VIRGINIA EMERSON HOPKINS, District Judge.
Plaintiff initiated this wrongful death action against Defendant Clay County, Alabama (the "County") on September 21, 2011, in the Circuit Court of Clay County, Alabama. (Doc. 1-1). On October 24, 2011, the County removed Plaintiff's lawsuit to this court on the basis of federal question jurisdiction. (Doc. 1 ¶ 3).
Pending before the court is Defendants' Motion To Dismiss Plaintiff's Amended Complaint (Doc. 25) (the "Motion") filed on February 7, 2012.
A Rule 12(b)(6) motion attacks the legal sufficiency of the complaint. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6). The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure require only that the complaint provide "`a short and plain statement of the claim' that will give the defendant fair notice of what the plaintiff's claim is and the grounds upon which it rests." Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 47 (1957), abrogated by Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 545 (2007); see also Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a).
While a plaintiff must provide the grounds of his entitlement to relief, Rule 8 does not mandate the inclusion of "detailed factual allegations" within a complaint. Twombly, 550 U.S. at 545 (quoting Conley, 355 U.S. at 47). However at the same time, "it demands more than an unadorned, the-defendant-unlawfully-harmed-me accusation." Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 1949 (2009). "[O]nce a claim has been stated adequately, it may be supported by showing any set of facts consistent with the allegations in the complaint." Twombly, 550 U.S. at 563.
"[A] court considering a motion to dismiss can choose to begin by identifying pleadings that, because they are no more than conclusions, are not entitled to the assumption of truth." Iqbal, 129 S. Ct. at 1950. "While legal conclusions can provide the framework of a complaint, they must be supported by factual allegations." Iqbal, 129 S. Ct. at 1950. "When there are well-pleaded factual allegations, a court should assume their veracity and then determine
A claim is plausible on its face "when the plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged." Iqbal, 129 S. Ct. at 1949. "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).
Plaintiff's failure to file any opposition to Defendants' Motion is not without significant repercussions. As explained by Judge Steele in Williams v. Quality Filters, Inc., No. 07-0015-WS-B, 2007 WL 4219201, *1 (S.D. Ala. Nov. 27, 2007):
Williams, 2007 WL 4219201, *1.
"The defense of qualified immunity completely protects government officials performing discretionary functions from suit in their individual capacities unless their conduct violates `clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.'" Cottone v. Jenne, 326 F.3d 1352, 1357 (11th Cir. 2003) (quotation marks omitted). "To receive qualified immunity, a government official first must prove that he was acting within his discretionary authority." Id. at 1357-58.
This is a two-part test. Under the first step, "the defendant must [prove that he or she was] performing a function that, but for the alleged constitutional infirmity, would have fallen within his legitimate job description." Holloman ex rel. Holloman v. Harland, 370 F.3d 1252, 1266 (11th Cir. 2004). Next, the defendant must prove that he or she was "executing that job-related function." Id. at 1267. "Once a defendant establishes that he was acting within his discretionary authority, the burden shifts to the plaintiff to show that the defendant is not entitled to qualified immunity." Cottone, 326 F.3d at 1358.
Until 2009, the Supreme Court had required a two-part inquiry to determine the applicability of qualified immunity, as established by Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 201 (2001). Under the Saucier test, "[t]he threshold inquiry a court must undertake in a qualified immunity analysis is whether [the] plaintiff's allegations, if true, establish a constitutional violation." Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 736 (2002).
If, under the plaintiff's allegations, the defendants would have violated a constitutional right, "the next, sequential step is to ask whether the right was clearly established." Cottone, 326 F.3d at 1358 (quoting Saucier, 533 U.S. at 201). The "clearly established" requirement is designed to assure that officers have fair notice of the conduct which is proscribed. Hope, 536 U.S. at 739. This second inquiry ensures "that before they are subjected to suit, officers are on notice their conduct is unlawful." Saucier, 533 U.S. at 206.
The "unlawfulness must be apparent" under preexisting law.
However, the Saucier framework was made non-mandatory by the Supreme Court in Pearson v. Callahan, 129 S.Ct. 808, 818 (2009), in which the Court concluded that, "while the sequence set forth [in Saucier] is often appropriate, it should no longer be regarded as mandatory." Thus, "judges of the district courts and the courts of appeals should be permitted to exercise their sound discretion in deciding which of the two prongs of the qualified immunity analysis should be addressed first in light of the circumstances in the particular case at hand." Id.
Despite the Supreme Court's modification of Saucier's analytical process, the substantive analysis remains unchanged; an officer is entitled to qualified immunity protection as long as he reasonably "could have believed" his conduct was lawful. Hunter v. Bryan, 502 U.S. 224, 227 (1991). Therefore, to deny immunity, a plaintiff must affirmatively demonstrate that "no reasonable competent officer would have" acted as the public official did. Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 341 (1986).
In determining whether the plaintiff meets this burden in the context of a motion to dismiss, the court is guided by the Eleventh Circuit's holding in Randall v. Scott, 610 F.3d 701 (11th Cir. 2010), which clarifies that
Randall, 610 F.3d at 709-10 (emphasis added) (footnote omitted).
Plaintiff's amended complaint contains four counts and adds four individual defendants
The death of the decedent in this case, Curtis Carl Watts, occurred on September 25, 2009. Plaintiff filed her Motion for Leave To Amend Complaint (Doc. 9) on December 6, 2011.
As Defendants explain in their brief:
(Doc. 26 at 10).
Plaintiff has not suggested that the relation back doctrine somehow saves the claims set forth in her amended complaint nor has she otherwise challenged the merits of Defendants' well-articulated statute of limitations defense. Moreover, it is not the court's function to construct opposing contentions for her. See, e.g., Bowden ex rel. Bowden v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 124 F.Supp.2d 1228, 1236 (M.D. Ala. 2000) ("It is not for the court to manufacture arguments on Plaintiff's behalf."). Therefore, the statute of limitations portion of the Motion is due to be granted.
Plaintiff has only sued the Individual Defendants in their individual capacity and they all have asserted that qualified immunity protects them from further prosecution of any federal constitutional claims in this case. In granting Plaintiff the opportunity to file an amended complaint, the court made it very clear that shotgun pleading was to be avoided. (Doc. 16 at 7-8).
In studying Plaintiff's amended pleading, the court observes that shotgun allegations still abound. Further, because of the shotgun and conclusory nature of the allegations set forth in the amended complaint, Plaintiff has failed to meet the Iqbal plausibility standard.
In particular, Plaintiff's amended complaint is silent about what Defendants Cotney and Tomlin allegedly did which could arguably subject them to personal liability for their actions as violations of the constitution. As for Defendants Alexander and Smith, to the extent that Plaintiff contends that they should be held personally liable under a supervisory constitutional theory, her allegations to sustain such a claim are woefully inadequate.
The Cottone supervisory standard provides:
362 F.3d at 1360-61.
Here, Plaintiff has not alleged personal participation in any alleged excessive force. She also does not assert the existence of widespread unconstitutional conduct. Similarly, Plaintiff has not articulated any facts that would support "the inference that the supervisor directed the subordinate to act unlawfully or knew that the subordinates would act unlawfully and failed to stop them from doing so."
Finally, to the extent that Plaintiff relies upon an alleged lack of training as a way to maintain her supervisory liability theory, she ineffectively only factually supports this by the allegation of the decedent's death. Such a bare allegation, without more, is inadequate because, when "[t]he policy relied upon is not itself unconstitutional, considerably more proof than the single incident will be necessary in every case to establish both the requisite fault on the part of the [defendant], and the causal connection between the `policy' and the constitutional deprivation." City of Oklahoma City v. Tuttle, 471 U.S. 808, 824, 105 S.Ct. 2427, 2436, 85 L. Ed. 2d 791 (1985) (footnote omitted).
Accordingly, the Motion is due to be alternatively granted with respect to the Individual Defendants on qualified immunity grounds as to any federal constitutional claims asserted against them.
The Individual Defendants also contend that to the extent Plaintiff seeks to assert state law claims against them, sovereign immunity bars them. As Defendants state in their brief:
(Doc. 26 at 19-20).
Therefore, based upon the foregoing authorities, all state law claims asserted against the Individual Defendants are alternatively due to be dismissed without prejudice on the grounds of sovereign immunity.
As an alternative ground in support of the Motion, the Entity Defendants maintain that they are due to be dismissed because they are not entities that are legally subject to suit. Concerning the Clay County Sheriff's Department, the Entity Defendants offer controlling authority in support of this proposition with respect to § 1983 actions. See Dean v. Barber, 951 F.2d 1210, 1214 (11th Cir. 1992) ("We agree with the magistrate judge's conclusion, which was adopted by the district court, that the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department is not a legal entity and, therefore, is not subject to suit or liability under section 1983.").
The Dean court utilizes a two-factor framework for determining whether an entity is properly sued: First, does the defendant fall within a category of those "not usually considered legal entities subject to suit"? Dean, 951 F.2d at 1214. Second, how does state law treat that entity regarding its capacity to be sued? Id. at 1215. As analyzed in Dean, the answers to both of these questions confirms that the Clay County Sheriff's Department is not an entity capable of being sued.
Additionally, using these factors, the court agrees with the Entity Defendants that the Clay County Sheriff Special Response Team, as a unit of the Clay County Sheriff's Department, is similarly not amendable to suit under § 1983 or Alabama law. (Doc. 26 at 21-22). Certainly, Plaintiff has not pointed to any Alabama statute or case that indicates otherwise. (Id. at 22).
Therefore, based upon the foregoing analysis, all claims asserted against the Entity Defendants are due to be dismissed on the alternative grounds that they are legally subject to suit under either Alabama or federal law.
Accordingly, the Motion is due to be granted, and Plaintiff's case is due to be dismissed. The court will enter a separate order.
