Stile v. Dubois et al

Filing 25

///ORDER granting without prejudice 18 Motion to Amend 1 Complaint as outlined within; approving 9 Report and Recommendation. So Ordered by Judge Joseph A. DiClerico, Jr.(ko)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF NEW HAMPSHIRE
James Stile
v.

Civil No. 17-cv-406-JD

David G. Dubois,
Strafford County Sheriff, et al.
O R D E R
James Stile, proceeding pro se and in forma pauperis,
brought suit against the Strafford County Sheriff and deputies
in the Sheriff’s office, Strafford County, the Strafford County
Administrator, the Strafford County Department of Corrections
Superintendent and officers, and officers with the United States
Marshals Service in the District of Maine.

His claims arose

from an incident that occurred in September of 2014, while Stile
was a pretrial detainee held at the Strafford County Department
of Corrections awaiting trial in a federal criminal case in the
District of Maine.

On preliminary review, the magistrate judge

issued a report and recommendation to dismiss Claims 3, 4, 5,
and 8, and to allow Claims 1, 2, 6, and 7.
Stile filed an objection to the report and recommendation,
addressing the recommendation to dismiss Claim 8.
defendants filed a response to the objection.

The

Stile also filed

a motion to amend the complaint to allege a claim for breach of
contract based on a third-party beneficiary theory, as allowed

in the report and recommendation.

The defendants object to the

motion to amend on the ground that the proposed amendment would
be futile.
I.

Report and Recommendation
The magistrate judge’s report and recommendation is

reviewed by the district judge if an affected party objects.
Fed. R. Civ. P. 72(b)(3).

However, only those parts of a report

and recommendation to which an objection is filed are subject to
review.

28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1); Fed. R. Civ. P. 72(b)(3);

Santos-Santos v. Torres-Centeno, 842 F.3d 163, 168 (1st Cir.
2016).
Stile’s objection is construed to argue that he is an
intended third-party beneficiary of the agreement between the
United States Marshals Service in the District of Maine and
Strafford County through which federal detainees are housed at
the Strafford County Department of Corrections.

He further

argues that the defendants breached the agreement by failing to
provide a safe means of transporting him from the jail to a
court hearing in Maine.

Based on that theory, he contends that

Claim 8 should have been allowed.
As is explained in the report and recommendation, Stile
alleged a tort claim in Claim 8, not breach of an agreement to
which he was a third-party beneficiary.

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The magistrate judge

explained the third-party beneficiary theory, citing Zikianda v.
County of Albany, 2015 WL 5510956, at *36-*37 (W.D.N.Y. Sept.
15, 2015), and Melvin v. County of Westchester, 2016 WL 1254394,
at *22 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 29, 2016).

In addition, the magistrate

recommended that dismissal be without prejudice to amending the
complaint.

Stile has moved to amend.

Stile’s objection has been considered but does not provide
grounds to reject the recommendation to dismiss Claim 8.

The

report and recommendation is accepted.
II.

Motion to Amend
Stile moves to amend his complaint to add a claim that the

defendants breached the agreement to which he was a third-party
beneficiary.

The defendants object to the motion on the ground

that the proposed amendment is futile because Stile did not
allege sufficient facts to support the claim.

The court may

deny leave to amend if the proposed amendment fails to provide
sufficient factual allegations, which when taken as true fail to
state a plausible claim for relief.

In re Curran, 855 F.3d 19,

28 (1st Cir. 2017).
In the proposed amended complaint, Stile alleges that the
Marshals Service contracted with Strafford County to house him
at the Strafford County House of Corrections and to provide
transportation for him to medical and court appointments.

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He

further alleges that the contract was signed by the Strafford
County Administrator and Officers Patnode, Knightly, and
Ossinger of the Marshal’s Service.

He states that the contract

“concern[ed] the custody and care of the Plaintiff James Stile.”
He alleges that the contract was breached when he was taken out
of the jail by officers who were not trained or not properly
trained, which resulted in injuries to him, and was then
transported in a cargo van that lacked appropriate safety
protections and minimum comforts, that did not comply with the
requirements of state and federal law, that was operated by
officers who were not trained or not properly trained, and that
caused him to be injured during the ride.
The defendants contend that the claim is futile because
Stile did not allege sufficient facts to show that he was an
intended third-party beneficiary of the contract.

In support,

the defendants rely on the analysis of third-party beneficiary
status in Intergen N.V. v. Grina, 344 F.3d 134, 146 (1st Cir.
2003), in which the court found that third-party beneficiary
status did not exist to allow enforcement of an arbitration
agreement.

That analysis involved parsing the contractual

relationships among families of corporate entities involved in
energy production and their agreements to purchase and service
certain equipment.

The defendants did not sufficiently

analogize that case to the circumstances here.
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Importantly, the

defendants did not address the cases cited by the magistrate
judge, which involve third-party beneficiary status in the
context of governmental contracts for detention services.
The defendants also mention the principle that government
contracts generally do not support third-party beneficiary
status.

In addition, they state that Stile would be limited to

contract damages, which the defendants argue do not exist.
Those theories are insufficiently developed to show that the
motion should be denied.

As Stile points out, he does not yet

have a copy of the contract, which he hopes to obtain through
discovery, and the defendants did not provide a copy of the
contract in support of their objection.
At this stage, Stile is allowed to amend his complaint by
adding the proposed amended complaint as a supplement to the
original complaint, as construed in the report and
recommendation.

Allowing the motion to amend, however, is

without prejudice to the defendants’ ability to move to dismiss
the claim.

The amended complaint adds Claim 9 which alleges

that the defendants breached the contract between the United
States Marshal’s Service for the District of Maine and Strafford
County by failing to provide safe care and custody for him which
caused him to be injured in the process of transporting him from
the jail for a court appointment on September 5, 2014.

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Conclusion
For the foregoing reasons, the magistrate judge’s report
and recommendation (document no. 9) is approved and accepted.
The plaintiff’s motion to amend (document no. 18) is
granted, without prejudice to the defendants to move to dismiss,
if appropriate.

The proposed amended complaint filed with the

motion shall be docketed as the amended complaint.
The operative complaint in this case is the original
complaint (document no. 1), Claims 1, 2, 6, and 7, and the
amended complaint, which adds Claim 9.
SO ORDERED.

__________________________
Joseph A. DiClerico, Jr.
United States District Judge
August 2, 2018
cc:

James Stiles, pro se
Corey M. Belobrow, Esq.
Brian J.S. Cullen, Esq.

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