PURISIMA v. NEW JERSEY TRANSIT POLICE DEPARTMENT et al
Filing
43
OPINION. Signed by Judge Noel L. Hillman on 4/23/2020. (tf, )
Case 1:17-cv-05312-NLH-AMD Document 43 Filed 04/23/20 Page 1 of 13 PageID: 794
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF NEW JERSEY
ANTON PURISIMA,
1:17-cv-05312-NLH-AMD
Plaintiff,
OPINION
v.
NEW JERSEY TRANSIT POLICE
DEPARTMENT, GREYHOUND BUS
LINES CORPORATION, ATLANTIC
CITY BUS TERMINAL, and DOES
1-1000,
Defendants.
APPEARANCES:
ANTON PURISIMA
390 9TH AVENUE
NEW YORK, NY 10001
Appearing pro se
SHARON PRICE-CATES
STATE OF NEW JERSEY
OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
DEPARTMENT OF LAW & PUBLIC SAFETY
25 MARKET STREET
P.O. BOX 114
TRENTON, NJ 08625
On behalf of New Jersey Transit Corporation (improperly
pleaded as “New Jersey Transit Police Department”)
JUSTIN A. BAYER
KANE PUGH KNOELL TROY & KRAMER, LLP
510 SWEDE STREET
NORRISTOWN, PA 19401-4886
On behalf of Greyhound Bus Lines Corporation
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HILLMAN, District Judge
Plaintiff, Anton Purisima, appearing pro se, filed a
complaint against Defendants, New Jersey Transit Corporation
(improperly pleaded as “New Jersey Transit Police Department”),
Greyhound Bus Lines, the Atlantic City Bus Terminal, which is
owned by New Jersey Transit, and Does 1-1000. 1
Plaintiff claims
that at 2:00 a.m. on July 5, 2017, he was seated on a bench at
the Atlantic City bus terminal when three New Jersey Transit
police officers approached him.
Plaintiff claims that he held a
Greyhound bus ticket to New York City that was valid for use
until August 29, 2017, as well as several valid New Jersey
Transit bus tickets.
Plaintiff further claims that the New Jersey Transit police
officers informed him of a two-hour limit on sitting in the bus
terminal, and asked the clerk at the Greyhound desk when the
next bus to New York City departed.
Plaintiff claims that the
clerk responded that there was a 4:30 a.m. bus, and one of the
officers wrote “4:30 A.M.” on Plaintiff’s Greyhound ticket.
Plaintiff claims that despite having a valid bus ticket, he was
told to leave the bus terminal or face a trespassing charge.
Based on this incident as pled in the Complaint, Plaintiff
1
This Court has jurisdiction over Plaintiff’s federal claims
under 28 U.S.C. § 1331, and supplemental jurisdiction over
Plaintiff’s state law claim pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1367.
2
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alleges that Defendants’ violated his rights under various
federal and state laws, including 42 U.S.C. § 2000a (Prohibition
against discrimination or segregation in places of public
accommodation). 2
Plaintiff claims that the bus terminal is a
place of public accommodation, and that being ordered to either
leave the bus terminal or travel on the next bus was in
violation of his right to access a place of public
accommodation.
Plaintiff further claims that Defendants’
actions were motivated by his race (Filipino), disability
(“taking medications”), and age (“senior citizen”).
Defendants have moved to dismiss Plaintiff’s complaint in
its entirety.
New Jersey Transit has moved to dismiss
Plaintiff’s complaint for lack of standing and for failure to
2
Section 2000a-3(a) provides a private right of action. 42
U.S.C. § 2000a-3 (“Whenever any person has engaged or there are
reasonable grounds to believe that any person is about to engage
in any act or practice prohibited by section 2000a-2 of this
title, a civil action for preventive relief, including an
application for a permanent or temporary injunction, restraining
order, or other order, may be instituted by the person aggrieved
. . . .”). Section 2000a-2 prohibits any person from
“withhold[ing], deny[ing], or attempt[ing] to withhold or deny,
or deprive or attempt to deprive any person of any right or
privilege secured by section 2000a or 2000a-1 of this title.” 42
U.S.C. § 2000a-2. Section 2000a provides, in part, that “[a]ll
persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the
goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and
accommodations of any place of public accommodation.” 42 U.S.C.
§ 2000a(a). Section 2000a-1 provides, in part, that “[a]ll
persons shall be entitled to be free, at any establishment or
place, from discrimination.” 42 U.S.C. § 2000a-1.
3
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state a claim.
Greyhound has moved to dismiss Plaintiff’s
complaint for failure to state a claim.
Plaintiff has opposed
Defendants’ motions by filing several motions of his own, all of
which this Court has reviewed. 3
Pro se complaints must be construed liberally, and all
reasonable latitude must be afforded the pro se litigant.
Haines v. Kerner, 404 U.S. 519, 520 (1972), reh’g denied, 405
U.S. 948 (1972).
Even though pro se complaints, “however
inartfully pleaded, must be held to less stringent standards
than formal pleadings drafted by lawyers,” Estelle v. Gamble,
429 U.S. 97, 107 (1976), pro se litigants “must still plead the
essential elements of [their] claim and [are] not excused from
conforming to the standard rules of civil procedure,” McNeil v.
United States, 508 U.S. 106, 113 (1993) (“[W]e have never
suggested that procedural rules in ordinary civil litigation
should be interpreted so as to excuse mistakes by those who
proceed without counsel.”); Sykes v. Blockbuster Video, 205 F.
App’x 961, 963 (3d Cir. 2006) (finding that pro se plaintiffs
are expected to comply with the Federal Rules of Civil
Procedure).
3
MOTION for More Definite Statement [29]; MOTION to Strike [30];
MOTION for Joining Motions [31]; MOTION to Strike [35]; MOTION
for More Definite Statement [36]. In light of the decision to
dismiss Plaintiff’s Complaint for lack of standing, Plaintiff’s
various motion will be denied as moot.
4
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When considering a motion to dismiss a complaint for
failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted
pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), a court
must accept all well-pleaded allegations in the complaint as
true and view them in the light most favorable to the plaintiff.
Evancho v. Fisher, 423 F.3d 347, 351 (3d Cir. 2005).
It is well
settled that a pleading is sufficient if it contains “a short
and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is
entitled to relief.”
Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2).
“While a complaint attacked by a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to
dismiss does not need detailed factual allegations, a
plaintiff’s obligation to provide the ‘grounds’ of his
‘entitle[ment] to relief’ requires more than labels and
conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the elements of a
cause of action will not do . . . .”
Bell Atl. Corp. v.
Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007) (citations omitted).
To determine the sufficiency of a complaint, a court must
take three steps: (1) the court must take note of the elements a
plaintiff must plead to state a claim; (2) the court should
identify allegations that, because they are no more than
conclusions, are not entitled to the assumption of truth; and
(3) when there are well-pleaded factual allegations, a court
should assume their veracity and then determine whether they
plausibly give rise to an entitlement for relief.
5
Malleus v.
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George, 641 F.3d 560, 563 (3d Cir. 2011) (quoting Ashcroft v.
Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 664, 675, 679 (2009) (alterations,
quotations, and other citations omitted).
A motion to dismiss for lack of standing is governed by
Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(1).
The standard for reviewing a
complaint on its face - a facial attack - under Rule 12(b)(1)
essentially applies the same standard under Rule 12(b)(6).
See
In re Schering Plough Corp. Intron/Temodar Consumer Class
Action, 678 F.3d 235, 243 (3d Cir. 2012) (citation omitted)
(explaining that standing is a jurisdictional matter which
should not be confused with requirements necessary to state a
cause of action, but in reviewing a facial challenge, which
contests the sufficiency of the pleadings, “the court must only
consider the allegations of the complaint and documents
referenced therein and attached thereto, in the light most
favorable to the plaintiff”).
The Court finds that Plaintiff has failed to state any
cognizable claims against Defendants because he has failed to
satisfy the threshold requirement that he has standing to bring
his claims.
To establish Article III standing, a plaintiff must
have “(1) suffered an injury in fact, (2) that is fairly
traceable to the challenged conduct of the defendant, and (3)
that is likely to be redressed by a favorable judicial
decision.”
As “[t]he party invoking federal jurisdiction,” a
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plaintiff “bears the burden of establishing these elements.”
Mielo v. Steak 'n Shake Operations, Inc., 897 F.3d 467, 478 (3d
Cir. 2018) (quoting Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, ––– U.S. ––––, 136
S. Ct. 1540, 1547 (2016); Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504
U.S. 555, 561 (1992)).
“The primary element of standing is injury in fact, and it
is actually a conglomerate of three components.
To establish an
injury in fact, a plaintiff must first show that he or she
suffered an invasion of a legally protected interest.
Second, a
plaintiff must show that the injury is both concrete and
particularized.
Third, a plaintiff must also show that his or
her injury is actual or imminent, not conjectural or
hypothetical.”
Id. (citations and quotations omitted).
Plaintiff’s complaint here fails to articulate what injury
he actually suffered as a result of his interaction.
Plaintiff’s complaint simply does not relate what happened after
he was confronted by the New Jersey Transit police.
Plaintiff leave the bus terminal?
a.m. bus?
Did
Did Plaintiff take the 4:30
Was Plaintiff cited for trespassing?
Absent such
allegations, the Court and the Defendants are unable to discern
what concrete and particularized injury Plaintiff has allegedly
suffered.
Rather than allege a personal harm, Plaintiff’s complaint
fairly read, is a generalized attack on the challenged policy.
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More precisely, Plaintiff appears to challenge New Jersey
Transit’s 2-hour limit on time waiting in the bus terminal, a
limit that applies even when a person holds a valid bus ticket.
Plaintiff’s disagreement with the policy and its application to
him is not enough, however, to state a “concrete” and
“particularized” injury.
The “mere existence . . . of [a]
particular corporate polic[y]” is insufficient, and “[b]are
procedural or technical violations of a statute alone will not
satisfy the concreteness requirement.”
Id. (citation omitted).
For example, in Mielo v. Steak 'n Shake Operations, Inc.,
the plaintiffs, who are disabled, alleged that the defendant
restaurant, as a place of public accommodation, failed to
correct barriers to a disabled person’s access, and failed to
have a corporate policy to ensure such access.
The Third
Circuit found that the plaintiffs had standing to assert their
injuries regarding their inability to access the restaurant
because they “sufficiently alleged a concrete harm in the form
of experiencing actual physical difficulty in ambulating through
parking facilities which are allegedly not ADA-compliant,” and
that they alleged “they personally experienced these concrete
injuries.”
Mielo, 897 F.3d at 479 (emphasis in the original).
The Third Circuit further found, however, that the
plaintiffs did not “have standing to seek remedies corresponding
to mere procedural violations of the ADA.”
8
Id.
The Third
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Circuit explained, “[E]ven assuming that Steak 'n Shake violated
the ADA by failing to have an adequate ADA compliance policy in
place, the mere nonexistence of such a policy would not afford
Plaintiffs a basis to establish standing.
In other words,
Plaintiffs would still need to show how the lack of a policy
resulted in a concrete harm that was particular to them.
Because Plaintiffs do not allege how the mere nonexistence of a
particular corporate policy constitutes a concrete harm in and
of itself, they cannot rely on the want of such a policy as a
basis for standing.”
Id.
Similarly in this case, Plaintiff appears to allege that
the 2-hour limit to waiting in the bus terminal inhibits access
to the bus terminal, and such access presumably should extend
for any amount of time that a person holds a valid ticket.
Here, Plaintiff’s Greyhound bus ticket was valid for travel from
July 3, 2017 through August 29, 2017, and it appears that
Plaintiff alleges he should not have been denied access for that
entire time.
But again, and like the plaintiffs in Mielo,
Plaintiff has failed to allege how he was injured by the policy.
The existence of the 2-hour waiting limit at the bus terminal
without any articulation of how the 2-hour waiting limit
actually harmed him cannot support a viable claim for lack of
access to a place of public accommodation.
See Mielo, 897 F.3d
at 479 (explaining that the second component of injury in fact
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requires that an alleged injury be both “concrete” and
“particularized,” and alleging “only a harm in the mere
existence or absence of” a particular policy is not enough to
confer standing); see also Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 136 S. Ct.
1540, 1548 (2016) (“For an injury to be ‘particularized,’ it
‘must affect the plaintiff in a personal and individual way.’”);
id. (“Particularization is necessary to establish injury in
fact, but it is not sufficient.
‘concrete.’
An injury in fact must also be
A ‘concrete’ injury must be ‘de facto’; that is, it
must actually exist.”); Healy v. Attorney General Pennsylvania,
563 F. App’x 139, 142 (3d Cir. 2014) (finding that the
plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge a rule of professional
ethics because they failed to allege how that rule harmed them
in any particularized or concrete way); Pennsylvania Prison Soc.
v. Cortes, 508 F.3d 156, 165 (3d Cir. 2007) (finding that the
prisoner plaintiffs lacked standing to bring their claims that a
state constitutional amendment regarding parole was
unconstitutional because they failed to allege any evidence that
they had any actual injury as a result of that amendment);
Public Interest Research Group of New Jersey, Inc. v. Magnesium
Elektron, Inc., 123 F.3d 111, 122 (3d Cir. 1997) (“When a
plaintiff claims that a defendant's threatened injury is the
source of his standing, he must show that the threatened injury
is so imminent as to be ‘certainly impending.’ The imminence
10
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requirement ensures that courts do not entertain suits based on
speculative or hypothetical harms.”).
In short, in order to
maintain his claims against New Jersey Transit regarding the 2hour waiting limit at the bus terminal, Plaintiff must state in
his complaint how it actually harmed him.
Moreover, to the extent that Plaintiff alleges that the 2hour limit was discriminatorily applied to him because of his
race, age, or disability, and it is not applied to others who
are not a minority, elderly, or disabled, Plaintiff has failed
to allege any facts to support such an allegation, which is also
fatal to that claim.
“The plaintiff in a disparate treatment
case must prove as an integral part of his or her case not only
the existence of disparate treatment but also that such
treatment was caused by purposeful or intentional
discrimination.”
Smithers v. Bailar, 629 F.2d 892, 898 (3d Cir.
1980), cited by Liggon-Redding v. Virtua Voorhees, 2014 WL
3870298, at *4 (D.N.J. 2014) (where a plaintiff claimed she was
discriminated against at a place of public accommodation - a
hospital - because of her race, finding that the plaintiff “has
not identified any statement, action, or circumstance where
Plaintiff was treated differently because of h[er] protected
status.
Plaintiff has also not established any causal link
between Plaintiff's alleged discriminatory treatment and
Plaintiff's race, national origin or religion”) (other citation
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omitted).
Finally, in addition to Plaintiff’s failure to allege any
injuries arising from the July 5, 2017 incident, Plaintiff’s
claims against Greyhound fail for an additional reason Plaintiff’s failure to plead any facts as to how Greyhound
discriminated against him or otherwise violated Plaintiff’s
rights under federal and state law.
Plaintiff’s only allegation
against Greyhound is that the clerk answered the New Jersey
Transit police officer’s question about when the next bus left
for New York City.
This sole alleged fact does not satisfy the
Twombly/Iqbal and Rule 8 pleading requirements to maintain any
claims against Greyhound.
Consequently, Plaintiff’s complaint must be dismissed in
its entirety. 4
Third Circuit case law, however, “supports the
notion that in civil rights cases district courts must offer
amendment--irrespective of whether it is requested--when
dismissing a case for failure to state a claim unless doing so
would be inequitable or futile.”
Fletcher-Harlee Corp. v. Pote
Concrete Contractors, Inc., 482 F.3d 247, 251 (3d Cir. 2007).
Because at this time it does not appear to the Court that
4
In light of this disposition, the Court need not address the
other arguments raised by Defendants as to why the Complaint
fails to state cognizable claims. If Plaintiff is able to
establish standing in any amended pleading, Defendants may renew
those arguments by motion.
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it would be inequitable or futile, the Court will provide
Plaintiff with 30 days to file an amended complaint to address
the deficiencies identified by the Court, if he is able to do
so.
An appropriate Order will be entered.
Date: April 23, 2020
At Camden, New Jersey
s/ Noel L. Hillman
NOEL L. HILLMAN, U.S.D.J.
13
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