Opinion ID: 2974340
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The remaining federal claims

Text: With the exception of the RICO claim,2 the district court dismissed all of Brown’s federal claims because it found that they were not ripe for adjudication. We agree, as we have already explained, that the procedural due process claim and the equal protection claim are not ripe. We will affirm the dismissal of the remaining claims, but on other grounds. See Russ’ Kwik Car Wash, Inc. v. Marathon Petroleum Co., 772 f.2d 214, 216 (6th Cir. 1985) (“A decision below must be affirmed if correct for any reason, including a reason not considered by the lower court.”) We have combed the 1690 pages of this record, and we conclude that Defendants are entitled to summary judgment on each of Brown’s remaining federal claims because Brown has failed to provide sufficient evidence to raise a genuine issue of material fact as to any of those claims. We turn first to Count VI, Brown’s substantive due process claim. Brown claims that the Defendants’ actions have deprived him of his “property interest relative to his right to receive a bequest of Redcoat stock and a liberty interest relative to his right to pursue a career as manager of [the Redcoat,]” and that “Defendant’s actions were arbitrary and capricious and there was no rational basis for the refusal to recommend approval of the stock transfer with Plaintiff as trustee.” Brown does not specify which Defendant acted arbitrarily, but from the context we assume he refers to Lt. Foster, the officer who conducted the background investigation and recommended that Brown and his brother did not meet the requirements for transfer of the stock and license. Brown apparently 2 The court dismissed the RICO claim on the merits and Brown does not appeal that aspect of the judgment. 9 complains that actions actually taken by the Defendants – as opposed to actions that he believed they would take had the application not been withdrawn – were arbitrary and without rational basis. The record before the district court on summary judgment does not contain evidence to raise a genuine issue of fact material to this claim. We note, for example, that it is undisputed that Brown is in fact a manager of the Redcoat. There is no evidence in this record to support a claim that the Defendants have prevented him from managing the tavern or from pursuing that career. Nor could a rational jury conclude, based on the evidence in this record, that the citations issued to the Redcoat for violations of the liquor laws over the years were issued in an attempt to provide a basis for some later action by the City with regard to a transfer of the Redcoat’s stock or the liquor license, or that the investigations of the Redcoat or Brown – or his mother and brother, for that matter – were undertaken for abusive or illegitimate reasons. In short, the record contains no evidence of executive action that could “properly be characterized as arbitrary, or conscience shocking, in a constitutional sense,” County of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833, 846 (1998), or of “conduct intended to injure in some way unjustifiable by any government interest [which] is the sort of official action most likely to rise to the conscience-shocking level.” Id. at 849. Brown has not provided evidence from which a jury could conclude that the Defendants refused or failed to prevent any of the harms of which he complains, or that Brown suffered any cognizable injury as the result of an official policy or custom of the City pursuant to which the individual Defendants acted or failed to act, or that any of the Defendants had or exercised any supervisory authority over any other of the Defendants as alleged in Count II. Nor does the record contain any evidence sufficient to permit a finding, required in order to prevail on Count III, a claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1985(3), that any Defendant acted on the basis of racial or other class-based 10 animus with regard to Brown or that any two of the Defendants acted in concert such that they were engaged in a conspiracy. In the absence of the evidence necessary to establish the conspiracy required to prevail on a claim under § 1985(3), Brown cannot prevail on Count IV, a claim that the Defendants violated 42 U.S.C. § 1986, which provides a cause of action against persons who, with knowledge of the §1985 conspiracy and the power to prevent the conspirators’ wrongful acts, fail to do so. Finally, the record contains no evidence from which a jury could find in Brown’s favor on Count VIII, his claim that the Defendants’ actions were in retaliation for the filing of – and prevailing in – a lawsuit against the City. Certainly this would qualify as protected activity for purposes of a claim of retaliation under the First Amendment, but the record clearly demonstrates that Brown was not a party to that lawsuit. We affirm the district court’s dismissal of these claims, but because Brown failed to provide sufficient evidence to raise a genuine issue of fact material to any of them, they must be dismissed with prejudice.