Opinion ID: 2995134
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Mr. Honaker’s Section 1983 Claims

Text: With respect to Mr. Honaker’s claims in Count I, the district court, pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 50 (Rule 50), granted Mr. Smith’s motion for judgment as a matter of law after the jury had returned a verdict for Mr. Honaker./4 Pursuant to Rule 50, a district court may grant judgment as a matter of law when there is no legally sufficient evidentiary basis for a reasonable jury to find for that party on that issue. Fed. R. Civ. P. 50(a)(1). We review a district court’s grant of judgment as a matter of law de novo. See Massey v. Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Ill., 226 F.3d 922, 924 (7th Cir. 2000); Futrell v. J.I. Case, 38 F.3d 342, 346 (7th Cir. 1994). After a jury has rendered its verdict, we must engage in this review not to determine whether the jury believed the right people, but only whether it was presented with a legally sufficient amount of evidence from which it could reasonably derive its verdict. Massey, 226 F.3d at 924. In that regard, we must judge whether the evidence in support of the verdict is substantial; the party opposing the motion must have put forward more than a mere scintilla of evidence to support that jury verdict. Willis v. Marion County Auditor’s Office, 118 F.3d 542, 545 (7th Cir. 1997); see also Futrell, 38 F.3d at 346. In reviewing the totality of the evidence in the record, we draw all inferences in the light most favorable to the party against whom the motion is directed. See Willis, 118 F.3d at 545; Cygnar v. City of Chicago, 865 F.2d 827, 834 (7th Cir. 1989). If, after reviewing all of the evidence in the case, the nonmoving party did not introduce enough evidence to support his claim, then judgment as a matter of law is appropriate. See Massey, 226 F.3d at 924.
Mr. Honaker first contends that there was sufficient evidence for a jury to conclude that Mr. Smith played a role in setting fire to his house. As we have noted, Mr. Honaker’s claim in this regard was filed under Section 1983. As a result, he must demonstrate not only that Mr. Smith was in fact involved in setting the fire, but also that Mr. Smith did so under color of state law and deprived Mr. Honaker of a federally guaranteed right. See 42 U.S.C. sec. 1983; see also Pickrel v. City of Springfield, 45 F.3d 1115, 1118 (7th Cir. 1995); Hughes v. Meyer, 880 F.2d 967, 971 (7th Cir. 1989) (citing West v. Atkins, 487 U.S. 42 (1988)). We have emphasized that [n]ot every action by a state official or employee is to be deemed as occurring ’under color’ of state law. Hughes, 880 F.2d at 971. Action is taken under color of state law when it involves a misuse of power, ’possessed by virtue of state law and made possible only because the wrongdoer is clothed with the authority of state law.’ Walker v. Taylorville Corr. Ctr., 129 F.3d 410, 413 (7th Cir. 1997) (quoting West, 487 U.S. at 49); see also Hughes, 880 F.2d at 971. As a result, acts by a state officer are not made under color of state law unless they are related in some way to the performance of the duties of the state office. See Gibson v. City of Chicago, 910 F.2d 1510, 1516 (7th Cir. 1990); Briscoe v. LaHue, 663 F.2d 713, 721 n.4 (7th Cir. 1981). In Hughes v. Meyer, 880 F.2d 967, 972 (7th Cir. 1989), for example, we determined that a warden of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources did not act under color of state law when he provided local sheriffs with information regarding an alleged criminal act undertaken by the defendants. The warden’s authority as an official who en forced the state’s game laws did not extend to the general enforcement of state law. See id. Thus, when he provided information regarding the alleged criminal act, he was not doing so by virtue of the authority granted to him by his state employment. See id. In contrast, in Pickrel v. City of Springfield, 45 F.3d 1115, 1116-18 (7th Cir. 1995), we held, in the context of reviewing a motion for dismissal under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), that an off-duty police officer could have been acting under color of state law when he arrested the plaintiff after an altercation between the two at a restaurant. We made this determinationbecause the officer, although off-duty, was attired in his police uniform which displayed his badge, was wearing his gun and had his marked squad car parked just outside the restaurant. See id. at 1118. We determined that these facts demonstrated that the officer was acting while displaying signs of state authority and advertising the presence of a state actor to those around him. See id. But see Latuszkin v. City of Chicago, 250 F.3d 502, 505-06 (7th Cir. 2001) (off-duty police officer had not acted under color of state law where disputed action occurred while officer was driving his own car outside of his police jurisdiction and where there was no allegation that [the officer] was engaged in police activity, that he displayed any police power, or that he possessed any indicia of his office at the time of the accident). We agree with the district court’s conclusion that, on this record, any action taken by Mr. Smith to cause Mr. Honaker’s house to burn to the ground was not effectuated under color of state law. Mr. Honaker does not explain how such an act was related to any official duty or activity of Mr. Smith as Mayor of Lovington or as its Fire Chief./5 Moreover, Mr. Honaker makes no substantive contention that Mr. Smith used the cloak of his authority as mayor or fire chief or any indicia of his office to set such a fire. In one of his briefs, Mr. Honaker appears to suggest that Mr. Smith may have paid Thomas to set the fire. See Appellant’s Reply Br. at 4. This allegation is not well-formed and, more importantly, Mr. Honaker again does not explain how such an act would be related in any way to the performance of Mr. Smith’s duties as a state officer./6 Under these circum-stances, we agree with the district court that there was no basis upon which a reasonable jury could conclude that Mr. Smith violated Section 1983 by causing Mr. Honaker’s house to be set afire.
Mr. Honaker also asserts that the district court erred when it ruled that no reasonable jury could have found that Mr. Smith, in his role as fire chief, failed to extinguish properly the fire at Mr. Honaker’s house. After extensively reviewing the evidence in the record, we must agree with the district court’s conclusion. The record does not contain a legally sufficient amount of evidence from which a jury reasonably could have inferred that Mr. Smith and the firefighters on the scene used anything less than their best efforts to extinguish the fire. As an initial matter, the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrated that, after receiving the call informing them of the fire on March 1, 1997, the Lovington Fire Department arrived at Mr. Honaker’s house within minutes. Fire Department records show that the call was received at 1:51
truck arrived at 1:56 a.m., two more trucks arrived at 1:57 a.m., and a fourth arrived at 2:09 a.m. See Def. Ex.7. Additionally, a number of firefighters corroborated the swift arrival time of the Fire Department./7 Moreover, despite the fact that the fire occurred in the early morning hours, the Fire Department responded with four fire trucks and twenty volunteer firefighters. Pursuant to a mutual aid agreement with the neighboring Sullivan Fire Department, which employs paid personnel, the Lovington firefighters also called for assistance from Sullivan. Lovington firefighter Steven Fleming testified that Sullivan would not have responded automatically to a fire in Lovington; instead, the Lovington Fire Department must affirmatively have requested their help. As a result of this call for assistance, Sullivan dispatched, in addition to several firefighters, an aerial fire truck which enables firefighters to direct ladders and water to the upper floors of homes. Lovington’s Fire Department did not own this type of truck. Additionally, all of the testimony at trial suggested that, upon arriving at Mr. Honaker’s house, the firefightersconsistently and vigorously fought the fire to the best of their ability. Particularly on point was the testimony of Tankersly, the investigator from the Illinois State Fire Marshall’s Office, who was called to the scene to determine the cause of the fire. Tankersly, who had 15 years of experience and who had investigated over 1,000 fires in his career, testified that when he arrived at 3:30 a.m., [f]irefighters were actively engaged in putting out hot spot fires within the structure. R.70 at 275. He also said that the firefighters had made every effort to put out the fire and that they could not have done anything more than what they did. He also corroborated Mr. Smith’s view that structural problems had rendered the house unsafe for entry by firefighters. A number of the firefighters themselves corroborated that the fire had been fought vigorously. They explained that, when they arrived at the scene, they immediately put water on the fire and began actively combating the blaze. See, e.g., id. at 217-20 (testimony of Doug Thomas); id. at 294-98 (testimony of Harold White); id. at 404-08 (testimony of Mr. Smith). Even James Webb, a neighbor and friend of Mr. Honaker’s, testified that, when he first noticed the fire at 2:10 a.m., he saw at least twenty members of the Lovington Fire Department fighting the flames. Mr. Webb’s testimony bore witness to the significant scope of firefighters’ response when he explained that I walked outside, and I saw the fire trucks. They were halfway down the block on Railroad Street [the street on which Mr. Honaker’s house was located] and almost all the way down the block on Middle Street. Id. at 304. Mr. Honaker points to three facts to support his assertion that Mr. Smith and the firefighters did not use their best efforts in combating the fire. First, he notes that it initially took the firefighters three hours to conquer the flames, a length of time that he suggests was far too great. Next, he submits that the fact that the firefighters did not enter his house to combat the fire suggests that they did not perform their duties properly. Lastly, he cites a piece of trial testimony in which Mr. Smith made the assertion that he did not let the firefighters enter the house because that house wasn’t worth getting hurt for. Id. at 167. Mr. Honaker claims that this statement demonstrates that Mr. Smith’s animus towards him was the reason why the firefighters did not enter the structure. As to the amount of time that it took to combat the fire, we have already noted that substantial testimony supported the conclusion that the firefighters made every effort to control the blaze and that Tankersly, an experienced fire investigator, testified that there was nothing more that could have been done. On the other hand, as the district court noted, Mr. Honaker presented no evidence that three hours was too long a time to put out this type of fire. R.61 at 9 (emphasis in original). Mr. Smith had explained that the fire raged for that period of time because the firefighters had difficulty in identifying the proper heat source on which to train their hoses and because the great amount of debris in and around the house made it difficult to quickly develop an entryway through which the water could attack the fire. Mr. Honaker did nothing to contest this explanation or to suggest that the firefighters lingered unnecessarily at the fire scene. A jury would have no evidentiary basis from which to infer reasonably that the Fire Department took an unreasonable amount of time to extinguish the fire. Additionally, as to the claim that the firefighters should have entered the house, Mr. Smith explained that he did not allow them to do so due to the precarious nature of the house’s structure. Every witness who testified on the subject confirmed that, during and after the fire, the floor joists supporting the second floor of the house were cracked and that the second floor itself was sagging--presenting the serious threat that, if the firefighters had entered the burning building, the house might have collapsed around them. For example, Tankersly noted that, after the fire was extinguished, the floor joists or the ceiling joists from the first floor were actually starting to crack or sag inward and agreed that it appeared that the second floor itself was actually sagging. R.70 at 276./8 Even Mr. Honaker agreed that, after the fire, one floor joist was broken and that the second floor was sagging downward. Additionally, overwhelming evidence established that the dwelling was in great disrepair because Mr. Honaker had been in the process of gutting the inside of the house. Id. at 307. Since he had purchased the house, Mr. Honaker had removed a non-load-bearing wall, had torn the kitchen ceiling out and even had experienced part of the chimney falling down on top of him. Lastly, witnesses with experience in investigating and fighting fires testified that, under the circumstances, it was not improper for the firefighters to combat the flames from outside the building. Tankersly explained that during his investigation, he saw that the collapse of the second floor shows major cracks beginning to show in the floor joists and that these cracks made the structure pretty much unsafe to even be in. Id. at 278. Mr. Smith explained that the classes in which he and the other firefighters were trained taught that a fire should be fought from the outside in and that if the structure is in danger of collapse, they should not enter the building. Id. at 407. In contrast, no witness, with or without firefighting experience, testified that the Lovington Fire Department should have entered the house under such circumstances. Mr. Honaker argues that, because the frame of the house continued to stand after the fire and because the firefighters later entered the building to hose down fire that had rekindled, the house was not in such precarious condition that the Fire Department could not have entered it when they first arrived. We do not believe that these facts, without more, are sufficient for a reasonable jury to conclude that the firefighters should have entered a burning building that, by all accounts, appeared to be in serious jeopardy of collapsing./9 Ultimately, Lovington’s volunteer Fire Department responded to a substantial fire in the early morning hours with four trucks, twenty firefighters and significant assistance from a neighboring fire department. Moreover, not only was substantial evidence presented that the firefighters actively fought the flames with their best efforts, but Mr. Honaker offered no testimony from any witness to demonstrate that the firefighters should have or could have done anything differently. As a result, we must agree with the district court’s ruling that there was insufficient evidence for a jury to find that Mr. Smith, in his capacity as Lovington’s Fire Chief, failed to fight the fire with his best efforts. Therefore, the district court properly granted judgment as a matter of law on Count I.