Brian Devereux v. Knox Cnty., Tenn.Brian Devereux v. Knox Cnty., Tenn.
COUNSEL
ARGUED: David S. Wigler, KNOX COUNTY, TENNESSEE, Knoxville, Tennessee, for Appellant. Richard Everett Collins, II, STANLEY, KURTZ & COLLINS, PLLC, Knoxville, Tennessee, for Appellees. ON BRIEF: David S. Wigler, KNOX COUNTY, TENNESSEE, Knoxville, Tennessee, for Appellant. Richard Everett Collins, II, STANLEY, KURTZ & COLLINS, PLLC, Knoxville, Tennessee, for Appellees.
JANE B. STRANCH, Circuit Judge. Brian Devereux suffered a major stroke during or around the period of his custody by Knox County for misdemeanor first-time DUI. Corrections officers were in and out of the holding cell where he sat motionless for several hours but did not provide medical attention until it was too late to mitigate the stroke‘s effects. Devereux and his wife, Renee Devereux,1 sued the officers and Knox County. They brought federal civil rights claims as well as negligence claims under the Tennessee Governmental Tort Liability Act, which waives sovereign immunity for certain claims, but not those arising from “civil rights.” After years of litigation, the district court dismissed all of Devereux‘s claims against the officers as well as his civil rights claims against Knox County. It then declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the TGTLA claims and dismissed them without prejudice, allowing Devereux to refile them in state court. Knox County objects, arguing that the district court should have retained jurisdiction and determined that the TGTLA‘s “civil rights exception” necessarily barred Devereux‘s negligence claims. The parties also move to certify a question about the civil rights exception‘s timing and scope to the Tennessee Supreme Court. We VACATE the district court‘s 2018 order denying Knox County‘s first motion to dismiss only as to its rationale regarding the TGTLA negligence claim and VACATE the portion of the district court‘s order of September 11, 2019, that relied on that vacated part of the district court‘s 2018 order, AFFIRM its judgment in all other respects, and DENY the parties’ joint motion to certify.
I. BACKGROUND
A. Factual Background
Late in the afternoon of June 3, 2016, Devereux turned himself in to the Knox
B. Procedural Background
Brian and Renee Devereux brought claims against the corrections officers (the “individual Defendants“) and Knox County under
In July 2017, Knox County filed a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim (“first motion to dismiss“). It argued that sovereign immunity barred the state-law claims under the “civil rights exception” in the TGTLA, see
During extensive motion practice, the parties disputed the admissibility of the testimony of Dr. Gaines, the neurologist who treated Devereux and who Devereux sought to introduce as an expert. The district court ultimately excluded Dr. Gaines‘s testimony because the disclosures were inadequate—and because Devereux did not respond to the individual Defendants and Knox County‘s renewed motion to exclude and instead raised his arguments in objections to the magistrate judge‘s order. The court remarked:
The Court begins by emphasizing—as [the magistrate judge] did—the importance of Dr. Gaines’ testimony about the timing of the stroke. Dr. Gaines is Plaintiffs’ only expert witness, so his testimony that Mr. Devereux suffered a stroke in the Knox County Jail is, by every appearance, necessary to establish a violation under
42 U.S.C. § 1983 —specifically, to establish that a delay in medical treatment resulted in a constitutional violation.
(R. 135, Order, PageID 1382 (citations omitted))
On September 11, 2019, the district court also granted the individual Defendants’ motion for summary judgment on the
The parties filed notices of appeal, but all except Knox County voluntarily dismissed their appeals. Knox County appealed the district court‘s September 11, 2019, order. Subsequently, Devereux and Knox County filed a joint motion asking us to certify the following question to the Tennessee Supreme Court:
When does the GTLA‘s civil rights exception attach in a case where, as here, the plaintiff‘s complaint avers claims against a Tennessee municipality under both
42 U.S.C. § 1983 (civil rights) and the GTLA (negligence) in the same action under the same underlying facts?
(Dkt. 34-1 at 2)
II. ANALYSIS
A. Standard of Review
We review de novo a district court‘s denial of a motion to dismiss for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction or failure to state a claim. Rote v. Zel Custom Mfg. LLC, 816 F.3d 383, 387 (6th Cir. 2016); Beydoun v. Sessions, 871 F.3d 459, 464 (6th Cir. 2017). We review a district court‘s denial of a motion to certify a question to a state court for abuse of discretion. Church Joint Venture, L.P. v. Blasingame, 947 F.3d 925, 930 (6th Cir. 2020).
The civil rights exception provides that Tennessee governmental entities do not waive their sovereign immunity “for injury proximately caused by a negligent act or omission of any employee within the scope of his employment” if “the injury arises out of ... [f]alse imprisonment pursuant to a mittimus from a court, false arrest, malicious prosecution, intentional trespass, abuse of process, libel, slander, deceit, interference with contract rights, infliction of mental anguish, invasion of right of privacy, or civil rights.”
We have since applied Johnson‘s analysis to similarly parallel civil rights and negligence claims. See Savage v. City of Memphis, 620 F. App‘x 425, 429–30 (6th Cir. 2015); Bryant v. City of Memphis, 644 F. App‘x 381, 384 (6th Cir. 2014). Tennessee courts have typically done the same. See, e.g., Siler v. Scott, 591 S.W.3d 84, 96–98 (Tenn. Ct. App. 2019), appeal denied (Oct. 11, 2019); Cochran v. Town of Jonesborough, 586 S.W.3d 909, 914–21 (Tenn. Ct. App. 2019), appeal denied (Aug. 4, 2019); Merolla v. Wilson County, No. M201800919COAR3CV, 2019 WL 1934829, at *4–6 (Tenn. Ct. App. May 1, 2019), appeal denied (Sept. 18, 2019).
In Tennessee, when a plaintiffs civil rights claim is dismissed for failure to state a claim, it remains an open question whether the district court must necessarily reach the parallel TGTLA negligence claim or can instead decline to exercise supplemental jurisdiction. We have likewise not conclusively answered the question but have touched upon adjacent issues. In Bryant, the plaintiff brought an employment discrimination claim under
negligent training.” Id. (emphasis removed). Without commenting on whether this reasoning was valid, we held that the district court acted properly by recasting the
In a similar situation, another Tennessee federal court recently employed the same jurisdictional procedure as the district court did here. In Blevins v. Marion County, No. 1:18-CV-53, 2020 WL 3036359 (E.D. Tenn. June 5, 2020), the plaintiff, a pretrial detainee, “had a stroke and was not treated for ‘several hours’ afterwards.” Id. at *2. Like Devereux, she brought federal civil rights claims in addition to claims for “violation of [Tenn. Code Ann.]
In earlier comparable cases, Tennessee courts offered no indication that this procedure posed a problem. See, e.g., Payne v. Tipton County, 448 S.W.3d 891, 894 n.1 (Tenn. Ct. App. 2014), appeal denied (Sept. 18, 2014); Payne v. Tipton County, No. 05-2310 MAP, 2006 WL 1967046, at *2 (W.D. Tenn. July 12, 2006); Parker v. Henderson County, No. W2009-00975- COA-R3-CV, 2010 WL 377044, at *2 n.2 (Tenn. Ct. App. Feb. 4, 2010); Parker v. Henderson County, 450 F. Supp. 2d 842, 857 (W.D. Tenn. 2006). Nor has our court found this procedure objectionable. See, e.g., Siler v. Webber, No. 3:05-CV-341, 2009 WL 10680025, at *6 (E.D. Tenn. Jan. 27, 2009) (declining to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over TGTLA claims), aff‘d, 443 F. App‘x 50 (6th Cir. 2011).
Decisions by district courts to decline supplemental jurisdiction over TGTLA claims remaining after dismissing the core civil rights claims generally draw on our decision in Gregory v. Shelby County, 220 F.3d 433 (6th Cir. 2000). There, the court dismissed the plaintiff‘s TGTLA claims against a corrections officer, declining to exercise supplemental jurisdiction. Id. at 445. We affirmed, highlighting that
Federal district courts in Tennessee have echoed this point, noting that it “is
Knox County argues that Gregory is entirely inapplicable, contending that it “cannot be read as creating a categorical rule precluding supplemental jurisdiction over TGTLA claims in every case.” True, Gregory creates no categorical bar—or requirement. Gregory simply holds that it is valid, under
Knox County also posits that declining to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over TGTLA claims after dismissing federal civil rights claims will lead to procedural maneuvering that will deprive Tennessee governmental entities of a meaningful opportunity to assert sovereign immunity. But denials of motions to dismiss that assert sovereign immunity are immediately appealable as collateral orders. Town of Smyrna v. Mun. Gas Auth. of Georgia, 723 F.3d 640, 645 (6th Cir. 2013); Kelly v. Great Seneca Fin. Corp., 447 F.3d 944, 948 (6th Cir. 2006). That provides an appropriate opportunity for Tennessee governmental entities to litigate and vindicate any sovereign immunity they can validly assert.
And that remains a secondary issue because the Tennessee Court of Appeals has already threaded the needle on this argument:
[W]e are . . . unpersuaded by Appellant‘s argument that because the district court dismissed Appellant‘s federal claims at the summary judgment stage, there were no civil rights violations, and
section 29-20-205(2) [the civil rights exception] is thereby inapplicable. Appellant asserts in his brief that “the [f]ederal [c]ourt specifically found, based on the [d]efendants[‘] [m]otions, that there were no ‘civil-rights’ violations.” Respectfully, we disagree. Nothing in the language ofsection 29-20-205(2) indicates that there must be an express finding that a civil rights violation occurred in order for the exception to apply. Indeed, immunity offered bysection 29-20-205 is broad, preserving immunityfor negligence claims so long as the “injury arises out of ... civil rights.” Tenn. Code Ann. § 29-20-205(2) . Here, there is no dispute that Appellant originally claimed that his injuries arose from violations of his civil rights . . . As such, the district court never concluded that the injuries alleged by Appellant did not sound in civil rights; rather, the district court simply concluded that Appellant failed to put forth sufficient evidence at the summary judgment stage to proceed with his action. Moreover, none of the cases discussed herein indicate thatsection 29-20-205(2) requires the claimant to be successful in his or her civil rights claim in order for the civil rights exception to apply to corresponding state law claims. As such, Appellant‘s argument in this regard is simply without basis.
Cochran, 586 S.W.3d at 919–20; see also Siler, 591 S.W.3d at 97.
This is very similar to the situation presented here. When confronting issues of state law, we view intermediate state appellate courts’ decisions as persuasive “unless it is shown that the state‘s highest court would decide the issue differently,” and no such showing has been made here. In re Dow Corning Corp., 419 F.3d 543, 549 (6th Cir. 2005). Cochran and cases like it counsel a particular course of action: the district court may decline to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over TGTLA cases, leaving it to the Tennessee courts to decide those claims in the first instance. As in Cochran, it could be that once in state court, TGTLA claims that arose from the same set of facts as the federal civil rights claims decided in federal court are unlikely to succeed. But as Cochran and cases like it indicate, Tennessee‘s courts are best situated to resolve that question. Thus, under governing precedent, the district court did not abuse its discretion by declining to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over Plaintiffs’ TGTLA claims.
Knox County also contends that the district court‘s order denying its first motion to dismiss (asserting sovereign immunity on the TGTLA claims because they arose from his civil rights claims) is unduly prejudicial because collateral estoppel will prevent it from litigating that issue in state court. That September 2018 order stated:
But the Court has no need to determine whether Mr. Devereux‘s negligence claim arises out of his
§ 1983 claim because it has already concluded that his§ 1983 claim requires dismissal, leaving no civil-rights claim standing against Knox County. Without an existing civil-rights claim from which the negligence claim against Knox County can “directly flow,” the negligence claim cannot come within subsection 29-20-205(2)‘s civil-rights exception. The viability of this claim now simply depends on whether Mr. Devereux has pleaded sufficient facts under each of the elements that comprises a negligence claim under Tennessee law .... Knox County, however, does not challenge the sufficiency of the allegations as they pertain to the elements of Mr. Devereux‘s negligence claim itself. The Court therefore offers no opinion as to whether Mr. Devereux states a plausible negligence claim under Tennessee law, and it will allow this claim to survive dismissal.
(R. 75 at PageID 551 (emphasis added))
In its later order of September 11, 2019, the district court described its previous order:
[T]he Court dismissed Mr. Devereux‘s municipal liability claim against Knox County, but it declined also to dismiss Mr. Devereux‘s negligence claim against Knox County under the TGTLA‘s civil-rights
exception, observing that, under Tennessee law, a TGTLA claim could potentially stand alone—that is, without an accompanying civil-rights claim under § 1983 .
(R. 136 at PageID 1405)
At the time of its decision on Knox County‘s first motion to dismiss, the district court did not have the benefit of the decision of the Tennessee Court of Appeals in Cochran. By the time the district court entered its order of September 11, 2019, Cochran had been published, but the district court did not address it. This timing notwithstanding, “[t]he general rule . . . is that an appellate court must apply the law in effect at the time it renders its decision.” Henderson v. United States, 568 U.S. 266, 271 (2013) (second alteration in original) (quoting Thorpe v. Hous. Auth., 393 U.S. 268, 281 (1969)).
Cochran suggests that the district court‘s statement—that the civil rights exception can only apply if a civil rights claim is currently pending—was erroneous. The court was correct that after it dismissed Devereux‘s municipal liability claim against Knox County, no civil rights claims were pending. But under Cochran, the issue is whether the claims “did not sound in civil rights,” and the presence of a civil rights claim is not strictly necessary for the civil rights exception to apply to parallel TGTLA claims. Cochran, 586 S.W.3d at 920. Given the district court‘s now-incorrect statement of law, concern regarding collateral estoppel in subsequent proceedings is justified because “even an erroneous judgment is entitled to preclusive effect as long as all the other prerequisites have been met.” Mullins v. State, 294 S.W.3d 529, 537 n.3 (Tenn. 2009). And here, when the mandate in this case becomes effective, the issue will have been fully “actually raised, litigated, and decided on the merits” in the earlier proceeding (this case), with the decision made final, and with Knox County having “had a full and fair opportunity” to argue the matter. Id. at 535.
The best approach on this record, then, is to give the Tennessee courts a fresh opportunity to consider whether Plaintiffs’ TGTLA claims against Knox County “did not sound in civil rights,” Cochran, 586 S.W.3d at 920, per the Tennessee legislature‘s strong preference. We therefore vacate the rationale of the district court‘s 2018 order on Knox County‘s first motion to dismiss regarding the TGTLA claim (R. 75 at PageID 551), and do so in order to prevent any issue of collateral estoppel in state court based on this aspect of the district court‘s reasoning. We also vacate the part of the district court‘s order of September 11, 2019 (R. 136 at PageID 1404-06), which relies on that aspect of the district court‘s 2018 order. We do not disturb the remainder of the district court‘s order of September 11, 2019.
C. Motion to Certify
Tennessee, like other states, invites federal courts of appeals to certify questions of law, which its Supreme Court may answer at its discretion. Tenn. Ct. R. 23(1). The certifying court must “determine[] that, in a proceeding before it, there are questions of [Tennessee] law ... which will be determinative of the cause and as to which it appears to the certifying court there is no controlling precedent in the decisions of the Supreme Court of Tennessee.” Id. Tennessee‘s rule mirrors our explanation that certification “is a matter within the discretion of the court” and is “most appropriate when the question is new and state law is unsettled.” State Auto Prop. & Cas. Ins. Co. v. Hargis, 785 F.3d 189, 194 (6th Cir. 2015) (quoting Transamerica Ins. Co. v. Duro Bag Mfg. Co., 50 F.3d 370, 372 (6th Cir. 1995)). We do “not trouble our sister state courts every time an arguably unsettled question of state law comes across our desks.” Id. (quoting Pennington v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 553 F.3d 447, 450 (6th Cir. 2009)). Instead, “[w]hen we see a reasonably clear and principled course, we will seek to follow it ourselves“; “[t]he state court need not have addressed the exact question, so long as well-established principles exist to govern a decision.” Id. Certain procedural concerns matter when deciding a motion to certify, including that “the appropriate time for a party to seek certification of a state-law issue is before, not after, the district court has resolved the issue.” Id.
Certification of the question the parties have proposed is not warranted here. As discussed above, there exists sufficient Tennessee appellate case law addressing questions similar to the one the parties seek to certify. The broad ruling that the parties would have the Tennessee Supreme Court make is not necessary to resolve this case. Moreover, given that the Tennessee legislature strongly prefers that Tennessee courts adjudicate TGTLA claims (and matters of Tennessee law in general), there is no need to impose the delays that would result from invoking the certification procedure when the option of letting the parties litigate this issue in Tennessee courts alone is readily available.
III. CONCLUSION
For the reasons discussed above, we VACATE the portion of the district court‘s 2018 order denying Knox County‘s first motion to dismiss the Devereuxs’ TGTLA claims only as to its rationale regarding the TGTLA negligence claim and also VACATE the portion of the district court‘s order of September 11, 2019, that relied on the vacated part of its 2018 order. We AFFIRM the district court‘s judgment in all other respects, and DENY the parties’ joint motion to certify.