Hughes v. The City of Montgomery, Alabama

Filing 24

OPINION. Signed by Honorable Judge Myron H. Thompson on 1/14/2013. (Attachments: # 1 Civil Appeals Checklist)(jg, )

IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES FOR THE
MIDDLE DISTRICT OF ALABAMA, NORTHERN DIVISION

TERRY HUGHES,

)
)
Plaintiff,
)
)
v.
)
)
CITY OF MONTGOMERY, et al., )
)
Defendants.
)

CIVIL ACTION NO.
2:12cv1007-MHT
(WO)

OPINION
Plaintiff Terry Hughes brings this lawsuit, naming as
defendants private citizens Derrick and Debora Sanders
along with the City of Montgomery, Police Chief Kevin J.
Murphy, and Police Officer R. C. Daniels.1 Hughes asserts
in this litigation violations of his rights under the
Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments, as enforced
through 42 U.S.C. § 1983.
state-law

torts

of

He further asserts claims

assault-and-battery

and

outrage.

Jurisdiction is proper pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1331
(federal question) and § 1367(a) (supplemental).
1. In his complaint, Hughes
Sanders’s first name as “Deborah.”

misspells

Debora

This case is now before the court on the Sanderses’
motion to dismiss.

The Sanderses argue that the only

claim against them-–that they have committed the tort of
outrage–-is due to be dismissed because Hughes has failed
to state a claim against them upon which relief can be
granted.2

See Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6).

set

below,

out

the

Sanderses’

For the reasons

dismissal

motion

is

granted.

I. MOTION-TO-DISMISS STANDARD
In considering a defendant's motion to dismiss filed
pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), the
court accepts the plaintiff's allegations as true and
construes the complaint in the plaintiff's favor.
v.

Cleland,

5

F.3d

1399,

1402

(11th

Cir.

Duke
1993).

Generally, to survive a motion to dismiss and meet the

2. The complaint is unclear as to which claims are
against which defendants.
However, Hughes’s counsel
clarified in a telephone conference with the court on
January 9, 2013, that the only claim against the
Sanderses is for the state-law tort of outrage.
2

requirement of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a)(2),
a

complaint

need

not

contain

“detailed

factual

allegations,” Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544,
555 (2007), but rather “only enough facts to state a
claim to relief that is plausible on its face,” id. at
570.

“A claim has facial 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.”
1949 (2009).

Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 129 S. Ct. 1937,

“The plausibility standard is not akin to

a ‘probability requirement,’ but it asks for more than a
sheer possibility that a defendant has acted unlawfully.”
Id. (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 556.

II. BACKGROUND
The allegations in Hughes’s complaint are as follows:
On August 29, 2011, he was stopped by Officer Daniels,
purportedly for speeding.

However, instead of ticketing

Hughes for speeding, Daniels demanded that he repay a

3

civil debt in the amount of $ 650 that Daniels insisted
Hughes owed to the Sanderses.

Hughes denied that he owed

the Sanderses money, but his protestations failed to move
Daniels, who threatened him with prison if he did not
pay.

Daniels then ordered Hughes to enter a local bank;

he turned over Hughes’s driver’s license to the bank
personnel; and he further ordered Hughes to withdraw the
amount he allegedly owed.

Hughes complied and handed the

cash to Daniels, who returned Hughes’s driver’s license
and allowed him to leave.
incident

occurred

at

the

Hughes alleges that this
“behest”

of

the

Sanderses.

Compl. (Doc. No. 1) at 4.3

3. However, in their dismissal motion, the Sanderses
tell a different story.
By their account, they hired
Hughes to perform some work on their home. After they
had paid him in advance for a portion of this work,
Hughes failed to complete it. Hoping for some redress,
the Sanderses say they asked the advice of Daniels, an
acquaintance from their church. Daniels told them that
their only option was to sue Hughes in civil court. The
Sanderses, wary of undertaking such a cumbersome effort,
state that they decided to drop the issue. Over a year
later, Debora Sanders received an unexpected call from
Daniels, who had stopped Hughes and wished to know how
much he owed them. She estimated that Hughes owed them
(continued...)
4

Hughes

subsequently

sued

the

Sanderses,

Officer

Daniels, Police Chief Murphy, and the City of Montgomery.
His only claim against the Sanderses is that they have
committed the Alabama tort of outrage.

III. DISCUSSION
The tort of outrage under Alabama law “is essentially
equivalent to what many states refer to as ‘intentional
infliction of emotional distress.’” K.M. v. Alabama Dept.
of Youth Services, 360 F. Supp. 2d 1253, 1259 n.4 (M.D.
Ala. 2005) (Thompson, J.).
a

plaintiff

must

show

To prove a claim of outrage,

that,

“(1)

the

defendant

...

intended to inflict emotional distress, or should have
known that his or her acts would result in emotional
distress; (2) the act [was] extreme and outrageous; (3)
the

act

...

caused

plaintiff[‘s]

distress;

and

(4)

plaintiff[‘s] emotional distress [was] so severe that no

3(...continued)
$ 650, and Daniels delivered that amount to their home
later that day.
5

reasonable

person

could

be

expected

to

endure

it.”

Palmer v. Infosys Technologies Ltd., Inc., ____ F.Supp.2d
____, ____, 2012 WL 3583025, at *3 (Aug. 20, 2012)
(Thompson, J.) (quotations and citations omitted).
Alabama’s outrage tort is considered an “extremely
limited cause of action,” Potts v. Hayes, 771 So. 2d 462,
465

(Ala.

2000),

and

is

available

to

redress

only

“conduct so outrageous in character and so extreme in
degree as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency,
and to be regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable
in a civilized society.”

American Rd. Serv. Co. v.

Inmon, 394 So. 2d 361, 365 (Ala. 1980).

Moreover, given

the murky threshold for this claim, Alabama courts have
generally

recognized

outrage

claims

in

only

three

specific sets of circumstances: “(1) cases involving
wrongful conduct in the context of family burials; (2)
cases in whuch insurance agents employ heavy-handed,
barbaric means to coerce insureds into settling insurance
claims[;] and (3) cases involving particularly egregious

6

sexual harassment.”
1330

(11th

Cir.

Tinker v. Beasley, 429 F. 3d 1324,

2005)

(internal

quotation

marks

and

citations omitted).
With the facts viewed in the light most favorable to
Hughes, the Sanderses’ conduct does not meet the very
high bar imposed by Alabama law for establishing a claim
of

outrage.

These

facts

are

not

within

the

three

categories of behavior the Alabama Supreme Court has so
far used to cabin the outrage claim.

Nor is this conduct

so outrageous that this court is compelled to depart from
these

categorical

limitations.

Hughes

makes

no

allegations that the Sanderses asked Daniels to harass
him, and, while Daniels’s behavior certainly constituted
a misuse of his own power, the Sanderses, as private
citizens, do not occupy the same position of public trust
and authority that Daniels does as a police officer.

Cf.

Woodley v. City of Jemison, 770 So. 2d 1093, 1096 (Ala.
Civ. App. 1999) (denying summary judgment on outrage
claim where police officer used information available in

7

that capacity to commit harassment, noting that “the
public places its trust in [police officers] to an extent
far greater and far more easily than it does in almost
any other individuals in any profession.”).
Even if Daniels’s conduct were sufficiently egregious
to support a claim of outrage, Hughes’s claim against the
Sanderses would still fail because he has not provided
sufficient facts about the Sanderses’ conduct to state a
plausible claim for relief.

Hughes’s only statements

about the involvement of the Sanderses in this case are
that they are his former customers and that Daniels
undertook his actions at their “behest.”
No. 1) at 2, 4.

Compl. (Doc.

However, Hughes does not specify whether

the Sanderses asked Daniels to pursue this matter in the
way that he did.
“factual

content

Therefore, Hughes has not pleaded
that

allows

the

court

to

draw

the

reasonable inference that the [Sanderses are] liable for

8

the misconduct alleged.”

Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S.

662, 678 (2009).4

*

*

*

Accordingly, for the above reasons, the Sanderses’
motion to dismiss will be granted, and the one claim
against them, the outrage claim, will be dismissed.

As

appropriate judgment will be entered.
DONE, this the 14th day of January, 2013.

/s/ Myron H. Thompson
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

4. In Hughes’s objection to the Sanderses’ motion to
dismiss, he notes that, as described in the Sanderses’
motion, the Sanderses asked Daniels for advice about how
to get their money back and Daniels conferred with Debora
Sanders by telephone during the traffic stop. Obj. (Doc.
No. 16) at 2. Hughes also states that the Sanderses have
not returned or offered to return the money. Id. at 1.
These additional details shed no further light on the
Sanderses’ instructions to Daniels or on their intent to
cause emotional distress; they are insufficient to
elevate Hughes’s outrage claim to the level of
plausibility.