UNPUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 16-1256

JOHN DOE, 4,

Plaintiff – Appellant,

v.

PRESIDENT JOHN W. ROSA, individually; MARK BRANDENBURG; 

COLONEL JOSEPH TREZ, individually; JENNIFER GARROTT, 

individually,

Defendants - Appellees.

No. 16-1257

JOHN DOE, A,

Plaintiff – Appellant,

v.

PRESIDENT JOHN W. ROSA, individually; MARK BRANDENBURG, 

individually; COLONEL JOSEPH TREZ, individually; JENNIFER 

GARROTT, individually,

Defendants - Appellees.

Appeals from the United States District Court for the District 

of South Carolina, at Charleston. Richard M. Gergel, District 

Judge. (2:14-cv-04396-RMG; 2:14-cv-00710-RMG)

Submitted: October 31, 2016 Decided: November 4, 2016
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Before KING and DUNCAN, Circuit Judges, and DAVIS, Senior 

Circuit Judge.

Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.

Jacqueline LaPan Edgerton, W. Mullins McLeod, Jr., MCLEOD LAW 

GROUP, LLC, Charleston, South Carolina; Allan P. Sloan, II, 

Kristen B. Fehsenfeld, PIERCE, HERNS, SLOAN & WILSON, 

Charleston, South Carolina; Gregg Meyers, JEFF ANDERSON & 

ASSOCIATES, Saint Paul, Minnesota, for Appellants. M. Dawes 

Cooke, Jr., John W. Fletcher, Charleston, South Carolina; 

Russell G. Hines, Stephen L. Brown, Carol B. Ervin, Brian L. 

Quisenberry, Stephanie N. Ramia, YOUNG, CLEMENT, RIVERS, LLP, 

Charleston, South Carolina; Caroline Wrenn Cleveland, Bob J. 

Conley, Emmanuel J. Ferguson, CLEVELAND & CONLEY, LLC, 

Charleston, South Carolina, for Appellees.

Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
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PER CURIAM:

John Doe, 4, and John Doe, A, appeal from the district 

court’s order granting summary judgment to Defendants in 

Appellants’ 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (2012) proceeding. Appellants 

alleged that Defendants John W. Rosa (President of The Citadel 

during the relevant time period), Mark Brandenburg (The 

Citadel’s attorney), Colonel Joseph Trez (Rosa’s executive 

assistant), and Jennifer Garrott (Deputy Director and Director 

of The Citadel’s summer camp) failed to protect them from the 

known risk of Louis ReVille, who sexually abused Appellants 

after he left his employment with The Citadel. We have reviewed 

the parties’ briefs and the record, and we find no meritorious 

issues for appeal. Accordingly, we affirm substantially for the 

reasons stated by the district court. See John Doe 4 v. Rosa, 

No. 2:14-cv-04396-RMG (D.S.C. Feb. 8, 2016); John Doe A v. Rosa, 

No. 2:14-cv-00710-RMG (D.S.C. Feb. 8, 2016).

The district court relied primarily on our decision in Doe 

2 v. Rosa, 795 F.3d 429 (4th Cir. 2015), cert. denied, 136 S. 

Ct. 811 (2016), which involved a substantially similar factual 

background, similar legal issues, and one of the Defendants in 

this case. All the suits considered the application of the 

state created danger doctrine, which attaches § 1983 liability 

to a failure to protect, where a plaintiff can “show that the 

state actor created or increased the risk of private danger, and 
4

did so directly through affirmative acts, not merely through 

inaction or omission.” Id. at 439. 

In Doe 2, we found that the plaintiffs had not shown a 

state created danger claim against Rosa because, for several 

reasons, they could not “demonstrate that [Rosa] created or 

substantially enhanced the danger which resulted in [their] 

tragic abuse at the hands of ReVille.” Id. First, unlike in 

the instant case, ReVille began abusing the plaintiffs in Doe 2

prior to the date when Rosa was on notice of ReVille’s risk. 

Second, Rosa did not “create or increase” the risk of 

plaintiffs’ abuse because Rosa did not make the danger to the 

plaintiffs worse and he had no constitutional duty to save them. 

Third, Rosa did not commit “affirmative acts”; allegations that 

he stood by and did nothing were insufficient. Finally, Rosa 

did not know the plaintiffs and had never spoken with them. Id.

at 439-41.

On appeal, Appellants argue that the district court 

incorrectly read Doe 2 to require that the victim be known to 

the state actor. Appellants attempt to distinguish Doe 2 by 

pointing out that, unlike the present case, the plaintiffs in 

Doe 2 were abused prior to Rosa’s knowledge that ReVille was a 
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pedophile.1 Further, Appellants contend that circuits are split 

as to whether a state created danger victim must be “known” or 

must be merely part of a “readily definable group at risk of 

harm.” 

While a review of Appellants’ citations does not show a 

clear split in the circuits, even assuming there is one, we find 

it unnecessary to draw specific lines, as even under the 

“readily definable group” test, summary judgment was properly 

granted in this case. Appellants first cite Estate of 

Johnson v. Weber, 785 F.3d 267, 271 (8th Cir. 2015), and

Armijo v. Wagon Mound Public Schools, 159 F.3d 1253, 1262 (10th 

Cir. 1998). While these cases discussed a risk to a group of 

victims, the cases actually involved victims known to the state 

actor. As such, they do not support Appellants’ argument that 

Doe 2 required an improper nexus between the state actor and the 

victim.

Appellants cite only one circuit court case involving an 

unknown victim. In Reed v. Gardner, 986 F.2d 1122, 1127 (7th 

Cir. 1993), the Seventh Circuit held that “direct contact” with 

the victims was not required if the dangers presented are 

 1 We conclude that this fact is irrelevant, as in Doe 2 we

considered the legal issues in the case, assuming that the Does 

faced a “new or increased risk of abuse” after Rosa’s actions or 

inactions. 795 F.3d at 440.
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“familiar and specific,” and cause “an immediate threat of harm 

[with a] limited range and duration.” The facts in Reed were 

that officers arrested a sober driver of a car, leaving the car 

keys with a drunk passenger who caused a head-on collision two 

hours later. Id. at 1123. The court found that such 

allegations stated a claim. Id. at 1127. 

The relationship between the victims and the state actors 

in the instant case were significantly more attenuated than the 

relationship in Reed. In Reed, the danger was of a short 

duration (the length of intoxication) and in a limited 

geographical area. The injury occurred two hours after the 

actions of the state actors, and the Reed court itself found 

this short period of time significant. 986 F.2d at 1127. Here, 

the time period ranged from weeks to months, was open ended, and 

involved risks covering a larger geographic area.

In addition, the potential victims in the instant case

would include at least any minor with whom ReVille came in 

contact with as part of his teaching, mentoring, supervising, or 

coaching at any place and at any time in the future. This class 

is neither discrete or identifiable. In fact, such a class is 

practically akin to the general public. The “general public is 

not ‘a limited, precisely definable group,’ and the 

state-created-danger doctrine does not apply.” Glasgow v. 

Nebraska, 819 F.3d 436, 442 (8th Cir. 2016); see also Jones v. 
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Reynolds, 438 F.3d 685, 697-98 (6th Cir. 2006) (holding that 

group of at least 150 spectators at a drag race was too large 

and unidentified for state created danger doctrine to apply). 

Even accepting Appellants’ argument that other circuits 

have decided the issue differently, Appellants have failed to 

show that our language in Doe 2 should be ignored or that it is 

inapplicable in the instant case. In Doe 2, we ruled that 

“immediate interactions between the [state actor] and the 

plaintiff” are a required nexus for state created danger 

liability. We found it significant that the state actor did not 

know the plaintiffs and was unaware of their existence. That is 

precisely the situation for all the Defendants in this case. It 

is undisputed that none of the Defendants knew the Appellants. 

In addition, to the extent the Defendants knew or should have 

known that ReVille posed a threat, the victims he posed a threat 

to were too diffuse and unspecified a group to attach 

constitutional significance to the Defendants’ failure to 

protect them. Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the 

district court granting summary judgment to Defendants on the 

state created danger claims. 
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Appellants also raised supervisory liability claims against 

Rosa and Garrott for their supervision of ReVille.2 Supervisory 

officials may be held liable where “supervisory indifference or 

tacit authorization of subordinates’ misconduct [is] a causative 

factor in the constitutional injuries they inflict on those 

committed to their care.” Shaw v. Stroud, 13 F.3d 791, 798 (4th 

Cir. 1994) (internal quotation marks omitted). To establish a 

viable claim of supervisory liability under § 1983, the 

plaintiff must establish (1) “the supervisor had actual or 

constructive knowledge that his subordinate was engaged in 

conduct that posed a pervasive and unreasonable risk of 

constitutional injury to citizens like the plaintiff,” (2) the 

supervisor’s response was sufficiently inadequate “to show 

deliberate indifference to or tacit authorization of the alleged 

offensive practices,” and (3) “an affirmative causal link 

between the supervisor’s inaction and the particular 

constitutional injury suffered by the plaintiff.” Id. at 799 

(internal quotation marks omitted). 

The district court ruled that, once ReVille left the employ 

of The Citadel, the causal link was broken. The court noted 

 2 Appellants also allege that Rosa is liable for the actions 

of Brandenburg and Trez. However, because the evidence is 

insufficient to support Appellants’ state created danger claims, 

for the reasons discussed above, Appellants’ supervisory 

liability claims must also fail. 
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that “[t]o rule otherwise would expose a former supervisor to 

unlimited and continuous liability for the acts of private 

violence of his former subordinate after the former subordinate 

left his government employer for the balance of the natural life 

of the former subordinate.” On appeal, Appellants address this 

issue, without citation and also without explaining why the 

district court’s conclusions were incorrect. 

We conclude that the district court correctly granted 

summary judgment to Rosa and Garrott on Appellants’ supervisory 

liability claims. There can be no supervisory liability when 

there is no underlying violation of the Constitution. See

Temkin v. Frederick County Comm’rs, 945 F.2d 716, 724 (4th Cir. 

1991). Here, because ReVille was not a state actor, there was 

no underlying constitutional violation. This is fatal to 

Appellants’ supervisory liability claims.

Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s judgment. We 

dispense with oral argument because the facts and legal 

contentions are adequately presented in the materials before 

this court and argument would not aid the decisional process.

AFFIRMED