Opinion
Civil Action No. 03-2512, Section "A" (3).
December 27, 2004
Before the Court is a Motion for Summary Judgment (Rec. Doc. 49) filed by the United States of America through the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Prisons (collectively "the United States"). Plaintiffs, Antoinette Marie Jones, on behalf of the minor child Naquita Nicole Jones, and Cynthia Marie Crandle, on behalf of the minor child Gerrinisha Crandle, oppose the motion. The motion, originally set for hearing on August 11, 2004, but continued for hearing on September 22, 2004, is before the Court on the briefs without oral argument. For the reasons that follow, the motion is GRANTED.
Factual and Procedural Background
This suit arises out of the murders of Keyala A. Crandle and Norris Crawford on March 7, 2000, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Plaintiffs are the minor children of the two victims.
Plaintiffs allege that the murders were committed by Kennon Bradford, Ms. Crandle's estranged boyfriend. At the time of the murders, Bradford was serving a ten year sentence following a 1999 conviction for being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(1) 924(a)(2). He was a prisoner of the United States incarcerated under the authority and jurisdiction of the United States Bureau of Prisons at Eglin Federal Prison Camp ("FPC Eglin") in Eglin, Florida. Bradford escaped from FPC Eglin on March 3, 2000, and was later apprehended in New Orleans on April 5, 2000. Plaintiffs claim that Bradford fatally shot Crandle and Crawford while he was here in New Orleans. Plaintiffs assert that the United States is liable for the wrongful death of their parents because the prison and its employees failed to properly maintain Bradford in custody. Plaintiffs have sued the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act ("FTCA").
Bradford has never been charged with the murders. Bradford did, however, plead guilty to a federal escape charge in conjunction with his March 3, 2000, escape.
The United States filed a motion to dismiss this action for lack of subject matter jurisdiction pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) in December 2003. After several continuances, the Court denied the motion without prejudice in open court on April 19, 2004. The Court was persuaded at oral argument that Plaintiffs should be allowed to conduct discovery for the limited purpose of establishing subject matter jurisdiction over the claims against the United States. The Court subsequently granted several extensions of the discovery deadline to Plaintiffs, and twice denied motions on behalf of the United States to alter or amend the orders given at oral argument.
On July 16, 2004, the United States filed the instant motion for summary judgment and noticed it for hearing on August 11, 2004. Plaintiffs then filed a motion to compel discovery responses and a motion to continue the motion for summary judgment. The Court continued the motion for summary judgment until September 8, 2004, a date well after the discovery hearing scheduled before the magistrate judge. The magistrate judge granted Plaintiffs' motion to compel and the Court continued the motion for summary judgment two more times notwithstanding the United States's objection.
The motion for summary judgment was scheduled to be heard on September 22, 2004. The day before the motion was to be heard, Plaintiffs moved ex parte for a continuance of the motion. The Court denied that motion with detailed reasons in a minute entry dated September 27, 2004. Nevertheless, in the interest of justice, the Court withheld consideration of the motion for summary judgment until after the magistrate judge ruled on the motion to compel discovery that Plaintiffs filed on September 24, 2004. On November 12, 2004, the magistrate judge denied that motion to compel after conducting an in camera review of the documents that Plaintiffs were seeking. The magistrate judge determined inter alia that none of the documents were probative of the jurisdictional issue. Plaintiffs did not seek review of that ruling so the United States's motion for summary judgment is now ripe for determination.
Discussion
The law is well-settled that the United States is immune from suit except where Congress has expressly waived sovereign immunity. Global Mail Ltd. v. United States Postal Serv., 142 F.3d 208, 210 (4th Cir. 1998). The Court lacks subject matter jurisdiction over any claim brought against the United States where no waiver of immunity is present. Id.
Pursuant to the FTCA, the United States faces potential liability for personal injury or death "caused by the negligent or wrongful act or omission of any employee of the Government while acting within the scope of his office or employment, under circumstances where the United States, if a private person, would be liable to the claimant in accordance with the law of the place where the act or omission occurred. " 28 U.S.C.A. § 1346(b) (1) (emphasis added). The parties agree that Florida substantive law governs in this case because any negligent conduct on behalf of federal employees would have occurred at FPC Eglin in Florida.
Although the language of the FTCA refers to liability for a "private person," the Supreme Court has held that liability for the government is not excluded for the performance of activities which private persons do not perform. See Indian Towing Co. v. United States, 350 U.S. 61, 64 (1955).
The FTCA creates liability for the United States only if the act at issue is a tort in the state where the conduct occurred.Miles v. Naval Aviation Museum Found., Inc., 289 F.3d 715, 722 (11th Cir. 2002) (citing 28 U.S.C. § 2674). To succeed on a negligence claim in Florida, a plaintiff must "show that the defendant owed a duty of care to the plaintiff, that the defendant breached the duty, that the breach caused plaintiff's injury, and that damages are owed." Id. (quoting Ewing v. Sellinger, 758 So.2d 1196, 1197 (Fla.Dist.Ct.App. 2000)). Thus, where no duty is owed to the plaintiff, there can be no liability. See id.
It is well-settled under Florida law that the department of corrections and law enforcement officers have no specific duty to protect individual members of the public from escaped inmates.Vann v. Dep't of Corrections, 662 So. 2d 339 (Fla. 1995) (quoting Dep't of Health Rehab. Servs. v. Whaley, 574 So. 2d 100 (Fla. 1991)). In other words, a breach of the general duty owed by the government to the public as a whole to protect its citizens is not a basis for liability. Id. (quoting Dep't of Corrections v. Vann, 650 So. 2d 658, 660 (Fla. Dist Ct. App. 1995)).
However, Florida law has also long recognized that a governmental entity might owe a duty of care to a specific citizen where a special relationship exists between the individual and the governmental entity. See, e.g., Everton v. Willard, 468 So. 2d 936, 938 (Fla. 1985); Parker v. Murphy, 510 So. 2d 990 (Fla.Dist.Ct.App. 1987) (finding no special relationship where an escaped prisoner attacked a family for the second time). The Court discussed the cases of Brown v. Woodham, 840 So. 2d 1105 (Fla.Dist.Ct.App. 2003), Henderson v. Bowden, 737 So. 2d 532 (Fla. 1999), and Sams v. Oelrich, 717 So. 2d 1044, 1047 (Fla.Dist.Ct.App. 1998), in which a special duty was found to exist, in its May 19, 2004, ruling denying the United States's motion to amend judgment. The crux of these cases is that the special duty determination will turn on the facts and circumstances of the specific case, i.e., whether the governmental entity has taken or failed to take some course of action such that a duty to the plaintiff would be created where none would otherwise exist. Absent a duty owed, there can be no recovery for negligence under Florida law. Absent a cause of action under Florida law, there can be no claim under the FTCA. Absent a claim under the FTCA, the United States's sovereign immunity deprives this Court of subject matter jurisdiction over the claim. With this legal backdrop in mind, the Court turns its attention to the facts of this case.
The following sequence of events is established by the NOPD incident reports and by the sworn declarations of FPC Eglin personnel. In the early morning hours of January 30, 2000, the New Orleans Police Department responded to a call from Keyala Crandle. Crandle reported that all of the windows had been smashed out of her car. (MSJ Exh. C NOPD Incident Rpt.). She told the officer that her ex-boyfriend Kennon Bradford and been pounding on her door asking to be let in shortly before the incident. (Id.). She also told the officer that Bradford had called her and told her that he was going to have her killed and that he would "blow up" her vehicle. (Id.). At 10:30 a.m. that same morning, NOPD responded to another call from Crandle reporting that her car had sustained fire damage. (Id.). The incident reports refer to a warrant that was issued for Bradford's arrest but there is nothing in the reports to indicate that NOPD knew that Bradford was supposed to be in federal custody at the time of these alleged incidents.
In the late afternoon of January 30, 2000, Crandle placed a call to FPC Eglin to report that Bradford had been in New Orleans. (MSJ Exh. A, Stichler Decl.). Raymond J. Stichler, who was Acting Operations Director at the time, received the call. Stichler states that Crandle told him that Bradford had called her and threatened to pay someone to kill her. (Id. ¶ 2). During the conversation, Joseph A. Helmin, who was FPC Eglin's Special Investigations Supervisor at the time, took over the call from Stichler.
Crandle reiterated to Helmin that Bradford had been in New Orleans and while there had vandalized her car and called her using a cell phone. (MSJ Exh. B, Helmin Decl.). According to Helmin, Crandle told him that she had already contacted NOPD, and Crandle gave Helmin the name of the two officers involved. Helmin asserts that it was his job to investigate Crandle's claim regarding Bradford's absence from the facility. (Id. ¶ 8). Helmin stated that he immediately dispatched a correctional officers to Bradford's dorm to confirm that he was present. The corrections officer located Bradford in his dorm and confirmed his identity with a photographed commissary identification card. (Id.). However, when Bradford later escaped on March 3, 2000, the U.S. Marshals and Helmin learned that someone else might have been paid to stand in for Bradford at FPC Eglin when he was allegedly absent from the institution prior to March 3, 2000. (Id. ¶ 11).
Plaintiffs have uncovered no evidence to contradict this version of events. Therefore, any special duty owed to Crandle by the United States would have to arise out of the single phone call that she placed to FPC Eglin on January 30, 2000. The record contains no evidence of any other contact or nexus between Crandle and the personnel at FPC Eglin prior to her death on March 7, 2000. The Court is now persuaded that under the facts of this case the United States owed no special duty to Crandle much less to Crawford whose existence was surely unknown to FPC Eglin.
This Court has recognized all along that Florida law typically imposes no duty upon law enforcement officers and corrections facilities to protect the public. Yet in certain cases law enforcement officials have, through their own affirmative conduct, created a "special duty" to a specific citizen. The Court remains convinced that with the right facts even a corrections facility can create a special duty. The Court has never suggested, however, that Plaintiffs' burden would be a light one in establishing a special duty because the facts in those cases where a duty was found were rather egregious. But the Court was loathe to dismiss this case without at least giving Plaintiffs an opportunity to conduct discovery into the facts leading up to the March 3, 2000, escape.
In this case, however, there are no facts to suggest that the United States owed a special duty to the Plaintiffs under Florida law. FPC Eglin received a single phone call from Crandle on January 30, 2000, to report Bradford's escape. The mere fact that Crandle reported the escape and advised that Bradford had threatened her is not enough to create a duty. FPC made no assurances to Crandle upon which she relied to her detriment, withheld no information that would have helped Crandle, and was not uniquely situated to protect Crandle who was located in another state. None of the cases in which a special duty was found to exist contained such meager facts.
Additionally, with respect to Crawford, there are no facts whatsoever to demonstrate that the United States owed him a special duty. Plaintiffs have contended throughout this case thatBrown v. Woodham, supra, extended the special duty to third persons who might foreseeably be found with a person known to be at risk. But the Brown court extended the duty to a third person in that case by relying upon Florida's domestic violence statutes — a statutory scheme that expressly sought to protect persons foreseeably at risk in domestic violence situations. No such statutory scheme is involved in this case. Moreover, inBrown, the perpetrator had made specific threats involving any man that he might find in the company of his wife. In contrast, the facts in this case do not suggest that prison officials had any reason to foresee Crawford as a potential victim. Thus, the United States owed no duty to Norris Crawford.
Based on the foregoing, the United States is entitled to summary judgment.
Accordingly;
IT IS ORDERED that the Motion for Summary Judgment (Rec. Doc. 49) filed by the United States of America through the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Prisons should be and is hereby GRANTED. The claims against the United States of America through the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Prisons are DISMISSED; IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that Plaintiffs shall amend their complaint within twenty (20) days to allege facts sufficient to demonstrate that this Court has original subject matter jurisdiction over the remaining claims. Absent a basis for original jurisdiction, the Court will issue an order dismissing the remaining claims without prejudice pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1367(c).