Christopher S. STRECKENBACH, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Charles VANDENSEN, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
No. 16-1695
United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.
Argued August 8, 2017. Decided August 21, 2017.
868 F.3d 594
The judgment of the district court is reversed, and the case is remanded with instructions to dismiss without prejudice to raising a Title II claim in state court.
Abigail C.S. Potts, Attorney, Office of the Attorney Gеneral, Wisconsin Department of Justice, Madison, WI, for Defendant-Appellee.
Before WOOD, Chief Judge, and BAUER and EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judges.
EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge.
In November 2014 Christopher Streckenbach, an inmate of Redgranite Correctional Institution in Wisconsin, left two boxes of personal property for his son to pick up. Under the prison‘s policy, property on deposit had to be collected within 30 days. If that did not occur, thе prison‘s staff was to ship the property to someone the inmate had designated. But if the inmate‘s account did not have enough money to cover shipping costs, the property was to be destroyed. The policy warned inmates that they were responsible for ensuring that their accounts had enough money on the 30th day. Streckenbach‘s son did not retrieve the boxes within the allotted time, and Charles VanDensen, the sergeant in charge of the mailroom, calculated a shipping cost of about $9.50, some $2 more than Streckenbach had available. VanDensen had the prоperty destroyed. Streckenbach could have covered the shipping costs had he planned for this expense and anticipated the possibility that his son would not appear.
Streckenbach contends in this suit under
The district court granted summary judgment to VanDensen, giving two reasons. 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 36994 (E.D. Wis. Mar. 21, 2016). The first is that the complaint did not specify the legal theories that Streckenbaсh relied on to oppose the motion for summary judgment, and the second is that VanDensen has qualified immunity. Neither of those reasons suffices. Complaints need not plead law or spell out theоries of liability. Johnson v. Shelby, — U.S. —, 135 S.Ct. 346, 190 L.Ed.2d 309 (2014). And immunity depends on legal uncertainty. The proposition that property owners, including inmates, are entitled to notice before their property is destroyed has been established for a long time. See, e.g., Zinermon v. Burch, 494 U.S. 113, 132, 110 S.Ct. 975, 108 L.Ed.2d 100 (1990); Montanez v. Secretary, Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, 773 F.3d 472, 484 (3d Cir. 2014).
The problem with holding VanDensen liable is different: it is that he was not responsible for giving notice. The pоlicy called for general notice by posting and specific notice by calculating shipping costs when property was delivered for pickup. We must accept Streckenbaсh‘s contention that both means of notice failed in his situation. But that failure cannot be blamed on VanDensen. He was not respon
Streckenbach maintains that VanDensen did make one mistake: when looking over the paperwork, he should have noticеd that the file lacked a shipping-cost calculation made when the boxes were received; from this absence, Streckenbach insists, VanDensen should have inferred that the guard who received the property failed to alert Streckenbach to the 2013 policy‘s workings. That‘s not an inevitable inference. VanDensen might have thought that the guard who received the boxes had notified Strеckenbach but failed to fill out all forms. It does not matter which inference is appropriate—or indeed whether VanDensen noticed, or should have noticed, the omission. For this aspect of Streckenbach‘s argument accuses VanDensen of negligence, and negligent bureaucratic errors do not violate the Due Process Clause. Daniels v. Williams, 474 U.S. 327, 336, 106 S.Ct. 662, 88 L.Ed.2d 662 (1986).
Instead, the remedy (the “process due“) for careless blunders that destroy property is litigation, under state law, to recover the property‘s value. See, e.g., Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S. 527, 101 S.Ct. 1908, 68 L.Ed.2d 420 (1981), applied by Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U.S. 517, 530-36, 104 S.Ct. 3194, 82 L.Ed.2d 393 (1984), to the intentional but mistaken destruction of prisoners’ property. And that litigation need not be against the person who made the mistake, a person who might have immunity as a matter of state law even if not as a matter of federal law. See
Streckеnbach‘s complaint included as defendants several state employees in addition to VanDensen. The district court dismissed all of the additional defendants at the screening stage, ruling that they were not responsible for the mistakes made by the prison‘s staff and could not be held vicariously liable for those errors. Streckenbach asks us to remand to allow further proceedings against the defendants who were warden, and deputy warden, of Redgranite in 2013, when the policy was adopted. Administrators might be deemed liable for the consequences of an unconsti
Counsel for Streckenbach told us at oral argument that the warden could be personally liable because it was foreseeable that subordinates would make operational errors. But that‘s just an argument for vicarious liability. As we have already explained, the people who make the errors, not the people who devised the рolicy, are the ones responsible for those errors. Every policy, in and out of prison, can be undermined by operational gaffes. Applications for Social Security disability benefits mаy be denied erroneously, sometimes without hearings, but this does not imply personal liability for Members of Congress and Administrators of Social Security who devised the policies being misapplied. Zoning laws may be misunderstood and lawful development prevented, producing losses to property owners. People may engage in costly but unnecessary repairs when inspectors misread building codes. Yet these errors do not lead to liability for the persons who wrote the zoning laws or the building codes. See Vance, 701 F.3d at 203-05 (majority opinion), 209-10 (Wood, J., concurring).
We grant that some policies lead to more errors than others. The more сomplex the policy, the more occasions for something to go wrong. The 2013 policy may have been in that category, for it was replaced in 2015 with a simpler rule that remains in effect. Undеr the 2015 policy inmates who want to get rid of property have two options: ship it at their own expense or have it destroyed. The option to leave the property for pickup has been abolished. The new policy eliminates the risk that inmates will misunderstand their options, since they must pay shipping costs when they drop off the property. It also eliminates an option that some inmates found valuable. Whether the 2015 policy is beneficial for inmates on balance is not a question we need answer. All we hold today is that VanDensen, the prison‘s warden, and the deputy warden are not personally liable in damages under
AFFIRMED