Opinion ID: 3028437
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Did the state actor take an affirmative action?

Text: Dr. Kim argues that an assurance or misrepresentation, without more, cannot constitute an “affirmative” act for purposes of the state-created danger inquiry. This Court has never expressly addressed this issue. We hold that a mere assurance cannot form the basis of a state-created danger claim. This Court rejected a similar claim in Bright. 443 F.3d at 284. A police officer “assured Bright approximately three weeks before Annette’s death that Koschalk would be arrested and in reliance upon these assurances, Bright failed to take defensive actions, such as leaving the area with his family, hence creating the opportunity for the damages ultimately four million patients nationwide each year in critical, emergency and non-emergency situations.”). 15 sustained.” Id. (internal quotes omitted). The Bright Court stated that, even assuming this account of causation was accurate, “[s]tate-created danger liability cannot be predicated on these facts.” Id. We concluded that, “Bright does not, and cannot, claim that the state in any way restricted his freedom to act on his family’s own behalf,” and invoked the DeShaney Court’s holding that, “under these circumstances, no “affirmative duty to protect arises . . . from the State’s . . . expressions of intent to help.” Id. (citing DeShaney, 489 U.S. at 200) (internal quotes omitted). The police officer’s assurance that someone would be arrested, an action then not taken, could not constitute an affirmative action. The Bright decision reflects the concerns that animated the Supreme Court’s decision in DeShaney. The Court observed that the “Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to prevent government from abusing [its] power, or employing it as an instrument of oppression.” 489 U.S. at 196 (citing Davidson v. Cannon, 474 U.S. 344, 348 (1986)) (internal quotes omitted); see also Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S. 527, 549 (1981) (Powell, J., concurring in result) (“It would make no sense to open the federal courts to lawsuits where there has been no affirmative abuse of power.”). Speaking of the “special relationship exception,” the DeShaney Court stated that the “affirmative duty to protect arises not from the State’s knowledge of the individual’s predicament or from its expressions of intent to help him, but from the limitation which it has imposed on his freedom to act.” 489 U.S. at 200. The Court further observed that, “[i]n the substantive due process 16 analysis, it is the State’s affirmative act of restraining the individual’s freedom to act on his own behalf–through incarceration, institutionalization, or other similar restraint of personal liberty–which is the ‘deprivation of liberty’ triggering the protections of the Due Process Clause.” Id. We applied this injunction by the DeShaney Court that the substantive component of the Due Process Clause must be predicated on an affirmative act that works a deprivation of liberty when we observed in Bright that state-created danger liability could not lie because the state did not “restrict[] his freedom to act on his [] own behalf.” 443 F.3d at 284. Although the DeShaney Court did not hold that words alone could not rise to the level of affirmative act that works a deprivation of liberty, the Supreme Court did provide two examples, incarceration and institutionalization, to guide our analysis. Ye cannot prevail unless Dr. Kim’s misrepresentation that Ye had “nothing to worry about and that he [was] fine” falls into the third category of a “restraint of personal liberty” that is “similar” to incarceration or institutionalization. DeShaney did not conclusively answer this question, nor was the Court focused on state-created liability, giving much greater consideration to circumstances that would give rise to the special relationship exception. However, the Court made clear that a ‘deprivation of liberty’ is a bedrock requirement of state liability under the substantive due process clause. Ye’s claim places before us the question of whether a mere assurance can constitute an affirmative act that invaded Ye’s personal liberty. We implicitly rejected this argument in Bright and do so 17 expressly now.4 DeShaney’s factual basis strongly suggests that mere assurances do not fall into the Court’s third category of ‘other’ restraints of personal liberty. In DeShaney, the Winnebago County Department of Social Services (“DSS”) became aware through repeated incidents that a young boy named Joshua DeShaney was very likely receiving severe beatings from his father. 489 U.S. at 192. However, DSS did not remove the child, and he was later beaten to the point of severe brain damage. Id. The Court noted that DSS “specifically proclaimed, by word and by deed, its intention to protect [DeShaney] against that danger.” Id. at 197. However, the Court did not characterize these expressions of intent to help–these assurances–as an affirmative action, stating rather that the “most that can be said of the state functionaries in this case is that they stood by and did nothing.” Id. at 203. The dissent highlighted this point, lamenting that “to the Court, the only fact that seems to count as an affirmative act of restraining the individual’s freedom to act on his own behalf is direct physical control.” Id. at 206 (Brennan, J., dissenting). This is not a wholly accurate reflection of the Court’s holding, which turned on the fact that, “[w]hile the State may have been aware 4 The act that invades a plaintiff’s personal liberty may not always be a restraint, as in the special-relationship context, but that is the nature of Ye’s complaint. Accordingly, the instructions of the DeShaney Court and our holding in Bright are particularly applicable. 18 of the dangers that Joshua faced in the free world, it played no part in their creation, nor did it do anything to render him any more vulnerable to them.” Id. at 201. Nevertheless, the language of both the majority and the dissent leave little doubt that an animating principle of the majority’s decision was that an assurance, in this case an expression of intent to help, is not an affirmative act sufficient to trigger constitutional obligations. Other courts of appeals have echoed this principle. In Rivera v. Rhode Island, the state allegedly promised to protect Jennifer Rivera in exchange for her testimony against Charles Pona, who was under indictment for murder. 402 F.3d 27, 30 (1st Cir. 2005). The state took no action and Rivera was shot and killed in front of her home. Id. The First Circuit held that “the state’s promises, whether false or merely unkept, did not deprive Jennifer of the liberty to act on her own behalf nor did the state force Jennifer, against her will, to become dependent on it,” and therefore could not support a state-created danger claim. Id. at 38. The First Circuit acknowledged that the assurances by the police may have increased Rivera’s exposure to harm, but reasoned that mere assurances could not constitute deprivations of liberty—a necessary component to any statecreated danger claim. Id. (“Merely alleging state actions which render the individual more vulnerable to harm, under a theory of state created danger, cannot be used as an end run around DeShaney’s core holding.”). The Eleventh Circuit took a similar approach in Wyke v. Polk County Board of Education, 129 F.3d 560 (11th Cir. 1997). 19 Shawn Wyke attempted suicide on school property and was prevented by a fellow student who related the incident to his mother. Id. at 564. The concerned mother who called the school was assured by the Dean of Students that “he would take care of it.” Id. The Dean did no more than read some Bible verses to Wyke, who committed suicide shortly thereafter. Id. The concerned mother testified that had she not been falsely assured that the problem would be dealt with by the Dean, she would have called Wyke’s mother directly. Id. at 570. The Court stated that the Dean “did not, either by verbal or physical act, restrain [the concerned mother] from picking up her telephone,” and therefore the Dean’s assurance could not support a state-created danger claim. Id. Dr. Kim’s assurances could, and almost certainly do, give rise to a state law medical malpractice claim. They cannot, however, constitute a deprivation of liberty within the meaning of DeShaney or Bright. DeShaney and Bright do not totally foreclose the possibility that words could constitute an affirmative act and a deprivation of liberty (such as an assault). However, these precedents make clear that assurances of wellbeing are not “affirmative” acts within the meaning of the fourth element of a state-created danger claim. 20 3. Did this act create a danger to the citizen or render the citizen more vulnerable to danger than if the state had not acted at all? Dr. Kim argues that Ye’s allegations, which must be taken as true for purposes of this appeal, do not establish that he made Ye more vulnerable to harm than if he had never acted. In Bright, this Court held that, if the other elements of a state-created danger claim are met, the state must have “rendered the citizen more vulnerable to danger than had the state not acted at all.” 443 F.3d at 281; see also D.R., 972 F.2d at 1373 (noting that the relevant inquiry is “whether the state actors involved affirmatively acted to create plaintiff’s danger, or to render him or her more vulnerable to it”). We have often adopted the language of “but for” causation when describing this last requirement of state-created danger liability. See Rivas, 365 F.3d at 197 (noting that the state-created danger test asks “whether the state actor used his or her authority to create an opportunity, which otherwise would not have existed, for the specific harm to occur,” and that, “[w]ere it not for [the state’s] acts,” no harm would have occurred); Kneipp, 95 F.3d at 1209 (observing that the jury could conclude that the officers’ conduct was the “but for” cause of the injury, and that their conduct “greatly increased” the likelihood of harm). We noted in Kaucher v. County of Bucks that, “[t]here must be a direct causal relationship between the affirmative act of the state and plaintiff’s harm.” 455 F.3d 418, 432 (3d Cir. 2006) (citing Smith, 318 F.3d at 510 (holding the fourth element asks if “but 21 for the defendants’ actions, the plaintiff would have been in a less harmful position”)). Ye’s allegations, which must be taken as accurate, state that, but for Dr. Kim’s assurances, he and his son would have gone to the emergency room. Ye’s expert testimony established a likelihood that, had they done so, the substantial harms that followed would have been avoided. 5 This is 5 Dr. Charles Faselis, an expert witness for Ye, testified that: Mr. Ye has permanent and devastating complications which could have been avoided if he had only received the necessary and required cardiac work up and the immediate, emergency hospitalization required. . . . Mr. Ye’s critical care polyneuropathy and current condition is a direct result of Dr. Tuan and Dr. Kim’s failure to obtain the required cardiac work up, and failure to hospitalize him before his collapse and need for emergency resuscitation and bypass surgery. Dr. S.J. Schneller, also an expert witness for Ye, testified that: It is my opinion, to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, that it was well below the standard of care for Mr. Ye’s physicians, Dr. 22 Tuan and Dr. Kim, to fail to refer him to a cardiologist and to fail to provide necessary medical treatment for his life-threatening condition and to disregard the known risks and that such wrongful conduct significantly increased the risk of harm to Mr. Ye and in fact caused his injuries.