Spriggs v. City of Chicago

• Decision Date: 31 August 1981
• Docket Number: No. 80 C 5483.,80 C 5483.
• Citation: 523 F. Supp. 138
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois
• Parties: Ebb SPRIGGS, Plaintiff, v. The CITY OF CHICAGO, a Municipal corporation, et al., Defendants.

523 F. Supp. 138

Ebb SPRIGGS, Plaintiff, v. The CITY OF CHICAGO, a Municipal corporation, et al., Defendants.

No. 80 C 5483.

United States District Court, N. D. Illinois, E. D.

August 31, 1981.

Richard L. Hirsh, Chicago, Ill., for plaintiff.

Robert T. Karmgard, Asst. City Corp. Counsel, Chicago, Ill., for defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

GETZENDANNER, District Judge.

Plaintiff Ebb Spriggs seeks damages for injuries allegedly caused by police misconduct. Named as defendants are both the allegedly culpable individual officers and their employer, the City of Chicago. Pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6), the City has moved to dismiss all claims against it. For the following reasons, this motion is denied.

I. Facts

According to plaintiff's allegations which are taken as true for the purposes of this motion, plaintiff, a black individual, was a victim of gross police brutality. Plaintiff alleges that around 11:30 p. m. on November 30, 1979, numerous armed plain-clothes officers demanded entry to his home on Chicago's west side. The officers, at least some of whom were white, did not identify themselves as policemen. In fear for his life, plaintiff attempted to flee through his rear door. However, he was quickly apprehended and thereupon subjected to a severe beating. Following the attack, the police officers searched plaintiff's home, finding and removing several guns. Plaintiff was then arrested and taken to the police station where he was held for four hours and charged with violating several Chicago ordinances. The States Attorney of Cook County subsequently dismissed all charges.

According to plaintiff, at no time during these events were any arrest or search warrants outstanding and the individual defendants did not have probable cause to believe that he had committed a crime or that his home contained any articles subject to seizure. Plaintiff claims that the acts of the individual defendants deprived him of rights secured by the Fourth, Fifth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments and proximately caused him great injury.

In Count I plaintiff seeks compensatory and punitive damages of $50,000 against the individual officers under both 42 U.S.C. § 1981 and 42 U.S.C. § 1983. In Count II plaintiff alleges that the above-described acts resulted from a conspiracy between the individual defendants and "other persons whose names are presently unknown." Complaint, ¶ 30. The goal of this conspiracy, plaintiff alleges, was the denial to plaintiff of his right to equal protection under the law. An additional $50,000 of compensable relief is accordingly sought from the individual defendants under 42 U.S.C. § 1985.

In Count III plaintiff alleges that "it is the practice and custom of the City of Chicago via its police officers to treat black individuals in the manner and fashion described in this Complaint." Complaint, ¶ 33. Plaintiff's claim of custom is premised on the following theory. Instances of police brutality against black individuals, he argues, occur often and repeatedly. Further, the City of Chicago is aware of all or most of these events. Yet in the face of this awareness, the City has failed to curb its employees' behavior. More specifically, the City has failed to discharge its "duty" to prevent or discourage said instances from occurring by means of investigation, punishment of the involved officer or other means ..." Complaint, ¶ 37. Plaintiff demands $50,000 from the City under 42 U.S.C. § 1981 and 42 U.S.C. § 1983.

The present motion concerns only Count III. It is thus necessary to discuss only the contours of municipal liability under Sections 1981 and 1983.¹

II. Section 1983²

A. Basic Requisites of Municipal Liability.

It is by now hornbook law that cities are "persons" within the meaning of Section 1983 and can thus be liable for the constitutional torts of their agents. Monell v. New York City Dept. of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658, 98 S.Ct. 2018, 56 L.Ed.2d 611 (1978), overruling on this point, Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 81 S.Ct. 473, 5 L.Ed.2d 492 (1961). But it is equally clear that the mere fact of agency is an insufficient basis upon which to premise municipal liability; "a municipality cannot be held liable under § 1983 on a respondeat superior theory." Monell, 436 U.S. at 691, 98 S.Ct. at 2036. Rather, municipal liability attaches only when

"the action that is alleged to be unconstitutional implements or executes a policy statement, ordinance, regulation, or decision officially adopted and promulgated by that body's officers. Moreover, although the touchstone of the § 1983 action against a government body is an allegation that official policy is responsible for a deprivation of rights protected by the Constitution, local governments, like every other § 1983 `person,' by the very terms of the statute, may be sued for constitutional deprivation visited pursuant to governmental `custom' even though such a custom has not received formal approval through the body's official decision-making channels."

Id., 436 U.S. at 690-1, 98 S.Ct. at 2035-36 (footnote and citation omitted). Only when a municipal "policy" is the motivating force behind a constitutional deprivation can it be said that a city has, in the words of the statute, "caused plaintiff to be subjected" to the wrong. Id. 436 U.S. at 692, 98 S.Ct. at 2036. Thus, municipal liability under Section 1983 requires proof of two elements. First, it must be shown that the acts of the city's agents were wrongful, i. e., there must be plead a constitutional or statutory (Maine v. Thiboutot, 448 U.S. 1, 100 S.Ct. 2502, 65 L.Ed.2d 555 (1980)) violation. Second, plaintiff must establish the existence of a municipal "policy" directing the occurrence of such violation. A Monell complaint can thus survive a motion to dismiss only if its averments sufficiently address both prongs of this test.

B. Constitutional Deprivation.

As alleged in the complaint, the acts of the individual defendants clearly contravened the Constitution. See Monroe v. Pape, supra. This is not to say that plaintiff's invocation of each constitutional amendment listed in the complaint is proper. At this point, for example, the alleged facts do not appear sufficient to sustain a finding of an Eighth Amendment violation. See Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U.S. 651, 664-71, 97 S.Ct. 1401, 1408-12, 51 L.Ed.2d 711 (1977). For present purposes, however, it is enough that the allegations evidence some constitutional wrong.

C. Municipal Policy.

Plaintiff has alleged that it is the policy of the City of Chicago to deprive its black citizens of their civil rights. Plaintiff candidly admits that in all probability no such official policy has been enacted. Memorandum in Opposition to the Motion to Dismiss at 5. Yet Monell makes clear that such admission is not fatal. Municipalities are equally liable for de facto policies or customs which engender constitutional deprivation. As the Second Circuit has noted, "to require that senior officials must have formally adopted or promulgated a policy before their conduct may be treated as `official' would for present purposes render Monell a nullity, exalting form over substance." Turpin v. Mailet, 619 F.2d 196, 200 (2d Cir. 1980).

Yet given this general rule, one might still question whether the alleged form of de facto policy—that evidenced by inaction—is a valid basis for Section 1983 liability. In Rizzo v. Goode, 423 U.S. 362, 96 S.Ct. 598, 46 L.Ed.2d 561 (1976), plaintiffs sought to hold numerous supervisory officials of the Philadelphia police department liable under Section 1983 for the constitutional torts of their subordinates. Liability was claimed to result from the supervisors' "failure to act in the fact of a statistical pattern" of subordinate misconduct. Id. at 376, 96 S.Ct. at 606 (emphasis in original). The Supreme Court unambiguously rejected the proferred theory, id., seemingly holding that inaction cannot equal Section 1983 liability. Id. at 384-5, 96 S.Ct. at 610 (Blackmun, J., dissenting).

The Court, however, offered an entirely different interpretation a mere two years later in Monell. There Rizzo was found to stand simply for the proposition "that the mere right to control subordinates without any control or direction having been exercised and without any failure to supervise is not enough to support § 1983 liability." Monell, 436 U.S. at 694 n.58, 98 S.Ct. at 2037 (citation omitted). Thus "at least one form of inaction — failure to supervise combined with the exercise of some control — may be actionable." Mayes v. Elrod, 470 F.Supp. 1188, 1194 (N.D.Ill.1979); accord, Redmond v. Baxley, 475 F.Supp. 1111, 1116 (E.D.Mich.1979).³ Under Monell, in short, it appears that municipal liability can be grounded in either the acts or omissions of policy-making officials. See, e. g., Turpin, supra, 619 F.2d at 200-1; Villa v. Franzen, 511 F.Supp. 231, 235 (N.D.Ill.1981).

Subsequent decisions have refined this point, indicating that liability attaches only when the inaction evidences an extremely high degree of culpability. The rule in the Second Circuit is that

"a mere failure by the county to supervise its employees would not be sufficient to hold it liable under § 1983. However, the county could be held liable if the failure to supervise or the lack of a proper training program was so severe as to reach the level of `gross negligence' or `deliberate indifference' to the deprivation of the plaintiff's constitutional rights."

Owens v. Haas, 601 F.2d 1242, 1246 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 980, 100 S.Ct. 483, 62 L.Ed.2d 407 (1979) (citation omitted). More specifically, "where senior personnel have knowledge of a pattern of constitutionally offensive acts by their subordinates but fail to take remedial steps, the municipality may be held liable for a subsequent violation if the supervisor's inaction amounts to deliberate indifference or to tacit authorization of the offensive acts." Turpin, supra, 619 F.2d at 201; acc...