Johnson v. Florida
| Decision Date | 29 October 2003 |
| Docket Number | No. 02-13499.,No. 02-14670.,02-13499.,02-14670. |
| Citation | 348 F.3d 1334 |
| Parties | Miller Frank JOHNSON, Lloyd Koger, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, United States of America, Intervenor-Plaintiff-Appellee, v. State of FLORIDA, et al., Intervenor-Defendants, Kathleen Kearney, Secretary, Department of Children and Families, Intervenor-Defendant-Appellant. Miller Frank Johnson, Lloyd Koger, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, United States of America, Intervenor-Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Dick Bradley, G. Pierce Wood Memor, et al., Defendants-Appellants, State of Florida, Jeb Bush, Governor of the State of Florida, et al., Intervenor-Defendants-Appellants. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit |
Jason Vail, Tallahassee, FL, Thomas B. York, Dilworth Paxson, LLP, Harrisburg, PA, Steven B. Goodman, Dilworth Paxson, LLP, Philadelphia, PA, for Appellants.
James K. Green, James K. Green, P.A., West Palm Beach, FL, Lisa Wilson Edwards, Mark L. Gross, U.S. Dept. of Justice, Civ. Rights Div., Washington, DC, Robin Lynn Rosenberg, Holland & Knight, LLP, Saint Petersburg, FL, Steven J. Schwartz, Center for Republic Representation, Northampton, MA, for Appellees.
Appeals from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida.
Before ANDERSON and COX, Circuit Judges, and NANGLE*, District Judge.
These consolidated cases arise out of litigation against the State of Florida ("the State") over conditions at a former state-run mental health facility, G. Pierce Wood Memorial Hospital ("GPW"), which closed in February 2002. In the first case, # 02-13499 ("the Consent Decree case"), the State1 challenges the district court's refusal to lift all conditions of a Consent Decree under which GPW was subject to court-supervised monitoring. The Consent Decree was entered to settle litigation between a plaintiff class of patients and the State regarding conditions of confinement, treatment and release at the hospital. In the second case, # 02-14670 ("the attorney fee case"), the State challenges the district court's order refusing to award attorneys' fees incurred in defending claims brought by the Justice Department as Intervenor on behalf of the patients. The State won on all counts at a bench trial, and claims it is statutorily entitled to attorneys' fees as the prevailing party.
Until its closure, GPW was a state-run hospital for the mentally ill, at which approximately 85 percent of the patients were involuntarily committed by court order under a Florida statute known as the "Baker Act." A group of patients at GPW brought a class action in the Middle District of Florida in November 1987, alleging that the State was violating their constitutional rights by providing substandard care and housing, and by failing to release them when they were "discharge ready." Specifically, the complaint alleged that the State: (1) violated their rights under the Fourteenth Amendment by failing to discharge them into less restrictive settings; (2) denied them procedural due process in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment by arbitrarily revoking privileges without formal standards and with no opportunity for challenge; (3) abridged their First, Ninth and Fourteenth Amendment rights by arbitrarily restricting visitation privileges; (4) infringed their right to counsel in violation of the First, Fifth, Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments by failing to provide legal assistance or an adequate law library; and (5) violated their Fourteenth Amendment rights by providing inadequate medical staffing, recreation, vocational training, security and nutrition.
The court certified a class of "all persons who are now or will in the future be committed" to GPW, and a subclass of present and future patients "who have been determined by their treatment team to be `discharge ready' for a period of 15 days or longer, but who have not been discharged." Significantly, the court later expanded the class to include "former patients at GPW even after they are discharged into community treatment facilities."
In June 1989, the parties entered into a Consent Decree, under which the State agreed to make various changes in operations at GPW. A preamble to the decree, entitled "Scope of Agreement," stated that the decree was binding upon "[d]efendants and their successors, agents, servants and employees." The only portion of the order at issue is the district court's refusal to terminate court supervision as it relates to three paragraphs of the Consent Decree: ¶¶ 2, 35, and 37. In Paragraph 2, the State agreed to begin assigning clients to living units and programs according to their individual functional levels and therapeutic needs. The State further agreed that:
As community facilities become available... this shall include moving residents from (1) more to less structured living; (2) larger to small living facilities; (3) group to individual residence; (4) segregated from the community to integrated into community living; (5) dependent to independent living, according to their needs and as more specifically set forth in the Comprehensive Services Plan for the Alcohol and Mental Health Program ... attached hereto and incorporated by reference.
Id. at ¶ 2. Paragraph 35 requires the parties to agree on the selection of a monitor to oversee compliance with the agreement, and Paragraph 37, which is similar to Paragraph 2, deals with the state's obligation to evaluate when patients are "discharge ready" and, subject to the availability of funding, to place them in appropriate community settings.
The decree expressly provided that it was subject to court approval, and that "[c]ompliance/non-compliance with this Agreement shall be determined by the Court." In other words, the parties clearly contemplated a continuing oversight role for the court. The Consent Decree was filed with the district court as a settlement agreement. After conducting a fairness hearing, the court approved the decree by order of August 14, 1989, reserving jurisdiction to oversee its implementation.
Because the State's obligations under the decree were somewhat general, the parties agreed after several years of oversight by the monitor to develop criteria by which the state's compliance could be measured. Accordingly, they entered into two additional agreements (the "Exit Criteria"). There were two sets of Exit Criteria — one governing the provision of legal services and one regarding the adequacy and timeliness of placement in community treatment—but only the latter is at issue here. The parties reduced their agreement to an "Exit Criteria Stipulation," which they agreed to submit to court approval. In the stipulation, the parties agreed that the Exit Criteria would be "the sole and exclusive method for assessing Defendants' performance and determining completion of their remaining obligations and the termination under the consent decree except as otherwise accepted by the parties and approved by the Monitors and the Court." Among other specifications, the stipulation provided that reports of the monitor evaluating the State's compliance with the Exit Criteria would be appealable to the district court and subject to de novo judicial review. Notably, the Exit Criteria purported in several instances to modify obligations imposed by the Consent Decree.2
In December 1994, the State moved for the first time to withdraw from the Exit Criteria. The State, evidently having concluded that it entered into an unfavorable bargain, argued that the stipulation exceeded the scope of the case as defined by the Complaint and the Consent Decree. It further argued that the executive branch officials who entered into the Exit Criteria overstepped their authority by purporting to bind legislative policymakers into the future. The motion was summarily rejected and the Exit Criteria remained in force.
In June 1996, the Justice Department moved to intervene in the case on the Plaintiffs' side under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1997 et seq. ("CRIPA"). CRIPA empowers the Attorney General to bring or join litigation seeking injunctive relief on behalf of persons confined in state or municipal institutions, if there is reasonable cause to believe that the confinees are being subjected to "egregious or flagrant conditions which deprive such persons of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States causing such persons to suffer grievous harm, and that such deprivation is pursuant to a pattern or practice (of violations)." See 42 U.S.C. § 1997(a). The DOJ Complaint accused the State of violating the Fourteenth Amendment and the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA"), 42 U.S.C. §§ 12131 et seq., by failing to protect patients from harm, failing to provide the level of care appropriate to meet the patients' liberty interests, and failing to ensure that each patient was placed in the most appropriate setting for his needs.
The State denied all of the DOJ allegations, and the case went to a five-week bench trial during August and September of 2000. At the start of the trial, the State announced that it had decided to close GPW (although the State contends that its intentions were known before the trial). However, because the parties had agreed in the pretrial order to limit the evidence presented at trial to that developed before September 30, 1999, the planned closure was not part of the record at trial. The original class Plaintiffs actively participated in the trial and sought affirmative relief beyond that provided under the Consent Decree.
Following the trial, the district court issued an opinion on June 28, 2001, ruling for the State on all counts of the DOJ complaint. The court concluded that as of September 30, 1999, the State was providing a constitutionally adequate level of care under the standard set forth in Youngberg v. Romeo, 457 U.S. 307, 102 S.Ct....
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