Rodgers v. Horsley

• Decision Date: 05 December 1994
• Docket Number: No. 93-6541,93-6541
• Citation: Rodgers v. Horsley, 39 F.3d 308 (11th Cir. 1994)
• Parties: Mona E. RODGERS, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. J. Michael HORSLEY, Commissioner of State Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation; James F. Reddoch, Jr., Deputy Commissioner of State Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation; Emmett Poundstone, III, Associate Commissioner for Mental Retardation State Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation; James E. Folsom, Governor, State of Alabama; Alabama Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation, a corporation, Defendants, John T. Bartlett, in his individual capacity; Phillip Boyd, an individual, Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 308

39 F.3d 308

Mona E. RODGERS, Plaintiff-Appellee, v.J. Michael HORSLEY, Commissioner of State Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation; James F. Reddoch Jr., DeputyCommissioner of State Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation; Emmett Poundstone, III AssociateCommissioner for Mental Retardation State Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation; James E. Folsom, Governor, State of Alabama; Alabama Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation, a corporation, DefendantsJohn T. Bartlett, in his individual capacity; Phillip Boyd an individual, Defendants-Appellants.

No. 93-6541.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

Dec. 5, 1994.

G.R. "Rick" Trawick, Dept. of Mental Health and Mental Retardation, Montgomery, AL, for appellants.

(Charles)Warren Rowe, Rowe & Rowe, Edward S. Brown, Enterprise, AL, for appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama.

Before HATCHETT and EDMONDSON, Circuit Judges, and SMITH^*, Senior Circuit Judge.

PER CURIAM:

Defendants, John T. Bartlett and Phil Boyd, appeal the district court's order denying motions for summary judgment based upon the doctrine of qualified immunity in a civil rights action under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983.We reverse.

BACKGROUND

In considering the denial of a defendant's summary judgment motion, we are required to view the facts, which are drawn from the pleadings, affidavits, and depositions, in the light most favorable to the plaintiff.E.g., Hardin v. Hayes, 957 F.2d 845, 848(11th Cir.1982).As a result, the "facts" for purposes of reviewing rulings on summary judgment motions may not, in reality, be the facts.But they are the "facts" for present purposes and are set out below.

In 1991, plaintiffMona Rodgers¹ was involuntarily civilly committed to the custody of the Alabama Department of Mental Health and Retardation("DMH").She was placed in the Admissions Unit at Searcy Hospital, a Mobile, Alabama psychiatric facility operated by DMH.When admitted, Plaintiff was approximately twenty-nine weeks pregnant.

On Monday, May 20, 1991, at fifteen minutes past midnight (12:15 a.m.), Rodgers entered the Unit's smoking room, located ten feet from the nurses station.Before entering the smoking room, she stopped, spoke to the nurses at the nurses station, and obtained a light for her cigarette.While she was in the smoking room, according to Rodgers, a black male entered the room and raped her.Rodgers left the smoking room fifteen minutes later, speaking to the nurses on her way out; but she did not report the rape until 2:10 p.m. on May 22.

At the time of the incident, Rodgers was on "medical observation" status because she was spotting, that is, bleeding a bit, in her vaginal region.Rodgers says that this status required a staff member to accompany her at all times ("one to one") except when she was in a secluded area of the hospital.To support this characterization of "medical observation" status, Rodgers relies exclusively on her affidavit testimony that "it had been told to me that that's the way the situation would be."²

Rodgers filed suit asserting various theories, including the violation of 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 for failure to provide her with adequate security, against the DMH and numerous individuals associated with the DMH in various capacities.The district court granted summary judgment in favor of all defendants except defendantsJohn T. Bartlett and Phil Boyd.Rogers v. State of Ala. Dep't. of Mental Health & Mental Retardation, 825 F.Supp. 986(M.D.Ala.1993).For the remaining defendants, Rodgers claims that her rape was caused by their failure to train and supervise subordinates adequately in violation of her "substantive due process" rights.Bartlett is the Director of Searcy Hospital and Boyd serves as Director and Chief Administrative Officer of the Admissions Unit.These defendants were responsible for hiring, training, and supervising the individuals charged with monitoring patients.

With their motions for summary judgment, defendants submitted the affidavit of defendantJohn Bartlett, which says that there had never been an incident of rape or an allegation of rape in the twelve years he has served as Director of Searcy Hospital.In response, Rodgers submitted the affidavit of Dr. Ronald Bloodworth, the psychiatrist in charge of treating Plaintiff during her confinement at Searcy.He testified that he was aware of several instances of "sexual contact" between patients, but that such instances were uncommon.He also testified that a former patient of his had disappeared in February 1991 and was discovered two days later, dead, "on a ledge."Rodgers claims that this dead patient was also on one-to-one observation status.

The district court, relying on Youngberg v. Romeo, 457 U.S. 307, 313-16, 102 S.Ct. 2452, 2457-58, 73 L.Ed.2d 28(1982), concluded that the law was clearly established that involuntarily committed patients had a constitutional right to reasonably safe conditions of confinement.Rogers, 825 F.Supp. at 990.Finding enough evidence to go to the jury, the district court denied the defendants' motions for summary judgment based on qualified immunity.Id. at 992.Defendants appeal.

DISCUSSION

Once the qualified immunity defense is raised, the plaintiff bears the burden of showing that the federal "rights" allegedly violated were "clearly established."Barts v. Joyner, 865 F.2d 1187, 1190(11th Cir.1989)(citingMitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 527-28, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 2816, 86 L.Ed.2d 411(1985)).

Rodgers does not contest that defendants in this case performed discretionary functions.Therefore to prevail, Rodgers must show that defendants violated what were, in the circumstances, her "clearly established" federal rights and that every reasonable government official in a similar position would have known that defendants' acts were unlawful.Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 817-19, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 2738, 73 L.Ed.2d 396(1982).

For a "right" to be clearly established, "[t]he contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right."Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 639-40, 107 S.Ct. 3034, 3039, 97 L.Ed.2d 523(1987)(emphasis added)."[I]n the light of pre-existing law the unlawfulness must be apparent."Id.As the en banc court recently explained:

When considering whether the law applicable to certain facts is clearly established, the facts of cases relied upon as precedent are important.The facts need not be the same as the facts of the immediate case.But they do need to be materially similar.See, e.g., Edwards v. Gilbert, 867 F.2d 1271, 1277(11th Cir.1989).Public officials are not obligated to be creative or imaginative in drawing analogies from previously decided cases.

Adams v. St. Lucie County Sheriff's Dept., 962 F.2d 1563, 1575(11th Cir.1992)(Edmondson, J., dissenting), approved en banc, 998 F.2d 923(11th Cir.1993).Put differently, "[i]f case law, in factual terms, has not staked out a bright line, qualified immunity almost always protects the defendant."Post v. City of Fort Lauderdale, 7 F.3d 1552, 1557(11th Cir.1993).

Rodgers has failed to show that in 1991 the law was clearly established.She points to no bright line established by pre-existing case law that would make it "apparent" to the defendants that what they were doing (or failing to do) was unlawful.Instead, Rodgers relies on a single case, Youngberg v. Romeo, 457 U.S. 307, 102 S.Ct. 2452, 73 L.Ed.2d 28(1982), which contains materially dissimilar facts.

In Youngberg, the Court created the general legal principle that persons who are involuntarily committed to state mental institutions have a right to safe conditions, freedom from bodily restraint, and a right to minimal training.³Id. at 315-20, 102 S.Ct. at 2458-60.

In the light of Youngberg, that an involuntarily committed patient has a constitutionally protected right to reasonably safe conditions of confinement is "clearly established."But, for purposes of qualified immunity analysis this right is far too general.SeeAnderson, 483 U.S. at 638-41, 107 S.Ct. at 3038-39."General propositions have little to do with the concept of qualified immunity."Muhammad v. Wainwright, 839 F.2d 1422, 1424(11th Cir.1987).

The question in this case is not whether, in general, involuntarily committed patients have a legally cognizable interest under the Fourteenth Amendment to safe conditions.They do.Instead, the question in this case, as in all qualified immunity cases, is fact specific: in May 1991, was it clearly established in this circuit that it was unconstitutional for a mental institution to fail to supervise a patient for fifteen minutes in the smoking room, when she was on close watch status for a health problem, when the institution had a history of some "sexual contact" involving patients other than plaintiff but no history of rape for the past twelve years, where a previous patient who was to be similarly monitored disappeared, apparently escaped through a bathroom window, and fell to her death on a ledge below, and where the plaintiff had never before complained of unwanted sexual contact from either the patient accused, any other patient, or any member of the staff?The answer is "NO."

The facts in Youngberg are just...