Opinion ID: 728963
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Arbitrary Conduct under Collins

Text: 33 Ms. Williams also alleges municipal liability on a second basis: she argues that the City is liable for its own unconstitutional conduct that resulted in Randy Bartel's death. The district court rejected this argument, believing that it was precluded by Hinton. In that case, we held that when a plaintiff seeks to hold the city liable solely because of the actions of its individual officers, the city may not be held liable where there was no underlying constitutional violation by any of its officers. Hinton, 997 F.2d at 782 (citing City of Los Angeles v. Heller, 475 U.S. 796, 799, 106 S.Ct. 1571, 1573, 89 L.Ed.2d 806 (1986)(per curiam)) (emphasis added). Here, as opposed to Hinton and Heller, Ms. Williams asserts municipal liability under her second theory based upon the alleged unconstitutional conduct of the City policy makers themselves rather than on the unconstitutional conduct of Officer Farr or other individual defendants. Therefore, as we discuss below, Hinton and Heller are not dispositive. 34 In light of Collins, we conclude that the City may be liable on the basis of its own conduct even if no City employee is found to have committed a constitutional violation in his individual capacity. In Collins, the widow of a city employee sued the city, alleging that the city had denied her husband substantive due process by failing to train or warn him on the dangers of working in sewers. The Court analyzed the claim by addressing whether the city's 'deliberate indifference' to Collins' safety was arbitrary government action that ... 'shock[s] the conscience' of federal judges. 503 U.S. at 126, 112 S.Ct. at 1069. The Court concluded that the City's failure to train, even assuming it amounted to deliberate indifference, was not conscience-shocking in the constitutional sense. Id. at 128, 112 S.Ct. at 1070. Implicit in this analysis is the premise that the City may be liable for its own deliberate indifference 10 if its conduct could properly be characterized as arbitrary, or conscience-shocking, in a constitutional sense. Id. 35 In holding that the City may be liable for its own unconstitutional policy even if Officer Farr is ultimately exonerated, we emphasize the distinction between cases in which a plaintiff seeks to hold a municipality liable for failing to train an employee who as a result acts unconstitutionally, and cases in which the city's failure is itself an unconstitutional denial of substantive due process. Heller and Hinton are cases belonging in the first category. In those cases, the unconstitutional acts were committed by individual officers. Derivative liability against the city was predicated upon a municipal policy under which the city was allegedly legally responsible for the individual officer's unconstitutional conduct. In order to impose liability in such cases, the policy need not itself be unconstitutional. See Collins, 503 U.S. at 123, 112 S.Ct. at 1067-68. Rather, the inquiry is whether an otherwise constitutional policy is the moving force behind unconstitutional conduct by a municipal employee. See City of Canton, 489 U.S. at 389, 109 S.Ct. at 1205. 11 36 In the second category of cases, liability against the city is sought not derivatively on the basis of unconstitutional conduct by an individual officer, but directly on the basis of the unconstitutional nature of the city's policy itself. Collins belongs in this category. In Collins, the widow of a municipal employee sued only the City alleging that the City violated her husband's constitutional rights by failing to warn of hazards in the workplace. The Court assumed that the plaintiff's allegations of the City's responsibility for the unsafe workplace were sufficient to hold the City liable for the actions of its agents, Collins, 503 U.S. at 124, 112 S.Ct. at 1068, and then turned to the question whether the plaintiff's complaint alleged a constitutional violation by the city, id. Significantly, the Court then did not assess whether any individual agent had acted unconstitutionally but rather considered whether the City's own conduct in failing to provide a safe workplace was itself an omission that can properly be characterized as arbitrary, or conscience-shocking, in a constitutional sense. Id. at 128, 112 S.Ct. at 1070. Fundamental to this analysis is the premise that a city may be liable when an unconstitutional city policy or custom injures someone even if no individual officer is found constitutionally liable. While a city may only act through its agents, it is the agents who implement the unconstitutional policy in their official capacities that are the focus of liability in a Collins case. 37 Municipal policy thus performs two separate functions, as the court in Collins attempted to clarify. In a Heller/Hinton case and in Canton, the inquiry is whether the policy may impose liability on the city solely for the unconstitutional acts of its employee. In such cases, the policy, even if constitutional, will nonetheless be a basis for municipal liability if that policy amounts to deliberate indifference to the rights of the public with whom the municipal employee comes in contact. In a Collins case, on the other hand, the inquiry is whether the policy or custom itself is unconstitutional so as to impose liability on the city for its own unconstitutional conduct in implementing an unconstitutional policy. See e.g., Garcia v. Salt Lake County, 768 F.2d 303, 310 (10th Cir.1985). 38 Although Ms. Williams is therefore not precluded by Hinton from making out a case of a direct constitutional violation by the City, the evidence she offers to support that violation does not meet the conscience-shocking standard required by Collins. Ms. Williams offered evidence that the City hired Officer Farr despite his poor driving record, against the recommendation of the executive director of the civil service commission, and despite reports by two psychologists recommending he not be hired without further testing. The City did not conduct that testing, nor did it require Officer Farr to take remedial training notwithstanding nine incidents of unacceptable driving and a prior accident in which Officer Farr was at fault for hitting another car under analogous circumstances. The record also contains evidence that the City generally did not require its police officers to comply with the applicable safety provisions. 39 While this conduct by the City should not be condoned, [t]he Due Process Clause 'is not a guarantee against incorrect or ill-advised personnel decisions.'  Collins, 503 U.S. at 129, 112 S.Ct. at 1070 (citation omitted). We cannot say that the conduct here was so egregious, outrageous and fraught with unreasonable risk as to shock the conscience. Uhlrig, 64 F.3d at 576. Accordingly, we affirm summary judgment for the City on this claim.