Opinion ID: 180860
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The panel majority erred in unjustifiably recognizing a new Bivens action where adequate, and arguably superior, state remedies exist.

Text: In its forty-year Bivens history, the Supreme Court has never provided a Bivens claim for relief to a person wholike the plaintiff in this case, Richard Lee Pollardhad adequate state tort remedies. [4] In its most recent consideration of whether to extend Bivens, the Court distilled four decades of jurisprudence into a two-part test: [T]he decision whether to recognize a Bivens remedy may require two steps. In the first place, there is the question whether any alternative, existing process for protecting the interest amounts to a convincing reason for the Judicial Branch to refrain from providing a new and freestanding remedy in damages. But even in the absence of an alternative, a Bivens remedy is a subject of judgment: the federal courts must make the kind of remedial determination that is appropriate for a common-law tribunal, paying particular heed, however, to any special factors counseling hesitation before authorizing a new kind of federal litigation. Wilkie v. Robbins, 551 U.S. 537, 550, 127 S.Ct. 2588, 168 L.Ed.2d 389 (2007) (emphasis added) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). A look at the three cases in which the Supreme Court has allowed a Bivens recovery reveals the emphasis the Court, and in turn, our sister circuits, have placed on the requirement that there be a lack of alternative state common law or statutory remedies. The Court has recognized two, and only two, contexts that permit recovery under Bivens: to provide an otherwise nonexistent cause of action against individual [federal] officers alleged to have acted unconstitutionally, or to provide a cause of action for a plaintiff who lacked any alternative remedy for harms caused by an individual [federal] officer's unconstitutional conduct. Corr. Serv. Corp. v. Malesko, 534 U.S. 61, 70, 122 S.Ct. 515, 151 L.Ed.2d 456 (2001). Neither circumstance is present in this case. In Bivens, the Court created an implied cause of action for the homeowner for a warrantless, but consensual, entry and a nonconsensual search of his apartment, in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. The drug agents' alleged conduct was egregious; they manacled the plaintiff in front of his wife and children, searched his entire apartment, and threatened to arrest his entire family. Bivens, 403 U.S. at 389, 91 S.Ct. 1999. However, the Court noted that, since Bivens consented to the federal agents entering his home, his act precluded a state tort claim for trespass. Id. at 394, 91 S.Ct. 1999. Thus, absent a right of action implied by the Court from the Constitution, Bivens would have had no means by which to vindicate his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures by recovery of damages, and through recovery of damages to deter the individual officers from engaging in such egregious conduct in the future. [5] Next, in Davis v. Passman, 442 U.S. 228, 99 S.Ct. 2264, 60 L.Ed.2d 846 (1979), the Court created an implied cause of action under the Fifth Amendment for a female office worker who alleged gender discrimination while working for Congressman Otto Passman of Louisiana. The Court noted that the plaintiff had no cause of action under Louisiana law for gender discrimination, and because the defendant was no longer in office, injunctive relief against the ex-Congressman would have been futile. Id. at 245, 99 S.Ct. 2264. Given the need for an otherwise nonexistent cause of action, Malesko, 534 U.S. at 70, 122 S.Ct. 515, the Court created an implied cause of action for monetary relief. Davis, 442 U.S. at 248, 99 S.Ct. 2264. The last, and most recent, application of Bivens liability before the Court occurred thirty years ago in Carlson v. Green, 446 U.S. 14, 100 S.Ct. 1468, 64 L.Ed.2d 15 (1980). In Carlson, the administratrix of the estate of a deceased federal prisoner brought an action alleging that prison officials had violated the prisoner's Eighth Amendment rights by exhibiting deliberate indifference to the prisoner's serious medical needsprecisely the claims made here by Pollard. The prisoner was alleged to have died as a result. Under Indiana's tort law, the prisoner's cause of action for his pain and suffering did not survive his death. Hence, the administratrix had no legally protected interest to be harmed, and thus, no standing to sue on behalf of decedent's estate. In light of the deterrence rationale in Bivens, the Court found an implied cause of action, which provided the only avenue to vindicate the decedent's rights to damages against the individual tortfeasors. [6] Id. at 23, 100 S.Ct. 1468. The facts of these cases show how marked a departure is the panel majority's opinion from established precedent. [7] Unlike Bivens, Davis, and Carlson, where the plaintiffs had no existing cause of action and no alternative state remedy, Pollard has a viable suit in state court against each of the jailor defendants under theories of intentional or negligent tort or medical malpractice. California law imposes an affirmative duty of care on jailers: One who is required by law to take or who voluntarily takes the custody of another under circumstances such as to deprive the other of his normal power of his normal opportunities for protection is under ... a duty to take reasonable action to protect them against unreasonable risk of physical harm. Rest. (2d) Torts § 314A, see also Delgado v. Trax Bar & Grill, 36 Cal.4th 224, 30 Cal.Rptr.3d 145, 113 P.3d 1159, 1165 n. 14 (2005) (citing provision with approval). To recover compensatory damages under California law, Pollard need prove only the individual defendants breached this affirmative duty, and that the breach caused him physical or emotional harm. Additionally, punitive damages are available in an ordinary negligence or medical malpractice action where plaintiff proves defendant acted with malice or extreme indifference to the plaintiff's rights. Flyer's Body Shop Profit Sharing Plan v. Ticor Title Ins. Co., 185 Cal.App.3d 1149, 230 Cal.Rptr. 276, 278-79 (1986). In at least one respect, Pollard's remedy under state law against both jailers and doctors is actually superior to any presumed action he would have under Bivens. A Bivens plaintiff must prove the defendants acted with deliberate indifference. Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 105, 97 S.Ct. 285, 50 L.Ed.2d 251 (1976). But, in a negligence claim, a plaintiff need establish only that the jailers breached their affirmative duty of providing reasonable care. Thus, unlike the few cases in which the Court has recognized a Bivens action, Pollard already has a state forum in which to remedy the alleged unconstitutional conductwith a lesser showing of culpability required, no less. Bivens claims were created for the situation in which the plaintiff had no other means of vindicating his constitutional rights in either state or federal court; that policy concern simply does not apply to a case, such as here, where adequate state tort remedies exist. The panel majority invokes the abstract claim of lack of uniformity as a reason to support its assertion that the existence of state tort remedies cannot, on its own, preclude recognition of a new Bivens action. But lack of uniformity has been a significant part of the Court's analysis only when the plaintiff has shown that he is barred from bringing suit for the alleged constitutional violation in one or more states. In Carlson, the plaintiff could not bring her claim because Indiana's survivorship law did not provide her standing to sue for violations of her husband's rights. Because other states allowed survivor claims, there was no actual uniformity unless the Court created a federal cause of action. Carlson, 446 U.S. at 25, 100 S.Ct. 1468. In Bivens, lack of uniformitymentioned explicitly only in Justice Harlan's concurrencewas relevant only because the plaintiff had showed that, since he had consented to the agents' entrance into his apartment, he had no cause of action under state law. Bivens, 403 U.S. at 394, 91 S.Ct. 1999. Davis did not even address the lack of uniformity claim because the case dealt with the quintessential Bivens scenario: there was no existing cause of action, under either federal statutory or state law, for the alleged constitutional violation. Qualms about lack of uniformity are irrelevant where, as here, the plaintiff has an adequate, and arguably superior, tort claim under state law. The plaintiff has not shownbecause he cannotthat there is any state which does not provide recovery for that most fundamental tort claim, in which one person's negligent conduct causes physical and/or emotional harm to another. Perhaps the states, as laboratories of democracy, Landell v. Sorrell, 406 F.3d 159, 178 (2d Cir.2005) (Jacobs, J., dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc), have adopted slightly different recovery caps or procedural rules, but the essence of the negligent tort claim existed as trespass on the case at common law when the forms of action were in full bloom, and exists today in all fifty states. As such, the panel's lack of uniformity preoccupation is as imagined as is any legal support for its assertion that state law remedies cannot, on their own, preclude recognition of a Bivens action.