Tebo v. Tebo
| Decision Date | 25 November 2008 |
| Docket Number | No. 07-60659.,07-60659. |
| Citation | 550 F.3d 492 |
| Parties | Lucille TEBO, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Cary TEBO; Kenneth Tebo; Chip Dale Holbrook, Medical Doctor; Nadine Bush, Medical Doctor, Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
Carroll E. Rhodes, Law Offices of Carroll Rhodes, Hazlehurst, MS, for Plaintiff-Appellant.
Brenda B. Bethany, Daniel, Coker, Horton & Bell, Jackson, MS, for Cary Tebo and Kenneth Tebo.
Whitman B. Johnson, III, Lorraine Walters Boykin, Currie, Johnson, Griffin, Gaines & Myers, Jackson, MS, for Chip Dale Holbrook.
Mark Priestly Caraway, Wise Carter Child & Caraway, Jackson, MS, for Nadine Bush.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi.
Before BENAVIDES, SOUTHWICK and HAYNES, Circuit Judges.
Lucille Tebo appeals the district court's grant of summary judgment. She alleges that the Defendants—her two adult stepsons and two medical doctors who evaluated her—engaged in a conspiracy to have her involuntarily committed for mental treatment. The asserted object of the conspiracy was the taking of her property after she was committed. We AFFIRM.
One evening in May 2003, Cary and Kenneth Tebo ("Tebo brothers") were visiting the farm where their father, Thurman Tebo, lived. Also living there was their stepmother, the Plaintiff Lucille Tebo. After an argument, Mrs. Tebo threw a phone at Cary and threatened to kill him. After the brothers left, she stayed up pacing and hitting the walls of the room where her husband was in bed. The next morning the brothers called the county sheriff. The sheriff contacted Joan Sonnier, a counselor employed by Region 8 Mental Health Services, which is a state agency. Sonnier, along with the sheriff, went to the Tebo residence so that Sonnier could evaluate Mrs. Tebo. The document Sonnier prepared during the visit is in the form of an affidavit from the husband, Thurman Tebo. Among other details, he stated that his wife "becomes angry, hits walls, takes her husband's medicines, [and] provokes other people."
Once learning of these allegations, Sonnier advised the brothers to file an affidavit at the county courthouse for involuntary civil commitment. In their affidavit, the brothers stated that Mrs. Tebo's problems were "throwing things, pitching fits, not sleeping," and that she was a "danger to self and others." A deputy clerk for the chancery court that had jurisdiction over the proceedings helped the Tebo brothers prepare a patient information form. The form identified a number of alleged problems, including that Mrs. Tebo abused prescription drugs. That allegation is not in the brothers' affidavit.
After the brothers' affidavit was filed on May 15, 2003, Mrs. Tebo was evaluated by Doctors Nadine Bush and Chip Dale Holbrook on May 19. Those doctors are Defendants in this suit. Mrs. Tebo alleges that she felt pressured to attend the evaluations. She worried that she would be committed to the state hospital if she did not attend them. No physical compulsion is alleged. After evaluating her, the doctors filed a report stating that Mrs. Tebo was in need of inpatient psychiatric treatment. In a handwritten section of the report, the two physicians said that she was "having problems with anger, throwing things at husband, threatening to kill him and taking [his] meds."
Either on the day of the evaluation or very soon thereafter, a special master recommended that both Mrs. Tebo and her husband receive treatment. Before the chancellor (trial judge) ruled on the recommendation, the brothers moved to dismiss the proceedings on June 2, apparently because Mr. and Mrs. Tebo were getting a divorce. The chancellor ordered a dismissal on June 4.
Mrs. Tebo then filed this suit in federal district court. She alleged that the Defendants conspired to violate her right to due process as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. She sought relief under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. She also presented state-law tort claims for intentional infliction of emotional distress, malicious prosecution, and negligence per se against all four Defendants, and for medical malpractice against the two doctors.
The district court granted summary judgment on all claims against the four Defendants who are appellees now. A settlement as to other parties was reached and an order of dismissal entered. Mrs. Tebo's notice of appeal contested only the judgment in favor of the Tebo brothers and the two doctors.
This court reviews a grant of summary judgment de novo. Summary judgment is appropriate if there is no genuine issue of material fact, and if the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Morris v. Powell, 449 F.3d 682, 684 (5th Cir.2006).
Mrs. Tebo alleges that the commitment procedures were not followed and each Defendant is liable. She concedes that the Tebo brothers are not state actors. In order to hold them liable on her Section 1983 claim, they must have engaged in a conspiracy with state actors to violate her constitutional rights. Cinel v. Connick, 15 F.3d 1338, 1343 (5th Cir.1994). To make such a claim actionable, the private and the public actors must have entered into an agreement to commit an illegal act, and a plaintiff's constitutional rights must have been violated. Id. A plaintiff must "allege specific facts to show an agreement." Priester v. Lowndes County, 354 F.3d 414, 421 (5th Cir.2004).
The essence of the alleged conspiracy is that the Tebo brothers agreed with Dr. Bush and social worker Joan Sonnier to have Mrs. Tebo "civilly committed without following the civil commitment statutes." According to Mrs. Tebo, the Tebo brothers violated her statutory rights by filing an affidavit containing false statements about her behavior, by falsely claiming they were entitled to pauper status, and by causing an evaluation to be conducted prior to a court's reviewing the affidavit for sufficiency. See Miss.Code Ann. § 41-21-67. Defendants Sonnier (now dismissed), Holbrook, and Bush are alleged to have misled Mrs. Tebo about her status under the civil commitment laws, and to have been part of the conspiracy to evaluate her without a court order.
As we have already summarized, Mrs. Tebo admitted engaging in some erratic behavior. The brothers called the county sheriff. The sheriff contacted Sonnier, and both then went to the Tebo home to conduct what Mrs. Tebo alleges was an illegal "pre-screening evaluation." Thereafter, the brothers followed Sonnier's advice by going to the county courthouse, where they filed the affidavit and signed the pauper's oath. There is no allegation that the brothers were involved in the commitment process after submitting their affidavit. The affidavit led to Mrs. Tebo's evaluation by the doctors. If the evaluation improperly occurred without court order, there is no evidence from which to infer that the brothers were complicit.
Mrs. Tebo's allegation that the Defendants were engaged in a conspiracy to violate her civil rights is conclusory. She offers no evidence of an agreement to commit an illegal act between the Tebo brothers and the state actors. Even had Sonnier's method of proceeding been in violation of state law, there is no evidence that the Tebo brothers, presumably not experts in civil commitment law, were aware of the illegality or that such lawlessness was a component of a scheme to have Mrs. Tebo illegally committed.
The same difficulty for the claim applies to the allegedly unlawful means by which Doctors Bush and Holbrook—whom the Tebo brothers never met—evaluated Mrs. Tebo. Similarly, Mrs. Tebo fails to show how the brothers' own allegedly improper conduct of signing a false pauper's oath and exaggerating her behavior in their affidavits shows that they were acting in agreement with state actors to have Mrs. Tebo illegally committed. She does not allege that they told Sonnier they were lying or of their supposedly illicit intentions, much less offer evidence of an actual agreement to commit Mrs. Tebo illegally.
Mrs. Tebo's allegations and evidence do not "allege specific facts to show" that there is a genuine issue of material fact as to whether there was "an agreement between the private and public defendants to commit an illegal act." Accordingly, we affirm the grant of summary judgment on this claim.
The next claim we will consider is that for intentional infliction of emotional distress. One description of this tort in Mississippi is this:
In general, damages for mental anguish or suffering are recoverable when they are the natural or proximate result of an act committed maliciously, intentionally, or with such gross carelessness or recklessness as to show an utter indifference to the consequences when they must have been in the actor's mind.
Lyons v. Zale Jewelry Co., 246 Miss. 139, 150 So.2d 154, 158 (1963). The emotional distress must have been intended or a reasonably foreseeable result of a defendant's act. Adams v. U.S. Homecrafters, Inc., 744 So.2d 736, 743 (Miss.1999). The tort requires conduct that is "wanton and willful" and that "would evoke outrage or revulsion." Speed v. Scott, 787 So.2d 626, 630 (Miss.2001). The conduct must "go beyond all possible bounds of decency, and ... be regarded as atrocious, and utterly intolerable in a civilized community." White v. Walker, 950 F.2d 972, 978 (5th Cir.1991) (quoting Lyons, 150 So.2d at 158).
In her amended complaint, Mrs. Tebo alleged that the defendants by entering a conspiracy to "institute, instituting, and continuing an original proceeding with malice and in intentionally inflicting emotional distress on the plaintiff," had committed this tort. That is by far her broadest statement of the claim. Relevant in our review, though, are not her pleadings but her required...
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