Moore, Jr. v. City of Harriman

• Citation: 272 F.3d 769
• Decision Date: 06 December 2000
• Docket Number: No. 99-5258,99-5258
• Parties: (6th Cir. 2001) Ralph Moore, Jr., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. City of Harriman; Harriman Police Department; Roy Jenkins, Chief of Police, Harriman Police Department; Darren McBroom; Terry Fink; Randy Heidle; Virgil McCart; Jerry Singleton, Defendants-Appellees. Argued:
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (6th Circuit)

Page 769

272 F.3d 769 (6th Cir. 2001)

Ralph Moore, Jr., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. City of Harriman; Harriman Police Department; Roy Jenkins, Chief of Police, Harriman Police Department; Darren McBroom; Terry Fink; Randy Heidle; Virgil McCart; Jerry Singleton, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 99-5258

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

Argued: December 6, 2000

Decided and Filed: November 8, 2001

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee at Knoxville. No. 97-00243 James H. Jarvis, District Judge.

Donald K. Vowell (argued and briefed), VOWELL & ASSOCIATES, Knoxville, Tennessee, for Appellant.

Robert H. Watson, Jr. (briefed), Nathan D. Rowell (argued and briefed), WATSON, HOLLOW & REEVES, Knoxville, Tennessee, for Appellees.

Before: MARTIN, Chief Judge; MERRITT, NELSON, BOGGS, NORRIS, SUHRHEINRICH, SILER, BATCHELDER, DAUGHTREY, MOORE, COLE, CLAY, and GILMAN, Circuit Judges.

BOYCE F. MARTIN, JR., C.J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which DAUGHTREY, MOORE, COLE, and CLAY, JJ., joined. MERRITT, J. (p. 10), delivered a separate concurring opinion. GILMAN, J. (p. 11), delivered a separate opinion concurring in the result. SUHRHEINRICH, J. (pp. 12-58), delivered a separate dissenting opinion, in which NELSON, BOGGS, NORRIS, SILER, and BATCHELDER, JJ., joined.

OPINION

BOYCE F. MARTIN, JR., Chief Judge. s's

Ralph Moore appeals the district court's order dismissing his 42 U.S.C. §1983 claims against five police officers for failure to clearly notify the officers that they were being sued in their individual capacities, under this Court's rule in Wells v. Brown, 891 F.2d 591 (6th Cir. 1989). A panel of this Court originally reversed the district court's decision, finding that although the complaint contained ambiguous language, taken as a whole it provided sufficient notice to the individual officers. See Moore v. City of Harriman, 218 F.3d 551 (6th Cir. 2000). The full Court vacated that decision and granted a rehearing en banc to clarify the pleading requirements for a § 1983 complainant seeking recovery from state officials in their individual capacities. See Moore v. City of Harriman, 218 F.3d 555 (6th Cir. 2000). For the following reasons, we reverse the district court's dismissal of Moore's claim.

I.

In April 1997, Moore sued the City of Harriman; the Harriman Police Department; Roy Jenkins, Chief of Police; and Officers Darren McBroom, Terry Fink, Randy Heidle, Virgil McCarter, and Jerry Singleton for using excessive force during Moore's arrest one year before. Moore alleged violations of the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and Article 1, §§ 7 and 8 of the Tennessee Constitution, as well as the state torts of malicious prosecution and abuse of process. Moore's complaint caption did not specify whether the officers were named in their official or individual capacities.

In January 1998, the officers moved to dismiss pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim against them in their individual capacities. Moore responded that his complaint showed that he had sued each officer in his individual capacity, but on February 27, the district court granted the officers' motion without prejudice as to all such claims. On March 6, Moore moved for leave to amend the complaint to add the word "individually" after each officer's name in the complaint caption. Additionally, Moore filed a Rule 59 motion to alter or amend the judgment insofar as it dismissed "any claims against [the officers] in their individual capacities," because it thus purported to dismiss the state law claims against the officers along with the § 1983 claims. On April 15, the district court reinstated Moore's state law claims against the officers, but denied Moore the opportunity to amend his complaint, stating that such an amendment would be futile as the one-year statute of limitations underlying the § 1983 claims had run. Moore timely appealed.

II.

We review the district court's dismissal of Moore's § 1983 claims de novo. See Taxpayers United for Assessment Cuts v. Austin, 994 F.2d 291, 296 (6th Cir. 1993). We review with care all dismissals on the pleadings, and "[d]ismissals of complaints under the civil rights statutes are scrutinized with special care."Jones v. Duncan, 840 F.2d 359, 361 (6th Cir. 1988) (quoting Dunn v. Tennessee, 697 F.2d 121 (6th Cir. 1982)).

In 1989, the Supreme Court ruled that states and state employees sued in their official capacities were not "persons" under § 1983, and therefore could not be held liable for money damages. See Will v. Michigan Dept. of State Police, 491 U.S. 58, 71 (1989). That same year, we held that Will required plaintiffs seeking damages under § 1983 to set forth clearly in their pleading that they were suing state officials as individuals, rather than as officials. See Wells v. Brown, 891 F.2d 591, 592 (6th Cir. 1989).

Wells's pleading requirements for § 1983 claimants rest on two rationales. First, Wells was concerned that defendants receive notice of the possibility of individual liability. See Pelfrey v. Chambers, 43 F.3d 1034, 1038 (6th Cir. 1995). "It is certainly reasonable to ask that all plaintiffs . . . alert party defendants that they may be individually responsible in damages." Wells, 891 F.2d at 594. Second, Wells found that § 1983 claimants must plead capacity for jurisdictional reasons. Will determined that the Eleventh Amendment creates a jurisdictional bar to suits against states and state employees sued in their official capacities for money damages; Rule 9(a) states in relevant part that "[i]t is not necessary to aver the capacity of a party . . . except to the extent required to show the jurisdiction of the court." Fed.R.Civ.Pro. 9(a). Accordingly, Wells reasoned, "[b]ecause the Eleventh Amendment places a jurisdictional limit on federal courts in civil rights cases against states and state employees, we understand Rule 9(a) to require plaintiffs to properly allege capacity in their complaint." Wells, 891 F.2d at 593.

Although other courts have read Wells to establish a per se rule requiring § 1983 plaintiffs to affirmatively plead "individual capacity" in the complaint, see, e.g., Biggs v. Meadows, 66 F.3d 56, 60 (4th Cir. 1995), we have never applied such a strict interpretation. In Whittington v. Milby, 928 F.2d 188 (6th Cir. 1991), decided just two years after Wells, we stated that "[u]nder Wells v. Brown, absent any indication that these defendants are being sued individually, we must assume that they are being sued in their official capacities . . . ." Id. at 193 (citation omitted) (emphasis added). In Brooks v. American Broadcasting Companies, Inc., 932 F.2d 495 (6th Cir. 1991), we reaffirmed that "[a]ll a [§ 1983] complaint need do is afford the defendant 'fair notice of what the claim is and the grounds upon which it rests.'" Id. at 497 (quoting Jones, 840 F.2d at 361) (internal quotes and citations omitted).

In fact, our post-Wells jurisprudence shows that we have applied a "course of proceedings" test to determine whether § 1983 defendants have received notice of the plaintiff's intent to hold them personally liable, albeit without clearly labeling the test as such. For instance, we have refused to dismiss a § 1983 complaint which failed to state "individual capacity," where one month after the complaint was filed, the plaintiff filed a motion stating that the defendants acted outside the scope of their employment and in bad faith. See Pelfrey v. Chambers, 43 F.3d 1034, 1038 (6th Cir. 1995). We have also looked to later pleadings, such as a response to a motion for summary judgment, to determine whether proper notice had been given. See Abdur-Rahman v. Michigan Dept. of Corrections, 65 F.3d 489, 491 (6th Cir. 1995). Therefore, while it is clearly preferable that plaintiffs explicitly state whether a defendant is sued in his or her "individual capacity," see, e.g., Hardin v. Straub, 954 F.2d 1193, 2000 (6th Cir. 1992), failure to do so is not fatal if the course of proceedings otherwise indicates that the defendant received sufficient notice. ¹

The Supreme Court has noted that "[t]he 'course of proceedings' in such [unspecified capacity] cases typically will indicate the nature of the liability sought to be imposed." Kentucky v. Graham, 473 U.S. 159, 167 n.14 (1985). Indeed, the vast majority of our sister circuits apply the "course of proceedings" test to determine whether suit has been brought against a state official as an official or as an individual. See Atchinson v. District of Columbia, 73 F.3d 418, 425 (D.C. Cir. 1996); Biggs, 66 F.3d at 61; Ying Jang Gan v. City of New York, 996 F.2d 522, 529-30 (2d Cir. 1993); Hill v. Shelander, 924 F.2d 1370, 1373-74 (7th Cir. 1991); Houston v. Reich, 932 F.2d 883, 885 (10th Cir. 1991); Melo v. Hafer, 912 F.2d 628, 635 (3d Cir. 1990); Lundgren v. McDaniel, 814 F.2d 600, 604 (11th Cir. 1987); Parker v. Graves, 479 F.2d 335, 336 (5th Cir. 1973). Only two circuits expressly deviate from this test. See Johnson v. Outboard Marine Corp., 172 F.3d 531, 535 (8th Cir. 1999) (presuming official liability absent express statement that suit is brought against defendant in individual capacity);Shoshone-Bannock Tribes v. Fish & Game Comm'n of Idaho, 42 F.3d 1278, 1284 (9th Cir. 1994) (presuming individual liability when complaint seeks money damages from state officials).

The officers in this case urge us to read Wells as adopting the Eighth Circuit's rule presuming an official capacity suit absent an express statement to the contrary. They argue that to withstand a motion to dismiss, Wells requires complaints seeking damages for alleged violations of § 1983 to contain the words "individual capacity," regardless of whether the defendants actually receive notice that they are being sued individually. Although we acknowledge that Wells contains language supporting this reading, we find the...