Opinion ID: 792823
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Special Danger

Text: 25 In addition to an affirmative act, plaintiffs alleging a constitutional tort under § 1983 [must] show [a] `special danger.' Kallstrom, 136 F.3d at 1066. We elaborated that a special danger exists where the state's actions place the victim specifically at risk, as distinguished from a risk that affects the public at large. Id. McQueen argues that this factor is satisfied because Doe was one of only five students that Judd left behind in the classroom with Smith. The district court assumed that this factor was satisfied. 26 As with the affirmative act requirement, we have set a high bar for the special danger requirement. In Kallstrom, we held that the second requirement was satisfied where the City's release of private information from undercover officers' personnel files placed the personal safety of the officers and their family members, as distinguished from the public at large, in serious jeopardy. 136 F.3d at 1067. But in several other cases — both before and after we fashioned the Kallstrom framework — we have rejected claims of a special danger. See Schroder, 412 F.3d at 729 (city's and officials' creation of a street and the management of traffic conditions posed a general traffic risk to pedestrians and other automobiles); Union County, 296 F.3d at 431 (failure to serve an ex parte order of protection in a timely manner); 8 Jones v. City of Carlisle, 3 F.3d 945, 950 (6th Cir. 1993) (city's allowing an epileptic to maintain a driver's license posed a danger to any citizen on the streets); Janan v. Trammell, 785 F.2d 557, 560 (6th Cir. 1986) (release of a parolee only endangered plaintiff as a member of the public at large). 27 We believe that when five children are left in a room alone with an armed classmate, as was the case here, the children are much more like the few officers and family members at risk in Kallstrom than the general public at risk in Schroder, City of Carlisle, and Janan. Smith was much more likely to shoot the students in his immediate physical presence than a member of the general public. There are, of course, arguments to the contrary: (i) Smith could have walked out of the room and fired at those in the hallway or in other rooms; and (ii) he posed a risk to the general public both because he could have left the school with the gun and because even shots fired inside a school can pass through walls or windows to harm victims outside. The first counterargument is of no avail, because we have little difficulty assuming that if the relevant group included everyone in the school, the special danger requirement still would be satisfied. The latter argument misses the mark for a different reason. While we do not discount the risks Smith posed to those outside his school (i.e., the general public), those risks were smaller than and collateral to the risks faced by the five children present in the classroom with him. Surely an attack by the gang members in Kallstrom would have created analogous collateral risks to the general public, yet it was no bar to our holding that the officers and their families, who as the likely targets of such attacks were more likely to be harmed, faced a special danger. Therefore, McQueen has shown sufficient evidence to raise a genuine issue of material fact as to the existence of a special danger. 28