Jackson v. City of Beaumont Police Dept.

• Decision Date: 03 April 1992
• Docket Number: No. 91-4709,91-4709
• Parties: Harry Lee JACKSON, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. CITY OF BEAUMONT POLICE DEPARTMENT, et al., Defendants, Don Gordon, Officer, and E.R. Pachall, Officer, Defendants-Appellants. Summary Calendar.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 616

958 F.2d 616

Harry Lee JACKSON, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. CITY OF BEAUMONT POLICE DEPARTMENT, et al., Defendants Don Gordon, Officer, and E.R. Pachall, Officer, Defendants-Appellants.

No. 91-4709

Summary Calendar.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

April 3, 1992.

Bruce W. Cobb, City of Beaumont, Asst. City Atty., Beaumont, Tex., for Don Gordon and E.R. Pachall.

John E. Sherman, Houston, Tex., for Harry Jackson.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.

Before GARWOOD, HIGGINBOTHAM, and BARKSDALE, Circuit Judges.

BARKSDALE, Circuit Judge:

Asserting qualified immunity, police officers Don Gordon and E.R. Pachall appeal the denial of their Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss Harry Lee Jackson's § 1983 claim that he was subjected to excessive force during an arrest, Jackson having earlier survived a 28 U.S.C. § 1915(d) Spears hearing. This appeal brings to the fore the differences in the functions of § 1915(d) and Spears hearings on the one hand and Rule 12(b)(6) on the other. We REVERSE and REMAND.

I.

In November 1987, Jackson, pro se and in forma pauperis, filed an action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the "Beaumont [Texas] Police Department", asserting several claims concerning his June 1987 arrest for aggravated robbery. Although not included within the "statement of claim", the complaint also referenced, without providing any detail, an earlier arrest in 1985, involving Jackson and officers Gordon and "Pascal". ¹ A Spears hearing was held in April 1988, by the magistrate judge. That same day, Jackson filed a "motion for summary judgment", contending that he was entitled to judgment because of the Police Department's failure to defend. He included several documents, which asserted that officers Gordon and "Pahaw" used excessive force during the 1985 arrest. The magistrate judge, in July 1988, denied the motion (construed as a request for default judgment), because the Department had not been ordered to answer.

Later that month, the magistrate judge recommended that the excessive force claim be dismissed as frivolous under § 1915(d), finding that it was time barred. In December 1988, the district court adopted the recommendation and dismissed the claim. Jackson appealed. This court reversed and remanded, in January 1990, finding that "the district court failed to consider whether Texas tolling provisions for the disability of imprisonment applied...." Jackson v. City of Beaumont Police, 894 F.2d 404 (5th Cir.1990) (unpublished opinion).

Following remand, Jackson moved, in March 1990, for permission to amend his complaint to include, for the first time, officers Gordon and "Pawhaw" as defendants. Later that month, the district court, noting that a responsive pleading had not been filed, granted the motion, but ordered that process not issue pending review under § 1915(d). A pro se amended complaint was filed in May 1990, and the magistrate judge held a second Spears hearing that July.

In January 1991, the magistrate judge issued a report (adopted by the district judge in April 1991), which noted that the excessive force claim was "stated in [the] motion for summary judgment submitted [in 1988] after [Jackson's first] Spears hearing", and recommended that the claim not be dismissed as frivolous. Accordingly, the amended complaint was ordered served on officers Gordon and Pachall. ² They moved, in March 1991, for dismissal under Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6), contending, inter alia, that Jackson had not plead facts sufficient to overcome their qualified immunity defense. In early April 1991, Jackson obtained counsel. The magistrate judge, in May 1991, recommended that the Rule 12(b)(6) motion be denied, stating that he had already found in his January 1991 report that Jackson "had sufficiently alleged facts for each of the elements of a Fourth Amendment excessive force claim." In July 1991, noting that Jackson had counsel, the district court adopted the report and denied the officers' motion to dismiss. Gordon and Pachall timely appealed. ³

II.

A.

A district court's ruling on a Rule 12(b)(6) motion is subject to de novo review. E.g., Barrientos v. Reliance Standard Life Ins. Co., 911 F.2d 1115, 1116 (5th Cir.1990), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 111 S.Ct. 795, 112 L.Ed.2d 857 (1991). The motion may be granted " 'only if it appears that no relief could be granted under any set of facts that could be proven consistent with the allegations.' " Id. (quoting Baton Rouge Bldg. & Constr. Trades Council v. Jacobs Constructors, Inc., 804 F.2d 879, 881 (5th Cir.1986)). Our review is limited solely to an evaluation of Jackson's amended complaint. E.g., Mahone v. Addicks Util. Dist. of Harris County, 836 F.2d 921, 935 (5th Cir.1988); Jackson v. Procunier, 789 F.2d 307, 309 (5th Cir.1986).

However, it appears that the magistrate judge, in considering the motion to dismiss, determined that an excessive force claim was stated in Jackson's "motion for summary judgment". (Of course, Gordon and Pachall were not served with this motion, which was submitted in April 1988, over two years prior to their being made defendants in May 1990.) "While it is ... appropriate to look beyond the pleadings to decide whether summary judgment should be granted, the converse is true when the question is whether the pleadings state a claim. It is black-letter law that '[a] motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) is to be evaluated only on the pleadings.' " Mahone, 836 F.2d at 935 (quoting O'Quinn v. Manuel, 773 F.2d 605, 608 (5th Cir.1985)). Accordingly, consideration of the Rule 12(b)(6) motion should have been confined to an evaluation of the amended complaint, which, of course, "supersede[d] the original [complaint] and render[ed] it of no legal effect". Boelens v. Redman Homes, Inc., 759 F.2d 504, 508 (5th Cir.1985); see also Clark v. Tarrant County, Texas, 798 F.2d 736, 740 (5th Cir.1986). The district court's consideration of information outside Jackson's amended complaint, however, does not affect our de novo review.

Furthermore, in recommending denial of the defendants' motion, the magistrate judge stated that the argument raised "ha[d] already been decided" in his January 1991 report. That report, however, had reviewed Jackson's amended complaint under § 1915(d), after a second Spears hearing, to determine whether it should be dismissed as frivolous. The Rule 12(b)(6) motion, on the other hand, raised the issue of qualified immunity and asserted that Jackson had not met this circuit's heightened pleading requirements for § 1983 claims where such a defense can be raised. See, e.g., Brown v. Glossip, 878 F.2d 871, 874 (5th Cir.1989).

It is well settled that ruling under § 1915(d) is separate and distinct from that under Rule 12(b)(6). In Neitzke v. Williams, 490 U.S. 319, 326, 109 S.Ct. 1827, 1832, 104 L.Ed.2d 338 (1989), the Court stated that "the failure to state a claim standard of Rule 12(b)(6) and the frivolousness standard of § 1915(d) were devised to serve distinctive goals, and ... while the overlap between these two standards is considerable, it does not follow that a complaint which falls afoul of the former standard will invariably fall afoul of the latter." Accord Wilson v. Lynaugh, 878 F.2d 846, 849 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 493 U.S. 969, 110 S.Ct. 417, 107 L.Ed.2d 382 (1989); Pugh v. Parish of St. Tammany, 875 F.2d 436, 438 (5th Cir.1989).

The primary function of § 1915(d) is to deter the filing of baseless lawsuits by in forma pauperis litigants who "would [not otherwise] be deterred by either the actual cost of litigation or the imminence of Rule 11 sanctions." Wilson, 878 F.2d at 850. Therefore,

[t]o the extent that a complaint filed in forma pauperis which fails to state a claim lacks even an arguable basis in law, Rule 12(b)(6) and § 1915(d) both counsel dismissal. But the considerable common ground between these standards does not mean that the one invariably encompasses the other. When a complaint raises an arguable question of law which the district court ultimately finds is correctly resolved against the plaintiff, dismissal on Rule 12(b)(6) grounds is appropriate, but dismissal on the basis of frivolousness is not.

Neitzke, 490 U.S. at 328, 109 S.Ct. at 1833 (footnote omitted). Accordingly, "frivolousness in the § 1915(d) context refers to a more limited set of claims than does Rule 12(b)(6)[;] ... not all unsuccessful claims are frivolous." Id.

On the other hand,

[u]nder Rule 12(b)(6), a plaintiff with an arguable claim is ordinarily accorded notice of a pending motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim and an opportunity to amend the complaint before the motion is ruled upon. These procedures alert him to the legal theory underlying the defendant's challenge, and enable him meaningfully to respond by opposing the motion to dismiss on legal grounds or by clarifying his factual allegations so as to conform with the requirements of a valid legal cause of action.

Id. at 329-30, 109 S.Ct. at 1834 (footnote omitted). Section 1915(d) dismissals involve no such procedural protections; indeed, they "are often made sua sponte prior to the issuance of process, so as to spare prospective defendants the inconvenience and expense of answering such complaints." Id. at 324, 330, 109 S.Ct. at 1831, 1834.

Accordingly, the district court could not deny the officers' qualified immunity defense simply on the basis that a § 1915(d) review had determined that Jackson had raised an arguable claim. ⁴ The officers were served with the amended complaint only after § 1915(d) review, and were not present at the Spears hearings which are generally held in conjunction with review under § 1915(d). See, e.g., Spears v. McCotter, 766 F.2d 179, 181-82 (5th Cir.1985), abrogated in part by Neitzke v. Williams, 490 U.S. 319, 109 S.Ct. 1827, 104 L.Ed.2d 338 (1989). As such, the qualified immunity issue raised by their Rule 12(...