Jones v. Duncan

• Decision Date: 07 March 1988
• Docket Number: No. 87-5172,87-5172
• Citation: 840 F.2d 359
• Parties: 45 Ed. Law Rep. 38 Roy E. JONES, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Tony A. DUNCAN, R.L. Byrd; Michael R. Gunter, James T. Jones, William Marlowe, Wayne Russell, Jerry L. Jones, Fred Copeland, Larry C. Duncan, Tommy Kilby, Billy R. Kreis, James Adams, Samuel D. Williams, and Morgan County Commission also known as Morgan County Quarterly Court, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

Page 359

840 F.2d 359

45 Ed. Law Rep. 38

Roy E. JONES, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Tony A. DUNCAN, R.L. Byrd; Michael R. Gunter, James T Jones, William Marlowe, Wayne Russell, Jerry L. Jones, Fred Copeland, Larry C. Duncan, Tommy Kilby, Billy R. Kreis James Adams, Samuel D. Williams, and Morgan County Commission also known as Morgan County Quarterly Court Defendants-Appellees.

No. 87-5172.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued Dec. 15, 1987.

Decided March 7, 1988.

David H. Dunaway, Dunaway, Harrell and Van Hook, Lisa M. Countiss (argued), LaFollette, Tenn., for plaintiff-appellant.

Joe R. Judkins, Wartburg, Tenn., Robert H. Watson, Jr. (argued), Knoxville, Tenn., for defendants-appellees.

Before MARTIN and GUY, Circuit Judges, and JOHNSTONE, District Judge. ^*

RALPH B. GUY, Jr., Circuit Judge.

Plaintiff, Roy E. Jones, filed suit in federal court pursuant to 42 U.S.C. Secs. 1983 and 1985 against the Morgan County Commission and the individual commissioners in their official capacities. Plaintiff alleged that members of the Commission had filed suit in state court seeking his removal from the office of Superintendent of Morgan County Schools. Plaintiff's federal civil rights claims are essentially based on allegations of malicious prosecution. The federal district court granted defendants' motion to dismiss under Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6), finding that the defendants had acted in their unofficial capacities as private citizens; hence, defendants' actions were not taken under color of state law as is required in suits brought under section 1983. Because we find that the requisite element of state action has been alleged, the order of dismissal is reversed.

I.

In June of 1983, Tony Duncan, the Morgan County Executive and Chairman of the County Commission, was informed by the county trustee that expenditures by the county school system had exceeded the amount allocated for that purpose by the Commission. Duncan authorized the payment of $20,000 from the county's general fund to cover the initial overdrafts, but instructed the bank not to honor any additional claims. Thereafter, Duncan contacted the state comptroller's office and requested an audit of the school system's financial status. The audit revealed that the system had spent approximately $300,000 more than what was allowed under the county school budget.

In response to the audit, the Morgan County Commission formed an investigative committee to determine the cause of the deficit in the school system's budget. The committee conducted hearings and interviewed several people involved in purchasing for the school system. The committee concluded that numerous items had been purchased with school funds that had not been used for educational purposes and that the county board of education had approved these expenditures. Some of the evidence before the committee showed that Jones had specifically recommended against making at least some of these expenditures. Superintendent Jones refused to appear before the committee and the committee had no subpoena powers with which to compel his appearance. At the conclusion of the investigation, the Commission unanimously passed a resolution which called for Jones' resignation. The resolution also instructed the county executive to take the necessary steps to institute ouster proceedings against Jones if he did not resign. The Commission rejected a proposal to adopt a similar measure which would have been directed against the entire school board. At the time this action was taken, Jones already had an action pending against the Commission for refusing to supply counsel to him in connection with a civil rights action in which he was a defendant. Some of the commissioners talked about "counter-suing" Jones, and it is clear that, at best, they had no hard evidence against Jones but wanted to clear the air and adopted a "let the chips fall where they may" approach to the proposed litigation.

Jones refused to resign and the Morgan County attorney advised the Commission that he would not file a statutory ouster proceeding against Jones. Members of the Commission, using county funds, hired a private attorney to act as a "special prosecutor" to pursue this matter. The attorney advised the defendants that the Commission itself could not institute proceedings under the Tennessee statutory ouster provisions. The statute, however, provided that an ouster proceeding could be brought by ten or more citizens or freeholders of Morgan County. Accordingly, twelve commissioners voluntarily filed an ouster proceeding as individual citizens of Morgan County. The state court granted Jones' motion for a directed verdict in the ouster proceeding following the presentation of plaintiff's proofs. The state court ruled that the Commission members who were acting as "relators" in the ouster proceedings had failed to establish a prima facie case. The Commission members did not appeal the dismissal of their state court action.

Jones was subsequently defeated in an attempt to gain reelection as superintendent of the county school system. He thereafter brought suit in federal court against the county commissioners who had previously instituted the unsuccessful ouster proceedings against him in state court. In his complaint, Jones brought claims under 42 U.S.C. Secs. 1983 and 1985 alleging that defendants had "maliciously prosecuted" the plaintiff "with an intent to deprive the plaintiff of his rights and privileges guaranteed by the Constitution and the laws of the United States." The complaint did not specify exactly which federal statutory or constitutional rights had been violated.

As previously noted, the district court granted the defendants' motion to dismiss under Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6), finding that plaintiff had failed to allege the state action element necessary to state a claim under section 1983. Specifically, the court found that the defendants were being sued for instituting the ouster proceedings against Jones and that, according to Tennessee law, such proceedings could only be brought by certain select government officials or by ten citizens of the county. ¹ Since the county attorney had refused the commissioners' request to bring the proceedings, the commissioners had to act as individual citizens in order to gain standing to proceed with the suit. Thus, the district court reasoned that commissioners could not have been acting in their official capacities when they instituted the ouster proceedings against Jones. Accordingly, the court concluded that Jones had failed to show that the defendants' actions were taken "under color of law" as is required under section 1983. Therefore, the district court dismissed the plaintiff's suit. ²

II.

In Dunn v. Tennessee, 697 F.2d 121 (6th Cir.1982), cert. denied sub nom. Wyllie v. Dunn, 460 U.S. 1086, 103 S.Ct. 1778, 76 L.Ed.2d 349 (1983), this court reiterated the standard used for reviewing the sufficiency of the allegations in a complaint for an action under section 1983:

Dismissals of complaints under the civil rights statutes are scrutinized with special care. A complaint need not set down in detail all the particularities of a plaintiff's claim against a defendant. Rule 8(a)(2) simply requires 'a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief....' Fed.R.Civ.P. 8(a)(2). All a complaint need do is afford the defendant 'fair notice of what the plaintiff's claim is and the grounds upon which it rests.' [cites omitted]. A motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6) should not be granted 'unless it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief.' [cites omitted]. [emphasis added].

Dunn, 697 F.2d at 125 (quoting Westlake v. Lucas, 537 F.2d 857, 858-59 (6th Cir.1976)).

In order to state a claim under section 1983, a plaintiff must allege two elements: (1) the plaintiff must show a deprivation of rights secured by the "Constitution and laws" of the United States, and (2) plaintiff must show that the defendant deprived him of this federal right "under color of law." ³ See Adickes v. S.H. Kress & Co., 398 U.S. 144, 150, 90 S.Ct. 1598, 1604, 26 L.Ed.2d 142 (1970).

Given the facts alleged in this case, we find that the district court erred in ruling that the plaintiff had failed to properly allege that the defendants acted under color of law. In reaching this conclusion, the court focused solely on the fact that, under Tennessee law, the ouster suit could only be brought by the defendants acting as individual citizens and not in their official capacity as commissioners. The district court, however, ignored all of the predicate actions taken by the defendants in their official roles which led to the unsuccessful ouster proceedings and could serve as the basis for a malicious prosecution suit. Thus, the use of defendants' names as relators in the ouster proceeding against Jones was merely the culmination of a whole series of earlier actions taken by the defendants in their official capacities as commissioners with the intent of removing plaintiff from his office. Lending their names to the suit as plaintiffs was actually the least of the actions involved in this scenario. The commissioners could have as easily had their spouses be the named plaintiffs. It was the exercise of their official power to set the wheels in motion to bring the suit and their financing of the suit that qualifies as "state action."

The defendants rely heavily on our decision in Crowder v. Conlan, 740 F.2d 447 (6th Cir.1984). In Crowder, a physician brought a ...