Opinion
No. X02 CV 04-4002555-S
March 31, 2005
RULING ON MOTIONS TO DISMISS
The plaintiffs, Broadus Bell, Sr. and Mattie Bell, who are the parents and coadministrators of the estate of James Bell, bring this ten-count action against the State of Connecticut, the department of mental health and addiction services, the Whiting Forensic Division of the Connecticut Valley Hospital ("Whiting"), and numerous state officials and employees (collectively, "the defendants"). The plaintiffs allege that James Bell died as a result of improper restraints and other actions by the defendants while Bell was civilly committed at Whiting. The defendants have filed two motions to dismiss portions of the complaint. The issues are 1) whether General Statutes § 17a-550, a provision in the patient's bill of rights, authorizes a cause of action against state employees in their individual capacity, and 2) whether the individual defendants are entitled to qualified immunity from suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 on the ground that the asserted right of parents to maintain a relationship with an adult child was not clearly established.
At oral argument, the plaintiffs clarified that counts one, two, and ten name only individual defendants in their individual capacities and not any state entities or actors in their official capacities, thus mooting the defendants' additional argument that sovereign immunity bars these claims.
I
The defendants contend that the patient's bill of rights, General Statutes § 17a-540 et seq., does not authorize a cause of action against individual state defendants sued in their individual capacities, as the plaintiffs have alleged in counts three through eight of the operative December 22, 2004 revised complaint. The key provision is General Statutes § 17a-550, which provides: "Any person aggrieved by a violation of Sections 17-540 to 17-549, inclusive, may petition the superior court within whose jurisdiction the person is or resides for appropriate relief including temporary and permanent injunctions, or may bring a civil action for damages."
In Mahoney v. Lensink, 213 Conn. 548, 569 A.2d 518 (1990), our Supreme Court held that the predecessor to General Statutes § 17a-550 abrogated the state's sovereign immunity and allowed a voluntary patient in a state mental facility to sue the state or its commissioners in their official capacities. Id., at 555-62. Although Mahoney did not resolve the precise issue here, its reasoning necessarily points the way. The Mahoney Court observed that the genesis for the patients' bill of rights was "the legislative concern for the fair treatment of the mental patients" and, in particular, "the then prevailing conditions at state mental health facilities." Id., 556, 559. The legislation in fact coincided with a task force report on the substandard practices at the Fairfield Hills state hospital. See id., 560-62. The Court also observed that "because the patients' bill of rights is remedial in nature, its provisions should be liberally construed in favor of the class sought to be benefitted." Id., 556. The Court concluded that, although the predecessor to § 17a-550 did not contain an express waiver of sovereign immunity, it was a "necessary implication of the purposes sought to be served by the enactment of the patients' bill of rights that the legislature intended to provide a direct cause of action against the state and thus to waive its sovereign immunity." Id., 558.
General Statutes § 17-206k, which has now been transferred to General Statutes § 17a-550 provided:
Any person aggrieved by a violation of Sections 17-206a to 17-206j, inclusive, may petition the superior court within whose jurisdiction the person is or resides for appropriate relief, including temporary and permanent injunctions, or may bring a civil action for damages.
Mahoney v. Lensink, supra, 213 Conn. 550 n. 1.
If § 17a-550 permits suits against the state in its official capacity, despite the absence of an express waiver of sovereign immunity, then it would be surprising if the statute does not also authorize suits against state officials sued in their individual capacities, for whom there is no special requirement of an express waiver. The ultimate inquiry, of course, is one of statutory construction. In conducting statutory interpretation, the court must "look to the words of the statute itself, to the legislative history and circumstances surrounding its enactment, to the legislative policy it was designed to implement, and to its relationship to existing legislation and common law principles governing the same subject matter . . ." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Bender v. Bender, 258 Conn. 733, 741, 785 A.2d 197 (2001). The most important factor, however, is "the language of the statute . . ." State v. Courchesne, 262 Conn. 537, 563, 816 A.2d 562 (2003). Cf. Public Acts 2003, No. 03-154 (providing that "[t]he meaning of a statute shall, in the first instance, be ascertained from the text of the statute itself and its relationship to other statutes.").
Section 17a-550 is entitled "Remedies of aggrieved persons." The language of the statute — "[a]ny person aggrieved by a violation of Sections 17a-540 to 17a-549 . . . may bring a civil action for damages" — is without exception or limitation. There is no support in the language of the statute for the defendants' contention that the statute excludes state defendants sued individually.
Further, interpreting the statute to apply to individual capacity suits against state employees is consistent with the statutory purpose, history, and applicable principles of construction. Allowing a right of action against state employees in their individual capacity certainly furthers the historical goal of remedying conditions in state mental hospitals. It is only logical to conclude that holding individual state employees financially accountable for their own wrongdoing is likely to be as least as effective in deterring that wrongdoing as holding the state itself responsible. Moreover, as Mahoney held, the remedial purpose of the statute calls for a liberal interpretation, and the broad, unqualified language of the statute readily allows for an interpretation that permits actions against individual state defendants.
The defendants express the concern that state defendants will be burdened by additional lawsuits or legal claims. But, as in this ease, they are already subject to suit individually under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 or, in other cases, for intentional torts. Further, state employees retain the protection of General Statutes § 4-165, which affords them immunity unless their actions were "wanton, reckless or malicious."
In pertinent part, § 4-165 provides:
No state officer or employee shall be personally liable for damage or injury, not wanton, reckless or malicious, caused in the discharge of his duties or within the scope of his employment.
In combination, then, §§ 17a-550 and 4-165 mean that a person can sue a state employee in his individual capacity for violations of the patient's bill of rights, but only for actions that are "wanton, reckless or malicious." In this case, the defendants do not dispute that the allegations of the complaint, construed in favor of the plaintiffs as required on a motion to dismiss, see Faulkner v. United Technologies Corp., 240 Conn. 576, 580, 693 A.2d 293 (1997), state a case of "wanton, reckless or malicious" conduct. Accordingly, the court denies the motion to dismiss counts three through eight.
The court thus agrees with the ultimate result, although not the phrasing, of various Superior Court decisions that have held that "[t]here is no personal or individual liability of state employees created by 17a-550 . . . [but that], [u]nder § 4-165, . . . a state employee may be liable in his individual capacity for a violation of 17a-550 if the employee's actions are wanton, reckless or malicious." Zigmund v. Young, Superior Court, judicial district of Middlesex, Docket No. 088324 (November 23, 1999) (Arena, J.). Under either approach, the combined effect of §§ 17a-550 and 4-165 is similar to that of General Statutes § 19a-24, which governs claims for damages against the commissioners of public health and mental retardation and related state officials. Section 19a-24 (a) contains what appears to be a limited waiver of sovereign immunity for official capacity suits. Section 19a-24(c) then provides that no employee or staff member of these commissioners "shall be held personally liable in any civil action for damages on account of any official act or omission not wanton or wilful . . ."
II
In count ten, the plaintiffs allege under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 that the defendants deprived them of "their right to maintain a familial relationship with James, and of their liberty interest in James's companionship and society, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution." (Complaint, count ten, ¶ 3.) The defendants move to dismiss on the ground of qualified immunity.
Qualified immunity from § 1983 liability is available to state officials "insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known." Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982). The constitutional right in question must be identified "at the appropriate level of specificity before a court can determine if it was clearly established." Wilson v. Layne, 526 U.S. 603, 615 (1999). In this case, a fair description of the constitutional right alleged in the complaint is the claimed fourteenth amendment right of a parent to the companionship of an adult child.
Although the United States Supreme Court held generally in Roberts v. U.S. Jaycees, 468 U.S. 609 (1984), that there is a fourteenth amendment right that protects "choices to enter into and maintain certain intimate human relationships," id., 617-12, it has never addressed the constitutional right of a parent to the companionship of an adult child in anything approximating the context of this case. In determining whether the law is clearly established in instances when the United States Supreme Court has not spoken, our courts "generally give special consideration to the decisions of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals." Schnabel v. Tyler, 230 Conn. 735, 743, 646 A.2d 152 (1994). In Patel v. Searles, 305 F.3d 130 (2d Cir. 2002), cert. denied, 538. U.S. 907 (2003), the Second Circuit held that qualified immunity did not apply in a case in which police officers allegedly "[engaged] in an extended public and private defamatory misinformation campaign to destroy a family, hoping that those tactics might produce incriminating leads in a murder investigation." Id., 140. Although the case involved an adult plaintiff who alleged that the officers had impaired relations with his father and siblings, Patel is nonetheless distinguishable due to the allegations, which are not present in the case at bar, that the officers' conduct "was intentionally directed at his family." Id., 137.
The plaintiffs focus on Patel's additional statement that "this Circuit has never held that a challenged action must be directed at a protected relationship for it to infringe on the right to intimate association." Id. This statement is dicta in view of the allegations that the officers intentionally directed their actions at disrupting the plaintiff's family relations. The court cannot say that dicta in a Second Circuit case makes the law clearly established, especially given the decisions of other circuits discussed below. Further, as support for the dicta in question, the Second Circuit cited its prior decision in Adler v. Pataki, 185 F.3d 35, 43-44 (2d Cir. 1999), in which the court focused on the first amendment right of intimate association in cases related to speech and petition rather than the fourteenth amendment liberty interests implicated here. See Patel, supra, 305 F.3d 137; Pizzuto v. County of Nassau, 240 F.Sup.2d 203, 212-13 (E.D.N.Y. 2002). Thus, even the dicta of Patel does not clearly establish a fourteenth amendment right of intimate association between a parent and an adult child.
As even the plaintiffs concede, decisions of other federal circuits may indicate whether the law was clearly established. See Varrone v. Bilotti, 123 F.3d 75, 79 (2d Cir. 1997); Plaintiffs' Brief at 12 n. 3. The District of Columbia Circuit has held that "there is no due process right to the company of an adult child who is independent," Butera v. District of Columbia, 235 F.3d 637, 641 (D.C. Cir. 2001), while the First Circuit has held that "a stepfather and siblings have [no] constitutionally protected interest in the companionship of their adult son and brother . . ." Ortiz v. Burgos, 807 F.2d 6, 7 (1st Cir. 1986). Both of these cases involved the death of an adult due to the alleged actions or inactions of state officials. These cases are thus directly on point. It is true that, in another factually similar case, the Seventh Circuit held that parents retain a constitutionally protected interest in the companionship of independent adult child. See Bell v. City of Milwaukee, 746 F.2d 1205, 1245 (7th Cir. 1984). But this Circuit split, in the absence of a definitive Second Circuit ruling, merely confirms that the law on this point is not clearly established. Accordingly, the defendants are entitled to qualified immunity on count ten.
Although in Butera the District of Columbia Circuit framed its holding in terms of an "independent" adult as opposed to a minor child, Butera v. District of Columbia, supra, 235 F.3d 641, 654-56, there is nothing in the present case to suggest that the plaintiff's decedent was not an independent adult or that he was functionally equivalent to a minor child. Therefore, Butera is not distinguishable on this ground.
III
The court grants the motions to dismiss on count ten and denies the motions to dismiss counts three through eight.
It is so ordered,
Carl J. Schuman Judge, Superior Court