Pearson v. Fair, s. 86-1463

• Decision Date: 31 December 1986
• Docket Number: Nos. 86-1463,86-1473,s. 86-1463
• Citation: 808 F.2d 163
• Parties: Donald PEARSON, et al., Plaintiffs, Appellees, v. Michael FAIR, et al., Defendants, Appellants. Donald PEARSON, et al., Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. Michael FAIR, et al., Defendants, Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

Page 163

808 F.2d 163

Donald PEARSON, et al., Plaintiffs, Appellees, v. Michael FAIR, et al., Defendants, Appellants.

Donald PEARSON, et al., Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. Michael FAIR, et al., Defendants, Appellees.

Nos. 86-1463, 86-1473.

United States Court of Appeals First Circuit.

Argued Dec. 5, 1986.

Decided Dec. 31, 1986.

Alexander G. Gray, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., with whom Francis X. Bellotti, Atty. Gen., Boston, Mass., was on brief, for Michael Fair, et al.

David R. Geiger with whom John H. Henn, Joseph D. Halpern, and Foley, Hoag & Eliot, Boston, Mass., were on brief, for Donald Pearson, et al.

Before CAMPBELL, Chief Judge, TORRUELLA and SELYA, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM.

The seeds from which the instant litigation sprouted were sown some fourteen years ago, when Mitchell G. King, Jr. brought suit in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts against various officials of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. King v. Greenblatt, 489 F.Supp. 105 (D.Mass.). King, an individual confined at the so-called "Treatment Center" of the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Bridgewater (MCI-Bridgewater) as a sexually dangerous person, see M.G.L. c. 123A, Secs. 1-9, sued under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 to enjoin the administrators and staff of the Treatment Center from continuing to impose certain allegedly unconstitutional and inhumane practices and conditions upon him during his confinement. The suit was not cast in a class action mode, but sought to vindicate and protect only the rights of the named plaintiff. As a corollary measure, King sought to have MCI-Bridgewater institute a panoply of procedural safeguards for his benefit.

King v. Greenblatt was settled in 1974. In consequence thereof, Judge Wyzanski entered a consent decree on June 3, 1974, and a supplemental consent decree some eight days later. The King decrees, in their ensemble, provided in substance, inter alia, that the Treatment Center was to be under the primary authority of the Commonwealth's Department of Mental Health and that said Department was to exercise its authority so patients would be subject to the least restrictive conditions necessary to achieve the legitimate objectives of their commitment. Further, the decrees made it clear that solitary confinement was not to be used for the purpose of discipline or punishment; to the extent that sequestration or segregation of patients in isolation was a necessary response to inappropriate or unacceptable behavior, the same was to be effected in conformity with no less than minimum standards of procedural due process and human decency. And, the King decrees contained certain specifics in these respects.

At or about the time of the settlement, the state defendants voluntarily promulgated certain "Policies and Procedures Concerning Inappropriate and Unacceptable For aught that appears of record, all was quiet for several years. Then, on December 21, 1981, six plaintiffs sued a bevy of Commonwealth officials seeking enforcement of the King decrees, an order of contempt, and mandated compliance with the Policies and Procedures. (The new case was assigned, under the district court's random lottery, to a new trier.) Although all six of the plaintiffs were individuals committed to the Treatment Center at MCI-Bridgewater as sexually dangerous persons pursuant to M.G.L. c. 123A, Secs. 1-9, King himself did not enter the fray. Once again, no class certification was pursued.

                Behavior" (Policies and Procedures) which they thought to be in harmony with the King decrees.  The Policies and Procedures were attached to the supplemental consent decree as entered, but the court expressly noted that it did "not order the adoption of or specifically approve any particular set of policies and procedures."    King v. Greenblatt, supra, supplemental consent decree at 2 (June 11, 1974).  It was acknowledged that the defendants had adopted the Policies and Procedures "without objection by plaintiff," and that the defendants deemed the same "to be in conformity with" the imperatives of the decrees.  Id.  Judge Wyzanski added a handwritten note to the effect that "the right to amend this decree is retained by the Court."    Id
                

It would serve no useful purpose painstakingly to detail what transpired over the next four and one-half years ¹; it is what did not occur which is pivotal here. Suffice it to say that, after various (inconclusive) hearings before a magistrate (see infra n. 3), a series of conferences involving the parties and the district judge, and some protracted settlement negotiations (which aborted at the eleventh hour), the district court summarily entered a final order on April 4, 1986, purporting to dispose of all pending matters. The order, in its entirety, is annexed hereto as Appendix A. The court rendered no explanation of the ratio decidendi for the order and made no findings (written or oral). The defendants appealed; the plaintiffs, although apparently willing to abide by the order, filed a protective cross-appeal (that is, if the portion of the order which places the force of federal law behind the Policies and Procedures is vacated, then, the plaintiffs argue, the denials of their sundry motions should likewise be reopened).

We recognize that the district court, disappointed by the failed settlement and mindful that the plaintiffs' grievances had been hanging fire for a long period of time, was seeking to conclude matters fairly and expeditiously. Yet, our examination of the record in this case leaves us little choice but to vacate the April 4, 1986 order. The district court acted in the absence of any demonstrated emergency, and on a final (rather than an interlocutory) basis. In its efforts to resolve a knotty matter, the court below was too precipitate. It disposed of the merits of the controversy without affording the litigants an opportunity to present evidence as to whether or not the Treatment Center had complied with the King decrees. Ancillary thereto, the court imposed upon MCI-Bridgewater, as a matter of federal law, the strictures of the Policies and Procedures--and it did so without any reasoned analysis of these rules or of the need (if any) to freeze them in place. The district court offered the parties no glimpse of the infrastructure of the April 4 order: there were no articulated findings of fact or conclusions of law. It exceeded the bounds of its discretion in fashioning definitive relief without taking any evidence; it also neglected to heed the command of Fed.R.Civ.P. 52(a) ("In all actions tried upon the facts without a jury ..., the court shall find the facts specially These shortcomings cannot be justified merely by pointing to the King decrees and to the district court's reservation therein of power to amend. In the first place, the present plaintiffs eschewed any attempt to intervene in the King action, see Fed.R.Civ.P. 24, and Mitchell King himself was not afforded any notice. Thus, the King decrees could not validly be amended in this proceeding. Moreover, where there is no agreement between the parties, there can be no "consent" decree. See United States ex rel. Clark v. Gramer, 418 F.2d 692, 694 (5th Cir.1969); Artvale, Inc. v. Rugby Fabrics...