Rittenhouse v. DeKalb County, 84-8039

• Decision Date: 09 July 1985
• Docket Number: No. 84-8039,84-8039
• Citation: 764 F.2d 1451
• Parties: Barbara RITTENHOUSE, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. DeKALB COUNTY, et al., Defendants-Appellees, Karen Bullard, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 1451

764 F.2d 1451

Barbara RITTENHOUSE, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. DeKALB COUNTY, et al., Defendants-Appellees Karen Bullard, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 84-8039.

United States Court of Appeals Eleventh Circuit.

July 9, 1985.

Charles B. Tanksley, Atlanta, Ga., for B. Rittenhouse.

D.W. Rolader, Roswell, Ga., for K. Bullard.

George P. Dillard, Stephen A. Friedman, Decatur, Ga., for DeKalb & Stewart.

Fred W. Ajax, Jr., Harvey S. Gray, Michael Rust, J. Loren Fowler, Atlanta, Ga., for City of Chamblee.

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

Before VANCE and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges, and PITTMAN ^*, Senior District Judge.

R. LANIER ANDERSON, III, Circuit Judge:

The Supreme Court held in Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S. 527, 101 S.Ct. 1908, 68 L.Ed.2d 420 (1981), that a prisoner's Fourteenth Amendment due process rights were not violated when prison officials negligently lost his property, since the prisoner had an adequate remedy available under state law to redress the wrong. In this appeal, we must first address the contention that the Parratt analysis does not apply because of the "established state procedure" exception. We reject that argument, and then address the question of whether a state law remedy is inadequate under Parratt if principal defendants are immune from suit. We hold that the state law remedy is adequate, notwithstanding the immunity.

I. FACTS AND POSTURE

The incidents leading to this action occurred in the City of Chamblee, a municipal corporation in DeKalb County, Georgia. DeKalb County supplies water and sewer service to Chamblee. On December 15, 1981, at 9:18 p.m., a resident of Chamblee called the DeKalb County Water and Sewer Authority and reported that a water meter was leaking and that the flow from the meter was running onto a nearby road. The caller warned that the temperature was expected to go below freezing that night, and that the leaking water might freeze on the road. DeKalb County did not repair the meter, water from the leak froze on the road, and a car skidded at the site early the next morning and collided with another car. The wreck caused extensive damage to the cars, inflicted personal injury on several of the cars' occupants, and resulted in the tragic death of a son of one of the drivers.

Rittenhouse, driver of one of the cars, filed this Sec. 1983 action ¹ in federal district court alleging that her Fourteenth Amendment rights had been violated by DeKalb The deposition testimony, when viewed most favorably to Rittenhouse, shows that DeKalb County road crews were not notified of the leaking meter. If the crews had been properly dispatched, however, they could have repaired the meter and salted the road, notwithstanding the pendency of other repair calls. The depositions further show that there is no common understanding among employees of the DeKalb County Water and Sewer Authority about how incoming repair calls are to be noted and referred to road crews for attention.

County, by C.L. Stewart, director of the County's water and sewer authority, and by the City of Chamblee. Rittenhouse also sought adjudication in federal court of her pendent state law negligence claim against Bullard, the driver of the car that had skidded out of control. DeKalb County and Stewart contended in their answer that the County and its officials enjoyed immunity from suit, that County officials had acted in good faith, and that there was no official policy, practice or custom that had led to the accident. ²

The district court granted DeKalb County and Stewart's motion for summary judgment on the grounds that "the allegations of tortious conduct ... do not rise to constitutional proportions and are thus not cognizable in a section 1983 action." 575 F.Supp. 1173 (D.Ga.1983). The district court was of the opinion that "the conduct of the local government complained of [must constitute] an abuse of power as a prerequisite to maintaining such an action." The court found that even if DeKalb County and Stewart had been negligent in failing to repair the leaking meter, they had acted in good faith, with the result that their action was not a sufficient abuse of power to raise an ordinary tort to the level of a constitutional violation. In light of this ruling, the district court declined to entertain the pendent state claims, and found certain other pending motions to be moot. The district court thus dismissed all claims and entered final judgment, from which Rittenhouse and Bullard have appealed. The only issue on appeal is whether a valid Sec. 1983 claim has been stated against DeKalb County and Stewart. ³

II. WHETHER THERE IS A VALID Sec. 1983 CLAIM: THE APPLICABILITY OF PARRATT

We have no difficulty agreeing with the district court that defendants' conduct did not amount to an abuse of power or other substantive constitutional violation. We are left then only with the contention that DeKalb County and Stewart deprived appellants of constitutionally protected rights without due process of law. Although appellants made this procedural due process claim to the district court, the district court did not explicitly address the claim. Apparently, the court assumed that a Sec. 1983 action could be maintained only if the conduct complained of were an abuse of power or a substantive constitutional violation. The Supreme Court made clear in Parratt, however, that merely negligent conduct can support a procedural due process claim if the state does not provide adequate postdeprivation remedies.

The conduct complained of in Parratt was the negligent loss by prison officials of a hobby kit a prisoner had ordered through the mail. The prisoner asserted that the prison officials had deprived him of property without due process of law in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. In considering the viability of a Sec. 1983 claim based on the officials' conduct, the Supreme Court observed that "[n]othing in the language Although the main thrust of appellants' argument on appeal is that sovereign immunity deprives them of an adequate state remedy, a more basic contention was mentioned in brief and pressed at oral argument, i.e., that the deprivations complained of were caused by the County's procedures, and that this case thus falls within the "established state procedure" exception described in Parratt, so that the Parratt analysis concerning the adequacy of postdeprivation remedies is simply inapplicable. We turn first to this "established state procedure" argument.

                of Sec. 1983 or its legislative history limits the statute solely to intentional deprivations of constitutional rights," 451 U.S. at 534, 101 S.Ct. at 1912, 68 L.Ed.2d at 427.  The Court held that Sec. 1983 affords a remedy "without any express requirement of a particular state of mind."   Id. at 535, 101 S.Ct. at 1913, 68 L.Ed.2d at 428.  The Court went on, however, and concluded that the state law remedies available to redress the prisoner's loss furnished him with all the process he was due under the Fourteenth Amendment, with the result that he failed to state a cause of action under Sec. 1983.   Id. at 542-43, 101 S.Ct. at 1916-17, 68 L.Ed.2d at 433-34
                

A. The Established State Procedure Exception

The Supreme Court recognized in Parratt that in many cases process must be provided prior to deprivation of a constitutionally protected interest. 451 U.S. at 537-41, 101 S.Ct. at 1913-16. In Parratt, however, the deprivation of property was "random and unauthorized" and predeprivation process was impracticable. Id. at 541, 101 S.Ct. at 1916. Since predeprivation process was not feasible, the Court held that the appropriate analysis for a procedural due process claim would focus on postdeprivation remedies. Thus, the Court assessed the postdeprivation tort claims procedures of the state, found them to be adequate, and concluded that the requirements of due process were satisfied. Id. at 543-44, 101 S.Ct. at 1916-17.

The "established state procedure" argument which appellants present finds its origin in dicta in the Parratt opinion, by which the Court distinguished that case from cases in which a deprivation has occurred as a result of some established state procedure. This distinction was the basis of the holding in Logan v. Zimmerman Brush Co., 455 U.S. 422, 102 S.Ct. 1148, 71 L.Ed.2d 265 (1982). There, an employee's discrimination claim was dismissed because a state agency failed to convene a conference on the case within the period of time that the state statute prescribed, and the state appellate court ruled that this deficiency was jurisdictional. The United States Supreme Court on direct appeal declined to apply Parratt, stating that the claimant was challenging "not the Commission's error, but the 'established state procedure' that destroys his entitlement without according him proper procedural safeguards." Id. at 436, 102 S.Ct. at 1158.

We conclude, however, that the instant case does not fall within this "established state procedure" exception. It is apparent both from Parratt itself and from its progeny that the rationale for the exception is that predeprivation process is feasible where the deprivation occurs as a result of an established state procedure. The discussion in Parratt of the matter of "established state procedure" is in the context of the feasibility of predeprivation process. See 451 U.S. at 537, 101 S.Ct. at 1914 ("In some cases this Court has held that due process requires a predeprivation hearing before the State interferes with any liberty or property interest enjoyed by its citizens. In most of these cases, however, the deprivation of property was pursuant to some established state procedure and 'process' could be offered before any actual deprivation took place"); id. at 541, 101 S.Ct. at 1916 ("In such a case, the loss is not a result of some established state procedure and the State cannot predict precisely when the loss will occur. It is difficult to...