Daniels v. Williams

¶8ON PETITION FOR REHEARING:

¶9WIDENER, Circuit Judge:

¶10This case is an appeal from a judgment for the defendant in an action brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. We affirm.

¶11Roy Daniels was a prisoner in the Richmond city jail on January 23, 1982, when he slipped and fell on a pillow and newspapers negligently left on some stairsteps by the defendant Williams, a deputy sheriff. The fall resulted in injuries to Daniels’ back and ankle, for which he received medical treatment. While the facts surrounding Daniels’ fall may be disputed, the district court found a common law negligence remedy available to Daniels and dismissed the case for failure to state a cause of action. Thus, for the purposes of this opinion, we assume that Daniels fell and that his fall was caused by Williams’ negligence.

¶12Daniels’ suit must fail for two alternate reasons, either of which is fatal to his claim. The first is that we are of opinion Daniels’ bodily injury occasioned by simple negligence was not a liberty interest protected by the due process clause.1 Second, even if Daniels had a liberty interest violated by the negligence of Williams, then he had a remedy under the law of Virginia which satisfied the requirements of procedural due process.

¶13I.

¶14Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S. 527, 101 S.Ct. 1908, 68 L.Ed.2d 420 (1981), decided that the negligent loss of two packages of hobby materials, belonging to one prisoner, and lost by a prison employee and another prisoner, was a deprivation of property under the Fourteenth Amendment. Parratt at p. 536-537, 101 S.Ct. at p. 1913-1914. The Court went on to decide, however, that because Nebraska provided a tort remedy as a means of redress for property deprivation, the deprivation was not without due process of law.

¶15Until Parratt was decided, in this circuit a claim of mere negligence did not give rise to a cause of action under § 1983. We decided that explicitly in Jenkins v. Averett, 424 F.2d 1228 (4th Cir.1970), in which, however, we granted relief in a case where the defendant’s actions were variously described to be gross and culpable, wanton and a raw abuse of power, but falling short of an intentional act. So our decision in Jenkins so far as property is concerned now gives way to Parratt.2

¶16*231We do not believe the Court intended Parratt to be applied automatically in a per se manner in every instance in which an act of negligence can also be stated as a § 1983 claim. The Court itself noted, at p. 534, 101 S.Ct. at p. 1912, quoting Baker v. McCollan, 443 U.S. 137, 99 S.Ct. 2689, 61 L.Ed.2d 433 (1979), that “[T]he question whether an allegation of simple negligence is sufficient to state a cause of action under § 1983 is more elusive than it appears at first blush. It may well not be susceptible of a uniform answer across the entire spectrum of conceivable constitutional violations which might be the subject of a § 1983 action.”

¶17In Parratt, the concluding paragraph of the opinion of the Court took pains to explicitly disavow construing its decision so that it might result in “turning every alleged injury which may have been inflicted by a state official acting under ‘color of law’ into a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment cognizable under § 1983.” 451 U.S. at 544, 101 S.Ct. at 1917. The Court continued:

“It is hard to perceive any logical stopping place to such a line of reasoning. Presumably, under this rationale any party who is involved in nothing more than an automobile accident with a state official could allege a constitutional violation under § 1983. Such reasoning ‘would make of the Fourteenth Amendment a font of tort law to be superimposed upon whatever circumstance may already be administered by the States.’ Paul v. Davis, 424 U.S. 693, 701 [96 S.Ct. 1155, 1160, 47 L.Ed.2d 405] (1976). We do not think that the drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment intended the Amendment to play such a role in our society.” 451 U.S. at 544, 101 S.Ct. at 1917.

¶18Thus, the Court, by explicitly rejecting a construction of its opinion which would permit maintaining a § 1983 claim for bodily injuries based on the negligent operation of an automobile by a state official acting under color of law, has limited its decision. Because we doubt that the Court intended to convey the impression that a prisoner suffering bodily injury from the negligence of a state official stands on a better footing than an ordinary citizen so injured, we think the Court intended to limit its decision to claims for the deprivation of property asserted by a prisoner, and we so hold. The difference in treatment between a prisoner’s property and his person may easily be justified. The demands of prison safety, life, and discipline make it obligatory for prison officials to have possession of, and search at some time or another, all of the property belonging to every prisoner. Prisons could be operated in no other fashion. Because the state of necessity has such complete control of the prisoner’s property, calling it to account for the unexplained loss thereof is not inconsistent with demands of the Fourteenth Amendment. No such reasons exist, however, to set the prisoner above the ordinary citizen in the protection of his person. If the ordinary citizen may not sue under § 1983 a state employee who has negligently deprived him of a liberty interest by injury to his person, then the prisoner should not be allowed to prosecute a similar claim. The Supreme Court has expressed the same thought in a different context. Just as “[m]edical malpractice does not become a constitutional violation merely because the victim is a prisoner,”3*232neither should negligent injury to the person.

¶19We are thus of opinion the negligent injury to the plaintiffs person is not a protectable liberty interest under the due process clause and the complaint does not state a cause of action under § 1983 on that account.

¶20II.

¶21It is not disputed that in Virginia at all times here pertinent a common law tort action for negligence might have been maintained against a state employee performing ministerial duties. While the State is immune,4 see James v. Jane, 221 Va. 43, 267 S.E.2d 108, 113 (1980), the employee is not. First Virginia Bank-Colonial v. Baker, 225 Va. 72, 301 S.E.2d 8 (1983). The sovereign immunity which may attach to employees performing discretionary duties does not attach to those performing ministerial acts.

¶22This was made clear in our recent case of Phelps v. Anderson, 700 F.2d 147 (4th Cir. 1983), and most recently, as we have noted above, by First Virginia Bank-Colonial in the state courts. In Phelps, prison employees had negligently deprived a prisoner of the use of his television set for a period of time. A prison adjustment committee had decided that the plaintiff owned the set and the prison employees’ negligent failure to return the set to the rightful owner, we held, was an act in which they had no discretion, and accordingly, because that prisoner had the right to proceed under Virginia law, we held that Parratt barred his § 1983 claim. In First Virginia Bank the suit was against the clerk of a court whose deputy had negligently indexed a deed of trust on the wrong page of the index book. The Virginia court held that act to be ministerial and allowed a suit to proceed against the clerk on account of the negligence of the deputy.

¶23In the case at hand, there is no claim that the deputy sheriff, Williams, was exercising any discretionary duty when he left the pillow on the stairsteps, so his actions at the most, looking at the case in the best light from Daniels’ side, were merely ministerial. Because Williams’ duties were ministerial, it was possible for Daniels to maintain an action in the Virginia courts on account of his injury without being met with the defense of sovereign immunity. Thus, even if Daniels were deprived of a liberty interest protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, the deprivation was not without due process of law under Parratt because a post-deprivation remedy was available in the state courts.

¶24The plaintiff argues that sovereign immunity is available to Williams as a defense, and it follows, the argument goes, that if sovereign immunity is available as a defense, any remedy he may have under state law may be inadequate and not in fact a remedy. The defendant argues that any immunity which may exist under state law is little different from the immunity afforded state officials in the federal courts in suits under § 1983, and continues that since the immunities involved are akin, even if not the same, then the existence of immunity should not serve to permit the suit to be maintained. Because we believe there is no significant difference in the duties of the deputy sheriff in this case, the pi’ison officials in Phelps, and the deputy clerk of the court in Baker, we think the duties of Williams were ministerial and do not reach the question of whether or not the existence of a possible immunity defense should permit the action to be maintained under § 1983.5

¶25*233The judgment of the district court AFFIRMED. is

¶33JAMES DICKSON PHILLIPS, Circuit Judge,

¶34dissenting in part and concurring in part:

¶35The majority affirms dismissal of Daniels’s claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 on alternative grounds. First, that as a matter of general principle there is no constitutionally protected liberty interest in being free of bodily injury caused by merely negligent, as opposed to intentional, conduct of state agents, or, put differently, that the merely negligent infliction of bodily injury by a state agent does not constitute “deprivation” of any constitutionally protected liberty interest; second, that even if such an interest in general exists, or such a deprivation might in general occur, any deprivation occurring here was not without due process because the state provides an adequate post-deprivation remedy for Daniels in the form of a traditional common law personal injury negligence action. Since § 1983 requires proof both that there has been deprivation of a constitutionally protected liberty (or property) interest and that it shall have occurred without due process, no cognizable § 1983 claim is here stated.

¶36I disagree with the first ground.

¶37On the second, I agree that with respect to the kind of negligent deprivation of liberty interest here involved a state’s post-deprivation tort remedy may provide the process constitutionally due; but I do not believe that due process is provided if a sovereign immunity defense is available to bar the state’s post-deprivation remedy. And because I do not believe that on the record before us we can determine whether that defense is so available, I would only affirm dismissal of this § 1983 claim on condition that it might be reinstated if the defense is drawn upon to bar his state claim in state court.

¶38I therefore dissent to the outright dismissal mandated by the majority.

¶39I

¶40As I understand the majority’s reasoning on the first ground — -that there is no constitutionally protected liberty interest in being free of bodily injury inflicted negligently by state agents — it runs as follows. Until Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S. 527, 101 S.Ct. 1908, 68 L.Ed.2d 420 (1981), decided that one could be “deprived” of a constitutionally protected property interest by negligent conduct of state agents, the law of this circuit had been that only intentional conduct could “deprive” of either property or liberty interests. Parratt decided only that one might be so deprived of property interests; hence prior circuit law respecting the deprivation of liberty interests is unaffected by intervening Supreme Court authority and remains that one may not be so deprived of liberty interests. By implication, circuit law on liberty interests should not in this case be brought into conformity with Parratt’s new dispensation as to property interests, because there are rational bases for maintaining the distinction first necessitated by Parratt.

¶41*234With respect, I simply disagree with this analysis.

¶42First off, I do not believe that the critical principles that emerged from Parratt can be read as being narrowly confined to property interests. It is true that the case was about a property interest so that the specific holding is so limited, but the threshold issue identified and addressed in the majority opinion was “whether mere negligence will support a claim for relief under § 1983,” 451 U.S. at 532, 101 S.Ct. at 1911. And this issue was answered affirmatively, if somewhat obliquely, in the same broad terms in which it was put by the Court: “§ 1983 affords a ‘civil remedy’ for deprivations of federally protected rights caused by persons acting under color of state law without any express requirement of a particular state of mind.” 451 U.S. at 535,101 S.Ct. at 1913.

¶43All of the other Justices writing in the case assumed that a necessary implication of the majority’s holding on this point was that it applied to liberty as well as property interests. Justice Powell, concurring, was principally concerned that “deprivation” should not be construed to cover any but intentional acts, and he unmistakably assumed, as his references show, that the Court’s opinion applied to deprivations of liberty as well as property interests. 451 U.S. at 546-554 & nn. 6, 7, 9, 101 S.Ct. at 1918-1923 & nn. 6, 7, 9. Justice Stewart, concurring, also plainly assumed that the majority’s specific holding that deprivations of property might be by negligent conduct necessarily would apply in logic as well to deprivations of liberty. 451 U.S. at 544-45, 101 S.Ct. at 1917-18 (Stewart, J., concurring). Justice Blackmun, concurring, joined by Justice White, was only concerned that the majority’s post-deprivation remedy analysis should be confined to property cases and not extended to claimed deprivations of life or liberty, clearly assuming that deprivation of either might be by negligent or intentional conduct. 451 U.S. at 545-46, 101 S.Ct. at 1917-18.

¶44I therefore believe that whatever may have been the pre-Parratt state of circuit law, Parratt made it plain as national law that whether challenged conduct was negligent or intentional is irrelevant to the threshold § 1983 question whether it was committed under color of state law and whether it deprived a person of federally secured rights, see Parratt, 451 U.S. at 535, 101 S.Ct. at 1912, and that this is true whether the rights allegedly violated involved property or liberty interests.1

¶45Furthermore, I doubt that it is accurate to suggest that before Parratt, this circuit had never recognized any § 1983 claim based on mere negligence. Certainly we had recognized such claims in the congruent eighth amendment context. See, e.g., Withers v. Levine, 615 F.2d 158, 162 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 849, 101 S.Ct. 136, 66 L.Ed.2d 59 (1980) (negligent failure to protect prison inmate against known threats of physical harm).2

¶46*235Finally, with all deference, I simply cannot accept the majority’s apparent holding that somehow the fourteenth amendment imposes a more stringent duty upon the states to avoid deprivations of the property than the liberty interests of either their prison inmates or citizens in their free societies. If there is a constitutional scale of values associated with the two kinds of interests, the majority’s analysis seems to me to stand on its head the obvious rank order that would be assigned them. See Parratt, 451 U.S. at 542, 101 S.Ct. at 1916 (suggesting that an intentional deprivation of liberty interests is “arguably ... more egregious” than a negligent deprivation of property interests); id. at 545, 101 S.Ct. at 1918 (Blackmun, J., concurring) (suggesting that deprivations of liberty interest might not be adequately remedied by state post-deprivation process though deprivations of property interests could be). Certainly in purely human terms it would be difficult to suppose that the Constitution assigned less value to the concededly modest bodily harm allegedly suffered in this case than the Supreme Court in Parratt held that it assigned to the loss of a $23.50 hobby kit.

¶47I would therefore hold, contrary to the majority, that Daniels’s complaint states a cognizable § 1983 claim that he was deprived of a liberty interest by the defendant acting under color of state law. This would then lead to the question whether the complaint had also sufficiently alleged that the deprivation was without due process.

¶48II

¶49On the due process question, I think it plain that Parratt’s principal holding that a state’s post-deprivation remedies may supply the due process that suffices to defeat an otherwise cognizable claim of rights deprivation under § 1983 applies to liberty as well as property interests. Indeed, the general principle had already been established in the pre-Parratt liberty interest case of Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U.S. 651, 97 S.Ct. 1401, 51 L.Ed.2d 711 (1977) (school paddling), a point the Parratt Court expressly recognized and relied upon. See Parratt, 451 U.S. at 542, 101 S.Ct. at 1916 (court’s post-deprivation remedy analysis asserted to be “quite consistent with the approach taken ... in Ingraham ”). Accordingly, I accept that Virginia’s ordinary tort remedies (irrespective of any special state Tort Claims Act remedies later provided) might supply the due process that would defeat a § 1983 claim such as Daniels’s.

¶50But I would hold that if under state law the defendant in this case could avoid liability on Daniels’s state-law claim by the defense of sovereign immunity, the state’s post-deprivation remedy does not provide for Daniels the adequate state remedy required to defeat his § 1983 claim on Parratt/Ingraham grounds. See Parratt, 451 U.S. at 551 n. 9, 101 S.Ct. at 1921 n. 9 (Powell, J., concurring).3

¶51III

¶52But this in turn, then leads to the difficult question of how, in this or any case, a *236federal § 1983 court is to determine whether an otherwise adequate post-deprivation state remedy is made inadequate because of the possible availability of a sovereign immunity, or other official immunity, defense to the generally cognizable state-law claim. Of course, no problem would exist where state law on the point is clear, or is stipulated, or possibly where the defense though available is waived for a particular case. But that, regrettably, is not the case we have. Here, the availability and scope of the defense is by no means clear on the record before us.4 And indeed, the problem is aggravated here by the fact that though the Commonwealth argues before us that the state remedy is not made inadequate by that means, we are told that in the parallel state action it has raised sovereign immunity as a defense.

¶53In this situation, I believe that the only fair course for a federal § 1983 court — certainly the only fair one for the claimant — is to condition dismissal of the § 1983 action on the abandonment or waiver by the state of any sovereign immunity defense it might assert, or the entry of an authoritative judgment by the state court that the defense does not bar the claimant’s state claim.

¶54Accordingly, I would remand to the district court with instructions to dismiss on those conditions, leaving to claimant the right to reinstate his § 1983 claim upon the entry of any judgment in his state action holding his state claim barred by sovereign immunity.

¶55Chief Judge HARRISON L. WINTER and Judge MURNAGHAN authorize me to say that they join in this opinion. Judge ERVIN authorizes me to say that he concurs in part I of this opinion.

¶61ERVIN, Circuit Judge,

¶62concurring in part and dissenting in part:

¶63I concur in Part II of the majority opinion and in the decision to affirm the judgment of the district court.

¶64I am unable, however, to accept the rationale contained in Part I of the majority opinion, and I respectfully dissent therefrom, for the reasons cogently stated by Judge Phillips in Part I of his dissenting opinion, in which I join.