White v. Lemacks, 98-9513

• Decision Date: 10 August 1999
• Docket Number: No. 98-9513,98-9513
• Parties: (11th Cir. 1999) PHYLLIS WHITE, acting as Administrator for the Estate of Jean Danison, WILLIAM ROSTAD, acting as Administrator for the Estate of Jean Danison, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. BILL LEMACKS, individually and in his official capacity as former Sheriff of Clayton County, Georgia, STANLEY TUGGLE, individually and in his official capacities as Sheriff and Deputy Sheriff of Clayton County, Georgia, CLAYTON COUNTY, GEORGIA, Defendants-Appellees
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 1253

183 F.3d 1253 (11th Cir. 1999)

PHYLLIS WHITE, acting as Administrator for the Estate of Jean Danison, WILLIAM ROSTAD acting as Administrator for the Estate of Jean Danison, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. BILL LEMACKS, individually and in his official capacity as former Sheriff of Clayton County, Georgia STANLEY TUGGLE, individually and in his official capacities as Sheriff and Deputy Sheriff of Clayton County, Georgia, CLAYTON COUNTY, GEORGIA, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 98-9513

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

August 10, 1999

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia D.C. Docket No. 1:98-cv-2063-CAM

Before CARNES, Circuit Judge, HILL, Senior Circuit Judge, and HOEVELER^*, Senior District Judge.

CARNES, Circuit Judge:

Plaintiffs William Rostad, acting as administrator for the estate of Jean Danison, and Phyllis White appeal the district court's dismissal of their 42 U.S.C. 1983 complaint against the defendants, who are Clayton County Sheriff Billy Lemacks, Deputy Sheriff Stanley Tuggle, and Clayton County, Georgia. The district court dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. For the reasons set forth below, we affirm the district court's judgment.

I. BACKGROUND

A. FACTS

According to the amended complaint, White and Danison were nurses in the employ of Prison Health Services, Inc., which was under contract to provide medical services to the inmate population at the Clayton County Jail. As a condition of their job, and while performing their nursing duties at the jail, they were required to be in close contact with inmates and their freedom of movement and ability to flee or otherwise protect themselves were limited. Although they had received assurances from agents of the defendants that adequate security measures would be in place to protect them from injury, in fact, inadequate steps were taken to protect them.

On July 23, 1996, while carrying out their nursing duties in the jail infirmary, White and Danison were attacked and brutally beaten by an inmate who was being held on aggravated assault charges. During the attack, White's head was slammed repeatedly against the floor while the inmate threatened to kill her. She was physically beaten about the head and body. Danison, too, was physically beaten by the inmate. At the time of the attack, one deputy sheriff had been assigned for White and Danison's protection, but that deputy was easily subdued. The attack continued until additional law enforcement personnel responded and the inmate was restrained.

B. PROCEDURAL HISTORY

In their initial complaint, plaintiffs brought claims against Sheriff Lemacks and Deputy Sheriff Tuggle in their individual and official capacities, and against Clayton County, Georgia, for substantive due process violations under both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. The complaint also alleged violations of Georgia law and sought punitive damages.

Defendants responded with a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). Their motion argued that the defendants did not owe plaintiffs a duty to protect them from a third party and did not have a constitutional obligation to provide a safe workplace. It also asserted that all of the defendants had qualified immunity, sovereign immunity, or official immunity, and that the request for punitive damages should be dismissed. Plaintiffs filed a motion to amend, attaching the proposed amended complaint. The amended complaint alleged additional facts, and it dropped the Fifth Amendment substantive due process claims and the Georgia law claims. The district court granted the plaintiffs' motion to amend the complaint, but also granted the defendants' motion to dismiss the remaining claims for failure to state a claim. The plaintiffs appeal the dismissal of their Fourteenth Amendment substantive due process claims.

II. DISCUSSION

We review de novo the district court's dismissal of a complaint for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. See Republic of Panama v. BCCI Holdings (Luxembourg) S.A., 119 F.3d 935, 948 (11th Cir. 1997). When considering a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, a court must accept the allegations in the complaint as true, construing them in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs. See Roberts v. Florida Power & Light Co., 146 F.3d 1305, 1307 (11th Cir. 1998), cert. denied, 119 S. Ct. 1027, 143 L.Ed.2d 38 (1999). We have done that in setting out the facts, above. A Rule 12(b)(6) motion should be granted only if it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiffs can prove no set of facts in support of their allegations which would entitle them to relief. See id.

We are bound to follow prior panel decisions, except where they have been overruled either by an en banc decision of this Court or a decision of the Supreme Court. See, e.g., United States v. Steele, 147 F.3d 1316, 1317-18 (11th Cir. 1998) (en banc); United States v. Hogan, 986 F.2d 1364, 1369 (11th Cir. 1993). This case involves the second part of that exception.

In Cornelius v. Town of Highland Lake, 880 F.2d 348 (11th Cir. 1989), we said that state and local government entities could be held liable for substantive due process violations for their failure to protect victims from harm caused by third parties where the state had a "special relationship" with the victim, or where the state, through its affirmative acts, put the victim in "special danger" of harm. Our holding in Cornelius is best described against the specific facts of that case. Plaintiff Harriet Cornelius was working at the Highland Lake town hall as the Town Clerk when she was abducted at knife point by two prison inmates and forced to accompany them for three days, during which time they terrorized her with threats of physical violence. The inmates were in the vicinity of town hall because the Town of Highland Lake had requested the Alabama Department of Corrections to provide inmate work squads to the town for maintenance and public works purposes. Despite the Department's policy that only nonviolent, "minimum custody" property offenders could be assigned to the work squads, one of the attackers approved for the Highland Lake assignment was serving a long sentence for armed robbery and had a history of violent crime. The tools provided to the inmates for their work included axes, picks, machetes, knives, and saws. An unarmed town employee supervised the inmates during their work, see Cornelius, 880 F.2d at 349-50, but the measures employed to protect Cornelius and others who worked at the town hall were clearly inadequate to ensure their safety.

Cornelius brought a suit under 1983 against the Town of Highland Lake, its Mayor, a member of the City Council, and officials of the Department of Corrections, alleging a violation of her substantive due process rights. She claimed that the inmates were able to abduct her only because of the officials' gross negligence and deliberate indifference to her rights. See id. at 351. The district court granted summary judgment for the defendants, but this Court reversed. Surveying prior cases, we concluded that government officials could be held liable under a substantive due process theory for injuries caused by third parties if there was a "special relationship" between the government and the victim, or if the government created a "special danger" to the victim that resulted in her injuries. See id. at 352-55 (citing Wright v. City of Ozark, 715 F.2d 1513 (11th Cir. 1983) for the special relationship doctrine, and Jones v. Phyfer, 761 F.2d 642 (11th Cir. 1985) for the special danger doctrine).We concluded in Cornelius that there were genuine issues of material fact, both as to whether a special relationship existed between Cornelius and the town officials and as to whether she faced a special danger from the work squad inmates, see id. at 355-59, which is to say that if she could prove the facts asserted, Cornelius would establish that her substantive due process rights had been violated by the government agencies.

In the special relationship analysis, we noted that "if Mrs. Cornelius wished to continue serving as the town clerk, she had to work in the environment created by the town officials; one that included routine exposure to prison inmates around the town hall." Id. at 355. We viewed the employment relationship between Cornelius and the town as a special relationship giving rise to a substantive due process duty on the part of the state to protect her from harm.

Under the special danger portion of the analysis, we observed "that the town and prison officials affirmatively acted together in bringing the inmates into the community of Highland Lake via the work squad program." Id. at 357. Moreover, there was evidence indicating that: (1) the town officials assigned to supervise the prisoners had no training in handling prisoners; (2) the defendants allowed the prisoners access to tools and weapons; and (3) the inmates were often unsupervised and free to roam. See id. at 357-58. That was enough, we thought, to implicate substantive due process under the "special danger" analysis.

Likewise, in this case, working around inmates was a necessary part of the plaintiffs' job,¹ and they have alleged that these governmental defendants failed to take adequate measures to protect them from the inmates and were deliberately indifferent to their safety. Accordingly, if Cornelius is still good law, these plaintiffs probably have pleaded a valid substantive due process claim. But Cornelius is not the last word on the subject.

Less than three years after our Cornelius decision, the Supreme Court in Collins v. City of Harker Heights, 503 U.S. 115, 127, 112 S. Ct. 1061, 1069 (1992), unanimously rejected as "unprecedented" a claim that a government employer...