A. No. K19C-03-008 NEP |
| Parties | CHRISTOPHER DUFRESNE, Plaintiff, v. CAMDEN-WYOMING FIRE COMPANY INC., and BOBBI SCOTT, HAROLD SCOTT, JONNY NICHOLS, MATT BROWN, JAMES QUEEN SR., HARRY GLENN NEESE, RON DEAR, ALAN REMBOLD, BRIAN DAWICKI, CARL WILLOUGHBY, SCOTT THORNE and BRIAN NEESE consisting of the BOARD OF DIRECTORS for the CAMDEN-WYOMING FIRE COMPANY and BOBBI SCOTT, HAROLD SCOTT, JONNY NICHOLS, MATT BROWN, JAMES QUEEN SR., HARRY GLENN NEESE, RON DEAR, ALAN REMBOLD, BRIAN DAWICKI, CARL WILLOUGHBY, SCOTT THORNE and BRIAN NEESE in their personal capacity, Defendants. |
| Court | Delaware Superior Court |
Upon Defendants' Motion to Dismiss the Second Amended Complaint in Part
GRANTED
Gregory A. Morris, Esquire, Liguori & Morris, Attorney for Plaintiff.
Jonathan L. Parshall, Esquire, Murphy & Landon, Attorney for Defendants.
Before the Court is the Motion of Defendants to Dismiss the Second Amended Complaint in Part. For the reasons set forth below, Defendants' Motion is GRANTED.
The facts recited herein are as alleged in the Second Amended Complaint of Plaintiff Christopher Dufresne (hereinafter "Dufresne").1 Defendant Camden-Wyoming Fire Company, Inc. (hereinafter the "Fire Company") is a corporation operating as a volunteer fire company in Camden-Wyoming, Delaware. The individual Defendants were members of the Board of Directors of the Fire Company (hereinafter the "Board") at the time of the events alleged in the Second Amended Complaint.
From 2000 to 2018, Dufresne was a member of the Fire Company and held various positions, including Board member and Deputy Chief. Near the end of Dufresne's tenure with the Fire Company, an unknown member of the Fire Company alleged that Dufresne had placed a tape recorder in the Board's meeting room. In response, the Board ordered an investigation. Upon conclusion of the investigation, the Board determined that the allegation was false and that they would not discipline Dufresne for the alleged action.
The Board then hired an outside investigator to conduct a second investigation.2 Like the first, the second investigation revealed no direct evidence that Dufresne had placed a tape recorder in the Board's meeting room. Nonetheless, the Board terminated Dufresne's membership. During the second investigation and after Dufresne's termination, all of the Defendants "and their representatives" made defamatory statements about him to third parties. As a result, the Camden PoliceDepartment arrested Dufresne for invasion of privacy and felony wire-tapping,3 and Dufresne suffered injury to his reputation, loss of employment and employment opportunities, and mental anguish.
Dufresne filed a Complaint on March 7, 2019, naming the Fire Company "and [its] Board of Directors"4 as defendants and alleging that they had defamed him. On May 8, 2019, Dufresne filed an Amended Complaint in which he named the individual members of the Board as defendants rather than the Board as a single entity. Defendants filed a motion to dismiss on May 22, 2019, asserting that both the Fire Company and the individual Defendants were immune from suit under the County and Municipal Tort Claims Act (hereinafter the "Act").5 In response to that motion, Dufresne filed a Second Amended Complaint on July 15, 2019, adding claims against all Defendants under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (hereinafter "Section 1983") and also stating that the individual Defendants were being sued both in their official capacities and in their "personal capacit[ies] unrelated to acting as [] agent[s]" of the Fire Company. On August 12, 2019, Defendants filed their Motion to Dismiss the Second Amended Complaint in Part,6 which is now before the Court.
On a motion to dismiss, the moving party bears the burden of demonstrating that "under no set of facts which could be proven in support of [the complaint] would the [plaintiff] be entitled to relief."7 Upon this Court's review of a motion to dismiss, "(i) all well-pleaded factual allegations are accepted as true; (ii) even vague allegations are well-pleaded if they give the opposing party notice of the claim; (iii)the Court must draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the non-moving party; and [(iv)] dismissal is inappropriate unless the plaintiff would not be entitled to recover under any reasonably conceivable set of circumstances susceptible of proof."8
Prior decisions of the Superior Court are split as to whether to apply state law pleading standards, rather than federal pleading standards, to claims brought under Section 1983.9 This Court finds persuasive the holding in Dollard v. Callery that conflict-of-laws principles require application of Delaware's "conceivability pleading standard" to Dufresne's federal claims, rather than the heightened federal "plausibility standard"10 established in Bell Atlantic Corporation v. Twombly11 and Ashcroft v. Iqbal.12
Finally, the Court need not, and will not, convert the Motion to one for summary judgment in response to Defendants' submission of certain exhibits to the Motion. Generally, when a court refers to matters outside the pleadings on a motion to dismiss, the motion must be converted to one for summary judgment.13 However, when a court takes judicial notice14 of an exhibit to a motion to dismiss, it need not convert the motion to one for summary judgment.15
Here, Exhibit 2 to Defendants' Motion is a list of registered Delaware volunteer fire companies, and Exhibit 5 represents census data for the city of Wilmington. Exhibit 2, generated by the Delaware State Fire Prevention Commission,16 is subject to judicial notice because it is a public record.17 Exhibit 5 is subject to judicial notice because it contains U.S. census data.18 The Court takes notice of Exhibits 2 and 5 and will render its decision on the pleadings alone because both exhibits contain facts that are not subject to reasonable dispute.
Counts I and II of the Second Amended Complaint assert claims against Defendants pursuant to Section 1983. That statute provides that "[e]very person who, under color of any statute . . . of any State . . . subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States . . . to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law . . . ."19 Thus, Section 1983 imposes civil liability on one who, under color of state law, deprives another of rights secured by the U.S. Constitution.20 Therefore, a private entity acting under color of state law is held toconstitutional standards because the U.S. Constitution "constrains governmental action 'by whatever instruments or in whatever modes that action may be taken.'"21
The U.S. Supreme Court has employed various approaches to determine whether a private entity is a state actor for purposes of Section 1983, and thus there is "no single test to identify state actions and state actors."22 However, all of these approaches require that the reviewing court determine whether the private entity's conduct is "'fairly attributable to the State.'"23 In this case, an application of each of these tests demonstrates that Defendants are not state actors for purposes of Section 1983 because their actions were not fairly attributable to the State.
Pursuant to one of the state actor tests provided by U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence, the reviewing court must consider whether the entity in question is controlled by the government. In Lebron v. National Railroad Passenger Corporation, Amtrak had denied the petitioner's request to place a political advertisement on one of Amtrak's billboards.24 The petitioner filed suit, arguing that Amtrak was subject to the requirements of the U.S. Constitution as a federal entity.25 The issue before the Court was whether Amtrak was a state actor pursuant to Section 1983.
Upon review, the Court noted that Amtrak was created by Congress26 to further the federal government's objectives.27 The federal government had appointed a majority of Amtrak's board of directors and owned all of Amtrak's preferred stock,28 thereby subjecting Amtrak to federal government control.29 These facts rendered Amtrak "no different from the so-called independent regulatory agencies," which are likewise controlled and created by the federal government.30 For these reasons, the Court held that Amtrak was part of the government for purposes of the petitioner's lawsuit.31
Here, the Fire Company was not created by a special act of the General Assembly. Thus, there is no State statute subjecting the Fire Company to the "direction and control" of State officials.32 Moreover, Dufresne concedes that the State of Delaware has not reserved to itself appointment rights over the Fire Company's Board.33 Therefore, pursuant to the Lebron test, Defendants are not state actors.
Under a second test provided by the U.S. Supreme Court, the reviewing court must determine whether the private entity performs a function that is traditionallythe exclusive duty of the state.34 In Manhattan Community Access Corporation v. Halleck, the Supreme Court considered whether a non-profit private corporation operating a public access cable channel was a state actor under Section 1983.35 Employing the "public function" test, the Court determined that a private actor may be considered a state actor if it "exercises 'powers traditionally exclusively reserved to the State.'"36 In other words, the government "must have...
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