Opinion ID: 1900912
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Section 1983 Claim

Text: Even as an award of attorney's fees under section 1988 is contingent on the existence of a substantial claim under section 1983, so recovery under section 1983 turns on the presence of a federal constitutional or statutory violation. See Maine v. Thiboutot, 448 U.S. 1, 4-8, 100 S.Ct. 2502, 2504-2506, 65 L.Ed.2d 555 (1980). In the case before us the Plaintiff alleged no federal statutory violation; his section 1983 claim rests solely on an asserted violation of his fourteenth amendment rights. Specifically, the Plaintiff contends that the Town of Searsport's failure to act on his general assistance application violated his right to procedural due process under the fourteenth amendment. [17] Procedural due process claims require a two-stage analysis. First, it must be determined if there has been a deprivation of an individual's life, liberty or property interests. Second, if such a deprivation has occurred, a determination must be made as to what process is due under the fourteenth amendment. Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U.S. 651, 672, 97 S.Ct. 1401, 1413, 51 L.Ed.2d 711 (1977); Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U.S. 471, 481, 92 S.Ct. 2593, 2600, 33 L.Ed.2d 484 (1972); Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 571, 92 S.Ct. 2701, 2706, 33 L.Ed.2d 548 (1972). As the first stage of this analysis, then, we must decide whether the Town of Searsport deprived the Plaintiff of any property interest safeguarded by the fourteenth amendment. [18] It is helpful in this regard to carefully review the interaction between the Plaintiff and the Town up until the Plaintiff filed his complaint in Superior Court. Jackson filed his first general assistance application on February 20, his second application and a fair hearing request on March 5, and his complaint in Superior Court on March 8, 1982. We are thus concerned with a period of sixteen days. During this period Jackson's application was not granted; neither was it denied. Action simply was deferred by the Town, in violation of both the Maine general assistance statute and Searsport's town ordinance. The first question we must decide is whether the Plaintiff had a constitutionally protected property interest in the timely processing of his application. This case does not present the question of whether a person currently receiving general assistance has a constitutionally protected property interest in the continued receipt of that assistance. Cf. Goldberg v. Kelley, 397 U.S. 254, 261-63, 90 S.Ct. 1011, 1016-18, 25 L.Ed.2d 287 (1970). Neither does it present the question of whether an arbitrary denial of general assistance to an eligible, first-time applicant would infringe any property right. [19] Instead, the property right asserted here derives from an administrative timetable this State has imposed on municipalities for processing general assistance applications. In short, the question is whether there is a property right in procedure. We have never in the past accorded procedure the status of a property right. The implications of treating all statutory procedures as property interests are momentous. Any violation of state or municipal procedure would automatically be transformed into a constitutional violation, on which a federal suit under section 1983 could be brought immediately. [20] Concern that the fourteenth amendment is becoming a font of tort law, Paul v. Davis, 424 U.S. 693, 701, 96 S.Ct. 1155, 1160, 47 L.Ed.2d 405 (1976), would be overshadowed as enforcement of the administrative procedures of states, municipalities and their agencies became the domain of the federal courts, with the added threat of demand for attorney's fees always looming on the horizon. Although the concept of property has evolved significantly from the era when the right-privilege distinction controlled, [21] it has not reached the point where a statutorily prescribed timetable for the administrative consideration of general assistance applications has become a property right. Property and procedure still remain functionally distinct concepts. Professor Van Alstyne's explanation of due process is instructive: As the fifth and fourteenth amendments read in fact, due process is not itself a protected entitlement. Rather, the sole protected interests are life, liberty, [and] property. Due process stands in relation to these not as an equivalent constitutionally established entitlement, but only as a condition to be observed insofar as the state may move to imperil one of the named substantive interests. That is: No State shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law . . . . Insofar as the state may seek to divest one of his life, some aspect of his liberty, or some modicum of his property, then it may yet be able to do so assuming that the condition of due process is met. But procedural due process appears never to be anything more than a kind of constitutional condition. It is evidently not a free standing human interest. [22] In sum, while procedure may serve to protect property rights, it does not, by that association, itself become a property interest. In the case before us, there is not even the benefit of such an association. The Plaintiff had no preexisting interest in general assistance benefits. As the Supreme Court stated in Board of Regents v. Roth : The Fourteenth Amendment's procedural protection of property is a safeguard of interests that a person has already acquired in specific benefits. 408 U.S. 564, 576, 92 S.Ct. 2701, 2708, 33 L.Ed.2d 548 (1972) (emphasis added). More recently the Court stated: A state-created right can, in some circumstances, beget yet other rights to procedures essential to the realization of the parent right. Plainly, however, the underlying right must have come into existence before it can trigger due process protection. Connecticut Board of Pardons v. Dumschat, 452 U.S. 458, 463, 101 S.Ct. 2460, 2463, 69 L.Ed.2d 158 (1981) (citations omitted). [23] The Town's failure to decide on the Plaintiff's applications or to hold a fair hearing within the prescribed periods did violate state law. It is well-established, however, that, [v]iolation of local law does not necessarily mean that federal rights have been invaded. Paul v. Davis, 424 U.S. 693, 700, 96 S.Ct. 1155, 1160, 47 L.Ed.2d 405 (1976) (quoting Screws v. United States, 325 U.S. 91, 108, 65 S.Ct. 1031, 1038, 89 L.Ed. 1495 (1945). [24] Moreover, [t]he simple fact that state law prescribes certain procedures does not mean that the procedures thereby acquire a federal constitutional dimension. Slotnick v. Staviskey, 560 F.2d 31, 32 (1st Cir.1977), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 1077, 98 S.Ct. 1268, 55 L.Ed.2d 783 (1978). We conclude that the Town of Searsport's failure to follow the statutory procedures for processing his general assistance applications infringed no constitutionally protected property interest of the Plaintiff. [25] Arriving now at the second stage of our analysis, even if the Plaintiff had been deprived of a constitutionally protected property interest, we would not be persuaded that he has asserted a meritorious due process claim. We reach this conclusion with specific reference to the Supreme Court's decision in Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S. 527, 101 S.Ct. 1908, 68 L.Ed.2d 420 (1981). Parratt, read together with the Court's earlier decisions in Paul v. Davis, 424 U.S. 693, 96 S.Ct. 1155, 47 L.Ed.2d 405 (1976), and Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U.S. 651, 97 S.Ct. 1401, 51 L.Ed.2d 711 (1977), marks the emergence of a major shift in the Supreme Court's analysis of procedural due process claims. [26] The central feature of this new approach is a focus on the availability of state-law remedies which prevent a deprivation of life, liberty or property from becoming a deprivation without due process. In Paul, a defamation action brought under section 1983, the Court first intimated that state tort law might constitute adequate process to protect a person's liberty interests. 424 U.S. at 712, 96 S.Ct. at 1165-66. [27] In Ingraham, a case involving corporal punishment in a public school, the Court concluded that a constitutionally protected liberty interest was implicated, but held that the traditional common-law remedies are fully adequate to afford due process. 430 U.S. at 672, 97 S.Ct. at 1413. In Parratt the Court was faced with a section 1983 claim by a prisoner who alleged that the loss by prison officials of a hobby kit which he had ordered by mail constituted a deprivation of property without due process. In language quite appropriate for the case at bar the Court concluded: [T]he respondent has not alleged a violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Although he has been deprived of property under color of state law, the deprivation did not occur as a result of some established state procedure. Indeed, the deprivation occurred as a result of the unauthorized failure of agents of the State to follow established state procedure. There is no contention that the procedures themselves are inadequate nor is there any contention that it was practicable for the State to provide a predeprivation hearing. Moreover, the State of Nebraska has provided respondent with the means by which he can receive redress for the deprivation. The State provides a remedy to persons who believe they have suffered a tortious loss at the hands of the State. 451 U.S. at 543, 101 S.Ct. at 1917. Although the factual circumstances of the instant case diverge somewhat from those present in Parratt, we are persuaded that the principles enunciated in that decision apply with equal force here. As was the case in Parratt, if the Plaintiff was deprived of any property, it was in derogation ofand not according toestablished procedure. In terms of the availability of a state-law remedy, the case for such a remedy is much stronger here than in Parratt. In Parratt the respondent was not deemed to have suffered any due process violation because of the availability to him of a common law tort action. Here instead, the Plaintiff had a statutory right to judicial review, a right of which he took full advantage. [28] The only potentially significant factor distinguishing the instant case from Parratt is that the record here indicates at least a degree of intentional action on the part of the Town in not acting in a timely fashion on the Plaintiff's applications. In Parratt, only a negligent deprivation was alleged. This divergence is not fatal. Parratt relied on Ingraham, which involved intentional corporal punishment. Read together, Paul, Ingraham and Parratt lead to the conclusion that an intentional taking of property may be adequately redressed through state-law remedies. The intentional-negligent distinction, moreover, is irrelevant to the question of the availability and adequacy of state procedures to satisfy the requirements of due process. We agree fully with the courts and commentators who have concluded the principles announced in Parratt apply to both negligent and intentional conduct by state officials. [29] Accordingly, we conclude that even if a legitimate property interest were involved, our State procedure available to, and indeed invoked by, the Plaintiff would satisfy the due process requirements of the fourteenth amendment.