Watson v. McGee

• Decision Date: 01 December 1981
• Docket Number: No. C-3-80-354.,C-3-80-354.
• Citation: 527 F. Supp. 234
• Parties: Jimmie Lee WATSON, et al., Plaintiffs, v. James H. McGEE, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Ohio

527 F. Supp. 234

Jimmie Lee WATSON, et al., Plaintiffs, v. James H. McGEE, et al., Defendants.

No. C-3-80-354.

United States District Court, S. D. Ohio, W. D.

December 1, 1981.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Philip B. Herron, Richard M. Hunt, John S. Pickrel, Dayton, Ohio, for plaintiffs.

James D. Dennis, Asst. City Atty., Dayton, Ohio, for defendants.

DECISION AND ENTRY OVERRULING DEFENDANTS' MOTION TO DISMISS COMPLAINT; PLAINTIFFS GIVEN LEAVE OF COURT TO AMEND COMPLAINT WITHIN STATED PERIOD OF TIME, CONFERENCE CALL SET

RICE, District Judge.

I. INTRODUCTION

This matter is before the Court pursuant to the motion of all Defendants herein to dismiss the complaint, under Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6), for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. Defendants have filed both a memorandum and reply memorandum in support of their motion, alleging various grounds of dismissal with respect to each Defendant or group of Defendants. Plaintiffs have responded to the contentions raised by the Defendants, and have requested that the motion to dismiss be denied with regard to all Defendants. Before the specific matters at issue herein are addressed, the Court will briefly outline the relevant background of this action, while being cognizant that under the standards applicable to motions to dismiss, the allegations of the complaint are taken as true. United States v. New Wrinkle, Inc., 342 U.S. 371, 373, 72 S.Ct. 350, 351, 96 L.Ed. 417 (1952).

Plaintiffs filed the within action on August 28, 1980, against the City of Dayton and other named Defendants, including the Dayton City Mayor, members of the Dayton City Commission, the Dayton City Manager, Dayton City Police Chief, and unnamed police officers at the Dayton City Jail. Plaintiffs sought to represent a class of persons consisting of individuals confined as pretrial detainees at the Dayton City Jail on or about April 2, 1979. This action arises from a fire at the Dayton City Jail on the above date, which caused smoke inhalation, lung damage, and other physical injuries to the Plaintiffs and other pretrial detainees.

Plaintiffs have alleged in the complaint that their injuries were caused by the Defendants' negligent actions, including their failure to remedy the hazardous and unsafe conditions at the Dayton City Jail, which were known by Defendants to be inadequate in relation to fire safety standards prior to the time of the fire. Plaintiffs have contended that the acts and omissions of the Defendants violated Plaintiffs' rights to life and liberty and equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment, and their right under the Eighth Amendment, not to be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. Jurisdiction herein is premised upon 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331, 1342, and 1343, by virtue of the fact that the Plaintiffs' claims are brought under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983, 1985, 1986 and 1988. With this information in mind, the Court now turns to consideration of the specific grounds for dismissal raised by the Defendants. However, for analytical purposes, the contentions made by Defendants will be addressed in a different order than that initially advanced in Defendants' motion to dismiss, with attention first being directed to the issue of whether the complaint has stated a cause of action under federal law with regard to any of the Defendants.

II. FAILURE TO STATE A CAUSE OF ACTION AGAINST ANY OF THE DEFENDANTS

In Part IV of the Memorandum in support of Defendants' Motion to Dismiss, the Defendants have claimed that this action must be dismissed because the complaint herein is based solely upon the negligent conduct of the Defendants, which is not sufficient to state a cause of action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Plaintiffs have not responded specifically to the negligence argument raised by Defendants, but have pointed out that the complaint alleges both actions taken under color of state law, and a violation of Plaintiffs' Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights. These allegations are claimed by Plaintiffs to be sufficient to satisfy the requirements of § 1983.

42 U.S.C. § 1983, as amended in 1979, states that:

Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress.

Until recently, the Supreme Court has refrained from determining whether allegations of negligence are sufficient to state a cause of action under § 1983. Procunier v. Navarette, 434 U.S. 555, 566, n.14, 98 S.Ct. 855, 862, n.14, 55 L.Ed.2d 24 (1978) (Navarette); Baker v. McCollan, 443 U.S. 137, 99 S.Ct. 2689, 61 L.Ed.2d 433 (1979) (Baker). In Baker, the Court stated that:

Having been around this track once before in Procunier, supra, we have come to the conclusion that the question whether an allegation of simple negligence is sufficient to state a cause of action under § 1983 is more elusive than it appears at first blush. It may well not be susceptible of a uniform answer across the entire spectrum of conceivable constitutional violations which might be the subject of a § 1983 action. In any event, before the relationship between the defendant's state of mind and his liability under § 1983 can be meaningfully explored, it is necessary to isolate the precise constitutional violation with which he is charged.

Id. at 139-40, 99 S.Ct. at

However, in a recent decision, Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S. 527, 101 S.Ct. 1908, 68 L.Ed.2d 420 (1981) (Parratt), the Supreme Court attempted to provide more assistance to lower courts, noting, with respect to Baker and Navarette, that:

These two decisions, however, have not aided the various courts of appeals and district courts in their struggle to determine the correct manner in which to analyze claims such as the present one which allege facts that are commonly thought to state a claim for a common-law tort normally dealt with by state courts, but instead are couched in terms of a constitutional deprivation and relief is sought under § 1983.

Id. 101 S.Ct. at 1911. In Parratt, the Plaintiff, a prison inmate, brought suit under § 1983 to recover for the negligent loss of hobby materials valued at approximately $23.50; claiming that he had been deprived of his property without due process of law. Id. at 1910. The District Court granted summary judgment in the inmate's favor, and the Court of Appeals affirmed. Id. The Supreme Court reversed the judgment, finding that the prisoner had not satisfied the requirements necessary to establish a Fourteenth Amendment violation because the deprivation of his property had not been accomplished without due process of law. Id. at 1917. Specifically, the Court noted that although the inmate had been deprived of his property, the fact that the State of Nebraska "had a tort claims procedure which provided a remedy to persons who suffered tortious losses at the hands of the State," id. at 1910, avoided the conclusion that there had been any constitutional deprivation of property without due process of law within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. Id. at 1916.

In the course of reaching the above conclusions, the Court considered whether negligent acts were sufficient to invoke the application of § 1983. The Court stated that:

Nothing in the language of § 1983 or its legislative history limits the statute solely to intentional deprivation of constitutional rights. In Baker v. Collan, supra, we suggested that simply because a wrong was negligently as opposed to intentionally committed did not foreclose the possibility that such action could be brought under § 1983.

. . . . .

Section 1983, unlike its criminal counterpart, 18 U.S.C. § 242, has never been found by this Court to contain a state of mind requirement. The Court recognized as much in Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167 81 S.Ct. 473, 5 L.Ed.2d 492 (1961), when we explained after extensively reviewing the legislative history of § 1983, that:

"It is abundantly clear that one reason the legislation was passed was to afford a federal right in federal courts because, by reason of prejudice, passion, neglect, intolerance or otherwise, state laws might not be enforced and the claims of citizens to the enjoyment of rights, privileges and immunities guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment might be denied by the state agencies."

. . . . .

Both Baker v. McCollan and Monroe v. Pape suggest that § 1983 affords a "civil remedy" for deprivations of federally protected rights caused by persons acting under color of state law without any express requirement of a particular state of mind. Accordingly, in any § 1983 action the initial inquiry must focus on whether the two essential elements to a § 1983 action are present:

(1) whether the conduct complained of was committed by a person acting under color of state law; and (2) whether this conduct deprived a person of rights, privileges or immunities secured by the Constitution or laws of the United States.

Id. at 1912-1913 (emphasis added).

Based on the comments made by the Supreme Court in Parratt, this Court concludes that negligence is cognizable under § 1983, subject to the limitation that the wrongful conduct alleged must be performed under color of state law, and must deprive the plaintiff of a right secured by the Constitution and the laws of the United States. Thus, even if Plaintiffs' complaint herein is premised solely upon the negligent acts of the Defendants, that fact alone does not mandate dismissal of the Complaint.

Because distinct arguments have been presented by various Defendants with respect to the "under color of state law" requirement of § 1983, the Court has determined that for analytical purposes, it would be...