Opinion ID: 749872
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Willful Disregard for Plaintiff's Safety

Text: 27 The second prong of the Kneipp test asks whether the state actor acted with willful disregard for or deliberate indifference to plaintiff's safety. Kneipp, 95 F.3d at 1208 & n. 21. [T]he environment created by the state actors must be dangerous; they must know it to be dangerous; and ... [they] must have been at least deliberately indifferent. Johnson v. Dallas Indep. Sch. Dist., 38 F.3d 198, 201 (5th Cir.1994), cert. denied, 514 U.S. 1017, 115 S.Ct. 1361, 131 L.Ed.2d 218 (1995). See also Leffall v. Dallas Indep. Sch. Dist., 28 F.3d 521, 531 (5th Cir.1994) ([I]t is not enough to show that the state increased the danger of harm from third persons; the [S] 1983 plaintiff must also show that the state acted with the requisite degree of culpability in failing to protect the plaintiff.). In other words, the state's actions must evince a willingness to ignore a foreseeable danger or risk. Of course, the notion of deliberate indifference contemplates a danger that must at least be foreseeable. In Kneipp, we focused on the police officers' decision to send Samantha Kneipp home alone, despite their awareness of her intoxicated and incapacitated state, as evidence of their deliberate indifference. In Cornelius, the court held the defendants could be liable based on their knowledge of the risk created by the presence of the community work squad inmates. 880 F.2d at 358. These factors are not present here. Defendants could not have been aware of the danger posed by Stovall, nor could they have foreseen it. As a matter of law they cannot have acted with willful disregard for Diane Morse's safety. 10 28 Our decision in Mark v. Borough of Hatboro is instructive. The plaintiff owned an auto repair business that was destroyed in a fire set by a volunteer firefighter. The plaintiff filed a § 1983 action against the borough and the fire company, claiming their failure to properly screen volunteer firefighters resulted in the damage to his property. Affirming the district court's grant of summary judgment, we rejected plaintiff's claim that the danger of volunteer firefighters committing arson is so grave and so obvious that the defendants failure [to screen volunteers] evinced willful disregard for the rights of individuals with whom the firefighters came in contact. Mark, 51 F.3d at 1140. A similar analysis can be applied to the allegations here. As contrasted with the risk that an intoxicated woman left alone on the road during inclement weather might be injured, the risk that unlocking a school entrance would invite the actions of a deranged third person is no more a foreseeable risk than the risk that a firefighter will have a proclivity for arson. Consequently, defendants here cannot have acted with the requisite culpability to be liable under the state-created danger theory. 29 Also instructive is the decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Johnson v. Dallas Indep. Sch. Dist., 38 F.3d 198 (5th Cir.1994), cert. denied, 514 U.S. 1017, 115 S.Ct. 1361, 131 L.Ed.2d 218 (1995). In that case, a student at a Dallas high school was killed by a stray bullet fired by a non-student during an argument in a school hallway. The ruckus was instigated by the non-student, who was able to enter the school carrying a concealed weapon because the school's metal detectors were not in use. The decedent's father filed suit under § 1983, claiming, inter alia, that the school district was responsible for his son's death under the state-created danger theory. The district court granted defendants' motion to dismiss, and the court of appeals affirmed. According to the court, 30 [a]ctual knowledge of a serious risk of physical danger to the plaintiff has been a common feature of the state-created danger cases. From the pleadings in this case, no legitimate inference can be drawn that the school officials might have been actually aware of a high risk that an armed non student invader would enter the campus and fire a pistol randomly during school hours. 31 38 F.3d at 201-202. The court of appeals found that the most that may be said of defendants' ultimately ineffective attempts to secure the environment is that they were negligent, but not that they were deliberately indifferent. Id. at 202. 32 The same is true in the case before us. Stovall's attack on Diane Morse was not a foreseeable risk, and there is no allegation in the complaint that defendants knew of the threat she posed. Defendants, by allowing construction workers to keep the rear entrance to the school unlocked, did not willfully or deliberately disregard a foreseeable danger. Assuming their actions rose to the level of negligence, merely negligent acts cannot support a claim under the state-created danger theory of § 1983. Kneipp, 95 F.3d at 1208; Johnson, 38 F.3d at 202. Much like the decedent in Johnson, Morse was the tragic victim of random criminal conduct rather than of school officials' deliberate, callous decisions, and plaintiff's complaint cannot be read to allege otherwise. Consequently, plaintiff has not met his pleading burden under the second prong of the Kneipp test. 33