Opinion ID: 64044
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Due Process Violation by the Tebo Brothers

Text: Mrs. Tebo alleges that the commitment procedures were not followed and each Defendant is liable. She concedes that the Tebo brothers are not state actors. In order to hold them liable on her Section 1983 claim, they must have engaged in a conspiracy with state actors to violate her constitutional rights. Cinel v. Connick, 15 F.3d 1338, 1343 (5th Cir.1994). To make such a claim actionable, the private and the public actors must have entered into an agreement to commit an illegal act, and a plaintiff's constitutional rights must have been violated. Id. A plaintiff must allege specific facts to show an agreement. Priester v. Lowndes County, 354 F.3d 414, 421 (5th Cir.2004). The essence of the alleged conspiracy is that the Tebo brothers agreed with Dr. Bush and social worker Joan Sonnier to have Mrs. Tebo civilly committed without following the civil commitment statutes. According to Mrs. Tebo, the Tebo brothers violated her statutory rights by filing an affidavit containing false statements about her behavior, by falsely claiming they were entitled to pauper status, and by causing an evaluation to be conducted prior to a court's reviewing the affidavit for sufficiency. See Miss.Code Ann. § 41-21-67. Defendants Sonnier (now dismissed), Holbrook, and Bush are alleged to have misled Mrs. Tebo about her status under the civil commitment laws, and to have been part of the conspiracy to evaluate her without a court order. As we have already summarized, Mrs. Tebo admitted engaging in some erratic behavior. The brothers called the county sheriff. The sheriff contacted Sonnier, and both then went to the Tebo home to conduct what Mrs. Tebo alleges was an illegal pre-screening evaluation. Thereafter, the brothers followed Sonnier's advice by going to the county courthouse, where they filed the affidavit and signed the pauper's oath. There is no allegation that the brothers were involved in the commitment process after submitting their affidavit. The affidavit led to Mrs. Tebo's evaluation by the doctors. If the evaluation improperly occurred without court order, there is no evidence from which to infer that the brothers were complicit. Mrs. Tebo's allegation that the Defendants were engaged in a conspiracy to violate her civil rights is conclusory. She offers no evidence of an agreement to commit an illegal act between the Tebo brothers and the state actors. Even had Sonnier's method of proceeding been in violation of state law, there is no evidence that the Tebo brothers, presumably not experts in civil commitment law, were aware of the illegality or that such lawlessness was a component of a scheme to have Mrs. Tebo illegally committed. The same difficulty for the claim applies to the allegedly unlawful means by which Doctors Bush and Holbrookwhom the Tebo brothers never metevaluated Mrs. Tebo. Similarly, Mrs. Tebo fails to show how the brothers' own allegedly improper conduct of signing a false pauper's oath and exaggerating her behavior in their affidavits shows that they were acting in agreement with state actors to have Mrs. Tebo illegally committed. She does not allege that they told Sonnier they were lying or of their supposedly illicit intentions, much less offer evidence of an actual agreement to commit Mrs. Tebo illegally. Mrs. Tebo's allegations and evidence do not allege specific facts to show that there is a genuine issue of material fact as to whether there was an agreement between the private and public defendants to commit an illegal act. Accordingly, we affirm the grant of summary judgment on this claim.