Germany v. Vance

• Citation: 673 F. Supp. 1143
• Decision Date: 01 December 1987
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 82-1271-S.
• Parties: Suzanne GERMANY, Plaintiff, v. Carol VANCE, John Paladino, Mark Mulcahy and James Donadini, Jr., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Massachusetts

673 F. Supp. 1143

Suzanne GERMANY, Plaintiff, v. Carol VANCE, John Paladino, Mark Mulcahy and James Donadini, Jr., Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 82-1271-S.

United States District Court, D. Massachusetts.

December 1, 1987.

Steven B. Rosenthal, Bornstein & Cohen, Boston, Mass., for plaintiff.

Michelle A. Kaczynski, Asst. Atty. Gen., Boston, Mass., for defendants.

AMENDED MEMORANDUM AND ORDER ON CROSS-MOTIONS FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT

SKINNER, District Judge.

Plaintiff Suzanne Germany brought this action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and Mass.Gen.L. c. 12, § 11I, alleging the deprivation of her constitutional rights by defendants, who at all pertinent times were employees of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Division of Youth Services ("DYS"). The case is now before me on cross-motions for summary judgment. Although plaintiff's Amended Complaint contains several counts, she has waived all except Count V. The parties have agreed to have the case decided on the basis of a Statement of Agreed Upon Facts and certain exhibits and affidavits submitted by the parties. Because there is no genuine issue as to any material fact, summary judgment is appropriate at this time. Fed. R.Civ.P. 56(c).

Facts

On September 17, 1979, plaintiff was charged with assault and battery upon her father, Michael Hussey. The matter was tried in the juvenile session of the Fourth District Court of Eastern Middlesex County in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where plaintiff's father testified against her. Plaintiff was found delinquent and committed to the custody of DYS.

Plaintiff appealed the decision to a jury of six in the Lowell District Court in Middlesex County, where she plead guilty to the charge of assault and battery.¹ Under the terms of an agreed-upon disposition, she was given a suspended sentence to the custody of DYS, with probation. On March 11, 1980, after a suspension hearing, plaintiff was surrendered to DYS custody. At that time, defendant Carol Vance and her supervisor, defendant John Paladino, were assigned by DYS to oversee the care, treatment and housing of the plaintiff.

On March 25, 1980, plaintiff's parents met with Vance and informed her that the alleged assault and battery by the plaintiff on her father never took place, and that plaintiff's father had lied about the assault in order to obtain services for his daughter. Vance reported this information in an internal document which she prepared on or before April 2, 1980 and submitted to Paladino. Defendants Vance and Paladino subsequently discussed the recantation.

Neither Vance nor Paladino informed plaintiff that her father had recanted his testimony. On April 18, 1980, defendant Paladino prepared a document entitled "Regional Court Report" regarding the plaintiff, and submitted it to the Woburn District Court. The recantation was not mentioned in the status report. In May 1980, plaintiff's parents reiterated to defendant Vance their statement that the assault and battery charge had been fabricated.

On June 9, 1980, due to a change in the legal residence of plaintiff's parents, responsibility for plaintiff's case was transferred from Vance and Paladino to defendants Mark Mulcahy and James Donadini, Jr. Just prior to the transfer, copies of all material regarding plaintiff's commitment and treatment were forwarded to Mulcahy, the newly assigned caseworker. Upon reading the materials, defendant Mulcahy learned that the charges against plaintiff had been fabricated. He immediately notified his supervisor, defendant Donadini. He also, on the day of the transfer, informed plaintiff that her father had recanted his testimony. At a meeting on June 9, 1980, defendant Donadini told plaintiff that "anything which can be done to help the situation" would be done.

Plaintiff remained in DYS custody. Within a few weeks, she wrote a letter to Judge Cullen of the Woburn District Court informing him of the recantation. On October 1, 1980, defendant Donadini mailed a letter to Judge Cullen explaining that plaintiff's father had recanted his testimony, and that plaintiff was not amenable to treatment as a result. Upon receipt of Donadini's letter, Judge Cullen appointed counsel for plaintiff. On November 13, 1980, plaintiff was placed in an independent living situation. She was discharged from DYS custody on September 1, 1981.

In Count V of her Amended Complaint, plaintiff alleges that defendants, acting under color of state law, deprived her of her rights under the Fifth, Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. She alleges that defendants' failure to inform her and the court of the recantation, their failure to have counsel appointed for her upon learning of the recantation, and their unreasonable detention of her after the recantation, violated her right to counsel, her right to due process of law, her right of access to the courts, and her right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.

Defendants argue that the suit is barred by the Eleventh Amendment. They also assert that they are entitled to qualified immunity as state officials because they had no clearly established constitutional duty to disclose the recantation by plaintiff's father.

Discussion

A. Eleventh Amendment.

The Eleventh Amendment bars suits for damages against states in federal courts. Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651, 663, 94 S.Ct. 1347, 1356, 39 L.Ed.2d 662 (1974). It also bars suits for damages against state officials where the state is the "real, substantial party in interest." Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, 465 U.S. 89, 101, 104 S.Ct. 900, 908, 79 L.Ed.2d 67 (1984). Even defendants concede, however, that state officials who act under state law in a manner violative of the federal Constitution are stripped of their official character and are subject to the consequences of their actions. Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123, 28 S.Ct. 441, 52 L.Ed. 714 (1908); Scheuer v. Rhodes, 416 U.S. 232, 94 S.Ct. 1683, 40 L.Ed.2d 90 (1974). Defendants argue, in essence, that there was no constitutional violation, and thus the suit is barred by the Eleventh Amendment.

This argument is in fact merely a restatement of the question presented: did defendants violate plaintiff's constitutional rights. If plaintiff's constitutional rights were denied, defendants concede that there is no Eleventh Amendment defense. If there was no constitutional violation, plaintiff cannot prevail. I therefore hold that the Eleventh Amendment does not bar this suit, and turn to the question of whether defendants' actions infringed upon plaintiff's constitutional rights.

B. Qualified Immunity.

The defendants have raised a qualified immunity defense to all of plaintiff's claims. The defendants in this case, as DYS caseworkers and supervisors performing discretionary functions, are governed by the standards articulated in the Supreme Court in Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 2738, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982):

Government officials performing discretionary functions, generally are shielded from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.

This standard is not a subjective test of the official's state of mind, but rather an inquiry into the objective reasonableness of the official's actions. De Abadia v. Izquierdo Mora, 792 F.2d 1187, 1193 (1st Cir.1986). The determination is one for the judge, not a jury. Hall v. Ochs, 817 F.2d 920, 924 (1st Cir.1987).

The defendants in this case are only liable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 if they are found to have violated a "clearly established" constitutional right. Since the Harlow decision, the term "clearly established" has been clarified. The mere identification of a broad constitutional right that is alleged to have been violated will not be sufficient:

Our cases establish that the right the official is alleged to have violated must have been "clearly established" in a more particularized, and hence more relevant, sense: The contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right. This is not to say that an official action is protected by qualified immunity unless the very action in question has previously been held unlawful, ... but it is to say that in light of preexisting law the unlawfulness must be apparent.

Anderson v. Creighton, ___ U.S. ___, 107 S.Ct. 3034, 3039, 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987). In determining whether a right is "clearly established," the First Circuit has focused its inquiry on the sufficiency of the existing case law:

We need not find a ruling tht considered the precise situation at hand. It is enough, rather, that there existed case law sufficient to clearly establish that, if a court were presented with such a situation, the court would find that plaintiff's rights were violated.

Hall v. Ochs, 817 F.2d at 925. Each of plaintiff's constitutional claims must be examined in this context.

1. Right to Counsel.

Plaintiff alleges that defendants had a constitutional duty, under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments, to provide her with counsel as soon as they learned of her father's recantation. Courts have held, however, that an indigent defendant does not have a constitutional right to have counsel appointed at all post-conviction proceedings. Ross v. Moffitt, 417 U.S. 600, 94 S.Ct. 2437, 41 L.Ed.2d 341 (1974); Johnson v. Avery, 393 U.S. 483, 488, 89 S.Ct. 747, 750, 21 L.Ed.2d 718 (1969). Specifically, there is no constitutional right to have counsel appointed on a motion for a new trial. Dirring v. United States, 353 F.2d 519, 520 (1st Cir.1965). Indeed, even plaintiff's counsel, in his Memorandum of Law in Support of Plaintiff's Motion for Summary Judgment, acknowledges,

An indigent defendant does not have an absolute right under any provision of the United States Constitution or the Massachusetts Declaration

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