Peterson v. Baker

• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit
• Writing for the Court: Per Curiam
• Citation: Peterson v. Baker, 504 F.3d 1331 (11th Cir. 2007)
• Decision Date: 25 October 2007
• Docket Number: No. 06-16180.,06-16180.
• Parties: Wendy PETERSON, Individually and as next friend of Jonathon Peterson, a minor, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Amber BAKER, Eddie Mosley, Trudy Sowar, Paulding County Board of Education, Paulding County School District, Defendants-Appellees.

504 F.3d 1331

Wendy PETERSON, Individually and as next friend of Jonathon Peterson, a minor, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Amber BAKER, Eddie Mosley, Trudy Sowar, Paulding County Board of Education, Paulding County School District, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 06-16180.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

October 25, 2007.

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Darcy S. DuVal, William P. Claxton, Claxton & Claxton, LLC, Atlanta, GA, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

Stephen T. Snow, Roger Scott Sumrall, Hall, Booth, Smith & Slover, P.C., Atlanta, GA, William Thomas Cable, Jr., Vinson, Talley, Richardson & Cable, Dallas, GA, for Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

Before EDMONDSON, Chief Judge, and CARNES and FAY, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:

This case arises from a hostile encounter between a teacher and her student. Plaintiff-Appellant Wendy Peterson ("Plaintiff"), acting on behalf of her minor son Jonathon Peterson ("Jonathon" or "the student"), appeals the district court's decision granting summary judgment in her Section 1983 suit to Defendants Amber Baker ("Baker" or "the teacher"), Jonathon's eighth-grade teacher; Eddie Mosley ("the principal"), principal of Jonathon's school; Trudy Sowar ("the superintendent"), superintendent of the school district; and the Paulding County School District ("the school district"). Seeing no reversible error, we affirm the judgment.

I. Background

This action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 arises from a confrontation between Jonathon and his eighth-grade reading teacher. As a first-year teacher, Baker taught remedial reading at Herschel Jones Middle School. During the 2003-2004 school year, fourteen-year-old Jonathon was assigned to her class.

The incident giving rise to this lawsuit occurred in February 2004 when Jonathon and classmate Willie Landers arrived late to class. Both students were talking during class; so, the teacher told Landers to leave the classroom. Jonathon testified that he thought the teacher directed him to step outside as well. When Jonathon attempted to leave the room with Landers, the teacher told Jonathon to sit back down; but he refused "[b]ecause [he] wanted to leave." The teacher yelled at Jonathon and shook her finger in his face. As he moved toward the classroom door, the teacher then placed her left arm across the doorframe, again instructing Jonathon to take his seat. Still, Jonathon refused to be seated. The teacher claims that Jonathon pushed her, causing her to stumble, and that he grabbed her hand and knocked her arm from the doorframe. Jonathon admits only that he "moved her hand off the door . . . not hard, just pushed it down." That Jonathon initiated physical contact with the teacher is undisputed.

Then, as Jonathon reached for the doorknob, the teacher grabbed his neck. In his deposition, Jonathon claimed that she "squeez[ed] my neck to where I was starting not to be able to breathe." According to the teacher, she was afraid that Jonathon was going to strike her; so, she put her hand up to Jonathon's neck or collarbone and pushed him away.

The record is unclear on the extent to which the teacher "choked" Jonathon. While Jonathon testified that he "was starting not to be able to breathe," he also testified more categorically that the teacher "squeez[ed] me until I couldn't breath." Neither party has pointed to evidence indicating the length of time that the teacher squeezed Jonathon's neck. Nevertheless, according to Jonathon, when the teacher relinquished her grasp, "it took me a while to catch my breath." As Jonathon left the classroom, he turned back to the teacher, cursed at her, and told her never to put her hands on him again.

After leaving the building for a while, Jonathon went to the school administrative office to report the incident. Jonathon testified in his deposition that he was not suffering pain when he arrived at the office; but according to Principal Mosley, red marks were visible on Jonathon's neck. On the same day, Plaintiff — Jonathon's mother — also reported the incident to local police who took photographs of Jonathon and observed blue and red bruises as well as a scratch on his neck. The school district immediately placed the teacher on administrative leave. Soon thereafter, she resigned.

Plaintiff brought this Section 1983 action, with supplemental state law claims, on behalf of her son Jonathon against the teacher. Plaintiff claimed that the teacher administered corporal punishment by grabbing Jonathon's neck in violation of his substantive due process right to bodily integrity under the Fourteenth Amendment. Plaintiff also sued the principal, the superintendent, the school district, and the Paulding County Board of Education ("the board of education")¹ for failure to train, to instruct, and to supervise the teacher, which — Plaintiff says — resulted in the constitutional violation.

In granting summary judgment for all defendants, the district court determined that, even assuming the teacher's act was corporal punishment, it "[did] not rise to the level of a substantive due process violation" because the injury was de minimus and because the teacher did not act with the willful or malicious intent to injure the student.² On Plaintiff's state law claims, the district court determined that the teacher was entitled to official immunity under Georgia law because she did not act with malice toward the student or otherwise intend to cause the student harm in performing her discretionary duty to maintain discipline in the classroom.³ Plaintiff now appeals.

II. Standard of Review

Summary judgment is warranted only when "there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and . . . the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c). We review a district court's decision granting summary judgment de novo. Arrington v. Helms, 438 F.3d 1336, 1341 (11th Cir.2006). In doing so, we apply the same legal standards as the district court; and we view all facts, as well as all reasonable inferences therefrom, in the light most favorable to the non-moving party — here, the Plaintiff. See id.

III. Discussion

A. Section 1983 Claims

Plaintiff contends that the district court erred in finding no genuine issues of material fact on her federal claim against the teacher. The heart of Plaintiff's argument is that a genuine dispute exists about whether the teacher acted in self-defense or whether she administered corporal punishment. Plaintiff asserts that the teacher's act of grabbing and squeezing Jonathon's neck was excessive corporal punishment in violation of clearly established constitutional law. In response, the teacher argues that the undisputed facts demonstrate that her act was not excessive and that she merely reacted to Jonathon's provocation in self-defense. To us, it is unimportant whether the teacher either acted in self-defense or imposed corporal punishment because her conduct, even if we assume it to be motivated solely by an intent to punish, did not violate the Constitution.

Officials acting under the color of state law violate the substantive component of the Due Process Clause only when their conduct "can properly be characterized as arbitrary, or conscience shocking, in a constitutional sense." County of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833, 118 S.Ct. 1708, 1717, 140 L.Ed.2d 1043 (1998) (internal quotation marks omitted). The Supreme Court has made clear "that the due process guarantee does not entail a body of constitutional law imposing liability whenever someone cloaked with state authority causes harm." Id. We have stressed in our own cases that Section 1983 must not be used "as a `font of tort law' to convert state tort claims into federal causes of action." Waddell v. Hendry County Sheriff's Office, 329 F.3d 1300, 1305 (11th Cir.2003). We also have noted that "even intentional wrongs seldom violate the Due Process Clause." Id. Briefly stated, "conduct intended to injure in some way unjustifiable by any government interest is the sort of official action most likely to rise to the conscience-shocking level." Lewis, 118 S.Ct. at 1718.

Here, Plaintiff does not contend that the teacher's conduct was wholly unjustified by a government interest. In other words, Plaintiff does not argue that the teacher's conduct had no legitimate disciplinary purpose. As the district court noted, neither party disputes that the teacher acted within the scope of her discretionary authority when the allegedly wrongful act occurred. Instead, Plaintiff claims that the teacher imposed corporal punishment in response to Jonathon's behavior in an unconstitutionally excessive manner. Because Plaintiff rests her claim on the premise that the teacher intended to administer corporal punishment by grabbing Jonathon's neck, we assume for the purpose of deciding this appeal that the teacher's use of force constituted corporal punishment.⁴

Broadly speaking, the law of this circuit says that "excessive corporal punishment, at least where not administered in conformity with a valid school policy authorizing corporal punishment . . ., may be actionable under the Due Process Clause when it is tantamount to arbitrary, egregious, and conscience-shocking behavior." Neal v. Fulton County Bd. of Educ., 229 F.3d 1069, 1075 (11th Cir.2000). To show that the allegedly excessive corporal punishment is conscience-shocking, a plaintiff must prove at a minimum that "(1) a school official intentionally used an amount of force that was obviously excessive under the circumstances, and (2) the force used presented a reasonably foreseeable risk of serious bodily injury."⁵ Id. We determine whether the amount of force used is obviously excessive by considering the totality of the circumstances. Id. Among other things, we look to "(1) the need for the application of corporal punishment, (2) the relationship between the need and amount of...