Novoferreiro v. Israel

• Decision Date: 05 May 2015
• Docket Number: CASE NO. 14-CIV-62674-BLOOM/Valle
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Florida
• Parties: YESENIA NOVOFERREIRO, Plaintiff, v. SCOTT ISRAEL, in his capacity as Sheriff of Broward County, Florida, Defendant.

YESENIA NOVOFERREIRO, Plaintiff, v. SCOTT ISRAEL, in his capacity as Sheriff of Broward County, Florida, Defendant.

CASE NO. 14-CIV-62674-BLOOM/Valle

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA

May 5, 2015

ORDER ON MOTION TO DISMISS

THIS CAUSE is before the Court on Defendant Broward Sheriff's Office's ("Defendant" or "BSO") Motion to Dismiss, ECF No. [19] (the "Motion") with respect to Plaintiff Yesenia Novoferreiro's ("Plaintiff") Amended Complaint, ECF No. [15]. The Court has carefully reviewed the Motion, all supporting and opposing submissions, the record in this case and applicable law. For the reasons set forth below, the Court in part grants the Motion.

I. FACTUAL ALLEGATIONS

Plaintiff filed the instant action on November 24, 2014, asserting claims against Defendant for violation of her civil rights under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and for common law false imprisonment and negligence. ECF No. [1] (the "Complaint"). In brief, Plaintiff alleges that, while she was properly arrested and detained on October 16, 2013 pursuant to a valid warrant (for violation of pretrial release conditions in connection with separate charges of uttering forged bills, the "Warrant"), the sole basis for her detention by Defendant between October 30, 2013 and November 7, 2013 was Defendant's erroneous belief that criminal charges were still pending against Plaintiff. Plaintiff claims that Defendant's "policies instituted a system that had nosafeguard for individuals whose charges were dropped when the individual was being held for pickup by [Defendant] in another Florida county." Compl. ¶¶ 29, 40, 51. On January 16, 2015, Defendant filed a motion to dismiss the original Complaint. Defendant requested that the Court dismiss Plaintiff's Section 1983 claims for failure to support the allegations that Defendant maintained the offending policies or customs at issue and for failure to allege incidents similar to Plaintiff's establishing a known need for Defendant to train its employees to avoid the alleged civil rights violations. It further sought dismissal of the common law claims on the basis of state sovereign immunity. On February 19, 2015, the Court dismissed the Complaint with leave to amend on the principal basis that it was factually deficient. ECF No. [14] (the "Order"). Familiarity with the factual background, relevant law and law of the case set forth in the Order is assumed.

As explained in the Order, Plaintiff's allegations in the Complaint that the Warrant which subjected her to arrest and confinement was "a nullity" as of October 28, 2013 amounted to a "legal conclusion couched as a factual allegation" which the Court would not accept as true for purposes of evaluating the Complaint's pleading sufficiency. Order at 8 (citing Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007); Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009); Oxford Asset Management Ltd. v. Jaharis, 297 F.3d 1182, 1188 (11th Cir. 2002) ("legal conclusions masquerading as facts will not prevent dismissal")). And, "if the Warrant for violation of Plaintiff's pretrial release conditions remained valid between October 28 and November 7, 2014, Defendant's continued enforcement of the Warrant was proper." Id. Thus, "Plaintiff's theory of the case - that Defendant maintains improper practices or policies under which it neglects to ascertain whether there remain criminal charges pending against an individual in its custody -fails to the extent that Plaintiff cannot allege that Defendant was not under the continuing obligation to enforce judicial orders to keep those individuals in custody." Id. at 8-9.

Plaintiff filed her Amended Complaint on March 5, 2015. The Amended Complaint addresses the aforementioned pleading deficiency and Defendant does not take issue with the fact or timing of the Warrant's in/validity. Plaintiff now alleges that "the Warrant was recalled on or about October 28, 2013" and that "on or about November 1, 2013, the Broward County Clerk of Courts' officers specifically notified the Defendant's warrant division that the Warrant had been recalled." Am. Compl. ¶¶ 10-11. Nevertheless, Plaintiff was held by Defendant in jail with no bond continuously from October 30, 2013 to November 7, 2013. Id. ¶ 17.

According to Plaintiff, "[o]nly when an attorney was consulted by Plaintiff's family, on or about November 7, 2013, to represent Plaintiff in what they thought was a pending criminal matter, did it come to light that Plaintiff was being held without legal justification." Id. ¶ 18. The attorney contacted general legal counsel for BSO and explained that Plaintiff was being held in jail despite having no pending case or sentence. Id. ¶ 19. "General legal counsel for Defendant, recognizing that Plaintiff was being held without legal justification, acted immediately, and without any court order necessary, to ensure that Plaintiff was processed and released as swiftly as possible." Id. ¶ 20.

As in her original Complaint (with one addition), Plaintiff further alleges that Defendant maintains the following policies or customs:

[D]irecting law enforcement in other Florida counties to detain individuals for whom there was an active Broward County warrant and, subsequent to that time, when [Defendant] was informed that the State Attorney had declined to file the criminal case out of which the [warrant] arose, of not informing law enforcement in other Florida counties to release the detained individuals.

[D]oes not keep records of people whose Broward County cases terminated via "no information" unless the person was in their custody[, t]hus . . . not onlyinvit[ing] the exact constitutional violation that occurred in this matter, but essentially guarantee[ing] it.

[T]ransporting individuals from jails in other Florida counties ("Transported Broward Inmates") to the Broward County Correctional System without checking, at the time of arrival at the Broward County Correctional System, whether the Transported Broward Inmate had any criminal charges pending.

[I]ndefinitely incarcerating Transported Broward Inmates, once transported to the Broward County Correctional System, without checking whether the Transported Broward Inmate had any criminal charges pending.

[I]ndefinitely incarcerating Transported Broward Inmates without "taking the person before the trial court judge who issued the warrant," contrary to Florida Law.

Id. ¶ 21.

Plaintiff again asserts claims for violation of her civil rights under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Count I, on the basis of Defendant's alleged "customs or usages", Count II, on the basis of Defendant's alleged "official policies" (pleading those counts in the alternative), and Count III for failure to train) and common law claims of false imprisonment (Count IV) and negligence (Counts V and VI). The instant Motion, filed on March 30, 2015, seeks dismissal as to all but Count IV.

II. DISCUSSION

Defendant again challenges the sufficiency of Plaintiff's Section 1983 actions and urges dismissal of her common law claims on the basis of sovereign immunity. The Motion succeeds only with respect to the Section 1983 claims.

A. Section 1983 "Custom" and "Policy" Claims (Counts I & II)

Plaintiff's allegations with respect to her allegedly improper incarceration (excepting her substantiation of the Warrant's recall and her subsequent continued incarceration), and with respect to BSO's alleged customs or policies (save for adding that BSO fails to keep records of people whose cases terminated via "no information" unless the person was in their custody), arelargely identical to those stated in the original Complaint. The Court therefore proceeds with the same analysis of Plaintiff's pleading sufficiency as stated in the Order. There, the Court explained:

While a complaint "does not need detailed factual allegations," it must provide "more than labels and conclusions" or "a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action." Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007); see Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (explaining that the Rule 8(a)(2) pleading standard "demands more than an unadorned, the-defendant-unlawfully-harmed-me accusation"). Nor can a complaint rest on "'naked assertion[s]' devoid of 'further factual enhancement.'" Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678 (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 557 (alteration in original)). The Supreme Court has emphasized that "[t]o survive a motion to dismiss a complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to 'state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.'" Id. (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 570); see also Am. Dental Assoc. v. Cigna Corp., 605 F.3d 1283, 1288-90 (11th Cir. 2010). . . .

Any person acting under color of state law who violates a constitutional right of another is liable for the injured party's losses. 42 U.S.C. § 1983. "Section 1983 provides a fault-based analysis for imposing municipal liability; therefore, plaintiffs must establish that the city was the person who caused them to be subjected to their deprivation." Depew v. City of St. Marys, Ga., 787 F.2d 1496, 1499 (11th Cir. 1986). "[W]hen execution of a government's policy or custom, whether made by its lawmakers or by those whose edicts or acts may fairly be said to represent official policy, inflicts the injury th[en] the government as an entity is responsible under § 1983." Monell v. Dep't of Soc. Servs. of City of New York, 436 U.S. 658, 694 (1978). "To establish a policy or custom, it is generally necessary to show a persistent and wide-spread practice[; h]owever, the custom need not receive formal approval." Depew, 787 F.2d at 1499; see also Smith v. Mercer, 572 F. App'x 676, 679 (11th Cir. 2014) ("A plaintiff must identify a 'consistent and widespread practice' of constitutional deprivations to prove local government liability for an unofficial custom."); Carter v. Columbus Consol. Gov't, 559 F. App'x 880, 881 (11th Cir. 2014) ("the challenged practice or custom must be 'so pervasive as to be the functional

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