MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

JOHN HOLSCHUH, Senior District Judge

On November 11, 2004, William R. Harris, Jr. filed this action against the City of Circleville; Director of the Ohio Department of Public Safety, Kenneth Morckel; Officer Glenn Richard Williams, II; Officer Phillip Roar; Officer Robert Gaines; Trooper Heather R. McManes; Trooper R.A. Cooper; Circleville Emergency Medical Services ("Circleville EMS"); and Circleville EMS employees Lisa A. Swift and D. Sharp. All of Mr. Harris' claims relate to incidents that occurred during and subsequent to his April 3, 2004 arrest on a charge of operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated.

First, Mr. Harris asserts claims of civil rights violations, excessive force, false imprisonment, and intentional infliction of emotional distress against defendants City of Circleville and three of its police officers, Officer Williams, Officer Roar, and Officer Gaines. Mr. Harris asserts the same claims, as well as a claim of defamation, against two Ohio State Highway Patrol officers, defendants Trooper McManes and Trooper Cooper. Next, Mr. Harris asserts claims of negligent hiring and retention against the City of Circleville and Mr. Morckel. Finally, Mr. Harris asserts a negligence claim against the Circleville EMS department and two of its employees, who were not involved in his arrest, but who transported him to the hospital after events which occurred while he was in police custody.

At the preliminary pretrial conference, the Magistrate Judge asked the parties to brief the issue of whether the Court may properly exercise supplemental jurisdiction over Mr. Harris' state law negligence claim against defendants Circleville EMS, Ms. Swift, and D. Sharp. Mr. Harris and the EMS defendants both filed memoranda concerning jurisdiction. For the following reasons, the Court concludes that it does not have supplemental jurisdiction over Mr. Harris' negligence claim.

I.

The following statement of facts is taken from the complaint. Mr. Harris alleges that on the night of April 3, 2004, while he was driving toward Chillicothe with his girlfriend, he was pulled over for speeding by Ohio State Trooper McManes. Trooper McManes administered a portable breath test and field sobriety tests. Having determined that Mr. Harris was "right at the legal limit," Trooper McManes decided not to charge Mr. Harris with operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated (OMVI), but told him that he could continue his trip toward Chillicothe if his girlfriend drove. While Trooper McManes was preparing the speeding citation, Trooper R.A. Cooper arrived on the scene. Trooper Cooper told Mr. Harris that he was going to charge him with OMVI. He then arrested Mr. Harris and took him to a location in Circleville (possibly the Circleville police department). Mr. Harris alleges that when he arrived there, he was handcuffed and taken to a jail cell. While he was still handcuffed, he claims that he was beaten by police officers and suffered temporary paralysis as well as permanent injuries. After about two hours, the Circleville EMS arrived. As EMS employees Ms. Swift and D. Sharp were in the process of taking Mr. Harris to the hospital, Mr. Harris alleges that they negligently dropped him from a stretcher. It is on the basis of these facts that the pending matter will be decided.

II.

Mr. Harris contends that his federal § 1983 civil rights claims and his state law negligence claim are part of the same case or controversy because they derive from a "common nucleus of operative facts." Ahearn v. Charter Township of Bloomfield, 100 F.3d 451, 454-55 (6th Cir. 1996). Circleville EMS suggests that the plain language of 28 U.S.C. § 1367 permits this Court to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the claims in question. Accordingly, it does not oppose the Court's exercise of that jurisdiction. The remaining parties have not taken a position on the jurisdictional issue.

Supplemental jurisdiction is governed by 28 U.S.C. § 1367. Subsection (a) provides that in any action over which a district court has original jurisdiction, the district court may maintain jurisdiction over all other claims made in the action as long as those claims are "so related to claims in the action within such original jurisdiction that they form part of the same case or controversy under Article III of the United States Constitution." Supplemental jurisdiction serves to moderate between the restrictions imposed by the doctrine of limited jurisdiction and the more expansive principle that combining federal and state law claims can serve notions of judicial economy and fairness. See Seals v. Quarterly County Court, 526 F.2d 216, 220 (6th Cir. 1975). Without supplemental jurisdiction, a federal court would not have jurisdiction to hear a state law claim that is related to a federal claim properly before the court under 28 U.S.C. § 1331. Conversely, supplemental jurisdiction "allows a plaintiff to include claims over which a federal court would not normally have jurisdiction" so long as the facts of the two claims constitute a single or controversy under Article III of the Constitution. Voyticky v. Village of Timberlake, Ohio, ___ F.3d ___, ___ (6th Cir. June 22, 2005).

The test set forth in United Mine Workers v. Gibbs, 383 U.S. 715 (1966), sets the limits of a federal court's supplemental jurisdiction over state law claims. See Aschinger v. Columbus Showcase Co., 934 F.2d 1402, 1412 (6th Cir. 1991). In Gibbs, the Supreme Court held that a federal court may exercise jurisdiction over a state law claim only if the federal and state claims derive from a "common nucleus of operative fact." Id. at 725. Further, the federal claim must have "substance sufficient to confer subject matter jurisdiction on the court" and the plaintiff's claims must be "such that he would ordinarily be expected to try them all in one judicial proceeding." Id. The decision to exercise supplemental jurisdiction is discretionary "and includes consideration of such factors as judicial economy, convenience, and fairness to the litigants." Kauffman v. Allied Signal, Inc., Autolite Div., 970 F.2d 178, 187 (6th Cir. 1992).

In cases where a court has exercised supplemental jurisdiction over a plaintiff's state law claims, the determination that jurisdiction is proper is based on the similarity between the operative facts of the federal and state law claims. For example, in Harper v. AutoAlliance Int'l, Inc., 392 F.3d 195 (6th Cir. 2004), the plaintiff alleged both a federal Title VII claim and state civil rights claim. The court exercised supplemental jurisdiction over the state law claim because both claims arose from "the identical allegation that Defendants retaliated against [the plaintiff] for filing a complaint with the EEOC." Id. at 209. By contrast, in Salei v. Boardwalk Regency Corp., 913 F.Supp. 993 (E.D. Mich. 1996), the court found that it did not have supplemental jurisdiction. In that case, the federal claim arose under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act while the state law claims were for breach of a settlement agreement and a violation of a prior state court order. In concluding that it did not have supplemental jurisdiction, the court stressed the difference in operative facts between the federal claim and state law claims by noting that "two separate factual inquiries are required in order to litigate the federal versus the state claims." Id. at 999.

In the instant action, Mr. Harris relies on Feinthel v. Payne, et al., 121 Fed. Appx. 60 (6th Cir. 2004) (unreported) to support his position that the Court's exercise of supplemental jurisdiction would be proper here. In Feinthel, police officers confronted an individual (Mr. Feinthel) who was allegedly harassing his neighbors. Although Mr. Feinthel told police that he did not have a gun, when he turned around the police observed what they perceived to be a gun tucked into his pants. Consequently, they tackled him and arrested him. In his complaint, Mr. Feinthel pleaded both federal civil rights claims and Ohio tort claims against the officers. Id. at 61-62. In passing, the Court of Appeals noted that the lower court had jurisdiction over the state law claims pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1367(a). Id.

The facts in Feinthel are readily distinguishable from the facts in the instant action. In Feinthel, the plaintiff was tackled by the police and sustained injuries. All of Mr. Feinthel's claims, both federal and state, arose from that single incident and were asserted against the same defendants who allegedly violated his federal constitutional rights. By contrast, while the incidents Mr. Harris alleges all occurred within several hours of one another, they are bound together by little else. Mr. Harris attempts to tie the events together by claiming that the EMS workers' conduct is "bound to the individual officers' conduct in that Defendant E.M.T. acquiesced to Plaintiff's inhumane treatment by joking and laughing at the injuries caused by the officers." Def.'s Mem. of Jurisdiction at 5.

The Court cannot agree that the events surrounding the negligence claim are sufficiently related to the § 1983 claims as a result of the EMS workers' alleged joking and laughing. The instant action is more akin to Salei than to Harper orFeinthel. Simply put, the facts Mr. Harris must set out in order to prove his negligence claim against Circleville EMS and its employees are entirely different from the facts he must set out to prove his § 1983 case against the police officers. The claims against the officers involve a factual determination of whether the arresting officers had sufficient information to make an OMVI arrest, whether Mr. Harris did anything to justify use of force against him, and how much force the officers applied. By contrast, the only facts pertinent to his negligence claim against the EMS defendants relate to how he was secured on the stretcher and what caused him to be dropped, along with any injuries he may have suffered as a proximate result of the EMS defendants' actions. Consequently, the § 1983 claim over which the Court has original jurisdiction and the state law negligence claim are not "so related" that they form part of the same case or controversy. 28 U.S.C. § 1367(a). Therefore, the Court concludes that it does not have supplemental jurisdiction over Mr. Harris' negligence claim against defendants Circleville EMS, Ms. Swift, and D. Sharp. That claim will be dismissed without prejudice.

III.

Based on the foregoing, Mr. Harris' negligence claim against defendants Circleville EMS, Ms. Swift, and D. Sharp is DISMISSED WITHOUT PREJUDICE for want of jurisdiction.