Hagwood v. City of Phila.
| Decision Date | 25 May 2022 |
| Docket Number | CIVIL ACTION NO. 21-4966 |
| Citation | 604 F.Supp.3d 293 |
| Parties | Rasheim HAGWOOD, Plaintiff, v. CITY OF PHILADELPHIA, et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Pennsylvania |
Thomas F. Sacchetta, Gerald B. Baldino, III, Sacchetta & Baldino, Media, PA, for Plaintiff.
Kathryn Faris, City of Philadelphia Law Department, Philadelphia, PA, for Defendant City of Philadelphia.
Plaintiff Rasheim Hagwood ("Plaintiff") brings this case against the City of Philadelphia ("Defendant" or the "City") alleging that Plaintiff was injured on Defendant's property as a result of a defective condition. Plaintiff brings a claim for negligence and two claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 : a claim alleging the existence of a state-created danger, and a claim alleging the Defendant failed to train and supervise employees of the Department of Human Services and Philadelphia Juvenile Justice Services Center.
Defendant has moved to dismiss the claims against it. For the following reasons, Defendant's motion will be granted.
Plaintiff was employed by U.S. Facilities, Inc., a private company that provides building and facility management services. U.S. Facilities provides maintenance services for the Philadelphia Juvenile Justice Services Center ("PJJSC"), a juvenile services detention center where juveniles are held while they await their court hearings. The PJJSC facility is also maintained by the Department of Human Services ("DHS"). DHS and PJJSC are both City-run entities and do not have separate corporate existences from the City. The City and its employees are responsible for overseeing, supervising, and managing the juveniles at PJJSC.
Plaintiff alleges that, as part of his employment at U.S. Facilities, Plaintiff was responsible for answering service calls and performing maintenance and repair work at PJJSC. On October 26, 2019, Plaintiff was at PJJSC to perform maintenance work. Plaintiff was only allowed access to certain locations within the facility to assist PJJSC's staff, employees, and agents. Plaintiff alleges that Defendant's employees at PJJSC had to unlock certain doors to allow him access to restricted areas of PJJSC. However, Plaintiff was not accompanied by any security or staff while completing the maintenance work and Plaintiff believed that the juveniles in the facility would not have access to the areas where Plaintiff was permitted to work.
Plaintiff alleges that while completing the maintenance work at PJJSC, a group of juveniles gained access to the area Plaintiff was working in because the locking mechanism on the door to the area was defective, broken, and/or improperly maintained. Sec. Am. Compl. ¶ 8, ECF No. 20. Plaintiff claims that, as a result, "he was attacked, beaten, and assaulted by multiple unrestrained juveniles who were being detained at PJJSC." Id. ¶ 18. Plaintiff alleges he was knocked unconscious and no one from PJJSC came to his assistance. Plaintiff also alleges that he sustained "injuries to his face, head, brain with concussion and post-concussive syndrome
, tinnitus, and TMJ dysfunction, neck, back, right lower extremity, right knee, left lower extremity, left ankle, left upper extremity, left index finger, a facial contusion and neuralgia, PTSD, anxiety, as well as lacerations, scarring and disfigurement." Id. ¶ 80.
According to Plaintiff, he later learned from a detention counselor that such attacks happen all the time and, despite this, Defendant failed to restrain the juveniles. Plaintiff alleges that Defendant allowed the juveniles to roam freely in the facility despite knowing that there were previous breaches in security, issues with understaffing in the facility, and that the "staff responsible for inspecting security doors and barricades frequently failed to properly conduct inspections." Id. ¶ 64.
Plaintiff points to Michael Scott, the Executive Director of PJJSC, Deana Ramsey, the principal of PJJSC, and Cynthia Figueroa, the Commissioner of DHS, and alleges that their deliberate indifference caused the facility to fail "to take or institute necessary precautions to provide proper training, policies, procedures, and adequate security." Id. ¶¶ 30, 34, 38.
Plaintiff initially brought this case against the City, DHS, and PJJSC in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County. On November 10, 2021, the City, DHS and PJJSC removed this case to federal court. On December 6, 2021, Plaintiff filed an amended complaint (the "Amended Complaint") as a matter of course. The City, DHS and PJJSC City, DHS and PJJSC moved to dismiss the Amended Complaint. On March 4, 2021, the Court dismissed Plaintiff's negligence and section 1983 claims for failure to state a claim. DHS and PJJSC were dismissed as defendants because they do not have independent corporate existences from the City. Plaintiff then filed a second amended complaint (the "Second Amended Complaint"). Defendant now moves to dismiss all counts in the Second Amended Complaint. After hearing oral argument on the relevant issues, Defendant's motion is ripe before the Court.
A party may move to dismiss a complaint for failure to state a claim. Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6). When reviewing such a motion, the Court is "required to accept as true all allegations in the complaint and all reasonable inferences that can be drawn from [the allegations] after construing them in the light most favorable to the non-movant." Conard v. Pa. State Police, 902 F.3d 178, 182 (3d Cir. 2018) (quoting Jordan v. Fox, Rothschild, O'Brien & Frankel, 20 F.3d 1250, 1261 (3d Cir. 1994) ).
However, Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 173 L.Ed.2d 868 (2009) (citing Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007) ). To survive a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, a complaint must "contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.’ " Id. (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 570, 127 S.Ct. 1955 ).
Defendant contends that Plaintiff's claim of negligence is barred by the Pennsylvania Political Subdivision Tort Claims Act (the "PSTCA"). The PSTCA grants immunity to political subdivisions within Pennsylvania. See 42 Pa. C.S. § 8541 (). However, this grant of immunity is subject to certain exceptions.
Under the PSTCA, a local agency of the state shall be held liable for negligence involving (1) vehicle liability, (2) care, custody or control of personal property, (3) real property, (4) trees, traffic controls and street lighting, (5) utility service facilities, (6) streets, (7) sidewalks, (8) care, custody or control of animals, or (9) sexual abuse. Id. § 8542(b).
The parties do not dispute that the PSTCA applies. Plaintiff contends, however, that his claim falls under the real estate exception of section 8542(b)(3). On the other hand, Defendant argues that the real estate exception applies only to claims related to premises liability, rather than claims involving harm caused by third parties. For support, Defendant points to Mascaro v. Youth Study Ctr., which held that "the real estate exception imposes a standard of liability on the political subdivision to an extent no greater than that of a private landowner" and which includes the "duty ... to maintain the property safely for the activities for which it is regularly used, for which it is intended to be used, or for which it may reasonably be foreseen to be used." 514 Pa. 351, 361-62, 523 A.2d 1118 (1987). Thus, the "real estate exception [applies] only to those cases where it is alleged that the artificial condition or defect of the land itself causes the injury, not merely when it facilitates the injury by the acts of others, whose acts are outside the statute's scope of liability." Id. at 363, 523 A.2d 1118. As the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in Mascaro explained, "[t]he real estate exception ... has consistently been held to be unavailable to those whose claim of negligence consists of a failure to supervise the conduct of students or persons adequately." Id. at 362, 523 A.2d 1118.
Plaintiff seeks to distinguish Mascaro by arguing that the real estate exception can also apply to situations where third parties are involved in causing the alleged harm. Plaintiff points to Wilson v. Philadelphia Housing Authority, 735 A.2d 172 (1999), a case in which the Commonwealth Court held that a municipal agency could not be afforded immunity under a similar exception to governmental immunity, section 8522(b)(4). Section 8522(b)(4) provides that sovereign immunity does not apply where harm resulted from a "dangerous condition" on "Commonwealth agency real estate and sidewalks, including Commonwealth-owned real property, leaseholds in the possession of a Commonwealth agency and Commonwealth-owned real property leased by a Commonwealth agency to private persons, and highways under the jurisdiction of a Commonwealth agency." 42 Pa. C.S. § 8522(b)(4). The Wilson court considered a situation where the plaintiff was injured on a Commonwealth agency's property after a third party pushed the plaintiff onto a pole stump, which was deemed a dangerous condition on the property. 735 A.2d at 173, 175. The Wilson court held that the Commonwealth agency was not immunized from the claim because the third party's action had set in motion the plaintiff's fall. Id. at 175.
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