Lewis v. City of St. Louis et al
Filing
19
MEMORANDUM AND ORDER - IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the motion to dismiss filed by Defendant Kimberly Gardner is DENIED. (Doc. 13 ). Signed by Magistrate Judge Nannette A. Baker on 7/3/18. (KJS)
IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF
MISSOURI EASTERN DIVISION
CHARLES LEWIS,
Plaintiff,
v.
SAINT LOUIS, MISSOURI, CITY OF,
et al.,
Defendants.
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No. 4:18-CV-00213-NAB
MEMORANDUM AND ORDER
This matter, brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging due process violations in
connection with Plaintiff Charles Lewis’s (“Plaintiff”) prolonged incarceration after he was
legally entitled to release, as well as a Missouri common law claim for false imprisonment, is
before the Court on the motion of Defendant Kimberly Gardner (“Gardner”) to dismiss
Plaintiff’s complaint for failure to state a claim on which relief may be granted, and on the
basis of qualified or absolute immunity. (Doc. 13). For the reasons set forth below, the motion
will be denied.
BACKGROUND
Plaintiff’s claims arise out of his eight-day detention at the St. Louis City Medium
Security Institution (“MSI”) and the St. Louis City Justice Center (“Justice Center”) after
criminal charges against him were dismissed, and out of the unsanitary conditions of his
confinement, which lasted for approximately twelve months in total.
Plaintiff names as Defendants the City of St. Louis (the “City”) and the following
individuals, solely in their individual capacities: Vernon Betts, the Sheriff of the City; Jeff
Carson, Superintendent of MSI; Charlene Deeken, the Director of the City’s Department of
Public Safety; Kimberly Gardner, the City’s Circuit Attorney; Dale Glass, the Commissioner
of the City’s Division of Corrections; and five “unknown” defendants.
Plaintiff alleges that he was arrested in May 2016, and charged with two counts of
making terroristic threats. (Doc. 1 at 4). Because Plaintiff could not afford to post bond, he
was detained at MSI pending trial. Plaintiff was tried on criminal charges in the City’s circuit
court in March 2017. Id. At trial, Plaintiff was acquitted of one count of making terroristic
threats, with ten jurors in favor of acquittal and two in favor of conviction. After trial,
Plaintiff was returned to MSI. Id. at 4-5.
On May 15, 2017, Defendant Gardner and an “unknown” Assistant Circuit Attorney of
the Circuit Attorney’s office filed a Memorandum of Nolle Prosequi, which the state court
accepted and which dismissed the charges against Plaintiff. Id. at 5. After May 15, 2017,
Plaintiff continued to be held in MSI. Id. On May 20, 2017, Plaintiff’s public defender was
notified that the charges against Plaintiff had been dismissed. Id. On May 22, 2017, his public
defender noticed that Plaintiff’s name was still on the MSI jail roster, and she verified with the
St. Louis City Sheriff’s Office that Plaintiff was being held because Plaintiff was subject to a
hold issued by Jefferson County, Missouri. Id. at 5-6. Plaintiff’s public defender then called
the Jefferson County court and was informed that no such hold had been issued. Id. at 6.
Sometime after May 22, 2017, Plaintiff was transferred from MSI to the Justice
Center. Id. Plaintiff alleges that he repeatedly informed various officers that he should be
released. Id. Upon being detained at the Justice Center, Plaintiff asked two “unknown”
Lieutenants why he was being held, and was informed that he was subject to a hold issued by
Jefferson County. Id. Plaintiff told them he was not subject to any such hold. Id. Plaintiff was
eventually released “on or after May 23, 2017.” Id. at 7.
Plaintiff alleges that for the duration of his stay at MSI he was subjected to
unconstitutionally poor conditions of confinement. Id. at 7-8. He asserts that throughout his
confinement he endured leaking sewage, collapsing ceilings, extreme hot and cold
temperatures, visible mold, outbreaks of scabies and lice, infestations of mice, rats, snakes,
spiders and raccoons, and exposed asbestos. Id.
Plaintiff alleges that Defendant Gardner has a responsibility to communicate the
dismissal of criminal charges to those with direct custody over people incarcerated by the City
to ensure the immediate release of innocent citizens. Id. at 8. Plaintiff also alleges that
Defendant has the responsibility to set policies, direct staff training, and establish patterns or
practices of the City of St. Louis with respect to the incarceration and release of innocent
citizens and people who are subject to release because they have completed their sentences,
and that Defendant knowingly failed in these responsibilities, thus causing Plaintiff to be
wrongfully incarcerated and wrongfully punished. Id. at 9.
Plaintiff further alleges that, aside from him, other people residing in corrections
institutions in St. Louis City were unlawfully detained after charges had been dropped against
them, and that the Office of the Missouri State Public Defender System informed all
Defendants that this was the case. Id. at 9.
Finally, Plaintiff alleges that Defendants’ actions caused him physical harm and severe
emotional distress. Id. at 12.
Plaintiff’s complaint contains 10 counts: Fourth Amendment, due process, and statelaw false imprisonment claims, arising out of his eight-day wrongful incarceration and asserted
against Betts, Carson, Deeken, Gardner, Glass, and certain of the unknown Defendants (Counts
I, II, and IV); a due process claim arising out of his conditions of confinement and asserted
against Carson, Deeken, a n d Glass (Count III); supervisory claims asserted against all
Defendants for failure to establish policies, failure to properly train staff, and establishing a
pattern or practice with respect to wrongful incarceration of citizens (Counts V, VI, and VII);
and supervisory claims against the City of St. Louis, Betts, Carson, Deeken, Glass, and an
“unknown” Sheriff’s employee with respect to safe and sanitary conditions of confinement for
pretrial detainees (Counts VIII, IX, and X). In Counts I, II, and IV, Plaintiff alleges that the
named Defendants “knew or should have known that Plaintiff was wrongfully imprisoned” and
that these Defendants were “directly responsible for depriving Plaintiff of his freedom.” Id. at
13-14. As the claims related to conditions of confinement (Counts III, VIII, IX, and X) are not
directed against Defendant Gardner, the Court will not address those claims in this Order.
Plaintiff seeks compensatory and punitive damages, attorney’s fees and costs.
ARGUMENTS OF THE PARTIES
Defendant Gardner argues that Plaintiff fails to state a claim against her because
Plaintiff has failed to allege that she was personally involved in violating his rights. Gardner
further argues that Plaintiff’s federal claims are barred by qualified immunity, and that she is
entitled to absolute immunity for all claims.
In response, Plaintiff argues that he has sufficiently pled the personal involvement of
Defendant Gardner in each count directed toward her. He states that Defendant “knew there
was a problem, failed to do anything about it despite her authority and responsibility within the
criminal justice system, and allowed Plaintiff and others like him to have their constitutional
rights violated.” (Doc. 14 at 4). Plaintiff also contends that Gardner is not entitled to qualified
immunity because she violated his clearly established constitutional rights, and that Gardner is
not entitled to absolute immunity because her relevant actions were administrative rather than
prosecutorial in nature.
In reply, Defendant reiterates her arguments in support of dismissal and further
contends that Plaintiff’s allegations of constitutional violations are merely conclusory.
DISCUSSION
For a plaintiff to survive a motion to dismiss, “a complaint must contain sufficient
factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.’” Ashcroft
v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570
(2007)). “Determining whether a complaint states a plausible claim for relief will . . . be a
context-specific task that requires the reviewing court to draw on its judicial experience and
common sense.” Id. at 679. The reviewing court accepts the plaintiff’s factual allegations as
true and draws all reasonable inferences in favor of the nonmoving party. Torti v. Hoag, 868
F.3d 666, 671 (8th Cir. 2017). But “[c]ourts are not bound to accept as true a legal conclusion
couched as a factual allegation, and factual allegations must be enough to raise a right to relief
above the speculative level.” Id.
In civil rights actions, a complaint should be liberally construed when determining
whether it has stated a cause of action sufficient to survive a motion to dismiss. See Frey v. City
of Herculaneum, 44 F.3d 667, 671 (8th Cir. 1995). Moreover, the reviewing court must accept
the plaintiff’s factual allegations as true and construe them in the plaintiff’s favor, though it is
not required to accept the legal conclusions the plaintiff draws from the facts alleged. Iqbal, 556
U.S. at 678; Retro Television Network, Inc. v. Luken Commc’ns, LLC, 696 F.3d 766, 768-69 (8th
Cir. 2012). A court must “draw on its judicial experience and common sense,” and consider the
plausibility of the plaintiff’s claim as a whole, not the plausibility of each individual allegation.
Zoltek Corp. v. Structural Polymer Grp., 592 F.3d 893, 896 n.4 (8th Cir. 2010) (quoting Iqbal,
556 U.S. at 679); see also Braden v. Walmart Stores, Inc., 588 F.3d 585, 594 (8th Cir. 2009)
(noting “the complaint should be read as a whole, not parsed piece by piece to determine whether
each allegation, in isolation, is plausible”). A motion to dismiss should not be granted merely
because a complaint does not state with precision every element of the offense necessary for
recovery. Roberts v. Walmart Stores, Inc., 736 F.Supp. 1527, 1528 (E.D.Mo. 1990). “A
complaint is sufficient if it contains allegations from which an inference can be drawn that
evidence on these material points will be introduced at trial.” Id.
To state a claim under § 1983, a plaintiff must allege (1) that the defendant acted under
color of state law; and (2) that the alleged conduct deprived the plaintiff of a constitutionally
protected federal right. Schmidt v. City of Bella Villa, 557 F.3d 564, 571 (8th Cir. 2009).
The doctrine of qualified immunity shields officials from civil liability so
long as their conduct does not violate clearly established . . . constitutional
rights of which a reasonable person would have known. The dispositive
inquiry in determining whether a right is clearly established is whether it
would be clear to a reasonable officer that his conduct was unlawful in the
situation he confronted. The qualified immunity analysis thus is limited to the
facts that were knowable to the defendant officers at the time they
engaged in the conduct in question. Facts an officer learns after the incident
ends—whether those facts would support granting immunity or denying it—
are not relevant.
Hernandez v. Mesa, 137 S. Ct. 2003, 2007 (2017) (citations omitted). To determine whether a
defendant is entitled to qualified immunity, the Court must “conduct a two-step inquiry: (1)
whether the facts, viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, demonstrate the deprivation
of a constitutional or statutory right; and (2) whether the right was clearly established at the time
of the deprivation.” Solomon v. Petray, 795 F.3d 777, 786 (8th Cir. 2015).
Absolute Immunity for Prosecutors
The common law grants absolute immunity to judges and certain judicial officers, as
well as prosecutors, acting within the scope of their judicial or prosecutorial duties. Van de
Kamp v. Goldstein, 555 U.S. 335, 341 (2009). Considerations of public policy underlie this
type of immunity, including a “concern that harassment by unfounded litigation” could cause a
“deflection of the [officer’s] energies from his public duties and also lead the [officer] to shade
his decisions instead of exercising the independence of judgment required by his public trust.”
Id.
Thus, the Supreme Court has held that “absolute immunity applies when a prosecutor
prepares to initiate a judicial proceeding or appears in court to present evidence in support of a
search warrant application.” Id. at 343. But “absolute immunity may not apply when a
prosecutor is not acting as an officer of the court, but is instead engaged in, say, investigative
or administrative tasks.” Id. at 342. “To decide whether absolute immunity attaches to a
particular prosecutorial activity, one must take account of [the] functional considerations” of
the activity, including whether the activity is “connected with the prosecutor’s basic trial
advocacy duties.” Id. at 342, 346.
Several courts have held that a prosecutor’s act of “omitting to see to the release” of an
individual when the basis for detention no longer exists is an administrative task not entitled to
immunity. See, e.g., Odd v. Malone, 538 F.3d 202, 215 (3d Cir. 2008) (holding that a
prosecutor’s act of failing to notify relevant authorities that an underlying action for which a
detainee was being held as a material witness had been dismissed, was an administrative act for
which the prosecutor was not entitled to absolute immunity); Schneyder v. Smith, 653 F.3d
313, 334 (3d Cir. 2011) (holding that Van de Kamp did not alter the result in Odd because the
“duty of disclosure [of a change in the circumstances surrounding the detention of a material
witness] was neither discretionary nor advocative, but was instead a purely administrative act
not entitled to the shield of immunity”); Pinaud v. Cty. of Suffolk, 52 F.3d 1139, 1151–52 (2d
Cir. 1995) (“Keeping a person in state custody after the termination of all charges against him
has nothing to do with conducting a prosecution for the state. . . . [T]he handling of a prisoner
after the complete conclusion of all criminal charges is not a prosecutorial task but rather an
administrative one . . . .”). The Court agrees with these authorities and holds that Gardner is
not entitled to absolute immunity for her alleged actions in failing to inform the relevant
authorities of the dismissal of the charges against Plaintiff.
Personal Involvement
“Respondeat superior is not applicable to § 1983 claims.” Ouzts v. Cummins, 825 F.2d
1276, 1277 (8th Cir. 1987) (per curiam). Thus, “a warden’s general responsibility for
supervising the operations of a prison is insufficient to establish personal involvement,” which
is required to state a § 1983 claim against an individual defendant. Id. However, the warden
“might be liable if [he] had made policy decisions resulting in the alleged unconstitutional
conditions.” Id.
Under § 1983, a supervisor may be held liable for constitutional violations caused by
his or her “failure to properly supervise and train the offending employee.” Jackson v. Nixon,
747 F.3d 537, 543 (8th Cir. 2014).
Individual liability under § 1983 requires a causal link to, and direct
responsibility for, the alleged deprivation of rights . . . . For a supervising
officer to be liable under § 1983 for the constitutional violation of a
subordinate based on a failure to supervise . . . the supervisor must have
demonstrated deliberate indifference or tacit authorization of the offensive
acts.
Doe HM v. City of Creve Coeur, Mo., 666 F. Supp. 2d 988, 997 (E.D. Mo. 2009) citations
omitted). “Proof of actual knowledge of constitutional violations is not . . . an absolute
prerequisite for imposing supervisory liability . . .. [However, a] single incident, or a series of
isolated incidents, usually provides an insufficient basis upon which to assign supervisory
liability.” Howard v. Adkison, 887 F.2d 134, 138 (8th Cir. 1989).
Likewise, under Missouri law (for the purpose of the false imprisonment claim),
“public officers are not responsible for acts of subordinate officials, if such subordinates are
themselves employees of the government, where there is no negligence on the part of such
public officials in employing them, unless the superior officer has directed or encouraged or
ratified such acts, or has personally co-operated therein.”
State ex rel. Green v. Neill, 127
S.W.3d 677, 679 (Mo. 2004).
The viability of Plaintiff’s complaint turns, then, on whether Gardner had actual or
constructive notice of, and was deliberately indifferent to or authorized the asserted violations.
This is a close question. However, with respect to Plaintiff’s wrongful incarceration and
related supervisory claims (Counts I, II, IV, V, VI, and VII), a reasonable inference can be
drawn based on the limited record at this early stage of the proceedings that Defendant
Gardner was on notice of and deliberately indifferent to or authorized the violations alleged.
See, e.g., Davis v. Hall, 375 F.3d 703, 716 (8th Cir. 2004) (affirming the denial of summary
judgment on § 1983 claims for prolonged incarceration as to those defendants who “were on
notice that [the wrongfully detained person] was entitled to be released”).
Qualified Immunity
Defendant also asserts that Plaintiff’s § 1983 claim is barred by the doctrine of qualified
immunity. The doctrine of qualified immunity exists to “protect public officers from liability for
the exercise of discretion in performing a public duty; it reflects a decision that the public is
better served by public officials who will not be deterred by fear of liability from executing the
office with an independent and decisive judgment.” In re Scott County Master Docket, 672
F.Supp. 1152, 1172 (D.Minn. 1987). “Qualified immunity may protect government officials
from liability under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, but not if their conduct violated clearly established
statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.” Nelson v.
Corr. Med. Servs., 583 F.3d 522, 527 (8th Cir. 2009) (citing Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 739
(2002)).
Defendant’s qualified immunity argument is based on the contention that she is not
alleged to have been personally involved in any violation of Plaintiff’s rights. Based on the
limited record at this stage, and as discussed supra, the Court disagrees. Accordingly, Gardner
is not entitled to qualified immunity, as it was clearly established at the time of the events in
this case that an individual may not be detained after charges against him have been
dismissed. See, e.g., Davis, 375 F.3d at 712 (wrongful, prolonged incarceration).
CONCLUSION
Accordingly,
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the motion to dismiss filed by Defendant Kimberly
Gardner is DENIED. (Doc. 13).
Dated this 3rd day of July, 2018.
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