Baker v. PutnalBaker v. Putnal
This is a civil rights action filed under
BACKGROUND
Sergеant Michael Putnal, is a police officer for the City of Galveston (“the City”). On March 14, 1992, he was on duty at R.A. Apffel Park in Galveston where a large gathering of people were celebrating spring recess from colleges and universities. While Putnal and his fellow officers patrolled the park and beach area fighting broke out. Two witnesses told Putnal that someone had entered the crowd with a pistol-gripped shotgun.
Minutes later, the officers heard gunfire which sent the crowd scurrying. As Putnal moved to investigate, two peoрle grabbed him and gestured toward a red car which they said contained the shooters. As Putnal approached the car he saw Wendell Baker, Jr., and another man sitting in a truck parked on the beach. As Putnal neared the truck, Baker, Jr., who was sitting in the passenger’s seat, turned in Putnal’s direction. Putnal shot and killed Baker, Jr. After-wards, police recovered a Browning automatic .380 caliber pistol under the passenger’s seat of the truck.
The parents of Baker, Jr., Wendell C. Baker, Sr., and Zoe A. Baker, and Michelle Sapentеr as next friend of Baker, Jr.’s minor son, Ashton D. Baker (collectively “the Bakers”) filed this action alleging several civil rights violations under the Constitution and
The defendants filed a joint motion to dismiss under
The district court granted the dismissal motion while expressly declining to rule on the pending motions for summary judgment. With respect to the Fourth Amendment claim, the court held that the Bakers had failed to satisfy the heightened pleading standard required to overcome qualified immunity. Furthermore, it found that Putnal acted properly and that his training was adequate to the crisis at the park. The court then held that the Bakers had no cognizable action under the Eighth Amendment because Baker, Jr., had not been arrested and had not been convicted, precluding Eighth Amendment punishment analysis. Finally, the court held that Putnal did not deprive Baker, Jr., of his right to life under the Fourteenth Amendment because circumstances justified Putnal’s use of deadly force.
As to Putnal’s superiors, the court held that they were entitled to qualified immunity because Putnal had not acted improperly, Putnal’s training was adequate, and the Bakers had not shown that the superiors’ actions or omissions rose to a level of deliberate indifference. The court held that the City of Galveston was liable neither for deliberate indifference nor callous disregard. Furthermore, because Putnal did not violate the Constitution, no wrongdoing could be attributed to the City. Because the court dismissed the Bakers’
DISCUSSION
Jurisdiction
Putnal opens his argument by saying that we have no jurisdiction to address the
Colie
does not apply. Putnal’s argument does not concern the omission of a party from the notice of appeal but, rather, the designation of the capacities in which the plaintiffs bring this lawsuit. This court previously has made this distinction and found that a party’s failure to designate all of the capacities in which he brings suit does not defeat jurisdiction.
King v. Otasco, Inc.,
Standing
The other defendants — City, Poor, and Rogers — argue that the plaintiffs have no standing under
The first-fallacy in defendants’ argument is that the Bakers bring this claim only under
Heightened Pleading Standard
The Bakers argue that the district court erred by applying the heightened pleading standard we enunciated in
Elliott v. Perez,
Defendants are correct that Leather-man does not preclude the heightened pleading requirement in actions against individual government defendants:
[Ujnlike various government officials, municipalities do not enjoy immunity from suit—either absolute or qualified—under§ 1983 . In short, a municipality can be sued under§ 1983 , but it cannot be held liable unless a municipal policy or custom caused the constitutional injury. We thus have no occasion to consider whether our qualified immunity jurisprudence would require a heightened pleading in cases involving individual government officials.
Leatherman,
“[Tjhe Court in Leatherman concluded that the heightened pleading requirement of Elliott could not be applied in a§ 1983 suit against a municipality, reserving the question of whether it might survive in cases against public officials____ We do not abandon the insistence in Elliott v. Perez that a complaint must do more than allege conclusions. Rather, we embrace it
Schultea,
The Bakers also allege that even if
Leatherman
permits a heightened standard to be maintained for public officials sued as individuals, no heightened standard can be allowed for actions against individual defendants in their official capacities. This is true, and the Supreme Court has explained that official-capacity lawsuits are typically an alternative means of pleading an action against the governmental entity involved, in this case the City of Galveston.
Hafer v. Melo,
The Amendment
We review a district court’s denial of a motion to amend for abuse of discretion.
Whitaker v. City of Houston,
Motion to Dismiss
The next issue is whether we should review the district court’s order granting defendants’ motion to dismiss as an order granting summary judgment because the district court failed to accept the allegations of the complaint as true and relied on evidence outside the pleadings in ruling on the motion.
The Bakers contend that the district court improperly made factual findings in ruling on defendants’ motion to dismiss. In so doing, the district court considered more than the pleadings, a course reserved for summary judgment. Further the court failed to follow
In considering a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim under
Plaintiffs deny that Wendell C. Baker, Jr., had committed any acts of aggression toward defendant Putnal, but even if Wendell C. Baker, Jr., had possession of, or was holding a pistol, he did not point the pistol in the direction of or towards defendant Putnal.
In reciting the facts of the ease, however, the district court stated:
Defendant Putnal saw the passenger [Wendell C. Baker, Jr.] was holding a blue steel semi-automatic handgun in his right hand and a blue steel magazine in his left hand. The magazine was loaded with bullets____ The passenger then turned in the direction of Defendant Putnal as he simultaneously loaded the magazine into the gun, leveling his gun at Defendant Putnal.
In effect, the trial сourt adopted portions of the defendants’ claims as fact without acknowledging any contradiction with the complaint. • Thus, the court failed to accept as true the Bakers’ allegation that Baker, Jr., did not point a gun at Putnal. In so doing, the court failed to apply the standards of
The district court justified its decision on the basis of the heightened pleading requirement of qualified immunity cases:
This Court is aware of the widely divergent allegations of the facts set forth by the Plaintiffs and the Defendants. This Court will not engage in weighing the fаcts as it would in a Motion for Summary Judgment. Rather, this Court need only evaluate the legitimate evidence necessary to support qualified immunity.
In its memorandum and order the court called the complaint’s allegations conclusory, failing to set forth “specific facts showing that the use of force by Defendant Putnal was excessive to the need and objectively unreasonable.” Concerning the dispute as to whether Baker, Jr., had a gun when Putnal approached, the court relied on Putnal’s sworn affidavit testimony that Bаker, Jr., did, in fact, have a gun. The court discounted the Bakers’ assertions as founded upon “vague, unarticulated beliefs about the Decedent’s character.” Indeed, the court stated that it “found that Defendant Putnal acted properly in the precise circumstances of this case.” The court later relied on this “finding” in dismissing the claims against Putnal’s superiors and the City. Clearly, these references to material outside the pleadings were not “stray” or “irrelevant” and were hardly marginal.-
In
Scheuer v. Rhodes,
These holdings are consistent with the procedural framework we outlined in
Schultea
for evaluating qualified immunity in a
As stated in
Summary Judgment as to
In
Siegert v. Gilley,
The Bakers assert that Putnal shot and killed Wendell Baker, Jr., without adequate provocation. To support their allegation, they provide the sworn testimony of three witnesses who state that the decedent took no threatening action toward Putnal as the officer аpproached the truck. Indeed, their affidavits suggest that Baker, Jr., may have barely had an opportunity to see Putnal before Putnal fired his gun. Putnal, on the other hand, tells us that Baker, Jr., was holding a semi-automatic pistol, loaded the pistol with ammunition, and leveled it at him from the passenger’s side of the vehicle, thereby justifying deadly force.
There is also a dispute between the accounts of Putnal and the Bakers’s witnesses as to whether Putnal said'anything to Baker, Jr., before he turned toward Putnal. Whether Putnal ordered Baker, Jr., to “frеeze” or to drop the pistol before Baker, Jr., turned toward him and whether Baker, Jr., was even holding the pistol or pointing it at Putnal are certainly issues of fact material to whether Putnal’s actions were excessive and objectively reasonable. The only uncontroverted evidence is that there was a good deal of confusion on the beach and that Baker, Jr., at least began to face Putnal from his position in the truck. Chaos on the beach and Baker, Jr.’s mere motion to turn and face Putrtal arе not compelling reasons to find that Putnal’s use of force was not excessive as a matter of law. There are simply too many factual issues to permit the Bakers’
We also are concerned with the district court’s finding that Putnal acted reasonably given the information from the County of Galveston Medical Examiner’s Office, obtained through discovery. According to the report, Baker, Jr., received four gunshot wounds, one to the left arm, one through the right upper back, one through the left flank, and one through the left temple. The nature of the wounds indicate that Baker, Jr., was not facing Putnal when he was shot. The number of shots and the nature of the wounds raise a serious question as to the reasonableness of his conduct, more of a question of fact than a court may dispose of on summary judgment. Therefore, we reverse the district court’s order granting summary judgment as to the Bakers’ claims asserting Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment due process violations and remand for trial.
Pre-trial detainees may not bring a cause of action based on the Eighth Amendment.
Thibodeaux v. Bordelon,
As to the alleged Fourteenth Amendment equal protection violation, the Bakers made no assertion to support such a claim. We therefore uphold the granting of summary judgment on this claim.
Summary Judgment as to Putnal’s Superiors
The Bakers also contend that Putnal’s suрeriors are liable under
For a police chief to be held liable under
The complaint states, “Defendants Poor and Rogеrs trained defendant Putnal in the use of firearms in accordance with the statutes, ordinances, regulations, customs, and usages of defendant City and the State of Texas.” The Bakers’s own pleading essentially concedes that they cannot satisfy the requirements for holding Chiefs Poor and Rogers liable for Baker, Jr.’s death. Further, the district court, which had considered any evidence proffered by the Bakers in response to the pending motions for summary judgment, found that Putnal’s training was adequate with respect to the situation at issue..
The summary judgment evidence does not support the claims of inadequate training or deliberate indifference. At the time of the incident, Poor was the Chief of Police for Galveston and Rogers was the area incident commander on the day of the Baker, Jr., shooting. The Bakers offer the affidavit of a purported criminal justice expert, James D. Ginger, Jr., as evidence of the alleged inadequacy of the supervision and training provided by Chiefs Poor and Rogers. However, Ginger’s statement is more aspersion thаn evidence. It forms unsubstantiated conclusions regarding the defendants’ role in creating purportedly outdatéd policy and providing inadequate manpower and supervision for controlling a crisis of the nature that erupted the day of the shooting. For example, Ginger calls then Captain Rogers’s failure to assume command and control on the day of the shooting a proximate cause of Putnal’s reaction. Yet there is no accompanying proof that Rogers knew of the gravity of the situation developing at Apffel Park or could have responded in time, much less evidence of any deliberate indifference overcoming qualified immunity.
Supervisory officials may be held liable only, if: (i) they affirmatively participate in acts that cause constitutional deprivation; or (ii) implement unconstitutional policies that causally result in plaintiffs injury.
Mouille v. City of Live Oak, Tex.,
Summary Judgment as to the City of Galveston
Finally, the Bakers contend that the City is liable under
Municipalities are not vicariously liable for the actions of their employees under
On summary judgment, plaintiffs did not meet their burden. Their only evidence аs to policy, again, comes from the Ginger affidavit, and it is no more damaging to the City, despite the absence of a qualified immunity defense, than it is to defendants Poor and Rogers.
The Bakers did not raise the issue of the dismissal of their state law claims on appeal, so we do not address it now.
CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, we REVERSE the district court’s order dismissing the claims against Putnal and REMAND for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. We AFFIRM as' to the remaining defendants. We order each party to bear its own costs on this appeal.