Lemoine v. New Horizons Ranch and Center, Inc.

• Decision Date: 12 May 1999
• Docket Number: No. 98-10742,98-10742
• Citation: 174 F.3d 629
• Parties: Susie LEMOINE, on behalf of Andrew Est. of Lemoine, Individually and as Personal Representative of the Estate of Andrew Lemoine, Deceased, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. NEW HORIZONS RANCH AND CENTER, INC., et al., Defendants, Paul Scott; Kelly Hutchinson; and Wayne Hairgrove, Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 629

174 F.3d 629

Susie LEMOINE, on behalf of Andrew Est. of Lemoine Individually and as Personal Representative of the Estate of Andrew Lemoine, Deceased Plaintiff-Appellee, v. NEW HORIZONS RANCH AND CENTER, INC., et al., Defendants Paul Scott; Kelly Hutchinson; and Wayne Hairgrove Defendants-Appellants.

No. 98-10742.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

May 12, 1999.

Portia J. Bott, Michael B. Paddock, Fort Worth, TX, James W. Lane, Lane, Lane, Ft. Worth, TX, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

Laurie R. Eiserloh, Austin, TX, for Defendants-Appellants.

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

Before REYNALDO G. GARZA, STEWART and PARKER, Circuit Judges.

STEWART, Circuit Judge:

Appellants appeal the district court's decisions to deny their motions for summary judgment. The district court denied their claim to qualified immunity because it found that there existed two genuine issues of material fact. We REVERSE.

FACTUAL & PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

This wrongful death / substantive due process Fourteenth Amendment case focuses upon the 1995 death of Andrew Lemoine ("Andrew"). Andrew, at the age of twelve, died of a heat stroke after being forced to work as part of a behavior modification program in which he moved forty-pound rocks all day outside in temperatures reaching 103 degrees. When he died, Andrew was in the care of a private residential treatment center called New Horizons Ranch and Center ("New Horizons"), and was under the managing conservatorship of the Texas Department of Protective Regulatory Services ("TDPRS"). At the time of his placement at New Horizons, Andrew was receiving a complex regime of anti-psychotic and other psychotropic medicines which, among other side-effects, allegedly made him hyper-sensitive to light and less able to dissipate heat. These drugs also inhibited his body's ability to sweat and made him feel full and less likely to drink water. The essence of the claim underlying the appeal Andrew's brief life was tragic. Born in 1983, Andrew was two years old when he was taken from his family as a result of severe abuse by his father. Andrew's mother and Plaintiff-appellee, Susie Lemoine ("Ms. Lemoine" or "plaintiff"), also failed to protect him from the abuse and failed to treat him with needed antibiotics. A family court gave TDPRS managing conservatorship over Andrew, but refused to terminate Ms. Lemoine's parental rights.

before us is that TDPRS should never have sent Andrew to New Horizons, and that at the very least it should have ensured that Andrew's full medical records were provided to New Horizons.

Because of an existing parental relationship, Andrew could not be placed in an adoptive home. A foster home was also inappropriate because of his severe emotional problems. In 1992, TDPRS placed Andrew in the Buckners Family Center ("Buckners"), a residential treatment center in San Antonio. Kelly Hutchinson, a social worker from TDPRS and one of the three Defendants-appellants in this case, became Andrew's caseworker.

In 1995, Andrew became an adolescent and could no longer stay at Buckners. Consequently, Hutchinson began the process of finding Andrew a new residential treatment facility. During this process, Hutchinson became an acting supervisor at TDPRS. Paul Scott, the second of the three Defendants-appellants, took Hutchinson's place as Andrew's caseworker. Together, they continued the process of finding a new residential treatment facility center.

This process had eight steps. The parts of that process in controversy in this case are emphasized below:

1. Hutchinson, Scott, Ms. Lemoine, and the family court held a Permanency Planning Team meeting, in which they discussed Andrew's impending move.

2. Scott submitted the "Common Application Form" to a private agency on state contract. The private agency is contractually obliged to determine what level of care a child requires. Andrew was ranked at a level five out of six, with six requiring the most care.

3. Scott obtained a list of acceptable facilities.

4. Hutchinson and Scott selected New Horizons as Andrew's new facility.

5. Scott determined that there were no impending actions against New Horizon's license.

6. Hutchinson and Scott filled out Form 2646 (the "Transfer Evaluation Form"). TDPRS did not obtain the signature of a Masters of Social Work, which is required for a transfer. ¹

7. Hutchinson and Scott filled out Forms 2085 and 2085a, in which they gave New Horizons permission to perform medical and dental care for Andrew.

8. Scott and Elisabeth Villareal, Andrew's direct caregiver at Buckners, visited New Horizons for a preplacement visit. Scott and Villareal met with Mike Snider, Admission Director of New Horizons, and Villareal provided Snider with Andrew's most recent physical, psychiatric, and dental evaluations, his medications, his most recent treatment plan, school records, and first-hand information about Andrew's disciplinary and medical history. Scott did not monitor Buckners to make certain that the facility sent Andrew's complete medical record. ²

Thirty-two days after his transfer to New Horizons, Andrew died.

Plaintiff-appellee Ms. Lemoine brought this 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action claiming that Andrew's constitutional rights under the Fourteenth Amendment's substantive due process clause were violated. The action was brought in federal district court against Hutchinson and Scott, the two TDPRS employees who were responsible for Andrew's care and who had directly worked on Andrew's case, as well as TDPRS employee Wayne Hairgrove, Lead Program Director of Child Protective Services in Tarrant County (together "appellants"). ³

Appellants filed motions for summary judgment asserting qualified immunity. The district court denied each motion and explained that there existed two genuine issues of material fact, the first relating to whether the appellants had obtained a signature from a person holding a master's degree in social work approving Andrews' transfer, and the second involving whether the appellants had sent Andrew's complete medical records to New Horizons. This timely appeal followed.

JURISDICTION

Plaintiff contends we do not have jurisdiction over this appeal because it is nothing more than a sufficiency of the evidence claim, and our appellate jurisdiction does not extend to such issues when they are presented to us on a denial of a motion for summary judgment. Appellants assert, on the other hand, that their appeal is not an argument disputing the district court's view of the facts, but rather a legal claim assuming the facts as the district court saw them. Because we have recently altered the law in this area, we briefly review the pertinent limits to our appellate jurisdiction.

Normally, we do not have appellate jurisdiction to review a district court's denial of a motion for summary judgment because such a motion is not a final one within the meaning of 28 U.S.C. § 1291. An exception to this rule exists when the summary judgment motion is premised on a claim of absolute or qualified immunity. See Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985). In such a case, we possess appellate jurisdiction over the interlocutory appeal because the claim in question is separate from the underlying merits of the case and therefore fits within the collateral order exception laid out in Cohen v. Beneficial Inducs. Loan Corp., 337 U.S. 541, 546, 69 S.Ct. 1221, 93 L.Ed. 1528 (1949). See Colston v. Barnhart, 146 F.3d 282, 284 n. 1 (5th Cir.) (denying petition for en banc review), cert. denied --- U.S. ----, 119 S.Ct. 618, 142 L.Ed.2d 557 (1998).

Even in these cases, however, appellate jurisdiction is limited. We have appellate jurisdiction to review the district court's decision denying summary judgment only to the extent it turns on an issue of law. Or said differently, our appellate jurisdiction does not allow us to review that district court's factual findings. It is helpful at this point to realize that when a district court denies a motion for summary judgment on the basis that there exist genuine issues of material fact, the district court is actually making two separate conclusions:

First, the court has concluded that the issues of fact in question are genuine, i.e., the evidence is sufficient to permit a reasonable factfinder to return a verdict for the nonmoving party. Second, the court has concluded that the issues of fact are material, i.e. resolution of the issues might affect the outcome of the suit under governing law.

See Colston v. Barnhart, 146 F.3d 282 (5th Cir.) (citations omitted), cert. denied --- U.S. ----, 119 S.Ct. 618, 142 L.Ed.2d 557 Here, the plaintiff argues that we do not have appellate jurisdiction because appellants make nothing more than an attack on the genuineness of the two fact issues identified by the district court. We disagree. Appellants contend that even if the district court's identification of genuine fact issues are correct, these fact issues are immaterial because they do not show that appellants acted with anything more than negligence. As noted earlier, the district court opined that there existed two genuine issues of material fact, the first relating to whether the appellants obtained a signature from a person holding a master's degree in social work approving Andrews' transfer, and the second involving whether the appellants had sent all of Andrew's complete medical records to New Horizons. The crux of appellants' argument is that even if the district court correctly identified the factual issues above, such factual findings are immaterial because these failures show nothing more than mere negligence. As plaintiff must prove more than negligence to state a constitutional violation, say ...