Franklin v. Gwinnett County Public Schools

• Decision Date: 11 June 1991
• Docket Number: No. A91A0113,A91A0113
• Citation: 200 Ga.App. 20,407 S.E.2d 78
• Parties: , 69 Ed. Law Rep. 609 FRANKLIN v. GWINNETT COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS, et al.
• Court: Georgia Court of Appeals

Page 78

407 S.E.2d 78

200 Ga.App. 20, 69 Ed. Law Rep. 609

FRANKLIN v. GWINNETT COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS, et al.

No. A91A0113.

Court of Appeals of Georgia.

June 11, 1991.

Weinstock, Scavo & Montalto, Michael Weinstock, Hillard J. Quint, Atlanta, for appellant.

Freeman & Hawkins, Frank C. Bedinger III, Alan R. Heath, Atlanta, Tennant, Davidson, Thompson & Sweeny, E. Victoria Sweeny, Lawrenceville, Pruitt & Britt, Walter M. Britt, Buford, Arnold J. Wright, Atlanta, for appellees.

POPE, Judge.

While plaintiff/appellant Christine Franklin was a student at North Gwinnett High School, she was allegedly subjected to sexual molestation and/or abuse by a former teacher at the school, Andrew Hill. ¹ Plaintiff filed suit on December 29, 1988 against the Gwinnett County Public Schools and Dr. William Prescott, the band director at North Gwinnett High School, in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia (hereinafter the "federal court action"). Count I of plaintiff's complaint in the federal court action alleged that plaintiff had been intentionally discriminated against because of her gender in violation of Title IX of The Education Amendments of 1972 and The Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987. Count II of that complaint alleged plaintiff was intimidated and coerced in violation of The Education Amendments of 1972. (All counts of the federal court action will hereinafter collectively be referred to as the "Title IX claim.") Defendants in the federal court action filed a motion to dismiss pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), asserting, inter alia, that the compensatory relief sought by plaintiff was unavailable for a Title IX claim. The district court granted defendants' motion on the basis that the compensatory relief sought by plaintiff was unavailable. Franklin v. Gwinnett County Pub. Schools, 1:88-cv-2929-ODE (N.D.Ga. May 1, 1989). The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that decision. Franklin v. Gwinnett County Pub. Schools, 911 F.2d 617 (11th Cir.1990).

On November 2, 1990, plaintiff filed the instant case in the Superior Court of Gwinnett County (hereinafter the "state court action"). The defendants in the state court action are the Gwinnett County Public Schools, Dr. Franklin Lewis, the principal of North Gwinnett County High School, and Virginia Lacy, a guidance counselor at North Gwinnett County High School. In Count I of plaintiff's complaint in the state court action, plaintiff alleges deprivation of her constitutional rights pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983. In Count II, plaintiff alleges defendants deprived her of certain rights guaranteed by the Georgia Constitution, and in Count III plaintiff asserts a cause of action for negligent infliction of emotional distress. Defendants filed a motion for summary judgment in the state court action on the basis that the doctrine of res judicata barred plaintiff's state court action. The trial court granted defendants' motion for summary judgment, and plaintiff appeals from that decision.

In plaintiff's first enumeration of error, plaintiff alleges that the trial court erroneously granted defendants' motion for summary judgment on the basis of res judicata with respect to plaintiff's claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. In particular, plaintiff alleges that (a) the law governing plaintiff's Section 1983 action changed between the time plaintiff filed the federal court action and the state court action; (b) the trial court erred in applying this court's decision in Morgan v. Dept. of Offender Rehabilitation, 166 Ga.App. 611, 305 S.E.2d 130 (1983) to find that plaintiff's Section 1983 action could have been raised in the federal court action; (c) the trial court improperly found that the cause of action alleged in the federal court action was the same as the cause of action alleged in the state court action; (d) the trial court erroneously found that the parties in the state court action were the same parties or in privity with the parties in the federal court action; and (e) the trial court failed to consider the underlying policy considerations associated with granting the defendants' motion for summary judgment. In plaintiff's second enumeration of error, plaintiff asserts that the trial court erred in applying the doctrine of res judicata to plaintiff's state court claims.

1. The doctrine of res judicata in Georgia is set forth at OCGA §§ 9-12-40 and 9-12-42. In order for the doctrine of res judicata to apply, the following three elements must be present: " '(1) identity of parties(, including their privies); (2) identity of the cause of action; and (3) adjudication by a court of competent jurisdiction.' " Barnes v. City of Atlanta, 186 Ga.App. 187, 188(1), 366 S.E.2d 822 (1988) (quoting Firestone Tire, etc., Co. v. Pinyan, 155 Ga.App. 343, 345(2), 270 S.E.2d 883 (1980)). Plaintiff does not contend that the federal district court would not have been a court of competent jurisdiction to hear any Section 1983 claim plaintiff may have had available to her. Plaintiff asserts, however, that the remaining two elements of res judicata are absent in this case.

The court will first address plaintiff's contention that the law governing plaintiff's Section 1983 claim changed between the time plaintiff filed her federal court action and the time plaintiff filed her state court action. "The doctrine of res judicata prevents relitigation of those issues which were actually raised in the first suit and any and all claims which 'under the rules of law might have been put in issue in the cause wherein the judgment was rendered until the judgment is reversed or set aside.' " Walker v. Kroger Co., 181 Ga.App. 745, 747, 353 S.E.2d 551 (1987). Therefore, if a Section 1983 claim was available to plaintiff at the time she filed her federal court action, plaintiff's Section 1983 claim could now be barred by res judicata.

Essentially, plaintiff argues that res judicata should not apply to the state court action because shortly after plaintiff filed her federal court action, the United States Supreme Court, in DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dept. of Social Svcs., 489 U.S. 189, 109 S.Ct. 998, 103 L.Ed.2d 249 (1989), limited a Section 1983 cause of action in similar factual situations to only when a "special relationship" exists between plaintiff and defendant. Plaintiff further asserts that until the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued its opinion in Arnold v. Board of Educ., 880 F.2d 305 (11th Cir.1989), there was no precedent for finding such a "special relationship" between a school student and school officials.

We find plaintiff's argument to be without merit. First, the DeShaney opinion was not issued until after plaintiff filed her federal court action. Plaintiff does not allege nor is there any evidence that in December 1988 plaintiff knew the DeShaney case was pending before the United States Supreme Court and that the decision in that case might affect whether plaintiff had a Section 1983 claim against defendants.

Furthermore, DeShaney is factually dissimilar to the instant case, which makes its application to this case questionable. In DeShaney, a four-year-old boy was severely beaten by his natural father. The child and his mother brought suit alleging that Winnebago County, its Department of Social Services ("DSS"), and certain individual DSS employees had deprived the boy of a constitutionally protected liberty interest by failing to intervene to protect him against a risk of violence from his father of which they knew or should have known. In that case, the Court held that a liberty deprivation triggering due process protection cannot be found when a state actor fails to protect a person against harms inflicted by a third party, who is not a state actor, absent a "special relationship." The Court found that the relationship between the State of Wisconsin and the injured child was not sufficient to create such a relationship because although the State may have been aware of the dangers that the child faced, it neither created those dangers nor rendered the child more vulnerable to them. DeShaney, supra at 201, 109 S.Ct. at 1006.

The primary factual distinction between the DeShaney case and this case is that the actor who allegedly harmed plaintiff in this case, her former teacher, was a state actor. The law in Georgia is well-settled "that public school officials are state officers acting under color of law, whose action is therefore state action...." State v. Young, 234 Ga. 488, 494(2), 216 S.E.2d 586 (1975). See also Lopez v. Houston Indep School Dist., 817 F.2d 351, 353 (5th Cir.1987) (a school system is a local government unit that may be held liable under certain circumstances for deprivations of rights protected by the Constitution or federal law) (citing Kingsville Indep. School Dist. v. Cooper, 611 F.2d 1109 (5th Cir.1980)). The decision in DeShaney intimates that if the harm inflicted on the child had been inflicted by a state actor rather than a private third party, or if the child had been in state custody, the result would have been different.

Plaintiff's reliance on Arnold v. Board of Educ., 880 F.2d 305 (11th Cir.1989), for the proposition that the Eleventh Circuit recognized for the first time that there was a "special relationship," as required by DeShaney, between a student and school officials, is also misplaced. There is no mention in that opinion of the need for such a "special relationship" nor of the DeShaney opinion. Indeed, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals' failure to address this issue and its cursory holding that school officials, who allegedly encouraged a student to have an abortion, were acting under color of state law, suggests that the court did not consider the law on this issue to be unsettled. Id. at 315.

Plaintiff's contention that any Section 1983 claim asserted at the time she filed her federal court action may have given rise to sanctions by the federal court is also...