Washington v. Hous. Auth. of Columbia

• Decision Date: 19 January 2023
• Docket Number: 21-2059
• Parties: Danielle WASHINGTON, Personal Representative of the Estate of Calvin Witherspoon Jr., Plaintiff - Appellant, v. HOUSING AUTHORITY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBIA, a/k/a Columbia Housing Authority, a/k/a Columbia Housing, Defendant - Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

58 F.4th 170

Danielle WASHINGTON, Personal Representative of the Estate of Calvin Witherspoon Jr., Plaintiff - Appellant,

v.HOUSING AUTHORITY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBIA, a/k/a Columbia Housing Authority, a/k/a Columbia Housing, Defendant - Appellee.

No. 21-2059

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued: October 27, 2022

Decided: January 19, 2023

Richard Allan Hricik, LAW OFFICES OF RICHARD A. HRICIK, Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, for Appellant. Charles Franklin Turner, Jr., WILLSON JONES CARTER BAXLEY, P.A., Greenville, South Carolina, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Amanda C. Dure, PANGIA LAW GROUP, Washington, D.C., for Appellant.

Before GREGORY, Chief Judge, WYNN, Circuit Judge, and FLOYD, Senior Circuit Judge.

Reversed and remanded by published opinion. Judge Wynn wrote the opinion, in which Chief Judge Gregory and Senior Judge Floyd joined.

WYNN, Circuit Judge:

This case arises out of the death of Calvin Witherspoon, Jr., who died of carbon monoxide poisoning at his city-owned apartment in Columbia, South Carolina. Plaintiff Danielle Washington, Witherspoon's daughter and the personal representative of his estate, appeals the district court's dismissal of her complaint against the City of Columbia Housing Authority ("Housing Authority") for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. Because we conclude that Plaintiff has alleged sufficient facts to plead a § 1983 claim against the Housing Authority, we reverse and remand for further proceedings.

I.

We recount the facts as alleged in the complaint, accepting all well-pleaded factual allegations as true. Owens v. Balt. City State's Att'ys Off. , 767 F.3d 379, 385 (4th Cir. 2014).

On January 17, 2019, Witherspoon died of carbon monoxide poisoning in his apartment at Allen Benedict Court Apartments, a housing complex owned and maintained by the City of Columbia Housing Authority. The city police and fire chiefs concluded that the cause of Witherspoon's death was a faulty, thirty-year-old furnace that had caused carbon monoxide to leak into his apartment, as well as several others.

The Housing Authority originally installed the gas-burning furnace in 1990 but had never regularly inspected, tested, or maintained it. And ultimately, a build-up of debris caused the furnace's carbon monoxide venting to stop functioning. The problem went undetected because "carbon monoxide detectors [were] missing in all 244 units" of the complex. J.A. 31.¹

In fact, Witherspoon wasn't the only person to suffer the consequences that January night. Another tenant, Derrick Roper, also died from carbon monoxide poisoning

, and several other tenants were hospitalized due to carbon monoxide exposure. Following the incident, the entire apartment complex was evacuated, and all tenants were relocated.

The police and fire chiefs determined that Witherspoon's death was entirely preventable had the Housing Authority performed regular maintenance. Yet they found that the Housing Authority had performed no preventative maintenance on appliances at the complex, maintenance reports were inadequate or incomplete, and tenants who lived at the apartments believed that "if they complained, things would not be fixed." J.A. 30. The Housing Authority only had a single inspector for all 2,600 of its housing units. And ultimately, an inspection of the apartments revealed 869 code violations, ranging from missing carbon monoxide detectors and faulty smoke detectors to exposed wires and expired fire extinguishers. The fire chief found that several stoves were leaking natural gas, presenting a "severe risk for the community and its occupants." J.A. 31.

The Housing Authority was required by state and local law to install carbon monoxide detectors in each unit. But none were found in any of the units at Allen Benedict Court. The Housing Authority itself had recognized before Witherspoon's death that a missing carbon monoxide detector was a "life-threatening condition." J.A. 29. And because of that, in 2017—more than a year before Witherspoon's death—the Housing Authority adopted a "Life-Threatening Conditions" policy ("Policy 8-1.C") for privately owned properties, requiring that residents immediately install a carbon monoxide detector within 24 hours if one was missing or inoperable. Id. The policy also identified a heating system with improper venting as a life-threatening condition because it "may cause improper or dangerous venting of gas." Id. Yet the Housing Authority "elected not to apply this policy to its own properties," including the apartments at Allen Benedict Court. Id. (emphasis added).

In early 2021, Plaintiff sued the Housing Authority under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that the Housing Authority violated Witherspoon's Fourteenth Amendment substantive-due-process rights, including his right to bodily integrity. And under Monell v. Department of Social Services of City of New York , 436 U.S. 658, 98 S.Ct. 2018, 56 L.Ed.2d 611 (1978), she alleged that the Housing Authority caused this constitutional violation by acting with deliberate indifference through several policies and customs and by failing to train its employees.

Regarding her Monell claim, Plaintiff alleged that the Housing Authority elected to apply Policy 8-1.C only to privately owned apartments, rather than to Allen Benedict Court and the other low-income apartment complexes that the Housing Authority owned. Additionally, she alleged that the Housing Authority had "an unofficial policy or custom of willful neglect to the properties it owned by engaging in gross mismanagement of resources and finances, insufficient budgeting, absence of oversight, and gross neglect of maintenance, repair and capital improvements in its properties." J.A. 21. She alleged that this mismanagement was a conscious choice by the Housing Authority for financial gain: it led "the properties [to become] so dangerously unsafe and uninhabitable that they became eligible for federal grants." Id. Lastly, Plaintiff alleged that the Housing Authority's inadequate training and supervision of its employees regarding compliance with applicable housing laws led to the violation of Witherspoon's constitutional rights.

In response, the Housing Authority filed a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, arguing that Plaintiff failed to allege conduct that was so arbitrary and egregious as to shock the conscience and therefore amount to a constitutional violation. Additionally, the Housing Authority contended that there was no causal nexus between its policies and the alleged constitutional violation.

The district court agreed, concluding that Plaintiff's allegations failed to show a constitutional violation because the Housing Authority's actions amounted to, at most, only negligence, rather than deliberate indifference. The court also concluded that Plaintiff failed to plead sufficient facts to establish causation because she "failed to allege facts showing the alleged deficiencies made Witherspoon's death bound to happen rather than merely likely to happen." Washington v. Hous. Auth. of City of Columbia , No. 3:21-cv-00148-JFA, 2021 WL 3886595, at *7 (D.S.C. Aug. 31, 2021). Plaintiff timely appealed.

II.

On appeal, we review de novo a district court's dismissal of a complaint for failure to state a claim. Starbuck v. Williamsburg James City Cnty. Sch. Bd. , 28 F.4th 529, 532 (4th Cir. 2022). In conducting this review, we accept all factual allegations as true and draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the plaintiff. Singer v. Reali , 883 F.3d 425, 437 (4th Cir. 2018).

"[T]o survive a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), a complaint need only allege facts which, if true, ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.’ " Owens , 767 F.3d at 403 (quoting Ashcroft v. Iqbal , 556 U.S. 662, 678, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 173 L.Ed.2d 868 (2009) ). As such, "[t]he recitation of facts need not be particularly detailed, and the chance of success need not be particularly high." Id. (citing Iqbal , 556 U.S. at 678, 129 S.Ct. 1937 ; Bell Atl. Corp v. Twombly , 550 U.S. 544, 570, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2006) ). And a plaintiff fails to meet this standard "only when he offers ‘labels and conclusions’ or formulaically recites the elements of his § 1983 cause of action." Id. (quoting Iqbal , 556 U.S. at 678, 129 S.Ct. 1937 ).

III.

"When a § 1983 claim is asserted against a municipality," as here,² we must answer two questions: "(1) whether plaintiff's harm was caused by a constitutional violation, and (2) if so, whether the city is responsible for that violation." Covenant Media of S.C., L.L.C. v. City of N. Charleston , 493 F.3d 421, 436 (4th Cir. 2007) (quoting Collins v. City of Harker Heights , 503 U.S. 115, 120, 112 S.Ct. 1061, 117 L.Ed.2d 261 (1992) ). We consider these questions in turn.

A.

To prove a violation of substantive-due-process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, a plaintiff must show that a defendant's behavior was "so egregious, so outrageous, that it may fairly be said to shock the contemporary conscience." Dean ex rel. Harkness v. McKinney , 976 F.3d 407, 413 (4th Cir. 2020) (quoting Terrell v. Larson , 396 F.3d 975, 978 (8th Cir. 2005) ), cert. denied , ––– U.S. ––––, 141 S. Ct. 2800, 210 L.Ed.2d 930 (2021). To be conscience shocking, a defendant's behavior must lack "any reasonable justification in the service of a legitimate governmental objective." County of Sacramento v. Lewis , 523 U.S. 833, 846, 118 S.Ct. 1708, 140 L.Ed.2d 1043 (1998).

Although "the measure of what is conscience shocking is no calibrated yard stick," it does " ‘poin[t] the way.’ " Id. at 847, 118 S.Ct. 1708 (quoting Johnson v. Glick , 481 F.2d 1028, 1033 (2d Cir. 1973) ). And to that end, the Supreme Court has "described a ‘culpability spectrum’ along which behavior may support a substantive due process claim." Dean , 976 F.3d at 414 (quoting Lewis , 523 U.S. at 848–49, 118 S.Ct. 1708 ).

On one end of the spectrum is "conduct intended to injure [that is] in some way...