Opinion ID: 760210
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Judgment on the Pleadings for the Shorewood Defendants

Text: 27 A motion for judgment on the pleadings under Fed.R. Civ.P. 12(c) is reviewed under the same standard as a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6). Frey, 91 F.3d at 46. As to the Shorewood defendants, the complaint alleges that Jonathan's father and stepmother informed one of the officers about Jonathan's recent release from jail, his bizarre behavior, and that he was suicidal. Compl. p 24. It goes on to allege that [t]hey requested that Jonathan be taken into custody immediately for the purpose of initiating emergency detention procedures. Id. The complaint alleges that once the Shorewood police had Jonathan in custody, 28 Sgt. Dunn and Officer VanderSchaaf deliberately failed to review any readily available Shorewood Police Department records and incident reports, and County records, concerning Jonathan's extensive recent history of mental illness, involuntary commitment proceedings, his suicide attempt, his release from suicide watch at the Jail that very day, and Shorewood Police Department records from earlier that evening; they also failed to consult with anyone regarding the implementation of emergency detention procedures to continue Jonathan's custody in order to provide him with desperately needed medical treatment and care. 29 Compl. p 27. The complaint goes on to allege that the officers' inadequacies were a result of their lack of training or Shorewood's policy regarding the implementation of emergency detention hearings. Id. The complaint alleges that [d]espite the desperate pleas of Marc Collignon and his wife that Shorewood retain custody of Jonathan and obtain medical treatment for him, Sgt. Dunn and Officer VanderSchaaf released Jonathan about 1:30 a.m. Compl. p 27. These allegations demonstrate that Marc Collignon and his wife were genuinely concerned, but the allegations also demonstrate that the plaintiffs have no substantive due process claim against the Shorewood defendants. 30 The complaint seems to allege a right to be taken into custody for the purpose of receiving treatment, but no such right exists. Jonathan had no due process right to be involuntarily committed and thus deprived of his liberty. Wilson, 42 F.3d at 1066. It is therefore irrelevant whether the officers declined to initiate involuntary commitment proceedings because, as they allege, they believed Jonathan did not meet the statutory criteria, or, as the complaint alleges, because they were inadequately trained, constrained by a bad policy, or simply indifferent to whether Jonathan was involuntarily committed. 31 Perhaps realizing the futility of arguing that the Shorewood defendants should have taken steps to involuntarily commit Jonathan, on appeal the plaintiffs argue that their allegations assert a claim that the Shorewood defendants exposed Jonathan to a greater risk of suicide. As we noted, state actors may be liable if they place an individual in a position of danger, even if they themselves do not inflict the harm. E.g., Wallace, 115 F.3d at 429. 3 The plaintiffs argue that Shorewood, and its ultimate decision maker, Sgt. Dunn, were required to assess and ameliorate any incremental mental pain and suffering and increased risk of suicide which resulted from Jonathan's seizure and custodial detention by the UWM and Shorewood police departments while he was in a depressed and suicidal state. Appellants' Brief at p. 31. As authority for this sweeping proposition, the plaintiffs cite Archie, 847 F.2d at 1223. In that case, we stated: When the state puts a person in danger, the Due Process Clause requires the state to protect him to the extent of ameliorating the incremental risk. That statement is hardly support for the plaintiffs' broad proposition. The plaintiffs equate temporarily detaining a mentally ill person with put[ting] a person in danger. There is no comparison, especially under these facts. It is certainly possible that custody, even when quite temporary, is stressful for mentally ill persons like Jonathan. But temporarily detaining someone in Jonathan's situation does not expose him to an incremental risk that must then be ameliorated. Before the UMW and Shorewood officers acted, Jonathan was wandering the streets late at night. Having temporarily detained him, the officers returned him to his father and stepmother. In that situation, the risk that he faced was, if anything, reduced. Had the police simply ignored Jonathan, for whatever reason, they would face no liability for their inaction. See, e.g., Archie, 847 F.2d at 1223 (no constitutional violation by failing to dispatch ambulance in response to emergency call). The plaintiffs now argue that through intervention that effectively increased his chances of avoiding harm--getting Jonathan off the streets and back to his parents--the police became liable. Not so. Indeed, such an errant rule-in-hindsight would be a strong incentive for the police to avoid any attempt to provide assistance to people like Jonathan and so deny help to others who might benefit from the sort of temporary intervention that the police performed here. 32 Similarly, we must reject the plaintiffs' claim that Sgt. Dunn's refusal to provide Jonathan with access to medical personnel capable of assessing his known serious medical condition is also actionable. Appellants' Brief at p. 31. For this proposition, the plaintiffs cite Matzker v. Herr, 748 F.2d 1142, 1147-48 (7th Cir.1984), overruled in part as recognized by, e.g., Salazar, 940 F.2d at 240. Again, the cited authority does not support the plaintiffs' broad assertion. In Matzker, a pre-trial detainee had been severely beaten by other detainees in the county jail, suffering a broken nose, an injury to his eye, and three broken teeth. The jail officials transferred him to a hospital where his nose was treated, but his eye and teeth were not. The county held the detainee for three months but refused to provide him any medical treatment for his eye and teeth, resulting in permanent injury, because the jail itself lacked facilities to provide the medical care and the officials refused to transfer him to another institution that had such facilities. Concluding that this set forth a due process claim, we held: [A] pretrial detainee's due process right to be free from punishment is violated when a jailer fails to promptly and reasonably procure competent medical aid for a pretrial detainee who suffers a serious illness or injury while confined. Id. at 1147 (footnote omitted). This rule is, of course, just the well settled principle that when the state restrains an individual's ability to seek necessary aid, it must provide that aid itself. The Shorewood police did not restrain Jonathan's ability to get private aid; indeed they improved his ability to do so by preventing him from wandering the streets in the middle of the night and releasing him to his parents. The plaintiffs are trying to expand the rule that the state must provide medical treatment to pre-trial detainees into a rule imposing an obligation to provide medical treatment whenever the police interact with a person who turns out to have a chronic mental illness, no matter how brief that interaction. When the Shorewood police temporarily took Jonathan into custody, he was clearly not a pre-trial detainee. Also, there is a substantial difference between Jonathan's serious medical need, which was pre-existing and chronic, and the needs of a detainee such as Matzker, which were acute and occurred while in custody. As we said, no treatment would cure Jonathan's chronic mental illness; it could only be treated in the long term and with no guarantee of success. But prompt medical attention would have cured Matzker's medical needs--injuries that if treated would heal but if untreated could result in permanent harm--and by confining him, the county prevented him from seeking such aid elsewhere. Here, the Shorewood defendants had no obligation to provide long term care to Jonathan before they temporarily detained him, and did not incur such an obligation by doing so. 33 The judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.