King v. Greenblatt

• Citation: 52 F.3d 1
• Decision Date: 10 February 1995
• Docket Number: No. 94-1751,94-1751
• Parties: Mitchell G. KING, et al., Plaintiffs, Appellees, v. Milton GREENBLATT, Leslie Taylor, Charles W. Gaughan, M.C.I. Bridgewater, Defendants, Appellants. . Heard
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (1st Circuit)

Page 1

52 F.3d 1

Mitchell G. KING, et al., Plaintiffs, Appellees, v. Milton GREENBLATT, Leslie Taylor, Charles W. Gaughan, M.C.I Bridgewater, Defendants, Appellants.

No. 94-1751.

United States Court of Appeals First Circuit.

Heard Feb. 10, 1995.

Decided April 6, 1995.

William L. Pardee, Asst. Atty. Gen., with whom Scott Harshbarger, Atty. Gen., and Scott M. Davis, Asst. Atty. Gen., Boston, MA, were on brief, for appellants.

Anthony A. Scibelli, with whom Robert D. Keefe, Stephen C. Reilly, and Hale and Dorr, were on brief, for appellees The Class of 48 + 1; David R. Geiger, with whom Sarah B. Reed, and Foley, Hoag & Eliot, Boston, MA, were on brief for intervenors/appellees Donald Pearson, et al.

Before TORRUELLA, Chief Judge, BOWNES, Senior Circuit Judge, and STAHL, Circuit Judge.

BOWNES, Senior Circuit Judge.

This is the latest chapter in the institutional reform litigation brought in 1972 by plaintiff Mitchell King, then a civilly-committed patient of the Massachusetts Treatment Center for Sexually Dangerous Persons in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, to correct allegedly unconstitutional practices by the Department of Correction (DOC) at the Treatment Center. The history of the litigation has been exhaustively covered: In re Pearson, 990 F.2d 653 (1st Cir.1993) (Pearson III ), Pearson v. Fair, 935 F.2d 401 (1st Cir.1991) (Pearson II ), Langton v. Johnston, 928 F.2d 1206 (1st Cir.1991), Williams v. Lesiak, 822 F.2d 1223 (1st Cir.1987), and Pearson v. Fair, 808 F.2d 163 (1st Cir.1986) (per curiam) (Pearson I ). We review the case history only to put this appeal in perspective.

I.

King alleged that he had been deprived of due process and other federal constitutional rights by the defendants, specifically by officials of the DOC, who allegedly placed him in solitary confinement without notice of the charges against him or a meaningful opportunity to be heard. DOC's actions allegedly interfered with King's treatment by the Department of Mental Health (DMH), the agency vested with primary jurisdiction over the Treatment Center. See Mass.Gen.L. ch. 123A, Sec. 2. ¹ Thus, an element of this litigation, present from the very beginning, has been DOC's alleged usurpation of DMH's statutory authority over patients at the Treatment Center, during which usurpation the patients' constitutional rights were allegedly violated. Invoking both the Federal Constitution and state law, King sought declaratory and injunctive relief from the DOC's sequestration practices.

In 1974, the district court held a hearing on King's allegations and entered a consent decree that provided, in relevant part:

1. The Treatment Center at MCI Bridgewater shall be treated as a facility of the Department of Mental Health.

2. Primary responsibility and authority for the Treatment Center shall be exercised by the Department of Mental Health.

3. All personnel at the Treatment Center (clinical, custodial, administrative) shall be subject to the control of the Commissioner of Mental Health with respect to the handling of patients.

4. Custodial personnel, but not patients, shall be under the administrative, operational and disciplinary control of the Commissioner of Correction.

5. The Department of Mental Health shall exercise the responsibility and authority set forth in subparagraph 2 above so that patients at the Treatment Center should have the least restrictive conditions necessary to achieve the purposes of commitment....

The first four paragraphs of the consent decree closely track the requirements of ch. 123A, Sec. 2, the law in effect when the consent decree was entered. ²

Over time, the residents of the Treatment Center brought various suits to enforce or to modify the consent decrees. In 1988, the Commonwealth sought unsuccessfully to vacate the decrees. "The stream of litigation occasionally overflowed the district court," Pearson III, 990 F.2d at 655, and this court as well.

While the residents were attempting to enforce the consent decrees, forces on the sidelines of the litigation were mobilizing to amend ch. 123A. Beginning in 1986, Massachusetts' executive branch filed a number of legislative bills that sought to transfer control of the Treatment Center from DMH to DOC. None of these bills were adopted until 1994, when the Massachusetts legislature enacted St.1993, ch. 489. Chapter 489 purports to transfer all authority over the Treatment Center to the DOC, in direct contravention of the first five paragraphs of the consent decree. Section 2 of ch. 489 provides that "[t]he commissioner of correction shall maintain subject to the jurisdiction of the department of correction a treatment program or branch thereof at a correctional institution for the care, custody, treatment and rehabilitation of persons [ad]judicated as being sexually dangerous."

The defendants immediately moved under Fed.R.Civ.P. 60(b)(5) to modify the decree so that DOC might assume plenary authority over the Treatment Center, subject to all other substantive and procedural requirements of the decree. ³ Their sole argument was that the Massachusetts legislature's enactment of ch. 489 constituted "a significant change in circumstances warrant[ing] revision of the decree." See Rufo v. Inmates of Suffolk County Jail, 502 U.S. 367, 383, 112 S.Ct. 748, 759-60, 116 L.Ed.2d 867 (1992) (setting forth standard for modification of consent decrees, and reversing the decision of this circuit).

The district court denied the motion from the bench: "On the record that is now before me, and incorporated into that record, everything that I have learned about the case and found in the case from the trials of the Bruder and the Pearson cases [companion cases], I will conclude at this time that the defendants have not sustained their burden of showing a significant change in law or fact under Rufo." The court also made the following findings:

I do find that the consent decrees sought to address federal constitutional violations articulated by King and in Williams [a related case].

A critical component of the remedy provided by the consent decrees was that the Department of Mental Health was in control of the Treatment Center which was to provide, in part, a check on the Department of Correction[,] which compromised treatment.

I conclude that the Department of Mental Health is an essential part of the decree, and on the record before me at this time, the Department of Correction has done nothing yet that I can see which warrants my placing confidence in its ability to deliver ... patient treatment.

I conclude at this time that the Department of Correction's control of the Treatment Center compromises the federal constitutional remedy which the consent decree sought to impose, and would compromise the federal constitutional rights which the consent decrees sought to protect.

...

Will the Department of Correction provide th[e] same treatment [as DMH]? That's not shown. If they were to provide that treatment, if there were to be a case-specific inquiry in what the Department of Correction was going to do and proposed to do, then perhaps I would be able to rule otherwise. But at this point, there is not that showing....

The district court invited the Commonwealth to propose ways to modify the decree that would preserve the federal constitutional remedies, and yet accommodate the change in the underlying state law. It noted, however, that "we're not going to go anywhere" before the defendants have tested the court's interpretation of Rufo on appeal. ⁴ Undeterred, the defendants filed a renewed motion for modification and a motion to vacate the consent decrees while this appeal was pending.

II.

We review the district court's application of the Rufo standard, and the more general requirements for granting relief from a final judgment under Rule 60(b)(5), for errors of law or abuse of discretion. See Alexis Lichine & Cie. v. Lichine Estate Selections, Ltd., 45 F.3d 582, 586-87 (1st Cir.1995). Rufo held that "a party seeking modification of a consent decree bears the burden of establishing that a significant change" in either factual conditions or in law "warrants revision of the decree." 502 U.S. at 383-84, 112 S.Ct. at 760. If the moving party meets this standard, "the court should consider whether the proposed modification is suitably tailored to the changed circumstance." Id. at 383, 112 S.Ct. at 760. This "standard ... applies when a party seeks modification of a term of a consent decree that arguably relates to the vindication of a constitutional right." Id. at 383 n. 7, 112 S.Ct. at 760 n. 7.

Rufo instructed district courts to "exercise flexibility in considering requests for modification of ... institutional reform consent decree[s]" because such decrees " 'reach beyond the parties involved directly in the suit and impact on the public's right to the sound and efficient operation of its institutions.' " Id. at 381, 383, 112 S.Ct. at 759, 759-60 (quoting Heath v. De Courcy, 888 F.2d 1105, 1109 (6th Cir.1989)). We have echoed these concerns. See, e.g., Pearson III, 990 F.2d at 658 ("In institutional reform litigation, injunctions should not operate inviolate in perpetuity."); Mackin v. City of Boston, 969 F.2d 1273, 1275 (1st Cir.1992) ("we believe that district courts should be flexible in considering requests for relaxation of, or release from, decrees which were initially established to bring about needed institutional reforms"), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 113 S.Ct. 1043, 122 L.Ed.2d 352 (1993). Notwithstanding the application of this "less stringent, more flexible standard," a modification "must not create or perpetuate a constitutional violation." Rufo, 502 U.S. at 380, 391, 112 S.Ct. at 758, 763.

III.

We shall refer to the first five paragraphs of the 1974 consent decree as "structural" terms, inasmuch as they incorporate the administrative structure mandated by state law. These are the only terms the defendants seek to modify. For the purposes of their...