Opinion ID: 771471
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Fourteenth Amendment - Substantive Due Process

Text: 8 The district court rejected Mrs. Weeks' substantive due process claim because it found that Deputy Sheriff Longbottom had no affirmative duty to take Ray Weeks into protective custody or to obtain medical assistance for him to address the harm inflicted by private citizens. See DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dep't of Soc. Services, 489 U.S. 189 (1989). We have held that unless the police have a special relationship with the victim, the victim has no constitutional right to have the police provide medical assistance or intervene to protect him from the actions of private actors. See Tucker v. Callahan, 867 F.2d 909, 914 (6th Cir. 1989) (The failure to provide medical assistance is not actionable under §1983 for the same reason that the failure to intervene in the fight is not: in neither case did the state actor cause the injury of which plaintiff complains.); accord Walton v. City of Southfield, 995 F.2d 1331 (6th Cir. 1993); Foy v. City of Berea, 58 F.3d 227 (6th Cir. 1995). 9 Here, Longbottom could have requested an ambulance for Weeks, but he was under no constitutional duty to do so. We have found a deprivation under the due process clause in situations when the victim was in police custody and the police failed to act or when the police affirmatively acted to put the victim in a more vulnerable position that he would have been in otherwise. See Stemler v. City of Florence, 126 F.3d 856 (6th Cir. 1997) (finding a due process claim under §1983 because the officers actively placed the victim in a harmful situation); Davis v. Brady, 143 F.3d 1021 (6th Cir. 1998) (same); Kallstrom v. City of Columbus, 136 F.3d 1055 (6th Cir. 1998) (finding deprivation under §1983 because the city actively provided to criminal defendantsinformation from the personnel files of plaintiffs--who were undercover police officers--substantially increasing the risk that a private actor would deprive plaintiffs of their liberty interest in personal security). In the case before us here, however, Weeks was not and had not been in police custody; it was not Longbottom's actions that caused Weeks' harm; and Longbottom's order to Weeks to move along did not put Weeks in a more vulnerable position than he was in before he encountered Longbottom. 10 Mrs. Weeks cites two cases from other circuits that she contends are persuasive on the question of whether Longbottom owed Ray Weeks an affirmative duty to obtain medical treatment for him. See Salas v. Carpenter, 980 F.2d 299 (5th Cir. 1992); Wyke v. Polk County Sch. Bd., 129 F.3d 560 (11th Cir. 1997). Neither of those cases provides any help to Mrs. Weeks. In Salas, a county sheriff, untrained and unequipped to respond to a hostage situation, refused to permit properly trained and equipped city police officers to attempt to resolve a hostage crisis on property within the sheriff's jurisdiction, and instead attempted to handle it himself. The hostage was killed by the hostage-taker, and the estate of the hostage sued. The court refused to find that the sheriff had increased the vulnerability of the hostage in the sense envisioned by the Court in DeShaney. Salas, 980 F.2d at 309. Wyke presented the question of whether school officials who had knowledge of a student's attempts to commit suicide but failed to relay that knowledge to the student's mother had violated an affirmative duty to protect that student from harming himself. The court held that there was no such duty. 11 Longbottom had no duty under the Constitution to take Weeks into protective custody or to provide medical assistance to him. The district court correctly held that Mrs. Weeks has demonstrated no violation of her son's due process rights.