Booker v. Lapaglia et al

Filing 97

ORDER whereby the several motions for summary judgment 25 32 57 66 69 86 and 88 are all GRANTED IN PART and DENIED WITHOUT PREJUDICE IN PART. The court dismisses Daniel Beams and Paul White from this action, and holds that any federal claims against Methodist Medical Center, Southeastern, Team Health, and Nurse Jones are also dismissed. The court further dismisses any claims for violations of the Tennessee Constitution and dismisses the claims against Dr. LaPaglia and Nurse Jones for violations of Tenn. Code Ann. § 29-20-101. The remaining claims in this case are stayed pending the resolution of Mr. Booker's appeal in his criminal case that is currently before the Sixth Circuit. At that time, any pa rty may renew its arguments that the court here denies without prejudice by filing an appropriate motion. Dr. LaPaglia has filed a motion for leave to supplement his motion for summary judgment 91 . Nurse Jones and Methodist Medical Center have file d a similar motion 95 . These motions are DENIED AS MOOT, as is Mr. Booker's motion for permission to file an unsigned affidavit 79 . Finally, the court GRANTS the motion of Nurse Jones and Methodist Medical Center to file an amended answer. The court orders the parties to submit a notice when the Sixth Circuit has issued its opinion. At that time, the court will set the matter down for a scheduling conference. Signed by District Judge Tena Campbell on October 29, 2012. (AYB)

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN
DISTRICT OF TENNESSEE AT KNOXVILLE

FELIX CHARLES BOOKER,
Plaintiff,

ORDER AND
MEMORANDUM DECISION

vs.

MICHAEL A. LAPAGLIA, MD;
METHODIST MEDICAL CENTER OF
OAK RIDGE; TEAM HEALTH, INC.;
SOUTHEASTERN EMERGENCY
PHYSICIANS, INC.; TAMMY JONES, RN;
PAUL WHITE; DAVID BEAMS; CITY OF
OAK RIDGE; ANDERSON COUNTY;
DANIEL R. STEAKLEY; LEWIS
RIDENOUR; and JERRY SHELTON,

Case No. 3:11-cv-126

Defendants.

Plaintiff Felix Charles Booker filed suit against the Defendants in the above-captioned
matter following an incident in which Mr. Booker was arrested and searched for drugs. Mr.
Booker contends that the Defendants deprived Mr. Booker of his rights secured by the Fourth and
Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. Mr. Booker also asserts a number of
claims under Tennessee state law.
The Defendants have filed several motions that are currently pending before the court.
There are three motions for summary judgment that were filed by the police officers and the
entities that employ them: (1) a Motion to Dismiss and Motion for Summary Judgment filed by
Defendant Lewis Ridenour (Dkt. No. 25); (2) a Motion for Summary Judgment filed by

Defendants Jerry Shelton, Paul White, and Anderson County, Tennessee (Dkt. No. 32); and (3) a
Motion for Summary Judgment filed by Defendants Daniel R. Steakley, David Beams, and the
City of Oak Ridge, Tennessee (Dkt. No. 57). Four motions for summary judgment were filed by
medical groups and their employees: (4) a Motion for Summary Judgment filed by Defendant
Michael A. LaPaglia, M.D. (Dkt. No. 66); (5) a Motion for Summary Judgment filed by
Defendants Methodist Medical Center of Oak Ridge (Methodist Medical Center) and Tammy
Jones, R.N. (Dkt. No. 69); (6) a Motion for Summary Judgment filed by Defendant Team Health,
Inc. (Team Health) (Dkt. No. 86); and (7) a Motion for Summary Judgment filed by Defendant
Southeastern Emergency Physicians, Inc. (Southeastern) (Dkt. No. 88). Dr. LaPaglia and Nurse
Jones have also requested leave to file supplemental motions for summary judgment (Dkt. Nos.
91 & 95).
BACKGROUND
This lawsuit arises out of an incident that occurred on February 12, 2010. The facts in
this case are amply described by the Honorable H. Bruce Guyton in a Report and
Recommendation that he issued on Mr. Booker’s Motion to Suppress in the criminal case that
resulted from this incident. United States v. Booker, 3:10-cv-44, Dkt. No. 38 (E.D. Tenn. Oct. 7,
2011). Magistrate Judge Guyton’s opinion was later affirmed by the Honoroble R. Leon Jordan.
Id., Dkt. No. 47. In brief, Officer Daniel Steakley arrested Mr. Booker after a traffic stop in
which Officer Steakley found marijuana in Mr. Booker’s car. Officer Lewis Ridenour then took
Mr. Booker to the Oak Ridge Police Department and later to the Anderson County Detention
Facility, where Officer Jerry Shelton performed a strip search. On the suspicion that Mr. Booker
was concealing narcotics in his rectum, the officers took Mr. Booker to Methodist Medical
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Center. At the hospital, Dr. LaPaglia performed a digital rectal exam on Mr. Booker, to which
Mr. Booker claims he did not give his consent. Dr. LaPaglia ultimately administered a large dose
of a paralytic agent to Mr. Booker in order to remove a foreign object from Mr. Booker’s rectum,
which turned out to be a large rock of crack cocaine weighing 10.2 grams.
Mr. Booker was charged with possession with intent to distribute. During his criminal
case, Mr. Booker filed a motion to suppress in which he claimed that the police officers and the
medical staff violated his Fourth Amendment right to be protected from unreasonable searches
and seizures. Magistrate Judge Guyton denied Mr. Booker’s motion and wrote a lengthy Report
and Recommendation. Judge Jordan affirmed the Report and Recommendation and also issued
his own opinion, in which he reviewed de novo Mr. Booker’s allegations. A jury then found Mr.
Booker guilty of the possession charge, and sentenced him to sixty months in prison. Mr. Booker
appealed his sentence to the Sixth Circuit, which held oral argument in early October 2012. See
United States v. Felix Booker, No. 11-6311 (6th Cir. 2012). The circuit court has not yet issued
its opinion in the matter.
ANALYSIS
A. Claims that the Court Will Stay
On October 24, 2012, the court held a hearing on the motions for summary judgment that
are currently pending. The parties agreed that, under the Supreme Court case of Heck v.
Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477 (1994), many of Mr. Booker’s claims in this case were dependent on
the Sixth Circuit’s decision in the appeal of Mr. Booker’s criminal conviction. In Heck,
petitioner Roy Heck was convicted and sentenced for voluntary manslaughter. Id. at 478. While
Heck’s appeal from his criminal conviction was pending, he filed a § 1983 suit for damages that
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alleged the county prosecutors and a police investigator conducted an “unlawful, unreasonable,
and arbitrary investigation” that included the illegal destruction of evidence that was allegedly
exculpatory in nature. Id. at 479. The federal district court and the Seventh Circuit Court of
Appeals dismissed Heck’s § 1983 claims because both courts perceived the suit as a collateral
challenge in a civil proceeding to the legality of Heck’s criminal conviction. See id. at 479-80.
On grant of certiorari, the Supreme Court held, “In order to recover damages for [an] allegedly
unconstitutional conviction . . . a § 1983 plaintiff must prove that the conviction or sentence has
been reversed on direct appeal, expunged by executive order, declared invalid by a state tribunal
authorized to make such determination, or called into question by a federal court’s issuance of a
writ of habeas corpus.” Id. at 486-87.
Under Heck, the district court must consider whether a judgment in favor of the plaintiff
would necessarily imply the invalidity of his conviction or sentence. If it would, the complaint
must be dismissed unless the plaintiff can demonstrate that the conviction or sentence has already
been invalidated. But if the district court determines that the plaintiff’s action would not
demonstrate the invalidity of any outstanding criminal judgment against the plaintiff, the action
should be allowed to proceed.
Mr. Booker’s claims, including his assertions that his arrest and subsequent search were
unreasonable and were conducted without probable cause, are directly connected to his
subsequent conviction. As a result, many of Mr. Booker’s claims are likely barred by Heck
unless the Sixth Circuit overrules the judgment of the district court. But the court need not
conduct a Heck analysis for each claim at this time, because the Sixth Circuit has not yet reached
its decision. See Wallace v. Kato, 549 U.S. 384, 393-94 (2007) (holding that when a suit is filed
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while a criminal case is still pending, “it is within the power of the district court, and in
accordance with common practice, to stay the civil action until the criminal case . . . is ended.”).
The court finds that the best course of action is to stay the case until the Sixth Circuit has
issued its ruling. At that time, the court will be better equipped to address the issues raised by
the holding in Heck and the doctrine of collateral estoppel. Because the issue of qualified
immunity also depends to some extent on the Sixth Circuit’s holding, the court declines to
address the Defendant’s arguments about qualified immunity at this time.
B. Federal Claims that the Court Will Dismiss
There are a number of claims that the court can dismiss immediately since they do not
depend on any of the issues that are currently before the Sixth Circuit. First, the claims against
Sheriff Paul White and Police Chief Daniel Beams in their official capacities are redundant, since
Mr. Booker has sued Anderson County and the City of Oak Ridge. As a result, these claims are
dismissed. The federal claims under § 1983 against Methodist Medical Center, Southeastern,
and Team Health are also dismissed because these entities are not state actors and there is no
vicarious liability under § 1983. Monell v. Dep’t of Soc. Services of City of New York, 436 U.S.
658, 691 (1978); see also Street v. Corrections Corp. of America, 102 F.3d 810, 818 (“[E]very
circuit to consider [this] issue has extended the holding [of Monell] to private corporations as
well.”) (citation omitted).
The court also dismisses the federal claims against Nurse Jones because it finds that she
is not a state actor. “[T]he Fourth Amendment proscribes only governmental action and does not
apply to a search or seizure, even an unreasonable one, conducted by a private individual not
acting as an agent of the government.” United States v. Lambert, 771 F.2d 83, 89 (6th Cir.1985).
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Moreover, “[a] person will not be acting as a police agent merely because there was some
antecedent contact between that person and the police.” Id. Rather, to trigger Fourth
Amendment protection under an agency theory, “the police must have instigated, encouraged, or
participated in the search,” and “the individual must have engaged in the search with the intent of
assisting the police in their investigative efforts.” United States v. Robinson, 390 F.3d 853, 87172 (6th Cir. 2004). All of Nurse Jones’s actions of which Mr. Booker complains were performed
at the request of Dr. LaPaglia and not at the request of the police. While Mr. Booker argues that
he has not yet been allowed to conduct any discovery in the matter, the court cannot see how any
discovery would change its ruling in this matter. Given Nurse Jones’s position and the facts of
the case, the connection between Nurse Jones and the police is too attenuated to find that she was
a state actor.
C. State Law Claims that the Court Will Dismiss
The court will also dismiss some of Mr. Booker’s state law claims. First, Mr. Booker has
brought a cause of action for violations of the Tennessee Constitution against all of the individual
defendants. But Tennessee does not recognize a private right of action for violations of the
Tennessee Constitution. Cline v. Rogers, 87 F.3d 176, 180 (6th Cir. 1996); Bowden Bldg. Corp.
v. Tenn. Real Estate Comm’n, 15 S.W.3d 434, 444-45 (Tenn. Ct. App. 1999). Mr. Booker
argues that Tennessee Code § 40-7-121 operates on the Tennessee Constitution in a similar way
as 42 U.S.C. § 1983 operates on the U.S. Constitution by creating a private cause of action for
damages for violations of that document. The court is not persuaded by this argument, as it finds
no support for this reasoning in either the text of the statute or in cases decided by Tennessee
courts. As a result, Mr. Booker’s claims arising under the Tennessee Constitution are dismissed.
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Mr. Booker has alleged that the actions of the individual defendants and of Anderson
County and the City of Oak Ridge violated two provisions of the Tennessee Code: Tenn. Code
Ann. § 40-7-121 and Tenn. Code Ann. § 29-20-101. The court declines to address the merits of
these arguments at this time, but holds that Dr. LaPaglia and Nurse Jones cannot be liable under
Tenn. Code Ann. § 29-20-101 because they are not governmental entities or employees of those
entities as defined by Tenn. Code. Ann. § 29-20-102(3).
Finally, Mr. Booker has asserted causes of action for false arrest and imprisonment,
medical battery, assault and battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Mr. Booker
has asked the court to decline to exercise its supplemental jurisdiction over these common law
claims and over the state statutory claims discussed above. The court finds that Mr. Booker’s
argument is premature, since many of these claims are closely intertwined with the issues that are
currently before the Sixth Circuit. Once the circuit court issues its ruling, Mr. Booker may renew
his request to have these causes of action dismissed without prejudice by this court so that he
may bring them in state court.
ORDER
For the reasons discussed above, the several motions for summary judgment (Dkt. Nos.
25, 32, 57, 66, 69, 86 and 88) are all GRANTED IN PART and DENIED WITHOUT
PREJUDICE IN PART. The court dismisses Daniel Beams and Paul White from this action, and
holds that any federal claims against Methodist Medical Center, Southeastern, Team Health, and
Nurse Jones are also dismissed. The court further dismisses any claims for violations of the
Tennessee Constitution and dismisses the claims against Dr. LaPaglia and Nurse Jones for
violations of Tenn. Code Ann. § 29-20-101. The remaining claims in this case are stayed
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pending the resolution of Mr. Booker’s appeal in his criminal case that is currently before the
Sixth Circuit. At that time, any party may renew its arguments that the court here denies without
prejudice by filing an appropriate motion.
Dr. LaPaglia has filed a motion for leave to supplement his motion for summary
judgment (Dkt. No. 91). Nurse Jones and Methodist Medical Center have filed a similar motion
(Dkt. No. 95). These motions are DENIED AS MOOT, as is Mr. Booker’s motion for
permission to file an unsigned affidavit (Dkt. No. 79). Finally, the court GRANTS the motion of
Nurse Jones and Methodist Medical Center to file an amended answer.
The court orders the parties to submit a notice when the Sixth Circuit has issued its
opinion. At that time, the court will set the matter down for a scheduling conference.
SO ORDERED this 29th day of October, 2012.
BY THE COURT:

______________________________
TENA CAMPBELL
United States District Judge

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