Opinion
99 C 6180.
January 3, 2001.
MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER
Plaintiff Willie Long ("Long") filed an Amended Complaint (the "Complaint") against Michael Sheahan, Sheriff of Cook County, in his official capacity ("Sheahan") pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 ("§ 1983") for violating Long's Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. Sheahan has moved to dismiss the Complaint pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6). For the reasons set forth below, the Court grants Sheahan's motion to dismiss the Complaint.
BACKGROUND
The Complaint alleges the following facts which, for the purposes of ruling on this motion, are taken as true. Hishon v. Kemp Spalding, 467 U.S. 69, 73 (1984). In May of 1998, Long plead guilty to possession of a controlled substance and was sentenced to spend time at the Boot Camp operated by the Sheahan's office. In May of 1999, after failing to comply with conditions of the Boot Camp, Long was taken into custody at Cook County Jail. On July 6, 1999, Long again plead guilty, this time to violating the conditions of his sentence. He was then sentenced to one year in the custody of the Illinois Department of Corrections ("IDOC") He received credit for the 240 days he had already served and there were no other pending charges, warrants or holds on Long.
At that time, it was the practice of Sheahan's office to transport post-sentence detainees from Cook County Jail to the Joliet Correctional Facility ("Joliet") three times a week. Long believed he would be transported to Joliet within three days (by July 9, 1999). Additionally, Long thought that he was entitled to one day of good credit for each day of his sentence, pursuant to 730 Ill. Comp. Stat. 5/3 3-6-3. This led Long to believe that he would not only be transported to Joliet by July 9, 1999, but he would also be immediately released once processed by IDOC.
Rather than immediately transporting Long to Joliet, Sheahan's employees detained Long at Cook County Jail. Long, his mother and his attorney notified Sheahan's employees that he was not supposed to be held at Cook County Jail. On August 13, 1999, Long was transported to Joliet where he was processed and released later that day.
Long's Complaint alleges violations of his Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. In response, Sheahan filed the present motion seeking to dismiss these claims.
DISCUSSION
I. Standard for a Motion to Dismiss
When considering a motion to dismiss, a court must view the complaint's allegations in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, and all well-pleaded facts in the complaint must be accepted as true. Wilson v. Formigoni, 42 P.3d 1060, 1062 (7th Cir. 1994). Dismissal is proper only if it appears beyond a doubt that a plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of a claim which would entitle him to relief. Connley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 45-46 (1957). To withstand a motion to dismiss, a complaint must allege facts which sufficiently set forth the essential elements of the cause of action. Gray v. County of Dane, 854 F.2d 179, 182 (7th Cir. 1988).
The Supreme Court has made very clear that there is no heightened pleading reguirement for civil rights actions.Leatherman v. Tarrant Co. Narcotics Intelligence Coordination Unit, 507 U.S. 163, 168 (1993). "Rather, as in all civil litigation, the plaintiff is charged with the responsibility of setting forth, as mandated by Rule 8(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, `a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.'" Baxter by Baxter v. Vigo County Sch. Corp., 26 F.3d 728, 734 (7th Cir. 1994); see also Sledd v. Lindsay, 102 F.3d 282, 288-89 (7th Cir. 1996).
II. Official Capacity Liability
Municipal officers may be sued in their official or individual capacities under § 1983. See Kentucky v. Graham, 473 U.S. 159, 165-66 (1985). Long is seeking to hold Sheahan liable in his official capacity. An official capacity claim is not really a claim against an official, but rather a claim against the governmental entity for which he or she works. Id. Thus, for Long to state a § 1983 claim against Sheahan, he must state a claim against the Cook County Sheriff's Office.
Under Monell v. New York City Dep't of Social Servs., 436 U.S. 658, 691 (1978), municipalities may be held liable under § 1983 for deprivations of federal rights. Municipal liability, however, is limited to action for which the municipality is actually responsible — that is, acts which the municipality has officially sanctioned or ordered. Id. Respondeat superior will not suffice to impose § 1983 liability on the municipality. Id. Rather, "it is when the execution of a government's policy or custom, whether made by its lawmakers or by those whose edicts or acts may fairly be said to represent official policy, inflicts the injury that the government as an entity is responsible under § 1983." Id. at 694.
Courts have identified three instances in which a municipality can be said to have violated the civil rights of a person because of its policy:
(1) an express policy that, when enforced, causes a constitutional deprivation; (2) a widespread practice that, although not authorized by written law or express municipal policy, is so permanent and well settled as to constitute a custom or usage with the force of law; or (3) an allegation that the constitutional injury was caused by a person with final policymaking authority.Baxter by Baxter, 26 F.3d at 735 (citations omitted).
"Monell is a case about responsibility." Pembaur v. City of Cincinnati, 475 U.S. 469, 478 (1986). Properly put, the question before this Court is whether Long's Complaint has appropriately distinguished acts of the municipality from acts of employees of the municipality. In other words, is Long simply attempting to hold the Sheriff's Office vicariously liable for the wrongful acts of its employees — e.g., whomever failed to transport Long to Joliet. With this in mind, municipal liability under § 1983 only attaches where "a deliberate choice to follow a course of action is made from among various alternatives by the official or officials responsible for establishing final policy with respect to the subject matter in question." Id. at 483.
Long's Complaint sets forth allegations of policy by omission. It is Long's claim that the Sheriff acted deliberately indifferent by failing to train his officers regarding inmate inquiries and failing to remedy a known problem, namely detaining inmates who should be transferred to IDOC. In order to state a claim for municipal liability for failure to train, Long needed to allege that the municipality was "on notice of a pattern of constitutional violations resulting from the inadequate training." Hirsch v. Burke, 40 F.3d 900, 904 (7th Cir. 1994).
Unfortunately, Long's Complaint contains nothing more than boilerplate allegations of a municipal policy of failing to train employees to respond to inmate inquiries and detaining inmates who should be transferred to IDOC. See McTigue v. City of Chicago, 60 F.3d 381, 382-83 (7th Cir. 1995) ("Boilerplate allegations of a municipal policy, entirely lacking in any factual support that a [municipal] policy does exist, are insufficient. . . . The absence of any facts at all to support plaintiffs's claim renders the allegations mere legal conclusions of section 1983 liability devoid of any well-pleaded facts."(quoting Baxter by Baxter, 26 P.3d at 736)). Indeed, other courts in this District have recognized that "[c]laims based wholly on conclusory allegations of de facto municipal policy constitute one of the most prevalent forms of abuse in § 1983 actions." Copeland v. Northwestern Memorial Hosp., 964 F. Supp. 1225, 1240 (N.D.Ill. 1997) (citations omitted).
In an effort to save his otherwise-boilerplate claim, Long points to a single sentence in the Complaint which states: "defendant was aware that lawsuits were filed by James A. Cichon in 1995 and by John Buzzell, Kenneth Gray and Michael Carter in January of 1999, alleging that they were held in custody several days after the courts ordered their release." (Compl. ¶ 11) The Court does not consider this allegation sufficient to revive a boilerplate claim. While the Court does not expect extensive factual detail in this type of a pleading, it does require more than a recitation of legal conclusions. Merely stating that there are other complaints by prisoners claiming they were impermissibly detained by Sheahan's office is not enough. Had those complaints been resolved in the petitioner's favor, this Court may have considered that adequate notice to Sheahan that his employees were detaining people impermissibly and that, at the very least training was necessary to prevent such problems in the future. The Court does not mean to imply, however, that this is the only way a municipal responsibility claim could be plead. Unfortunately, the bald Complaint filed by Long gives the Court no indication that knowledge of a problem, let alone any affirmative policies, existed. In fact, Long pleads himself into a corner by stating in his Complaint that "the Sheriff of Cook County ships prisoners sentenced to the Joliet Correctional Facility three days a week." (Compl. ¶ 6.) This fact contradicts his current assertion that Sheahan had a policy of failing to correct a known problem of prisoners being held instead of transferred to the IDOC. From Long's Complaint, it is clear that a policy of transporting prisoners from Cook County Jail to Joliet three times a week was in place. Accordingly, Long's claims of municipal liability against Sheahan, in his official capacity, cannot survive.
For the reasons set forth above, the Court grants the Sheahan's motion to dismiss the Amended Complaint.