Owen v. Lash

• Decision Date: 28 June 1982
• Docket Number: 81-1409,Nos. 80-1105,s. 80-1105
• Parties: Richard OWEN, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Russell E. LASH, individually and as the Warden of the Indiana State Prison, and Charles E. Moore, individually and as the Assistant Warden of the Indiana State Prison, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 648

682 F.2d 648

Richard OWEN, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Russell E. LASH, individually and as the Warden of the Indiana State Prison, and Charles E. Moore individually and as the Assistant Warden of the Indiana State Prison Defendants-Appellees.

Nos. 80-1105, 81-1409.

United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit.

Argued Feb. 26, 1982.

Decided June 28, 1982.

David E. Vandercoy, Valparaiso Univ. School of Law Clinical Program, Valparaiso, Ind., for plaintiff-appellant.

Kermit R. Hilles, Deputy Atty. Gen., Indianapolis, Ind., for defendants-appellees.

Before STEWART, Justice (Retired), ^* and PELL and SPRECHER, ^** Circuit Judges.

STEWART, Justice (Retired).

This case comes before this Court on appeal for the second time. The previous appellate panel remanded the case to the District Court with instructions for resolving several then outstanding factual disputes. The District Court on remand conducted further proceedings and entered judgment. Because we find that the District Court misunderstood the instructions of the earlier panel specifying the issues to be addressed on remand, we vacate the judgment before us and, once again, remand the case for further proceedings.

I.

Over eight years ago, on February 4, 1974, plaintiff-appellant Richard Owen initiated this action seeking redress for, inter alia, the deprivation of his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights during his incarceration in the Indiana State Prison at Michigan City, Indiana. Specifically, Owen alleged that, during a period extending from March 1973 to February 1974, he was denied the right to correspond with a newspaper reporter and two individuals whose names he had received from a religious organization. Owen sought injunctive relief and damages, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983, 1985 and 1986, against the defendant-appellee Russell E. Lash, both individually and as the Warden of the Indiana State Prison. ¹

On November 5, 1976, in response to Lash's pre-trial motion, the District Court dismissed Owen's claims based upon the denial of his right to correspond. The District Court held that these claims were barred by the doctrine of res judicata in light of the decision in Aikens v. Lash, 371 F.Supp. 482 (N.D.Ind.1974), aff'd, 514 F.2d 55 (7th Cir. 1975), vacated, 425 U.S. 947, 96 S.Ct. 1721, 48 L.Ed.2d 191 (1976). ²

On appeal, this Court reversed the District Court's order dismissing Owen's correspondence claims, ruling that the issue of the denial of Owen's personal correspondence rights had not been presented in Aikens v. Lash and, therefore, that the doctrine of res judicata did not bar the present suit. As to the merits of Owen's correspondence claims, the Court stated that "(c)onsidering the conclusive evidence adduced at the hearing that Owen's communications with Kenny were stopped for the sole reason that he was a newspaper reporter and that his communication with Rutkowski and Graff was stopped solely because he didn't know them prior to incarceration, it cannot be said that he failed to state a claim ...." Owen v. Lash, Unpublished Order, No. 78-1208 at p. 7 (7th Cir. June 14, 1979). 601 F.2d 600. The Court added, however, that the prison's limitations on Owen's correspondence right could not be found to have violated the Constitution if such restrictions had been justified by "rational" and "legitimate" state interests. Id. The Court also noted that even if the restrictions on Owen's right to correspond were found to have violated the Constitution, Warden Lash might be shielded from personal liability by the "qualified immunity" accorded to executive officials. Therefore, the Court remanded the case to the District Court to determine whether the denial of Owen's right to correspond had been supported by a "rational basis" and whether the defendant Lash was protected from individual liability by the doctrine of qualified immunity.

On remand, the District Court conducted further proceedings and concluded that "the state's justification for the inhibition on prisoner correspondence" did not "pass muster" and had to be "rejected." The trial court ruled, therefore, that Owen had proven that the restrictions on his correspondence had violated his constitutional rights.

At that point in its opinion, the District Court posed the question "What kind of rights are we talking about?", and concluded that the violation under consideration was merely the denial of "court created procedural due process rights." Having so ruled, the trial court then focused on the Supreme Court's opinion in Carey v. Piphus, 435 U.S. 247, 98 S.Ct. 1042, 55 L.Ed.2d 252 (1977)-a case involving the denial of public school students' procedural due process rights-in order to formulate the damage award. Finding that there was no "basis in the record at all for awarding ... any punitive damages" and that Owen had failed to present proof of actual damages, the court concluded that, "under the teaching of Carey v. Piphus," only nominal damages in the sum of one dollar should be awarded.

The District Court was also faced with deciding against whom the judgment should be entered. Ruling that "there is no claim proven here against the defendant Russell E. Lash individually," the court entered judgment solely against Lash as Warden of the Indiana State Prison. Finally, in response to a subsequent motion by Owen as a pro se plaintiff, the District Court refused to award attorney's fees.

Dissatisfied with the one dollar judgment, Owen brought this appeal. He argues that the District Court's characterization of the violation at issue as a denial of procedural due process was erroneous and, therefore, that the trial court's decision to award only nominal damages to compensate for this deprivation must be reversed. Owen also contends that the trial court erred in absolving the defendant Lash from individual liability. He asks this Court to enter judgment against the defendant Lash individually, awarding plaintiff-appellant a "fair compensatory award," punitive damages, and attorney's fees.

II.

The linchpin of the District Court's decision was the ruling that the constitutional violation at issue was the denial of Owen's procedural due process rights. A finding that governmental action deprived a citizen of his right to procedural due process differs greatly from a ruling that such action violated an independent substantive right secured by the Constitution. The guarantee of procedural due process ³ places restrictions on the manner in which the government may undertake actions that infringe upon the rights of the citizenry; it imposes no limitations on the ends that such governmental action, accompanied by proper procedures, may achieve. The right to procedural due process " 'raises no impenetrable barrier to the taking of a person's possessions' or liberty, or life. Procedural due process rules are meant to protect persons not from the deprivation, but from the mistaken or unjustified deprivation of life, liberty or property." Carey v. Piphus, 435 U.S. 247, 259, 98 S.Ct. 1042, 1050, 55 L.Ed.2d 252 (1977) (quoting Fuentes v. Shevin, 407 U.S. 67, 81, 92 S.Ct. 1983, 1994, 32 L.Ed.2d 556 (1972)).

Of course, the specification of procedural safeguards that must precede or accompany governmental action may serve as a prime deterrent against malicious and improper conduct. "Moreover, proper procedures will surely eliminate some of the arbitrariness that results, not from malice, but from innocent error." Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 591, 92 S.Ct. 2701, 2716, 33 L.Ed.2d 548 (Marshall, J., dissenting.) "For when a person has an opportunity to speak up in his defense, and when the State must listen to what he has to say, substantively unfair and simply mistaken deprivations of (rights) can be prevented." Fuentes v. Shevin, 407 U.S. 67, 81, 92 S.Ct. 1983, 1994, 32 L.Ed.2d 556 (1972). Yet, despite the fact that the right to procedural due process may have an incidental effect on the substance of the actions undertaken by the government, it is clear that the guarantee of procedural due process merely imposes upon the State a duty to follow a fair process of decision making. Thus, a determination that governmental action violated a citizen's right to procedural due process is merely a condemnation of the procedures that attended the action and not an assessment of the constitutionality or propriety of the action itself.

By ruling that "this case in my judgment falls clearly on the side of the establishment of the violation of a procedural rather than a substantive due process," the District Judge of necessity held that the State did not violate Owen's constitutional rights by confiscating his letters and interrupting his correspondence with the outside world for over a year. Rather, according to the District Court's opinion, the only constitutional violation in this case was the State's failure to utilize proper procedures-such as providing notice and an opportunity to be heard-prior to depriving Owen of his correspondence rights.

The District Court's ruling that the only right at issue in this case was Owen's right to procedural due process is extremely surprising in light of the history of this lawsuit. Until this appeal, neither party in this case ever mentioned the right to procedural due process. No paper filed in the suit referred to that right until the District Court's decision. And during its initial consideration of Owen's correspondence claims prior to dismissing the claims as barred by res judicata, the District Court itself never once discussed the right to procedural due process. Owen had alleged in his complaint only that he had been deprived of his First and Fourteenth Amendment right to correspond, and not that this deprivation-regardless of its legality-had been accomplished without constitutionally required procedural safeguards. ⁴ Owen had sought redress only for the denial of his substantive correspondence right-for the restriction upon his...