Tate v. Frey

• Decision Date: 01 June 1984
• Docket Number: No. 83-5386,83-5386
• Citation: 735 F.2d 986
• Parties: Don TATE, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Richard FREY, et al., Defendants-Third Party Plaintiffs-Appellees, Commonwealth of Kentucky, et al., Third Party Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

Page 986

735 F.2d 986

39 Fed.R.Serv.2d 374

Don TATE, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Richard FREY, et al., Defendants-Third Party Plaintiffs-Appellees Commonwealth of Kentucky, et al., Third Party Defendants-Appellants.

No. 83-5386.

United States Court of Appeals Sixth Circuit.

Argued March 8, 1984.

Decided June 1, 1984.

W. Waverley Townes (argued), Nold, Mosley, Clare, Hubbard & Rogers, Walker B. Smith (argued), Eleanor F. Martin, Robert H. Littlefield, Ellen G. Friedman, Legal Aid Society of Kentucky, Inc., Louisville, Ky., for appellees.

Barbara Jones (argued), Linda G. Cooper, David Sexton, Frankfort, Ky., for appellants.

Before ENGEL and KRUPANSKY, Circuit Judges, and CELEBREZZE, Senior Circuit Judge.

PER CURIAM.

This is an appeal from an order of the United States District Court for the Western District of Kentucky (Allen, J.) granting a preliminary injunction mandating the third party defendant-appellants, the Corrections Cabinet of the Commonwealth of Kentucky (the State), to reduce the number of convicted felons confined in the Jefferson County Jail and to transfer each convicted felon confined therein to a state penal facility within thirty (30) days after the imposition of sentence.

The relevant facts indicate that in January of 1975 an action was initiated by the inmates of Jefferson County Jail in Louisville, Kentucky against the superintendent of that institution, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983. In 1976 following an evidentiary hearing, the district court entered a preliminary injunction addressing sanitary conditions, rights of inmates confined to isolation and visitation privileges at the institution. See Tate v. Kassulke, 409 F.Supp. 651 (W.D.Ky.1976).

The inmates filed a second amended complaint in 1980, naming Richard Frey (successor to Kassulke as superintendent of Corrections) as a defendant, charging numerous Eighth Amendment and other constitutional infringements resulting from the existing overcrowded conditions at the Jefferson County Jail.

On March 15, 1983 the county officials joined certain state corrections officials of the Commonwealth of Kentucky in a third-party complaint seeking: (a) money damages against the state as reimbursement for any sums which might be assessed against the county arising from the overcrowding of Jefferson County Jail and (b) a preliminary injunction enjoining state corrections officials from refusing to timely accept felons incarcerated in the Jefferson County Jail awaiting transfer to state facilities. ¹

On April 11, 1983, a hearing was conducted before the United States District Court for the Western District of Kentucky subsequent to which the trial judge, on April 20, 1983, issued a memorandum order acknowledging the lack of sleeping facilities available to the inmates of the Jefferson County Jail requiring them to sleep on floors and shelves for days on end, all as a result of overcrowding caused in part by the controlled intake policy mandated by the consent decree entered in Kendrick v. Bland in July of 1982. The memorandum order, deferring formal consideration of any injunction, directed the parties to confer with a view toward negotiating a program calculated to reduce the overcrowding and attendant unconstitutional conditions existing at the Jefferson County Jail.

Thereafter, on May 17, 1983, the parties, having failed to negotiate a resolution, the district court convened a hearing to address the motion for a preliminary injunction. At the conclusion of the hearings on May 19, 1983, it issued a mandatory injunction against the state corrections officials enjoining them to immediately reduce the number of convicted felons awaiting transfer to state facilities incarcerated in the Jefferson County Jail through a progressive reduction which would achieve the desired level of no more than thirty felons as of August 20, 1983. Additionally, the court enjoined the state corrections officials from permitting any convicted felons to remain incarcerated at the Jefferson County Jail for a period of more than thirty days from the imposition of sentence. The present appeal ensued.

On appeal the state charged that the district court erred in permitting its joinder as a third party defendant pursuant to Rule 14(a) Fed.R.Civ.P. and in granting the preliminary injunction here in issue.

Initially, the appellants have asserted that the county failed to allege any substantive basis to support its claim for relief against the state.

Rule 14(a) provides in pertinent part:

(a) When Defendant May Bring in Third Party.

At any time after commencement of the action a defending party, as a third-party plaintiff, may cause a summons and complaint to be served upon a person not a party to the action who is or may be liable to him for all or part of the plaintiff's claim against him.

While the purpose of Rule 14 is to encourage judicial economy by permitting courts to dispose of multiple claims which arise out of the same set of facts, an impleader action is proper when there is a right to relief in the third-party plaintiff under applicable substantive law against the third-party defendant.

A review of Kentucky state law indicates that the responsibility to provide for the confinement of convicted felons rests upon the state. Kentucky Revised Statute Sec. 532.100 provides that convicted felons be committed to the state for incarceration. ² Consequently, the third party plaintiffs have properly identified a substantive basis for their claim against the state in the third-party complaint. Additionally, evidence submitted during the hearings disclosed that the state through implementation of its controlled intake procedure has refused to timely accept convicted felons as required by state law, which inaction the district court specifically determined contributed to the unconstitutional overcrowding of the Jefferson County Jail. In light of the district court's determination that the controlled intake procedure contributed to the overcrowding of the Jefferson County Jail, complete relief would be elusive, if not impossible, to achieve absent joinder of the state as a third-party to this action. Accordingly, the district court properly permitted the joinder of the state as a third party defendant pursuant to Rule 14(a) Fed.R.Civ.P.

The Appellants have also alleged that even if they were properly joined as third party defendants, the district court erred in granting a preliminary injunction requiring the state to conform its actions to state law in light of the recent Supreme Court decision in Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, --- U.S. ----, 104 S.Ct. 900, 79 L.Ed.2d 67 (1984).

In Pennhurst, the Supreme Court concluded that a federal suit against state officials founded in state law contravenes the Eleventh Amendment where the relief sought and ordered impacts directly on the state itself.

Specifically, the Court in Pennhurst decided that the Eleventh Amendment prohibited a federal district court from mandating state officials, violating state law, to conform their conduct to state law with respect to a "condition of confinement action" involving a state institution since the state was the real, substantial party in interest. While directing federal courts to abstain from enjoining state officials from violating state law, the court specifically declined to address the issue of the district court's jurisdiction to order prospective relief arising from violations of federal law, but did incidentally recognize that any such relief should be constrained by principles of comity and federalism. Id. 104 S.Ct. at 910 n. 13. ³ In light of Pennhurst, the appellants have asserted that the district court erred in granting the preliminary injunction...