Warkevicz v. Berwick Area Sch. Dist.
| Decision Date | 14 July 2016 |
| Docket Number | No. 4:15-cv-01922,4:15-cv-01922 |
| Parties | EDWARD L. WARKEVICZ, Plaintiff, v. BERWICK AREA SCHOOL DISTRICT, MARYANN KOVALEWSKI, DANIEL MCGANN, WILLIAM MCLAUGHLIN, RON ROBSOCK, and SUZY WIEGAND, Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Middle District of Pennsylvania |
(Judge Brann)
Plaintiff initiated this obscure action with a correspondingly sparse complaint. As the Court attempted to wade through Plaintiff's murky and often discontinuous recounting of the events that gave rise to this litigation, it shortly became evident that Plaintiff had failed to allege sufficient factual matter to establish a plausible entitlement to relief as a matter of law.
Further obstructing Plaintiff's path to relief, a careful examination of this action's dramatis personae quite plainly reveals to any reasonable onlooker that the public officials implicated herein enjoy either qualified or absolute immunity as to each of the claims asserted against them—forms of immunity, which I note from the outset, promote the vitality of democratic rule by minimizing judicial second-guessing through lawsuits like this one.
As such, and in accordance with the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly and Ashcroft v. Iqbal, as well as that of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Connelly v. Lane Construction Corp., Defendants' motion to dismiss is granted in whole.1 Importantly, because I have also determined that, as a matter of law, amendment would be futile, the motion is granted with prejudice, and the courthouse doors will consequently be closed to any further attempt by Plaintiff to pursue this action in federal court.
"Although a reviewing court now affirmatively disregards a pleading's legal conclusions, it must still—as we have already emphasized—assume all remaining factual allegations to be true, construe those truths in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, and then draw all reasonable inferences from them."2 Plaintiff's complaint here is so inartfully drafted that distillation of fact from legal opinion has been rendered exceedingly difficult. The complaint, for instance, lacks any semblance of a sound factual basis or perceptible timeline for the events in question. Nevertheless, as demanded by prevailing law, this Court has endeavored to discern the complaint's factual allegations and thereafter, to cast them in the light most favorable to the Plaintiff.
The Berwick Area School District (hereinafter "the District") is a public school district that spans portions of both Columbia and LuzerneCounties. According to the complaint, on June 25, 2015, the District's school board "purported to exclude and bar Plaintiff from all real estate, property, buildings, stadiums, fields and any other location, owned, operated or controlled by the District, effective immediately."3 The individual Defendants—Maryann Kovalewski, Daniel McGann, William McLaughlin, Ron Robsock, and Suzy Wiegand—apparently are the five school board directors who voted to exclude Plaintiff.4 Plaintiff fails to provide any further meaningful facts about the June 25, 2015 board meeting.5
"The District thereafter informed Plaintiff that should he attempt to be physically present at any such location, that it had informed and instructed the local law enforcement officials to immediately remove him and consider him as a trespasser."6 According to Plaintiff, the area from which he was excluded "includes property to which the general public is invited without limitation for purposes of assembly, including, but not limited to, school buildings, stadiums and fields."7 Moreover, Plaintiff notes that "Defendants acted to exclude Plaintiff from all District propertywithout any form of due process or hearing prior to the deprivation."8 Plaintiff's June 25, 2015 exclusion was subsequently reiterated by the District's school board on September 14, 2015.9 He alleges that he requested a hearing from the District, which request has not yet been granted.10 No further details as to Plaintiff's ban have been pled.
As a consequence, Plaintiff alleges that "the Defendants have denied to Plaintiff his rights of assembly and access to public places and his privileges and immunities as guaranteed to him under the First, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution."11 Counts I through IV of Plaintiff's complaint each pertain, in somewhat overlapping fashion, to these alleged constitutional deprivations.
Plaintiff alleges that the following three comments were made by Defendant Kovalewski in reference to Plaintiff during the course of the June 25, 2015 and September 14, 2015 meetings:
In connection with these comments, Plaintiff writes that "[t]he Defendants caused such publicity to be printed and circulated in local newspapers and through other media and means."16 Plaintiff has failed to plead precisely how Defendants caused such publication or in what capacity such statements were ultimately publicized. Moreover, Plaintiff contends that "[t]he Defendants knew that such allegations regarding Plaintiff were false or, in the alternative, acted with extreme recklessness asto their falsity."17 Alternatively, Plaintiff writes that "the individual Defendants deliberately created the context and impression by which the action taken and the false report were disseminated."18 According to Plaintiff, such comments "created publicity casting [him] in a notoriously negative light."19
According to the complaint and as will become relevant later on, "Plaintiff is engaged in the business of providing insurance services to individuals and businesses of the general public in northeastern Pennsylvania." 20 He "does business under the name of Ed Warkevicz Insurance Services."21 "On account of aforesaid deprivation and the publicity given to it by the Defendants," Plaintiff contends that the "has lost business, revenue and profit from his insurance business on account of customers declining to do business with him."22 As a result, Plaintiff hasalso filed Counts V through VII, which allege intentional infliction of emotional distress, slander, and false light invasion of privacy, respectively.
Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), a defendant may file a motion to dismiss for "failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted." Such a motion "tests the legal sufficiency of a pleading" and "streamlines litigation by dispensing with needless discovery and factfinding."23 "Rule 12(b)(6) authorizes a court to dismiss a claim on the basis of a dispositive issue of law."24 This is true of any claim, "without regard to whether it is based on an outlandish legal theory or on a close but ultimately unavailing one."25
Beginning in 2007, the Supreme Court of the United States initiated what some scholars have termed the Roberts Court's "civil procedure revival" by significantly tightening the standard that district courts must apply to 12(b)(6) motions.26 In two landmark decisions, Bell Atlantic Corporation v. Twombly and Ashcroft v. Iqbal, the Roberts Court "changed . . . the pleading landscape" by "signal[ing] to lower-court judges that the stricter approach some had been taking was appropriate under the Federal Rules."27 More specifically, the Court in these two decisions "retired" the lenient "no-set-of-facts test" set forth in Conley v. Gibson and replaced it with a more exacting "plausibility" standard.28
Accordingly, after Twombly and Iqbal, "[t]o survive a motion to dismiss, a complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to 'state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.'"29 "A claim hasfacial plausibility when the plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged."30 "Although the plausibility standard does not impose a probability requirement, it does require a pleading to show more than a sheer possibility that a defendant has acted unlawfully."31 Moreover, "[a]sking for plausible grounds . . . calls for enough facts to raise a reasonable expectation that discovery will reveal evidence of [wrongdoing]."32
The plausibility determination is "a context-specific task that requires the reviewing court to draw on its judicial experience and common sense."33 No matter the context, however, "[w]here a complaint pleads facts that are 'merely consistent with' a defendant's liability, it'stops short of the line between possibility and plausibility of entitlement to relief.'"34
When disposing of a motion to dismiss, a court must "accept as true all factual allegations in the complaint and draw all inferences from the facts alleged in the light most favorable to [the plaintiff]."35 However, "the tenet that a court must accept as true all of the allegations contained in the complaint is inapplicable to legal conclusions."36 "After Iqbal, it is clear that conclusory or 'bare-bones' allegations will no longer survive a motion to dismiss."37 "Threadbare recitals of the elements of a cause of action, supported by mere conclusory statements, do not suffice."38
As a matter of procedure, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has instructed that:
Under the pleading regime established by Twombly and Iqbal, a court reviewing the sufficiency of a complaint musttake three steps. First, it must tak[e] note of the...
To continue reading
Request your trial