Loftus v. SE PA. TRANSP. AUTHORITY

• Decision Date: 09 February 1994
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 93-2471.
• Citation: 843 F. Supp. 981
• Parties: Francis J. LOFTUS, Plaintiff, v. SOUTHEASTERN PENNSYLVANIA TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITY and Transport Workers Union Of Philadelphia, Local 234, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Pennsylvania

843 F. Supp. 981

Francis J. LOFTUS, Plaintiff, v. SOUTHEASTERN PENNSYLVANIA TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITY and Transport Workers Union Of Philadelphia, Local 234, Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 93-2471.

United States District Court, E.D. Pennsylvania.

February 9, 1994.

H. Francis deLone, Jr., Philadelphia, PA, for plaintiff.

Nicholas J. Staffieri, Septa Legal Dept., Philadelphia, PA, Robert W. Kosman, Brodie, Techner, Rubinsky & Ford, Philadelphia, PA, for defendants.

MEMORANDUM

ROBRENO, District Judge.

Before the Court is the issue of what amount of factual detail and degree of particularity must be pled to state a cause of action for conspiracy to violate 42 U.S.C. § 1983 in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision in Leatherman v. Tarrant County Narcotics Intelligence & Coordination Unit, ___ U.S. ___, 113 S.Ct. 1160, 122 L.Ed.2d 517 (1993) (holding that § 1983 actions against a municipality cannot be held to a heightened standard of specificity).

Plaintiff Francis J. Loftus ("Loftus") brings the instant action under § 1983, alleging that his former employer, defendant Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority ("SEPTA"), and the union to which he belonged, defendant Local 234 of the Transport Workers Union of Philadelphia ("Local 234"), conspired to deprive him of his employment at SEPTA without due process of law. Each of the defendants has filed a motion to dismiss the complaint for failing to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6). The Court has reviewed the motions, and plaintiffs responses thereto, and will now grant both of the motions for the reason that plaintiff has failed to give defendants fair notice of his allegation of conspiracy.

I. BACKGROUND

Loftus claims that he was improperly discharged from SEPTA after he allegedly tested positive for alcohol. Loftus contends that the result of the test was inaccurate. See Pl.'s Complaint ¶¶ 6-9. SEPTA and Local 234 are parties to a collective bargaining agreement, and Loftus was a member of the bargaining unit. The collective bargaining agreement provides for a four-level grievance procedure culminating in arbitration at the union's discretion. See Def. SEPTA's Mot. to Dismiss exhibit A (copy of the collective bargaining agreement).¹ After Loftus's discharge, Local 234 filed a grievance on behalf of Loftus that was unsuccessful through the third level of the grievance process. The union chose not to take Loftus's grievance to arbitration. See Pl.'s Complaint ¶ 11. Loftus claims that the union did not adequately represent him in processing the grievance. More specifically, and of more relevance to his § 1983 claim, Loftus alleges that officials in Local 234 acted in concert with officials in SEPTA to deprive him of his position without a fair hearing. See id. ¶ 15. Loftus contends that the union's failure to demand an arbitration hearing, its failure to represent him vigorously during the grievance proceedings, and "SEPTA's concealment of evidence showing its test to be unreliable," id. ¶ 16, deprived him of his job with SEPTA without a fair hearing, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. See id. ¶¶ 18-19.

II. DISCUSSION

Plaintiff is proceeding under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.² To establish a claim under § 1983, a plaintiff must show that he was deprived of a right secured by the Constitution or the laws of the United States by a person acting under color of state law. See Flagg Bros., Inc. v. Brooks, 436 U.S. 149, 155, 98 S.Ct. 1729, 1732, 56 L.Ed.2d 185 (1978); Tunstall v. Office of Judicial Support of the Court of Common Pleas, 820 F.2d 631, 633 (3d Cir.1987). The motions to dismiss the complaint implicate the second part of the test, i.e., whether the plaintiff has adequately pled that the defendants acted under color of state law in conspiring to deprive plaintiff of his employment with SEPTA.³ Though SEPTA is clearly a state actor, see Crilly v. SEPTA, 529 F.2d 1355, 1357 (3d Cir.1976), Local 234 is not, and is thus not subject to suit under § 1983 unless state action is imputed to it through its alleged concerted action with SEPTA, see Adickes v. S.H. Kress & Co., 398 U.S. 144, 152, 90 S.Ct. 1598, 1605, 26 L.Ed.2d 142 (1970). Thus, unless plaintiff has adequately pled that Local 234, a non-state actor, conspired with SEPTA, a state actor, a § 1983 action cannot be maintained against both.

A motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim serves to test the sufficiency of a complaint. See Kost v. Kozakiewicz, 1 F.3d 176, 183 (3d Cir.1993). A plaintiffs allegations are considered true and are construed in the light most favorable to him, see Rocks v. Philadelphia, 868 F.2d 644, 645 (3d Cir. 1989), and his complaint should not be dismissed "unless it appears beyond doubt that he can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief," Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 45-46, 78 S.Ct. 99, 101-102, 2 L.Ed.2d 80 (1957).

Until the recent Supreme Court decision in Leatherman v. Tarrant County, it was the law in this circuit that a complaint alleging violations of § 1983 was subject to a requirement of heightened specificity beyond the general notice pleading requirement provided by Rule 8(a)(2) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. See, e.g., McArdle v. Tronetti, 961 F.2d 1083, 1089 (3d Cir.1992); Colburn v. Upper Darby Township, 838 F.2d 663, 666-67 (3d Cir.1988), cert. denied, 489 U.S. 1065, 109 S.Ct. 1338, 103 L.Ed.2d 808 (1989); District Council 47 v. Bradley, 795 F.2d 310, 313 (3d Cir.1986) ("It is undisputed that this court has established a higher threshold of factual specificity for civil rights complaints."); United States v. City of Philadelphia, 644 F.2d 187, 204 (3d Cir.1980); Rotolo v. Borough of Charleroi, 532 F.2d 920, 922 (3d Cir.1976). As described by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, "under the heightened pleading standard, a complaint must allege with particularity all material facts establishing a plaintiffs right of recovery." Leatherman v. Tarrant County Narcotics Intelligence & Coordination Unit, 954 F.2d 1054, 1055 (5th Cir.1992), rev'd, ___ U.S. ___, 113 S.Ct. 1160, 122 L.Ed.2d 517 (1993). The Supreme Court unanimously rejected this standard, finding it irreconcilable with the notice pleading provisions of Rule 8(a)(2). See Leatherman, ___ U.S. at ___, 113 S.Ct. at 1163. The Supreme Court noted that the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure impose a particularity requirement in only two specific instances, fraud or mistake. See id.; Fed. R.Civ.P. 9(b).

Under the "allocation of authority established by the three-tier system of federal courts," Casey v. Planned Parenthood, 14 F.3d 848, 856 (3d Cir.1994) (internal quotations omitted), this Court is obliged to follow Third Circuit precedent unless that precedent has been overruled by the court of appeals sitting in bane or by an opinion of the Supreme Court that overrules the precedent. See Hammond v. Commonwealth Mortgage Co. of Am., L.P. (In re Hammond), 156 B.R. 943, 947-48 (E.D.Pa.1993) (Reed, J.) (citing cases). Though the Court must attempt to reconcile where possible a conflict between the decisions of the Supreme Court and the Third Circuit, see, e.g., Jacob v. SmithKline Beecham, 824 F.Supp. 552, 558 n. 12 (E.D.Pa.1993) (declining to hold that Angst v. Mack Trucks, Inc., 969 F.2d 1530 (3d Cir.1992), had been overruled by District of Columbia v. Greater Washington Board of Trade, ___ U.S. ___, 113 S.Ct. 580, 121 L.Ed.2d 513 (1992)), it is bound to recognize when a Third Circuit precedent has been squarely overruled by an opinion of the Supreme Court. Leatherman is such a case. Though Leatherman dealt specifically with a § 1983 claim against a municipality, the ratio decidendi of the case reaches beyond claims against municipalities. As the Court stated in analyzing the Fifth Circuit's heightened standard:

We think that it is impossible to square the "heightened pleading standard" applied by the Fifth Circuit in this case with the liberal system of "notice pleading" set up by the Federal Rules.... In the absence of ... an amendment to Rules 8 and 9, federal courts and litigants must rely on summary judgment and control of discovery to weed out unmeritorious claims sooner rather than later.

Leatherman, ___ U.S. at ___, 113 S.Ct. at 1163. The Court is obliged to follow both the result reached by the Supreme Court (§ 1983 claims against municipalities cannot be held to a standard of heightened specificity) as well as the rule used in arriving at the result (all causes of action except those identified in Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 9 are to be tested by the pleading standard of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8). See Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 947 F.2d 682, 691-92 (3d Cir.1991) (examining the doctrine of stare decisis), aff'd in part and rev'd in part on other grounds, ___ U.S. ___, 112 S.Ct. 2791, 120 L.Ed.2d 674 (1992); Piazza v. Major League Baseball, 831 F.Supp. 420, 437-38 (E.D.Pa.1993) (applying the stare decisis rules of Planned Parenthood in a non-constitutional case); cf. Flood v. Kuhn, 407 U.S. 258, 282-84, 92 S.Ct. 2099, 2111-13, 32 L.Ed.2d 728 (1972) (rejecting the rule, i.e., professional baseball is not engaged in interstate commerce, but not the result established by the Supreme Court's prior rulings on major league baseball's antitrust exemption). Therefore, applying the rule established by Leatherman, I conclude that a § 1983 claim, with the possible exception of actions brought against individual government officials, see infra note 6 (issue expressly left open by the Supreme Court in Leatherman), must meet only the pleading requirements of Rule 8(a)(2) and is no longer subject to prior circuit law requiring the claim to be tested against a "heightened pleading standard."⁴

This conclusion is not inconsistent with the recent decision by a panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Kimberlin v. Quinlan, 6 F.3d 789 (D.C.Cir.1993). In Kimberlin, the defendants' ...