Opinion
Civ. No. 98-1256, SECTION "K" (1).
March 21, 2000.
ORDER AND REASONS
Plaintiff's Monell claims against the City of New Orleans for negligently hiring, training, supervising and disciplining the defendant officers and for failing to properly manage the Mobile Transportation Unit are dismissed by the court pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 50(a).
Under Fed.R.Civ.P. 50, judgment as a matter of law may be granted if "there is no legally sufficient evidentiary basis for a reasonable jury to find for [a] party." Fed.R.Civ.P. 50(a). The motion "should be granted by the trial court if, after considering all the evidence in the light and with all reasonable inferences most favorable to the party opposed to the motion, the facts and inferences point so strongly and overwhelmingly in favor of one party that the court concludes that reasonable people could not arrive at a contrary verdict." Texas Farm Bureau v. United States, 53 F.3d 120, 123 (5th Cir. 1995). The Court must "view the entire trial record in the light most favorable to the nonmovant, drawing all factual inferences in favor of . . . the non-moving party, and leaving credibility determinations, the weighing of the evidence, and the drawing of legitimate inferences from the facts to the jury." Conkling v. Turner, 18 F.3d 1285, 1300 (5th Cir. 1994).
The Supreme Court has established two fundamental requirements for holding a city liable under § 1983 for inadequate hiring and training policies: culpability and causation. First, the municipal policy must have been adopted with "deliberate indifference" to its known or obvious consequences. Second, the municipality must be the "moving force" behind the constitutional violation. Snyder v. Trepagnier, 142 F.3d 791, 795 (5th Cir. 1998).
In Monell, the Court held that a local government may not be held liable under respondeat superior for constitutional torts committed by a municipal employee. Instead, "[I]t is when execution of a government's policy or custom, whether made by its lawmakers or by those whose edicts or acts may fairly be said to represent official policy, inflicts the injury that the government as an entity is responsible under § 1983." Monell v. New York City Dept. of Soc. Servs., 98 S.Ct. 2018, 2037-38 (1978). Monell set a high threshold for causation as well, requiring that the plaintiff establish that the municipal policy be the "moving force" behind the constitutional violation. Id.
The Court clarified the Monell requirements in City of Canton v. Harris, 109 S.Ct. 1197, 103 (1989), a case arising under a liability theory (failure to train) that plaintiff alleges here. The Court held that, in limited circumstances, a municipality can be held liable for a failure to train its police officers. Plaintiffs seeking to win under this theory must first prove a direct causal link between the municipal policy and the constitutional deprivation; they then must establish that the city consciously enacted a policy reflecting "deliberate indifference" to the constitutional rights of its citizens. Id. at 1205. The Court concluded:
We hold today that the inadequacy of police training may serve as the basis for § 1983 liability only where the failure to train amounts to deliberate indifference to the rights of persons with whom the police come into contact. . . . Only where a failure to train reflects a "deliberate" or "conscious" choice by a municipality — a "policy" as defined by our prior cases — can a city be liable for such a failure under § 1983.Id. at 1204-05.
The Court further clarified Monell in Board of County Commissioners of Bryan County. Okla. v. Brown, 117 S.Ct. 1382, 137 (1997), another case arising under a liability theory advanced in the instant case — the municipality's allegedly inadequate screening and hiring policies. There, the Court held that the county was not liable for a sheriff's decision to hire, without adequate screening, an officer who later was accused of using excessive force. The Court noted that the plaintiff had "not demonstrated that [the sheriff's] decision reflected a conscious disregard for a high risk that [the officer] would use excessive force in violation of [the plaintiff's] federally protected right." Id. at 1394.
Bryan County underscores the need for Monell plaintiffs to establish both the causal link ("moving force") and the city's degree of culpability ("deliberate indifference" to federally protected rights). These requirements must not be diluted, for "[w]here a court fails to adhere to rigorous requirements of culpability and causation, municipal liability collapses into respondeat superior liability." Id. Accordingly, a high standard of proof is required before imposing Monell liability on a municipality. In Gonzalez v. Ysleta Indep. Sch. Dist., 996 F.2d 745 (5th Cir. 1993), the Fifth Circuit held that a school board did not act with deliberate indifference to the constitutional rights of schoolchildren when it failed to remove from the classroom a teacher accused of fondling students. The court noted that mere negligence fell short of the "deliberate indifference" standard and that "[i]n order for municipal liability to attach, plaintiffs must offer evidence of not simply a decision, but a "decision by the city itself to violate the Constitution.'" Id. at 759 (quoting City of Canton, 109 S.Ct. at 1208 (O'Connor, J., concurring)).
Plaintiff alleges that the city's police hiring policies were deficient because candidates' backgrounds were inadequately investigated. However, plaintiff has presented insufficient evidence to support such an allegation. Under Bryan County, where the Court held that "[o]nly where adequate scrutiny of an applicant's background would lead a reasonable policymaker to conclude that the plainly obvious consequence of the decision to hire the applicant would be the deprivation of a third party's federally protected right can the official's failure to adequately scrutinize the applicant's background constitute `deliberate indifference.'" Id. at 1392. The Court held that the county was not liable for a tort committed by a police officer, even though the sheriff had hired the officer despite a lengthy criminal record, including assault and battery, resisting arrest, and public drunkenness. The Court concluded that "[t]he connection between the background of the particular applicant and the specific constitutional violation must be strong." Id. On the evidence presented, plaintiff's claim that the city's screening policies were inadequate fails the Bryan County test: that the plaintiff's injury be the "plainly obvious consequence" of the hiring decision.
Plaintiff also complains that the officers were inappropriately trained. In City of Canton, the Court articulated the test for whenMonell liability can result from inadequate training. The opinion is worth quoting at length:
It may seem contrary to common sense to assert that a municipality will actually have a policy of not "taking reasonable steps to train its employees. But it may happen that in light of the duties assigned to specific officers or employees the need for more or different training is so obvious, and the inadequacy so likely to result in the violation of constitutional rights, that the policymakers of the city can reasonably be said to have been deliberately indifferent to the need. . . . In resolving the issue of a city's liability, the focus must be on adequacy of the training program in relation to the tasks the particular officers must perform. That a particular officer may be unsatisfactorily trained will not alone suffice to fasten liability on the city, for the officer's shortcomings may have resulted from factors other than a faulty training program. . . . Neither will it suffice to prove that an injury or accident could have been avoided if an officer had better or more training, sufficient to equip him to avoid the particular injury-causing conduct.Id. at 1205-06 (footnote and citations omitted).
Moreover, the Fifth Circuit has held that proof of a few unrelated violent incidents ordinarily is insufficient to hold a municipality liable for inadequate training. The plaintiff must demonstrate "at least a pattern of similar incidents in which the citizens were injured . . . to establish the official policy requisite to municipal liability under section 1983." Rodriguez v. Avita, 871 F.2d 552, 554-55 (5th Cir. 1989) (internal quotation and citation omitted). Under City of Canton, 109 S.Ct. at 1205, in order to prove the city's deliberate indifference, plaintiff must show that the failure to train reflects a "deliberate" or "conscious" choice to endanger constitutional rights. Plaintiff has made no such showing. There is no evidence of a pattern or practice of constitutional violations committed by allegedly poorly trained New Orleans police officers. In short, the totality of the evidence does not even approach theCity of Canton standard: that the inadequacy be "so obvious" and "so likely to result in the violation of constitutional rights," 109 S.Ct. at 1205, that the city can be said to have been deliberately indifferent.
Furthermore, the Fifth Circuit has emphasized that, when seeking to prove a municipality's malevolent motive, plaintiffs must introduce more evidence than merely the opinion of an expert witness. In Stokes v. Bullins, 844 F.2d 269 (5th Cir. 1988), the district court relied primarily on the testimony of a single expert witness in holding that the municipality violated § 1983. The Fifth Circuit disagreed, remarking that "an expert's opinion should not be alone sufficient to establish constitutional `fault' by a municipality in a case of alleged omissions, where no facts support the inference that the town's motives were contrary to constitutional standards." Id. at 275. Plaintiff's testimony was unsupported by any facts establishing the city's purportedly bad motive.
Proof of "moving force" causation was similarly absent. The evidence did not establish even a remote link between the city's failure to train and plaintiff's injury, so it fell far short of meeting the "rigorous" and "stringent" causation requirements demanded in Bryan County. There was no evidence of deliberate indifference to constitutional rights. Nor was there evidence supporting a causal link between the actions of the City and plaintiff's injury. No reasonable jury could have concluded otherwise.
Under Fifth Circuit precedent, plaintiff's Monell allegations regarding the failure to properly manage the Mobile Transportation Unit must also be dismissed. In Stokes v. Bullins, 844 F.2d 269 (5th Cir. 1988), the Fifth Circuit held that a county that failed to request a National Crime Information Center check for police applicants did not act with deliberate indifference toward the rights of its citizens — even though conducting a check would have disclosed that the applicant (who later shot the plaintiff) had a history of fifteen arrests for assault, armed robbery, and other misdeeds. The Fifth Circuit noted the efficiency of an NCIC check but declined to anoint it as a constitutional requirement. Id. at 275. Here, plaintiff has failed to establish the alleged failure of the City to properly manage or establish a Mobile Transportation Unit rises to the level of a constitutional violation. Stokes v. Bullins, 844 F.2d at 272.
CONCLUSION
After considering all the evidence in the light and with all reasonable inferences most favorable to the party opposed to the motion, the facts and inferences point so strongly and overwhelmingly in favor of one party that the court concludes that reasonable people could not arrive at a contrary verdict. Under Fed.R.Civ.P. 50, judgment as a matter of law is granted as "there is no legally sufficient evidentiary basis for a reasonable jury to find for [a] party." Fed.R.Civ.P. 50(a). Plaintiff's Monell allegations are dismissed in their entirety.
New Orleans, Louisiana, this 20 day of March, 2000.