Opinion ID: 219076
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Zinermon v. Burch

Text: Zinermon was set against a background of state law affording hospital staff the discretion to choose from two separate protocols for long-term admission for mental health treatment. The first was an involuntary protocol, which granted a patient a right to notice, a judicial hearing, appointed counsel, access to medical records and personnel, and an independent examination. Id. at 123. The second was a voluntary protocol, applicable only where an adult patient showing evidence of mental illness gave express and informed consent to admission. Id. The defendant hospital officials admitted the plaintiff under the latter, voluntary protocol despite the fact that he was heavily medicated and showing signs of disorientation, psychosis, hallucinations, and paranoia around the time he signed the hospital's consent form. -18- Following his release, the plaintiff filed suit for a violation of procedural due process. Of particular note, the plaintiff expressly disavowed any challenge to the statutes themselves and restricted his claim to the contention that petitioners' failure to provide constitutionally adequate safeguards in his case violated his due process rights. Id. at 117. Indeed, the Court found that the plaintiff apparently concede[d] that, if Florida's statutes were strictly complied with, no deprivation of liberty without due process would occur. Id. at 117 n.3. Sharing the plaintiff's view that the officials' actions contravened the procedures required by state law, the district court concluded that the conduct at issue was unauthorized and dismissed the suit under Parratt-Hudson. On appeal, the plurality of an en banc panel of the 11th Circuit reversed, finding the Parratt-Hudson doctrine inapplicable because the state could have provided additional predeprivation remedies. The Supreme Court agreed, distinguishing Parratt and Hudson on three bases. First, it noted that the deprivation of liberty in Zinermon was not unpredictable, and that [a]ny erroneous deprivation will occur, if at all, at a specific, predictable point in the admission process -- when the patient is given admission forms to sign. Zinermon, 494 U.S. at 136. Second, the Court found that, unlike in Parratt and Hudson, implementing a predeprivation process was not impossible, as the -19- state could have provided additional administrative procedures that would have limited and guided [the defendants'] powers to admit patients by ensuring that hospital officials correctly chose between the voluntary and involuntary admission protocols. Id. at 137. Third, the Court found that the defendants could not rightly characterize their conduct as unauthorized in the sense that word was used in Parratt and Hudson, because [t]he State delegated to them the power and authority to effect the very deprivation complained of . . . . Id. at 138. In thus construing the term unauthorized, the Zinermon majority expressly rejected the view that the Parratt-Hudson doctrine applies in every case where a deprivation is caused by an unauthorized . . . departure from established practices. Id. at 138 n.20 (internal quotation marks omitted).10 More fundamentally, the Court emphasized that the state chose to delegate to [hospital officials] a broad power to admit patients to [mental hospitals], i.e., to effect what, in the absence of informed consent, is a substantial deprivation of liberty. Id. at 135. The Court explained that it might be 10 We note that this understanding of unauthorized appears to be in direct tension with several of our precedents, which can be read to suggest that a departure from established state procedures by itself renders an official action unauthorized under Parratt and Hudson. See, e.g., SFW Arecibo, Ltd., 415 F.3d at 139; PFZ Props., Inc. v. Rodríguez, 928 F.2d 28, 31 (1st Cir. 1991). This point becomes critical in our qualified immunity analysis. See infra Part II.C. -20- constitutional to provide such broad discretion with little guidance on its exercise, but when those officials fail to provide constitutionally required procedural safeguards to a person whom they deprive of liberty, the state officials cannot then escape liability by invoking Parratt and Hudson. Id. 3. Application to San Gerónimo's Due Process Claim Turning to the facts of this case, we conclude that the rationale of Zinermon is squarely applicable, and thus the postdeprivation remedies available to San Gerónimo could not be sufficient to satisfy the Due Process Clause. Though presenting the deprivation of a property rather than liberty interest, the problem at the heart of this case is the same as in Zinermon: state officials, imbued with the broad discretion to effect deprivation of property interests, erroneously chose to deprive the plaintiff of its property under a protocol lacking the procedural protections required by due process. Commonwealth law provided the ARPE with two options for the suspension of San Gerónimo's construction permits: (1) an ordinary adjudicative process involving a formal hearing and other procedural safeguards, see P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 3, §§ 2151(a), 2152, 2157-59, 2161, 2163-64, or (2) an Emergency Adjudicatory Procedure, see id. § 2167. The latter was available in any situation in which there is imminent danger to the public health, safety and welfare or which requires immediate action by the -21- agency. P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 3, § 2167(a). The ARPE chose this emergency procedure, explaining: Pursuant to [§ 2167], the agencies may hold emergency adjudicatory procedures of an expeditious nature when there is an imminent danger to the public health, safety and welfare or which require immediate action by the agency. Some questions have arisen as to the ownership of the land where the Proyecto Paseo Caribe development is located after the Opinion issued by the Secretary of Justice. There have also been several incidents that could affect the safety of the employees working in this project, and of the citizens who have been holding demonstrations near said land. The conclusion in the aforementioned Opinion that some of the land occupied by the Proyecto Paseo Caribe development is public land, has evidenced the existence of a great public interest in the reevaluation of the endorsements of said project to safeguard the rights of both the proponents and the developers and the resources of the People of Puerto Rico. In re San Gerónimo Development, Inc., Order to Show Cause, at  (ARPE Dec. 14, 2007) (certified translation provided by the parties). As in Zinermon, there is no question that the defendants erred in their choice of the Emergency Adjudicatory Procedure. The Puerto Rico Supreme Court determined that the justification relied upon in the ARPE's order was very far from the extraordinary circumstances that would allow the use of the immediate action procedure . . . . San Gerónimo Caribe Project, Inc., 2008 TSPR 130, at . If Puerto Rico's statutes had been strictly complied with, the ARPE would have followed normal adjudicatory procedures -22- and no deprivation of [property] without due process would [have] occur[red]. Zinermon, 494 U.S. at 117 n.3. Though the defendants may have departed from state law protocols in suspending San Gerónimo's permits via the emergency procedure, we conclude that their action is distinguishable, on the three bases Zinermon cites, from the sort of genuinely random and unauthorized conduct subject to Parratt and Hudson. First, as in Zinermon, the point at which a deprivation of property would be effected is perfectly predictable -- it was at the point where an agency is choosing between regular and emergency procedures. See Zinermon, 494 U.S. at 136. Thus, it cannot be said that the deprivation of property without sufficient process was truly random. Second, unlike Parratt and Hudson, this was not a situation where the very nature of the deprivation made predeprivation process 'impossible.' Id. at 137 (quoting Parratt, 451 U.S. at 541). To the contrary, it is plain that, as in Zinermon, additional processes could have been implemented to limit[] and guide[] the defendants' power to effect deprivations of property under the emergency adjudicatory procedure. Id. The emergency procedures statute fails to offer any meaningful guidance on what types of circumstances will justify emergency action, stating only that such circumstances include any situation in which there is imminent danger to the public health, safety and -23- welfare or which requires immediate action by the agency. P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 3, § 2167(a). There is thus significant room for guidance or additional procedures for identifying when emergency adjudicatory procedures can permissibly be employed. Third, with regard to whether the defendants' actions were authorized, it is undisputed that the ARPE purported to act under the authority of § 2167(a), which does indeed permit deprivation of property interests without a hearing in exigent circumstances. Defendants suggest that their actions were unauthorized because they did not follow the procedures ordinarily required by Puerto Rico law. However, Zinermon teaches that this sort of unauthorized . . . departure from established practices is not 'unauthorized' in the sense the term is used in Parratt and Hudson. Zinermon, 494 U.S. at 138 & n.20. Rather, as in Zinermon, [t]he deprivation here is 'unauthorized' only in the sense that it was not an act sanctioned by state law, but, instead, was a deprivation of constitutional rights by an official's abuse of his position. Id. at 138 (citation omitted) (internal quotation marks and alterations omitted). And, in this case, as in Zinermon, [t]he State delegated to [the defendants] the power and authority to effect the very deprivation complained of . . . . Id. In short, this case does not match the mold cast by Parratt and Hudson. This was not a matter of random and -24- unauthorized action, but instead of predictable overreaching by government officials given broad discretion to choose the manner by which property interests might be deprived. As such, postdeprivation remedies were not sufficient to meet the requirements of due process here. San Gerónimo has made out a valid procedural due process claim.