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Heaton v. City of New York

United States District Court, S.D. New York
May 9, 2002
96 Civ. 1605 (RPP) (S.D.N.Y. May. 9, 2002)

Opinion

96 Civ. 1605 (RPP)

May 9, 2002

Bruce A. Young, Esq., Bill Mossman, Esq., New York, NY, Counsel for Plaintiff.

Patricia B. Miller, Esq., Mario G. Frangiose, New York, NY, Counsel for City of New York Law Department, Defendants.


OPINION AND ORDER


Following a jury trial resulting in a verdict for Defendants City of New York, Monique Gibbs, Odessa Collins, and Barbara Battle and against Plaintiffs Daniel Heaton ("Daniel") and Hardaway Heaton ("Hardaway"), Plaintiffs renew, pursuant to Rule 50 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, their motion for judgment as a matter of law. Plaintiffs also move, pursuant to Rule 59 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, for the Court to order a new trial on the grounds that the jury reached a seriously erroneous result and the verdict was a miscarriage of justice.

Background

In approximately December of 1987, Hardaway Heaton and his wife, Tammy, separated. (Trial Transcript ("Tr.") at 362.) The couple's two children, Daniel and Dawn, continued to reside with their mother following their parents' separation. (Tr. at 361-63.) Daniel was three years old when Hardaway moved out.

Hardaway visited with the children regularly for the first couple of months following the separation, and more intermittenly through August or September, 1988. (Tr. at 363-64.) After September 1988, Hardaway saw Tammy, Daniel and Dawn on only one other occasion prior to July 1994: at a donut shop in Pelham Bay around Christmas of 1988. (Tr. at 365-66.)

On July 8, 1991, Daniel and Dawn were removed from their mother's care by the Bureau of Child Welfare (now called the Administration for Children's Services ("ACS")) of the City of New York. Following the removal, Daniel and Dawn remained in foster care for some years. Hardaway did not receive notice of Daniel and Dawn's removal from their mother's custody or placement in foster care during 1991, 1992, or 1993. In July 1994, Hardaway received a letter from St. Dominic's Home, a private agency contracted by the City of New York to provide foster care services, notifying him of Daniel and Dawn's placement in foster care.

Soon thereafter, Hardaway began to visit with his children and expressed a desire to obtain custody of Daniel. In February 1995, Daniel began to live with Hardaway pursuant to a trial discharge. In May 1995, Daniel was discharged to Hardaway's full custody.

In March 1996, Hardaway and Daniel filed suit against Defendants. In April 1996, Hardaway brought Daniel to Elmhurst Psychiatric Hospital for a voluntary hospitalization. (Tr. at 384.) Daniel remained in the hospital for seven months. (Tr. at 385.) Following his discharge from the hospital, Daniel was placed in a therapeutic foster home. Up to this time, Daniel has not returned to live with Hardaway.

The Trial

Trial in this matter began on March 20, 2002. Following the dismissal of other claims in the case, Plaintiffs' remaining claims at trial were for violations of their civil rights pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Specifically, Plaintiffs alleged that Defendants Monique Gibbs, Odessa Collins, and Barbara Battle, case workers and/or supervisors for ACS, intentionally or recklessly failed to cause adequate steps to be taken to search for, locate, and notify Hardaway Heaton of his son's whereabouts and Family Court proceedings between July 8, 1991 and July 1994, thereby depriving Hardaway and Daniel of their constitutionally protected parent-child relationship without adequate procedural due process. Plaintiffs also alleged that the Social Services Administration of the City of New York ("SSA") had an official policy or custom of failure to train or supervise its employees that caused Gibbs, Collins, and Battle to fail to cause adequate steps to be taken to search for, locate, and notify Hardaway of Daniel's whereabouts and Family Court proceedings.

Defendants contested each of Plaintiffs' claims. Specifically, Defendants argued (1) that they had caused diligent searches to be made for Hardaway Heaton beginning in 1991 but were unsuccessful in their efforts prior to 1994 because they did not have Hardaway Heaton's social security number, and Hardaway Heaton did not reside at the address shown on Daniel Heaton's birth certificate or have a telephone listed under his name; (2) that the SSA did not have an official policy or custom of failure to train their case workers in their responsibilities to give notice to non-custodial, non-respondent parents of the whereabouts of their children and Family Court proceedings; and (3) that Hardaway and Daniel did not have a constitutionally protected parent-child relationship in July 1991. The basis, in part, for Defendants' assertion that Hardaway and Daniel did not have a protected parent-child relationship in July 1991 was that (a) Hardaway had had no contact with Daniel from the time that Daniel was four years old in December 1988 through the time Daniel was seven years old in July 1991 and had not made support payments to Tammy Heaton since December 1988; (b) Daniel had stated in a deposition in 1998 that he had no memory of Hardaway having lived with him before going into foster care (Tr. at 80); and (c) Daniel testified that, before he was placed in foster care, he had believed that his mother's subsequent boyfriend, Brad, was his father (Tr. at 84-85).

Daniel did testify at trial that "I had memories of [Hardaway] in my head. I never told anyone." (Tr. at 79.) He also testified that when Hardaway first came to see him "I recognized him a little bit. Not by my eyes but feelings were good towards him and it was very hard for me to recognize him. It was a long time." (Tr. at 83). He reiterated that "Like I said before, you cannot recognize someone after like seven years." (Tr. at 82).

Prior to the close of trial, the Court heard argument from the parties on whether Hardaway and Daniel had a constitutionally protected parent-child relationship as a matter of law. Plaintiffs argued that a marital, biological father has a constitutionally protected relationship with his children as a matter of law without regard to the factual circumstances. Defendants argued that a married, biological father could forfeit his right to a parent-child relationship by abandoning his child and that such a determination was a factual matter for the jury. The case law cited by Plaintiffs did not support their contention that a marital, biological father had an absolute right to a parent-child relationship under all circumstances. (Tr. at 821-25, 832-33.) The Court's review of relevant Supreme Court precedent indicated that the existence of a parent-child relationship is a mixed question of law and fact and that the Supreme Court had yet to rule on a similar fact situation. (Id.) The Court, therefore, resolved to submit to the jury the question of whether Daniel and Hardaway had a parent-child relationship in July 1991 to avoid the necessity of a retrial on this issue in this six year old case.

In so ruling, the Court made clear that, regardless of the jury's findings as to the existence or non-existence of a parent-child relationship in July 1991, it would require the jury to consider (1) whether Gibbs, Collins, or Battle had intentionally or recklessly failed to cause adequate steps to be taken to search for, locate, and notify Hardaway of his son's whereabouts and Family Court proceedings between July 8, 1991 and July 1994, and (2) whether an official policy or custom of SSA of failure to train and supervise their case workers had caused Gibbs, Collins, or Battle to fail to cause adequate steps to be taken to search for, locate, and notify Hardaway of his son's whereabouts and Family Court proceedings between July 8, 1991 and July 1994. (Tr. at 821-22.) The Court expressed to the parties that having the jury make a factual finding on the issue of whether a parent-child relationship existed between Hardaway and Daniel on July 8, 1991 would allow both parties to reserve their arguments for appeal. (Id.)

On March 26, 2000, the Court charged the jury and provided them with a verdict form consistent with the Court's earlier ruling. The jury returned an unanimous verdict in favor of Defendants finding (1) that Plaintiffs did not show by a preponderance of the evidence that Daniel had a parent-child relationship with Hardaway on July 8, 1991; (2) that Plaintiffs did not show by a preponderance of the evidence that Hardaway had a parent-child relationship with Daniel on July 8, 1991; (3) that Plaintiffs did not show by a preponderance of the evidence that Monique Gibbs, Odessa Collins, or Barbara Battle intentionally or recklessly failed to cause adequate steps to be taken to search for, locate, and notify Hardaway of his son's whereabouts and Family Court proceedings between July 8, 1991 and July 1994; and (4) that Plaintiffs did not show by a preponderance of the evidence that the Social Services Administration of the City of New York had an official policy or custom of failure to train or supervise its employees that caused Gibbs, Collins, or Barbara Battle to fail to cause adequate steps to be taken to search for, locate, and notify Hardaway of his son's whereabouts and Family Court proceedings between July 8, 1991 and July 1994.

Plaintiffs' Rule 50 Motion

Judgment as a matter of law "is reserved for those rare occasions when there is `such a complete absence of evidence supporting the verdict that the jury's finding could only have been the result o[f] sheer surmise and conjecture or the evidence must be so overwhelming that reasonable and fair minded persons could only have reached the opposite result.'"Sorlucco v. New York City Police Dept., 971 F.2d 864, 871 (2d Cir. 1992) (quoting Stubbs v. Dudley, 849 F.2d 83, 85 (2d Cir. 1988)). Plaintiffs argue that "the evidence when viewed most favorably to the non-movant City Defendants, and without considering credibility or weight, reasonably permits only a conclusion in Plaintiffs' favor that Defendants Gibbs, Collins, Battle, and the City of New York violated the procedural due process rights of Daniel Heaton and Hardaway Heaton." (Plaintiffs' Reply Decl. at 2.) The Court disagrees.

Violet Pitter, an adoption technician at St. Dominic's Home from May 1990 until July 1994, testified that: (1) she was responsible for doing diligent searches for missing parents of children who were in foster care (Tr. at 716); (2) diligent searches were initiated at the request of the case worker (Tr. at 716); (3) she received a request from a case worker in 1991 to do a diligent search for Hardaway Heaton (Tr. at 725); (4) she specifically recalled performing a search for Hardaway Heaton because the first name was an unusual name (Tr. at 726); (5) that, as part of the diligent search, she contacted, by letter, the New York State Office of Mental Health, Child Welfare Administration Public Assistance, the City of New York Department of Homeless Services, the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles, the New York State Department of Corrections, the New York City Department of Corrections, the New York City Department of Parole, the New York City Department of Probation, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the United States Army Records and Evaluation Center, the United States Marine Corps, the Naval Personnel Command, the United States Air Force Military Personnel Center, the United States Coast Guard Military Personnel Command, the United States Department of Veteran's Affairs, the New York City Housing Authority, the New York City Morgue, the New York City Missing Persons Bureau, the New York City Board of Elections, at least ten hospitals, and the Putative Father's Registry (Tr. at 721-22, 726-27); (6) she checked the New York City Telephone Directory for all five boroughs and called directory assistance (Tr. at 735-36); (7) no record of Hardaway Heaton was found during the search (Tr. at 727-28); (8) she communicated this information to the case worker (Tr. at 729); (9) she performed another diligent search for Hardaway Heaton in 1992 at the request of the St. Dominic's case worker (Tr. 730-31, 748-49); (10) she did not locate Hardaway Heaton during the 1992 search (Tr. at 731); (11) as part of the 1992 search, she sent a letter to Hardaway Heaton's address listed on Daniel Heaton's birth certificate (Tr. at 749); (13) she performed another diligent search for Hardaway Heaton in 1994 (Tr. at 732); (14) she could not remember how she had to come to receive Hardaway Heaton's address during that search, but sent a letter to Hardaway Heaton in July 1994 (Tr. at 764-65); and (15) that records documenting her diligent searches for Hardaway Heaton existed but were lost in 1995 when St. Dominic's Home moved its offices. (Tr. at 756-57.)

Undisputed evidence at trial revealed that Hardaway Heaton's name was not in the telephone directory for the years 1991-1995. (Tr. at 516-17, 538.)

Hardaway Heaton's testimony revealed that his wife had attempted to commit suicide on two occasions prior to their separation in 1987 (Tr. at 420) and that Hardaway had called the police in 1985 or 1986 because he suspected that his wife's brother had been sexually abusing Dawn (Tr. at 453-55). Hardaway testified that he had begun drinking heavily in 1987 when he left the marital home (Tr. at 373) and that he began abusing drugs by the summer of 1988 (Tr. at 476-77). Dr. Dudley, Plaintiff's medical expert, testified that Hardaway had told him that he was abusing drugs during the marriage and that the drug abuse contributed significantly to the deterioration of his marriage. (Tr. at 639.) Hardaway testified that he went into a residential drug and alcohol treatment center in 1989 (Tr. at 374) and, after completing treatment, he lived with a friend for several weeks (Tr. at 375-76, 481). Hardaway testified that he subsequently moved to an apartment on 45th Street in Astoria, Queens. (Tr. at 376) Hardaway Heaton previously signed an affidavit in 1999 where he stated that he had lived in 15-22 127th Street in 1990. (Tr. at 484.) At trial, Hardaway denied that that information was correct. (Tr. at 484.)

Monique Gibbs testified that: (1) she was the principal case worker on Daniel Heaton's case from 1991-1994 (Tr. at 116); (2) in July 1991, she learned from Tammy Heaton that Hardaway Heaton was Daniel and Dawn's father, but Tammy did not provide her with Hardaway's date of birth or social security number (Tr. at 122, 309); (3) she was present in Bronx Family Court on July 24, 1991 when Tammy Heaton informed Judge Fields that Hardaway Heaton was the father of Dawn and Daniel and that Hardaway's whereabouts were unknown (Tr. at 129-30); (4) she performed a clearance on Hardaway Heaton in July 1991; (Tr. at 123, 305-06); (5) the clearance on Hardaway Heaton "came up unknown" (Tr. at 197); (6) she informed her supervisor, Mr. Gus Quine, of the result of the clearance (Tr. at 197-98); (7) she informed the ACS attorney, Mr. Panusch, of the results of the clearance, and Mr. Panusch subsequently informed the courts (Tr. at 177); (8) she contacted the St. Dominic's case worker about performing a diligent search for Hardaway Heaton (Tr. at 181); (9) she obtained a copy of Daniel's birth certificate in September 1991 and forwarded it to the case worker at St. Dominic's Home (Tr. at 137); (10) she was informed, by way of a Uniform Case Record ("UCR") dated November 18, 1991 that "a diligent search will be initiated by St. Dominic's Home" (Tr. at 247); (11) she was aware, through the UCRs, that searches for Hardaway Heaton were being conducted by St. Dominic's Home, including a diligent search in 1992 (Tr. at 209, 247, 319); and (12) she received training in 1990 that, in cases where there was an absent parent, she was required to do a diligent search for the parent if ordered by the Court (Tr. at 156).

Ms. Gibbs testified that a clearance is performed by inputting the individual's name into a computer system called the State Central Registry. The ensuing search determines "whether the individual is known to the agency or to any other agency." Ms. Gibbs expressed some confusion regarding whether the all state agencies or all city agencies or only child abuse agencies are included in the search. (Tr. at 305-07.)

The testimony of Violet Pitter and Monique Gibbs supports the jury's findings that the plaintiffs had not shown by a preponderance of the evidence that (1) Monique Gibbs, Odessa Collins, or Barbara Battle intentionally or recklessly failed to cause adequate steps to be taken to search for, locate, and notify Hardaway of his son's whereabouts and Family Court proceedings between July 8, 1991 and July 1994, or (2) that the Social Services Administration of the City of New York had an official policy or custom of failure to train or supervise its employees that caused Gibbs, Collins, or Barbara Battle to fail to cause adequate steps to be taken to search for, locate, and notify Hardaway of his son's whereabouts and Family Court proceedings between July 8, 1991 and July 1994. Based on the existence of ample support in the record for the jury's findings, Plaintiff's motion for a directed verdict pursuant to Rule 50 is denied.

Because these findings were sufficient to support the jury's verdict in favor of Defendants, the Court will not analyze the factual support in the record for the jury's finding that no parent-child relationship existed between Daniel and Hardaway on June 8, 1991, though the evidence did support that jury finding if a marital, biological father has to establish that a parent child relationship existed. The undisputed evidence was that Hardaway Heaton failed to see or support his children for approximately three years prior to their placement in foster care. Though Hardaway Heaton testified that he was unable to locate his children during those years, he had a sufficient "suspicion" that the children were living in the Derimer Avenue apartment, where they were actually residing, that he went to the apartment on three occasions. (Tr. at 403.) Hardaway Heaton's testimony revealed that he had never contacted the police to file a missing persons report on his children, never contacted a Legal Aid attorney about steps that he might take to find his children, and never registered with the Putative Fathers Registry. (Tr. at 495.)

Plaintiffs' Rule 59 Motion

The "grant of a new trial motion is usually warranted only if it `is convinced that the jury has reached a seriously erroneous result or that the verdict is a miscarriage of justice.'" Sorlucco, 971 F.2d at 875. The Court does not believe that the jury has reached a seriously erroneous result or that the verdict is a miscarriage of justice. Substantial evidence supported Defendants' claims that they had diligently searched for Hardaway Heaton in 1991-1994, as discussed previously. Accordingly, the Court denies Plaintiffs' motion for a new trial pursuant to Rule 59 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

Conclusion

The Court denies Plaintiffs' motions for judgment as a matter of law pursuant to Rule 50 and for a new trial pursuant to Rule 59.


Summaries of

Heaton v. City of New York

United States District Court, S.D. New York
May 9, 2002
96 Civ. 1605 (RPP) (S.D.N.Y. May. 9, 2002)
Case details for

Heaton v. City of New York

Case Details

Full title:DANTEL HEATON, an infant, by his father and natural guardian HARDA WAY…

Court:United States District Court, S.D. New York

Date published: May 9, 2002

Citations

96 Civ. 1605 (RPP) (S.D.N.Y. May. 9, 2002)