Turner v. City of Toledo

• Citation: 671 F.Supp.2d 967
• Decision Date: 02 December 2009
• Docket Number: Case No. 3:07 CV 274.
• Parties: Betty TURNER, etc., Plaintiff, v. CITY OF TOLEDO, et al., Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Ohio

671 F.Supp.2d 967

Betty TURNER, etc., Plaintiff, v. CITY OF TOLEDO, et al., Defendant.

Case No. 3:07 CV 274.

United States District Court, N.D. Ohio, Western Division.

December 2, 2009.

Geoffrey N. Fieger, William J. McHenry, Fieger, Fieger, Kenney, Johnson & Giroux, Southfield, MI, Robert M. Scott, Lafferty, Gallagher & Scott, Toledo, OH, for Plaintiff.

Adam W. Loukx, Jeffrey B. Charles, Mark S. Schmollinger, City of Toledo, Department of Law, Jay E. Feldstein, Kalniz, Iorio & Feldstein, Richard M. Kerger, Kerger & Hartman, John A. Borell, Sr., Andrew K. Ranazzi, Office of the Prosecuting Attorney, Dennis A. Lyle, Anspach Meeks Ellenberger, James R. Knepp, II, Thomas J. Antonini, Robison, Curphey & O'Connell, Joan C. Szuberla, Spengler Nathanson, Toledo, OH, for Defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

KATZ, District Judge.

In this action, Plaintiff Betty Turner seeks recovery under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against Defendant Lucas County for deprivation of her decedent's civil rights. She also brings claims against defendants Jonathon Leach, William Ginn, and Joe Villanueva for depriving the decedent of his civil rights guaranteed under § 1983 by using excessive force against him during his stay at the Lucas County Jail, where Leach, Ginn, and Villanueva were on duty.

This matter is now before the Court on the motion of Lucas County (Doc. 94), pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. Pro. 59(e), for reconsideration of the portions of this Court's November 3, 2009, opinion (Doc. 92) denying Lucas County's motion to be dismissed from this action under Fed. R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6). Plaintiff has filed a motion for reconsideration (Doc. 94) of the portions of this Court's November 3, 2009, opinion granting the motions of Leach, Ginn, and Villanueva for dismissal of the § 1983 claims against them on qualified immunity grounds; Leach (Doc. 101), Ginn (Doc. 103), and Villanueva (Doc. 102) have filed briefs in opposition. Both motions will be denied.

I. Rule 59(e) Standard

The purpose of a motion to alter or amend judgment under Fed.R.Civ.P. 59(e) is to allow the court to reconsider matters "properly encompassed in a decision on the merits." Osterneck v. Ernst and Whinney, 489 U.S. 169, 174, 109 S.Ct. 987, 103 L.Ed.2d 146 (1989). This rule gives the district court the "power to rectify its own mistakes in the period immediately following the entry of judgment." White v. New Hampshire Dept. of Employment Security, 455 U.S. 445, 450, 102 S.Ct. 1162, 71 L.Ed.2d 325 (1982). Generally, three major situations justify a district court altering or amending its judgment: (1) to accommodate an intervening change in controlling law; (2) to consider newly discovered evidence; or (3) to prevent a clear error of law or a manifest injustice. Gen-Corp, Inc. v. American Intern. Underwriters, 178 F.3d 804, 834 (6th Cir.1999). Rule 59(e) is not designed to give an unhappy litigant an opportunity to relitigate matters already decided; nor is it a substitute for appeal. Roger Miller Musk, Inc. v. Sony/ATV Publishing, LLC, 477 F.3d 383, 395 (6th Cir.2007) (citing Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians v. Engler, 146 F.3d 367, 374 (6th Cir.1998)). Rather, a motion to alter or amend is proper only if it calls to the Court's attention "an argument or controlling authority that was overlooked or disregarded in the original ruling, presents manifest evidence or argument that could not previously have been submitted, or successfully points out a manifest error of fact or law." Davie v. Mitchell, 291 F.Supp.2d 573, 634 (N.D.Ohio 2003).

II. Lucas County's Motion for Reconsideration

In its motion, Lucas County seeks reconsideration on the ground that "no reason was presented in the Court's November 3rd, 2009 order as to why it was dismissed." (Doc. 94 at 2). But that opinion did, in fact, provide a reason for rejecting Lucas County's motion. Lucas County's sole argument in its original motion was that, under Ohio law, "a county is not regarded as a body corporate, like a municipality, and cannot sue or be sued." (Doc. 68 at 2). This Court responded by noting that, regardless of any immunity that they might enjoy from suit under state law, counties do not generally enjoy immunity from suit under federal law, citing Mt. Healthy City Sch. Dist. Bd. of Educ. v. Doyle, 429 U.S. 274, 280, 97 S.Ct 568, 50 L.Ed.2d 471 (1977) for the proposition that "the bar of the Eleventh Amendment to suit in Federal courts extends to States and state officials in appropriate circumstances . . . but does not extend to counties and similar municipal corporations." (Doc. 92 at 4).

Indeed, this Court, on March 16, 2009, rejected Lucas County's argument on this point in another § 1983 case with the following discussion:

Defendants argue that a county is not regarded as a body corporate and cannot sue or be sued except where specifically authorized by statute. See Stone v. Holzberger, 807 F.Supp. 1325, 1333 (S.D.Ohio 1992) (citing Ohio Rev.Code § 301.22); (Pancake v. Wakefield, 102 Ohio App. 5, 140 N.E.2d 887 (Athens Cty.1956)); Picciuto v. Lucas County Board of Commissioners, 69 Ohio App.3d 789, 769 [796] (1990). However, the United States Supreme Court has concluded that "[t]he bar of the Eleventh Amendment to suit in federal courts extends to States and state officials in appropriate circumstances . . . but does not extend to counties and similar municipal corporations." Mt. Healthy City School Dist. Bd. of Educ. v. Doyle, 429 U.S. 274, 280, 97 S.Ct. 568, 50 L.Ed.2d 471 (1977). The Sixth Circuit adopted this holding in S.J. v. Hamilton County, Ohio, when the court expressly affirmed the "portion of the district Court's order denying immunity to defendant Hamilton County, [Ohio]." 374 F.3d 416, 420 (6th Cir.2004).

Sanford v. County of Lucas, Ohio, No. 07-3588, 2009 WL 723227 at *3 (N.D.Ohio, March 16, 2009). Given this Court's square rejection of Lucas County's argument in Sanford, and the failure of Lucas County to address or even acknowledge that earlier decision, there was no need for anything more than a perfunctory statement of the legal basis for the denial of Lucas County's motion for dismissal in the instant case.

This was especially so because the legal basis for Lucas County's motion to dismiss remains entirely unclear. Since the motion cited only Ohio statutes and cases interpreting Ohio law, this Court (and the Plaintiff in this case) would have been fully justified in assuming that, like the motion of the Lucas County Sheriffs Department and Lucas County Jail considered contemporaneously, Lucas County's motion only sought dismissal of "any state law claims" brought against it. (Doc. 75 at 2-3).¹ Compounding matters, Lucas County's present motion simply repeats the discussion from its two previous motions, failing to address in any way this Court's stated reasons for rejecting them. Thus, far from presenting this Court with a "clear error of law" or any other proper Rule 59(e) ground for altering or amending the judgment, Lucas County's present motion fails even to clarify its earlier motion.

This Court's independent review of federal law indicates that there is some merit to the contention that "[i]n order to bring a viable § 1983 claim against a defendant, the defendant sued must be an entity that is subject to being sued [under state law]," Seltzer v. Mobile City Police Dept., 2008 WL 3852679 at *2 (S.D.Ala., August 6 2008). This is because, under Fed. R.Civ.P. 17(b), an entity's capacity to be sued is to be determined by state law. A closely-related question is whether a governmental entity that cannot sue or be sued qualifies as a "person" for the purposes of § 1983.

But this Court did not err in rejecting Lucas County's pseudo-arguments on these points. Having been forced to decide this issue three times now in the last several months on paltry briefing, the Court will engage in a longer discussion of this matter than is strictly necessary for disposition of this case, with the hope of clarifying issues relating to the legal status of Ohio political subdivisions under federal law, particularly insofar as they implicate difficult issues of sovereign immunity and federal preemption.

Courts have generally treated questions of whether a § 1983 suit may be brought against a "political subdivision" of a state, as this Court did in its two previous opinions on this matter, under the rubric of Eleventh Amendment sovereign immunity analysis, and have looked to whether the governmental entity in question shares the state's own immunity from suit. Thus, the Sixth Circuit has expressly permitted suits under § 1983 to proceed against Ohio counties, on the ground that counties do not enjoy sovereign immunity. See S.J. v. Hamilton County, Ohio, 374 F.3d at 420. So too, the Supreme Court has reasoned that a municipality, unlike a state, is a "person" under § 1983 because a state enjoys sovereign immunity, while a municipality does not. See Will v. Mich. Dep't of State Police, 491 U.S. 58, 70, 109 S.Ct. 2304, 105 L.Ed.2d 45 (1989). In this way, courts have generally found a governmental entity's suability under § 1983 to be a function of the entity's sovereign immunity under federal law.

Indeed, the Ohio courts have treated the question of a county's capacity to be sued under Ohio law in an analogous way, as turning on the extent to which a county is an instrumentality of the State. Thus, the Ohio cases holding that a county cannot be sued have reasoned that "[counties are local subdivisions of a State, created by the sovereign power of the State, of its own sovereign will," as opposed to "municipal corporations," which are not "superimposed by a sovereign and paramount authority." State ex. rel. Ranz v. City of Youngstown, 140 Ohio St. 477, 483, 45 N.E.2d 767 (1942) (quoting Bd. of Com'rs of Hamilton County v. Mighels, 7 Ohio St. 109, 118, 119 (1857) (Brinkerhoff, J.)). The essential logic of these venerable cases is that the State of Ohio decided, on its own sovereign...