Williams v. Borough of West Chester, Pa., 89-1052

Citation891 F.2d 458
Decision Date08 January 1990
Docket NumberNo. 89-1052,89-1052
PartiesWILLIAMS, Wayne, Individually and as Administrator of the Estate of Williams, Ronald K., Williams, Richard v. BOROUGH OF WEST CHESTER, PENNSYLVANIA, Green, John O. Ferriola, Jennadi, Morris, William A. McBride, Steven J. Chesko, William G. Martin, John D. Appeal of Wayne WILLIAMS, Individually and as Executor of the Estate of Ronald Williams, and Richard Williams.
CourtUnited States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (3rd Circuit)

Joseph P. Green, Jr. (argued), Duffy & Green, West Chester, Pa., for appellants.

Christine Mooney-Brenner (argued), Marshall, Dennehey, Warner, Coleman & Goggin, Philadelphia, Pa., for appellees.

Before BECKER, STAPLETON and GARTH, Circuit Judges.

OPINION ANNOUNCING THE JUDGMENT OF THE COURT

BECKER, Circuit Judge.

I.
A.

Since the Supreme Court decided its summary judgment trilogy, 1 appellate courts have increasingly been called upon to engage in difficult line-drawing exercises to determine whether a nonmoving party has adduced sufficient evidence to defeat a motion for summary judgment. The standard for this determination is more easily stated than applied:

[S]ummary judgment will not lie if the dispute about a material fact is "genuine," that is, if the evidence is such that a reasonable jury could return a verdict for the nonmoving party....

....

[The summary judgment] standard mirrors the standard for a directed verdict ... which is that the trial judge must direct a verdict if, under the governing law, there can be but one reasonable conclusion as to the verdict. If reasonable minds could differ as to the import of the evidence ... a verdict should not be directed....

In essence ... the inquiry under each [standard] is the same: whether the evidence presents a sufficient disagreement to require submission to a jury or whether it is so one-sided that one party must prevail as a matter of law.

Liberty Lobby, 477 U.S. at 248, 250, 251, 251-52, 106 S.Ct. at 2510, 2511, 2511, 2511-12. On the one hand, this standard makes clear that, even though the right to a jury trial is implicated, see id. at 267, 106 S.Ct. at 2519 (Brennan, J., dissenting), a nonmoving party must adduce more than a mere scintilla of evidence in its favor, see 477 U.S. at 249, 106 S.Ct. at 2510, 2 and cannot simply reassert factually unsupported allegations contained in its pleadings, see Celotex, 477 U.S. at 325, 106 S.Ct. at 2553. On the other hand, the standard purports to leave undisturbed the traditional rule that "[c]redibility determinations, the weighing of the evidence, and the drawing of legitimate inferences from the facts are jury functions, not those of the judge." Liberty Lobby, 477 U.S. at 255, 106 S.Ct. at 2513. Summary judgment motions thus require judges to "assess how one-sided evidence is, or what a 'fair-minded' jury could 'reasonably' decide," id. at 265, 106 S.Ct. at 2518 (Brennan, J., dissenting), an inquiry that obviously must be done on a case-by-case basis. 3

The inquiry becomes even more difficult when a defendant's liability turns on his or her state of mind. On the one hand, as the "reasonable jury" reference in Liberty Lobby suggests, circumstantial evidence alone must be sufficient to defeat summary judgment in some of these situations. Nothing in the trilogy suggests otherwise, and a contrary rule would immunize from trial all civil defendants who swear in affidavits that they lacked the requisite mental state, absent some rarely available "smoking gun." On the other hand, a nonmoving party in such a case cannot defeat summary judgment simply by asserting that a jury might disbelieve an opponent's affidavit to that effect. " '[D]iscredited testimony is not [normally] considered a sufficient basis for drawing a contrary conclusion.' Instead, the plaintiff must present affirmative evidence in order to defeat a properly supported motion for summary judgment." Liberty Lobby, 477 U.S. at 256-57, 106 S.Ct. at 2514 (emphasis added) (citation omitted). Such affirmative evidence--regardless of whether it is direct or circumstantial--must amount to more than a scintilla, but may amount to less (in the evaluation of the court) than a preponderance. Whether the quantum of circumstantial evidence in any particular case is enough to meet the Liberty Lobby standard sometimes requires us to make difficult, fact-specific, perhaps somewhat arbitrary judgments.

B.

This civil rights action, brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (1982), arises out of the suicide of Ronald Williams in the West Chester, Pennsylvania, police station. It presents a particularly difficult example of the general problem described above.

Plaintiffs Wayne Williams, father of Ronald Williams and administrator of his estate, and Richard Williams, twin brother of Ronald Williams, appeal from the grant of summary judgment for the defendants, the Borough of West Chester and a number of its police officers. 4 The appeal requires us to determine whether a genuine issue of material fact exists as to police officers' alleged deliberate indifference to the psychological needs of a prisoner.

A number of factors militate against summary judgment. The personal history of the decedent, which was marked by several bizarre previous suicide attempts, was known to many members of West Chester's 35-member police department, including members of the platoon in which the defendant police officers served. Even the Chief of Police had heard of Ronald's mental problems, although not the suicide attempts. The suicide attempts were part of the records of that platoon, and were read at its roll call. They were also known personally to the civilian dispatcher on duty on the night of the suicide. Nonetheless, the officers who had custodial responsibility for Ronald denied knowledge of the suicide attempts, either by word of mouth or from the roll call.

Because human beings often talk about bizarre behavior, a strong argument can be made that a reasonable jury could find that the custodial officers in this small police department did know about Ronald's history of mental problems. If they knew, their failure to remove Ronald's belt, in violation of the usual practice of the West Chester Police Department, or to take other suicide prevention measures, might well raise a genuine issue of material fact on the issue of deliberate indifference.

On the other hand, the custodial officers swore affidavits directly denying any knowledge of Ronald's past. At the time of the incident, West Chester had a population of over 18,000 people, and a thirty-five member force is not tiny. Officers work different shifts, and there is no evidence that the custodial officers were present when records of Ronald's past suicide attempts were read. Most important, Ronald's two most bizarre suicide attempts, see infra at 462, occurred six years before the events in question in this suit.

Although I believe that the question is extremely close under these circumstances, we will affirm the grant of summary judgment in favor of the two custodial officers, the civilian dispatcher (who had no custodial responsibility for prisoners), and the municipality.

II.

The following facts are essentially undisputed. On April 18, 1985, West Chester Police Officer Jennadi Ferriola entered Thatcher's Drug Store in West Chester in response to a shoplifting complaint. In the store were Ronald Williams, his brother Richard Williams, and several other people. Richard was being detained by store employees for allegedly having committed a retail theft. Store employees informed Officer Ferriola that Ronald had been threatening people in the store. Police Sergeant William Chesko then arrived on the scene, and escorted Ronald from the premises, informing him that if he returned to the store he would be arrested. Richard was taken into custody on the shoplifting charge, and Ronald re-entered the store. Ferriola and Chesko thereupon arrested Ronald for criminal trespass. Ronald was handcuffed, placed in a police car, and taken to the West Chester police station. While Ronald was in the presence of the officers, in the police car and subsequently at the police station, he repeatedly stated that he did not steal anything and that he was not going to be arrested for something he did not do.

Upon arrival at the police station, Officer Ferriola took Ronald to the squad room, where Police Officer William Morris and Dispatcher Steven McBride were present. Ferriola removed Ronald's handcuffs and instructed him to empty his pockets and take his jacket off. While he was taking his jacket off, Ronald assumed a "combative position." Ferriola and Morris then seized him and placed him in a police cell. However, they failed to remove his belt, the usual practice of the West Chester police department. 5 Dispatcher McBride witnessed this struggle. Ronald was placed in the cell between 6:05 and 6:10 p.m. Shortly thereafter, he was heard banging on the cell block door and yelling.

Richard Williams was then brought into the station. Sergeant Chesko interrogated him about another crime for approximately five or ten minutes, and then placed him in a cell next to Ronald's. After Richard was brought into the station, but before he was placed in the cell, Officer Ferriola left the station on a dinner break. Ferriola stated in his deposition that it was his intention to arraign and release Ronald when he returned, and that he had intended to wait until that time to do so because he thought that Ronald needed time to calm down. Officer Morris went off duty at approximately 6:10 p.m. and left the police station fifteen to twenty minutes later. Sergeant Chesko left the cell block area at approximately 6:25 p.m. and left the station five or ten minutes later. After Chesko left, Dispatcher McBride was the only police department employee in the police station. He heard yelling from...

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