Shean v. Garcia

• Decision Date: 15 April 2021
• Docket Number: NO. 3:20-cv-750-MMH-PDB,3:20-cv-750-MMH-PDB
• Parties: DORA R. SHEAN, Plaintiff, v. ANA MARIA GARCIA ET AL., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Middle District of Florida

DORA R. SHEAN, Plaintiff, v. ANA MARIA GARCIA ET AL., Defendants.

NO. 3:20-cv-750-MMH-PDB

United States District Court Middle District of Florida Jacksonville Division

April 15, 2021

Report and Recommendation

Plaintiff Dora Shean has not seen four grandchildren since 2017, and her daughter's parental rights over the children have been terminated. In this action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Ms. Shean, without a lawyer, sues the state court, two state judges, and "John Does I-IV" involved in shelter, dependency, termination-of-parental-rights, and adoption proceedings.

The named defendants—the Circuit Court of the Fourteenth Judicial Circuit in and for Bay County, Florida; Circuit Judge Brantley Clark; and Circuit Judge Ana Maria Garcia—move to dismiss the claims under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 8(a)(2), 12(b)(1), and 12(b)(6). Doc. 19. They argue dismissal is warranted on six grounds. Doc. 19.

Instead of responding to the motion to dismiss, Ms. Shean moves to stay this case pending ongoing state-court proceedings. Docs. 20, 28. She also moves to recover $75 from each named defendant because of refusals to waive service of process. Doc. 20 at 3.

Liberal Construction

A court must construe a pleading drafted by a pro se litigant liberally and hold it to a less stringent standard than one drafted by a lawyer. Tannenbaum v. United States, 148 F.3d 1262, 1263 (11th Cir. 1998).

Liberal construction does not mean excusing noncompliance with procedural rules. McNeil v. United States, 508 U.S. 106, 113 (1993). And liberal construction does not mean rewriting a deficient pleading or otherwise serving as de facto counsel. GJR Invs., Inc. v. Cty. of Escambia, 132 F.3d 1359, 1369 (11th Cir. 1998), overruled on other grounds by Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662 (2009). Instead, liberal construction means a court must "look beyond the labels used in a pro se party's complaint and focus on the content and substance of the allegations" to determine if a cognizable remedy is available. Torres v. Miami-Dade Cty., Fla., 734 F. App'x 688, 691 (11th Cir. 2018).

Because Ms. Shean is pro se, the Court must liberally construe the complaint.

Allegations and Claims

According to allegations in the complaint and other filings by Ms. Shean, the defendants—motivated by greed (an interest in obtaining funds for their locality) and revenge (an interest in retaliating against her for filing complaints against them)—violated the constitution and other laws in numerous ways, including by:

• making decisions favoring placement of the children with "Mrs. Legacy," the paternal grandmother of the two youngest children;• requiring Ms. Shean and her husband to undergo drug testing before a visit with the children;

• denying Ms. Shean and her daughter visits with the children for no reason;

• taking away Ms. Shean's ability to write, call, Skype, or visit the children;

• failing to provide Ms. Shean's daughter—who has struggled with mental illness since age eight—parenting and other services;

• burdening Ms. Shean and her daughter with having to travel long distances for court proceedings, services, and visits;

• failing to make every attempt to place the children in kinship care before placing them in foster care;

• failing to honor Ms. Shean's daughter's stated desire for Ms. Shean to adopt the children;

• refusing to place the children in Ms. Shean's home where Ms. Shean, her daughter, and the children could live together to enable Ms. Shean to help her daughter properly parent the children;

• impairing child rearing by Ms. Shean as their "pseudo parent" and by Ms. Shean's daughter as their mother;

• permitting the Legacys to subject the children to threats and undue influence, use them as "pawns," and poison their minds;

• refusing to allow Ms. Shean to participate in the state-court proceedings;

• deciding issues based on lies and fabricated documents;

• "rubberstamping" orders instead of providing reasoned decisions;

• ignoring pro se filings by Ms. Shean and her daughter;

• allowing the state-court proceedings to lapse into "limbo" while the children moved to Texas; and

• depriving Ms. Shean's daughter of an appeal of a state-court decision by failing to notify Ms. Shean's daughter of the decision, allowing counsel to withdraw, and failing to appoint new counsel.

Doc. 1 ¶¶ 1-4, 20, 22, 23, 27, 28, 31-33, 39-42, 44, 47-50; Doc. 16 at 29.

Ms. Shean alleges facts she contends make her the patently superior custodial choice over Ms. Legacy if considering the best interests of the children. For example, Ms. Shean alleges she had a long and deep relationship with the children, while Ms. Legacy did not; she had living arrangements suitable for the children, while Ms. Legacy did not; and she was biologically related to all four children, while Ms. Legacy was not. See, e.g., Doc. 1 ¶¶ 14, 17, 29, 30. Ms. Shean contends the defendants unfairly acted on an improperly administered test to find her daughter had molested the oldest girl, unfairly weighed against Ms. Shean that her son had been removed from her custody years ago, and treated Ms. Shean's longtime "paramour"—now husband—as the "fall guy" because of a drunken incident resolved years ago. Doc. 4-1 ¶ 16; Doc. 16 at 29, 40. Ms. Shean made the same or similar claims and allegations without success during the state-court proceedings. See Doc. 10-2 at 14-33.

In the prayer for relief, Ms. Shean asks this Court to (1) enter a nunc pro tunc order to September 2016 to address the original placement of the children with Ms. Legacy; (2) void all orders from the state-court proceedings; (3) force the children to return to Florida; (4) halt or reverse the adoption proceedings; (5) decline to provide immunity to the state-court judges; (6) require the state-court judges to represent themselves or hire their own lawyers;¹ and (7)reweigh the best-interest-of-the-child factors and find adoption by Ms. Shean—not by Ms. Legacy—is in the children's best interest."² Doc. 1 at 22-30.

The adoption was finalized on July 14, 2020—eight days after Ms. Shean filed the complaint here. Doc. 14-2 at 2. According to Ms. Shean, a petition for adoption she filed on March 7, 2018, in a separate but related state case remains pending. Doc. 16 at 41; Doc. 16-2 at 1-4.

In a forty-three-page response to an order to show cause why the case should not be dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction³ or transferred to another district,⁴ Ms. Shean quotes a law review article providing aconstitutional analysis of custody rights of grandparents and explains her reasons for suing:

I am fighting for other families, other grandmothers and other mothers who have their precious children ripped from their arms like they mean nothing to them. Some justices have found that families are more important than property, I follow that notion, I will spend every hour and every penny to win this war against our children. In a world where judges intentionally put children in bad homes to drive up the revenue because the other parent will continue to fight to keep their child or grandchild safe. Courts today, is a business. Judges violating their oath of office and betraying the public trust. Family courtcorruption must be stopped even if it be one parent at a time or one grandparent at a time.

...

This is about stopping corruption in the judicial branch, that is what this is. That is about someone in a robe, that should be trusted, taking advantage of the poor, the weak, the mentally infirmed and anyone else who doesn't have a voice like innocent children sent to foster homes to be indentured servants, traded like chattel for the Governor to collect funds for the state to make them solvent and to brag about job creation from his soap box in order to continue his political aspirations. Then God forbid the children who end up in worse cases than home and are raped and murdered when they could have just went to a loving grandparent but well grandparents don't pay the state and it puts a halt on the 12/22 or 15/22 rule of expediting adoptions. States and foster care placements both get financial incentives. To some people it is all about the money.

Doc. 16 at 1-11, 21. Ms. Shean also filed website printouts to support a contention that people involved in the state-court proceedings were awarded important positions with an organization to which Ms. Legacy is tied. Doc. 16-3.

42 U.S.C. § 1983

Ms. Shean sues under § 1983. See generally Doc. 1. Section 1983 provides:

Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State ... subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States ... to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress, except that in any action brought against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such officer's judicial capacity, injunctive relief shall not be granted unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was unavailable.

42 U.S.C. § 1983 (emphasis added). "Section 1983 is not itself a source of substantive rights, but merely provides a method for vindicating federal rights elsewhere conferred."⁵ Albright v. Oliver, 510 U.S. 266, 271 (1994) (internal quotation marks and quoted authority omitted).

Motion to Dismiss

In their motion to dismiss, the state-court judges and the state court argue dismissal with prejudice is warranted because: (1) the judges in their official capacities and the state court are not "persons" under § 1983; (2) the judges in their official capacities and the state court are entitled to Eleventh Amendment immunity; (3) Ms. Shean lacks Article III standing to obtain injunctive or declaratory relief; (4) Ms. Shean fails to state a claim on which relief may be granted; (5) the state judges in their individual capacities are entitled to absolute judicial immunity for damages; and (6) under the Youn...