Case Name: WHITTINGTON v. JOHNSTON et al.
Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
Jurisdiction: United States
Decision Date: 1953-01-29
Citations: 201 F.2d 810
Docket Number: No. 14051
Parties: WHITTINGTON v. JOHNSTON et al
Judges: Before BORAH, STRUM, and RIVES, Circuit Judges.
Reporter: Federal Reporter 2d Series
Volume: 201
Pages: 810–817

Head Matter:
WHITTINGTON v. JOHNSTON et al
No. 14051.
United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.
Jan. 29, 1953.
Rehearing Denied April 13,1953.
Walter J. Knabe, Montgomery, Ala., W. R. Martin,' Ozark, Ala., Hartwell Davis, Montgomery, Ala., for appellant.
E. C. Orme, Troy, Ala., J. M. Williams, Jr., Montgomery, Ala., Rushton, Stakely & Johnston, Montgomery, Ala., of counsel, for appellee.
Before BORAH, STRUM, and RIVES, Circuit Judges.

Opinion:
STRUM, Circuit Judge.
This action, based upon 8 U.S.C.A. § 43 and 47(3), was brought to redress the alleged deprivation of plaintiff's civil rights, and to recover damages resulting from an alleged conspiracy to that end. The action was dismissed by the district judge for lack of federal jurisdiction.
The complaint charges in effect that the defendants below, all of whom are private citizens, acting under Title 15, § 432, and Title 45, § 208, 209 and 210, Code of Alabama, 1940, conspired to, and did, cause plaintiff to be declared insane by an Alabama probate court when she was in fact sane, and caused her to be confined for five days in a county jail awaiting commitment to a mental institution, all without an opportunity to be heard. Plaintiff asserts she was thus deprived of her liberty without due process of law, contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment. There is no allegation that any of the defendants are, or that they acted as, officers of the State of Alabama.
The three conspiracy counts are based upon 8 U.S.C.A. § 47(3). That section, so far as here material, does not attempt to reach a conspiracy to deprive one of civil rights unless its object is a deprivation of equality, — of "equal protection of the laws," or "equal privileges and immunities under the laws". Collins v. Hardyman, 341 U.S. 651, 71 S.Ct. 937, 95 L.Ed. 1253. It does not purport to create a cause of action for conspiracies to deny due process. Yet the burden of the conspiracy counts is, not that the defendants conspired to deny plaintiff equality under the law, but that they conspired to deprive plaintiff of her liberty without due process. The two propositions are quite distinct. They are not equivalents. Mitchell v. Greenough, 9 Cir,, 100 F.2d 184; McShane v. Moldovan, 6 Cir., 172 F.2d 1016; Allen v. Corsano, D.C., 56 F.Supp. 169. No facts are pleaded which show that plaintiff has been subjected to any inequality of treatment. There is no charge that by said proceedings she has been subjected to any different or greater hazard than any other person against whom the Alabama statutes might be invoked, nor that she was deprived of any right or immunity which might be enjoyed by any other person under the law. It is clear that the conspiracy counts state no cause of,action under 8 U.S.C.A. § 47 (3). Collins v. Hardyman, supra.
The theory of the substantive counts based upon 8 U.S.C.A. § 43, is that the defendant Dr. Johnston, acting at the request of the other four defendants, signed a medical certificate that plaintiff was insane, based upon which she was declared to be insane by the state probate court without a hearing and was incarcerated pursuant to the Alabama statute. It is conceded that the lunacy proceeding followed the terms of the statute, but it is contended that because the statute contains no mandatory provision for hearing the person whose sanity is questioned before a commitment is issued, and because no hearing was afforded the plaintiff in this instance, the defendants by invoking the statute and setting its procedure in motion, "caused" the plaintiff to be subjected by the State to a deprivation of her right to due process secured by the Fourteenth Amendment, within the meaning of 8 U.S.C.A. § 43.
In Moses v. Tarwater, 257 Ala. 361, 58 So.2d 757, the Supreme Court of Alabama, one judge dissenting, sustained against a collateral attack by habeas corpus, the commitment of an allegedly insane person to the same institution, and under precisely the same statutes, here involved. The state circuit judge, before whom the habeas corpus proceeding originated, sustained the constitutionality of the statutes. The Alabama Supreme Court found it unnecessary to pass upon the question of due process in order to sustain the commitment. We also refrain from determining that question.
It is a non sequitur to say that merely by instituting the lunacy proceeding, the defendants "caused" plaintiff to be deprived of her right to due process within the meaning of 8 U.S.C.A. § 43. If there was any denial of due process, the efficient cause thereof was the omission of the state probate judge to give notice of the proceeding. That failure is not attributable to these defendants. Whether or not notice should be given is committed by the Alabama statute to the discretion of the probate judge. These defendants had no duty in that behalf. They simply instituted the lunacy proceeding as the Alabama statute authorized them to do, and left the conduct thereof wholly to the discretion of the probate judge whose duty and function it was to give any necessary notice.
In invoking the Alabama statute, defendants were entitled to act upon the presumption that the statute is valid, as it has not been authoritatively declared otherwise, and that in administering it the probate judge would proceed in accordance with the essential requirements of law. The mere institution of the lunacy proceed ing, without more, is too remote in the chain of causation to support an action under 8 U.S.C.A. § 43 for "causing" plaintiff to be deprived of the right to due process.
• If plaintiff's contentions are correct, then one who invokes the jurisdiction of a state court in a lunacy proceeding acts at his peril, and becomes liable under 8 U.S.C.A., § 43 in the event it turns out that the statute under which the court acts, or the procedure followed by the state officers in administering it, do not satisfy the requirements of due process. To hold the defendants liable in such circumstances would impose upon them a vicarious liability not contemplated by 8 U.S.C.A. § 43. That statute does not require those who regularly institute a lunacy, proceeding under a state statute to stand sponsor for the validity of the statute, nor for the acts of the state officers in administering it.
Plaintiff alleges that in instituting the lunacy inquisition, the defendants acted 'willfully and maliciously. But this adds no strength to the complaint under 8 U.S.C.A.' § '43. Neither the Fourteenth Amendment nor the Civil Rights Acts purport to secure a person against unfounded or malicious lunacy proceedings. If the facts here involved make out a case of false arrést or malicious prosecution, the redress of such wrongs is left with the states. Compare Lyons v. Weltmer, 4 Cir., 174 F.2d 473; McCartney v. State of West Virginia, 4 Cir., 156 F.2d 739.
We leave undetermined the question whether the complaint should have been dismissed "for lack of federal jurisdic-' tion." Even if the allegations of the complaint bring it within federal jurisdiction, Compare Bell v. Hood, 327 U.S. 678, 66 S. Ct. 773, 90 L.Ed. 939, 13 A.L.R.2d 383, the complaint clearly fails to state a claim for relief within the scope of 8 U.S.C.A. § 43 and 47(3), upon which it'is expressly based, for which reason it was proper to dismiss it.
Affirmed.
. Compare also the principles decided in Bottone v. Lindsley, 10 Cir., 170 F.2d 705; Givens v. Moll, 5 Cir., 177 F.2d 765; Moffett v. Commerce Trust Co., 8 Cir., 187 F.2d 242, 247; Grogoire v. Biddle, 2 Cir., 177 F.2d- 579, 581; Campo v. Neimeyer, 7 Cir., 182 F.2d 115, 118, and McGuire v. Todd, 5 Cir., 198 F.2d 60, the latter against city officers. See also note, 13 A.L.R.2d 390, 471, and Adams v. Terry, 5 Cir., 193 F.2d 600, 605, second column; Taylor v. Smith, 7 Cir., 167 F.2d 797, 12 A.L.R.2d 1; note 14 A.L.R. 2d text page 1100 et.spq.