Estate of Davis v. Johnson

• Decision Date: 27 September 1984
• Docket Number: No. 83-2631,83-2631
• Citation: 745 F.2d 1066
• Parties: ESTATE OF Clyde DAVIS, Deceased, William H. Davis, Administrator, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Marguerite JOHNSON, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 1066

745 F.2d 1066

ESTATE OF Clyde DAVIS, Deceased, William H. Davis Administrator, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Marguerite JOHNSON, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 83-2631.

United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit.

Argued April 10, 1984.

Decided Sept. 27, 1984.

Paul Brown, Heyl, Royster, Voelker & Allen, Springfield, Ill., for defendant-appellant.

William J. Harte, Ltd., Chicago, Ill., for plaintiff-appellee.

Before PELL and BAUER, Circuit Judges, and JAMESON, Senior District Judge. ^*

PELL, Circuit Judge.

Clyde Davis, a fifty-nine year old and evidently senile man, was murdered by a fellow detainee after the two were placed in a single "holding cell" at the City of Decatur, Illinois, police department headquarters. Clyde Davis' son, acting in his capacity as administrator of his father's estate, brought this action in federal district court pursuant to 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983. The complaint alleged that defendant Marguerite Johnson, an information clerk at the Decatur police headquarters, deprived Clyde Davis of rights secured by the Eighth Amendment to the federal Constitution. The complaint also asserted pendent tort claims under the wrongful death and survival statutes of Illinois. A jury returned a verdict against defendant in the amount of $875,000. Johnson thereupon filed a post-trial motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, which the district court denied. On appeal, Johnson assigns two errors with respect to the denial of her motion notwithstanding the verdict. First, she maintains that the district court should have granted the motion with respect to all counts of the complaint because there was insufficient evidence to go to the jury concerning the mental states requisite to her liability. Second, with respect to the wrongful death count in particular, Johnson argues the district court erred when it failed to enter judgment in her favor because there was no evidence Davis' son suffered pecuniary injury when his father died. We consider the two assignments of error in turn.

I. FACTS

Clyde Davis was fifty-nine years old at the time of his death and had been institutionalized in state hospitals or nursing homes for most of the latter half of his life. He was diagnosed as a "catatonic schizophrenic," an illness which left him largely withdrawn and at times severely bewildered. Davis experienced difficulty performing basic tasks such as eating, bathing himself, and taking care of personal hygiene.

Clyde Davis had only one child, William, who was twenty-eight when his father died. William was raised by his mother and never lived with his father. William had no control over the institutions in which his father was placed, and he did not pay for his father's care. During the last decade of his father's life, he visited his father on the average of once a month. Davis spoke to his son on only two occasions during that ten year period, and those communications were extremely terse. During the last ten years of his father's life, William received no financial support from his father, and he had no expectation that his father would recover or ever be able to contribute to his support.

On the evening of April 4, 1978, Davis was left unattended, and he wandered away from Nightingale Manor, a nursing home located in Decatur. Shortly after 10:00 p.m., Decatur municipal police officer Don Allsop was ordered to investigate a car which had rolled down an embankment adjacent to a Decatur street. Allsop found Davis sitting in the car and recognized the car as one that had been reported stolen. Allsop placed Davis under arrest for possession of a stolen vehicle and transferred custody of Davis to Richard Hazen and Leo Dauer, two municipal patrolmen who had arrived at the scene. Hazen and Dauer transported Davis to police headquarters. At trial, these two patrolmen described Davis as frail, unresponsive, and senile.

George Parks was the information clerk on duty when Hazen and Dauer brought Davis to police headquarters. The duties of an information clerk, according to Decatur police department regulations, include booking prisoners, making periodic checks of the holding cells, disseminating information to the public, dispatching police officers, and maintaining files. Parks had read a missing persons report concerning Clyde Davis, and he asked Davis to identify himself. Davis, however, made no response. Hazen and Dauer then took Davis to the holding cells of the headquarters, but they noticed that each of the three male cells already held at least one person. The officers then started toward the single female cell, but Parks informed them that that cell was also occupied. Hazen and Dauer returned Davis to the male section and placed him in a cell which at that time was occupied by one Donald Nobles. Neither Hazen nor Dauer noticed "anything unusual about Donald Nobles." Hazen, however, revealed at trial that, as they placed Davis in the cell, Nobles grinned and said, "So, you're going to put him in with me, huh?" Dauer returned to the cell a few minutes later to give Davis a jacket he had forgotten. Dauer stated that Davis took the jacket from him and apparently recognized the jacket as his. Dauer at this point heard no unusual noises in the cell area and he perceived no unusual activity. A prisoner being held in the male section testified at trial that he witnessed the placement of Davis in the cell with Donald Nobles. According to the prisoner, each officer supported Davis on one side and pulled him through the corridor. Davis' feet apparently dragged behind him and his pants fell below his knees.

Donald Nobles had been arrested in the morning hours of April 4, 1978, for the fatal shooting of his girlfriend. Detective George Hunk of the Decatur police department interviewed Nobles in the afternoon of April 4 and testified that Nobles exhibited a placid demeanor. Hunk also testified that Nobles' appearance was "not unusual" and that Nobles was neither aggressive nor violent at any time during the interview. Parks stated at trial that he observed no violent propensities in Nobles and he further stated that he had "no reason to keep [Nobles] separated [from the other prisoners.]" Nobles, however, testified that he had smoked marijuana and "angel dust" prior to murdering his girlfriend. The effects of these drugs had not yet dissipated when Nobles was incarcerated at the Decatur police headquarters. According to Nobles, these drugs made him "hallucinate" and be "very paranoid," the latter expression being a synonym for "being scared of everyone." Nobles also stated that during the afternoon hours he attempted suicide by running his head against the cell's bars and by striking his wrists against the cell's sink. Nobles admitted, however, that no officer knew of these actions. A prisoner who had seen Nobles strike his hands against the fixtures in his cell confirmed that no officer was aware of Nobles' activity.

At approximately 10:45 p.m., Marguerite Johnson, appellant in this case, arrived at the Decatur police headquarters to relieve Parks, whose shift as information clerk ended at 11:00 p.m. Johnson had been on duty during the early morning hours of April 4 when Nobles was originally brought to police headquarters following the shooting of his girlfriend. Johnson stated that Nobles "seemed very docile" and created no disturbances during her shift on the morning of April 4. Two officers on duty at 10:55 p.m. informed Johnson that the prisoner incarcerated in the cell occupied by Nobles matched the description of Clyde Davis given in the police missing persons report. The officers and Johnson walked to the cell area to confirm the identification, but the officer leading the group advised Johnson not to proceed any further because Davis had dropped his pants and was exposing his genitals. The officer addressed Davis by first and last name, but Davis gave no response. Directly thereafter, Johnson reported her belief about Davis' identity to Sergeant Stolz, the commanding officer in charge of the shift that had just ended. Stolz acknowledged that the man in custody probably was Davis, but for reasons not explained in the record, he failed to pursue the matter and he left the police station for home. Johnson, however, continued to pursue the matter, mentioning to Lieutenant Coventry, the commanding officer for her shift, that the man in the holding area matched the description of Clyde Davis. Coventry told Johnson that Davis was suspected of possessing a stolen car, and he instructed her to have Davis transferred to the county jail. Johnson responded that the workers at the county facility were waxing the jail's floors and that the facility was not currently receiving prisoners. Coventry then stated, "As soon as they are done, we will take him."

Thereafter Johnson attended to her normal duties, including booking new prisoners and answering telephone calls. At approximately 11:30 p.m., Johnson and five officers assembled in the booking area. Each agreed at trial that they would have heard commotion in the holding area from their location in the booking office, but they testified that none in fact perceived any noise coming from the cells. Two prisoners in the cell area, one in the male section and one in the female section, testified that they heard a fight going on in the holding cells. The prisoner in the male section stated he heard the sounds of a person being beaten approximately ten to fifteen minutes after Davis was placed in Nobles' cell. The prisoner testified that the sounds lasted between thirty and forty-five minutes. He also stated that another prisoner in the male area yelled, "Leave him alone." The prisoner in the female area, a male who was being kept apart from his coconspirator in the male section, testified that the fight lasted between ten and fifteen minutes. He estimated that he heard the sounds of the fight at approximately 10:15 p.m. One police officer testified at trial that...