Opinion ID: 1232748
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Okin's Due Process Claims

Text: Okin alleges that defendants acted in concert with defendant Sears and permitted him to impose his reign of terror and abuse upon [her], in violation of her right to due process, by failing to acknowledge and to investigate her complaints against Sears even where he had admitted to Police Chief Williams that he smacked Okin around and could not stop himself from behaving in this manner, failing to report her complaints accurately, failing to provide her reasonable police protections, and otherwise failing to discharge their duties as law enforcement agents. More specifically, Okin asserts that, by expressing contempt toward her and by condoning Sears's conduct, in particular by such actions as discussing sports with him following Okin's December 23, 2001 emergency call, defendants gave official sanction to Sears's abuse and affirmatively contributed to her vulnerability.
Although [a]s a general matter... a State's failure to protect an individual against private violence simply does not constitute a violation of the Due Process Clause, DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dep't of Soc. Servs., 489 U.S. 189, 197, 109 S.Ct. 998, 103 L.Ed.2d 249 (1989), state actors may be liable under section 1983 if they affirmatively created or enhanced the danger of private violence. Dwares v. City of New York, 985 F.2d 94, 99 (2d Cir.1993), overruled on other grounds by Leatherman v. Tarrant County Narcotics Intelligence & Coordination Unit, 507 U.S. 163, 164, 113 S.Ct. 1160, 122 L.Ed.2d 517 (1993). [T]hough an allegation simply that police officers had failed to act upon reports of past violence would not implicate the victim's rights under the Due Process clause, an allegation that the officers in some way had assisted in creating or increasing the danger to the victim would indeed implicate those rights. Dwares, 985 F.2d at 99. In Dwares, we vacated a district court's Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) dismissal of the Section 1983 claims of a demonstrator who alleged he had been beaten by skinheads. The plaintiff alleged that defendant police officers had assured the skinheads that unless they got completely out of control the police would neither interfere with their assaults nor arrest them, thus indicating that they could assault the demonstrators. Id. at 97. As Judge Kearse put it, [i]t requires no stretch to infer that such prior assurances would have increased the likelihood that the `skinheads' would assault demonstrators. Id. at 99. The plaintiff also alleged that the officers had in effect aided and abetted the deprivation of [his] civil rights by allowing him to be subjected to the prolonged assault in their presence without interfering with the attack. Id. Based on the allegations that police officers communicated to private actors that they had the freedom to harm others without risk of a law enforcement response, we found that [s]uch a prearranged official sanction of privately inflicted injury would surely have violated the victim's rights under the Due Process Clause. Id. In later cases, we read Dwares to establish that the Due Process Clause may be violated when police officers' affirmative conduct  as opposed to passive failures to act  creates or increases the risk of private violence, and thereby enhances the danger to the victim. In Hemphill v. Schott, 141 F.3d 412 (2d Cir.1998), for example, we found a material issue of fact as to whether police officers encouraged a private actor's violence against the plaintiff, where the officers, who were called to the scene of a drugstore robbery, allowed the store's manager to join them in pursuit of the plaintiff after returning the manager's gun, which the manager then used to shoot the plaintiff. Id. at 418-19. As we summarized our holding in Dwares, where the state actors actually contributed to the vulnerability of the plaintiff, or where the state actors aided and abetted a private party in the deprivation of a plaintiff's civil rights, a violation of the Due Process Clause does occur. Id. at 419. Since Dwares, we found that repeated, sustained inaction by government officials, in the face of potential acts of violence, might constitute prior assurances, Dwares, 985 F.2d at 99, rising to the level of an affirmative condoning of private violence, even if there is no explicit approval or encouragement. Pena v. DePrisco, 432 F.3d 98, 111 (2d Cir.2005). In Pena  also a 12(b)(6) analysis  we held that when, as the plaintiffs allege, state officials communicate to a private person that he or she will not be arrested, punished, or otherwise interfered with while engaging in misconduct that is likely to endanger the life, liberty or property of others, those officials can be held liable under section 1983 for injury caused by the misconduct under Dwares. This is so even though none of the defendants [is] alleged to have communicated the approval explicitly. Pena, 432 F.3d at 111. We held that the Due Process Clause could be violated by police officers' implicit message that they condoned an off-duty officer's act of driving-while-intoxicated, where his drunken driving resulted in multiple deaths. Id. at 111 ([T]o the extent that fellow police officers and some supervisors participated in or condoned [the off-duty police officer's] behavior, and even ... invited [the officer] to drive after drinking heavily, it could be inferred by a reasonable juror that those defendants, by their actions, implicitly but affirmatively condoned [the officer's] behavior and indicated to [the officer] that he would not be disciplined for his conduct.) Here, we agree with the district court that Okin has failed to show a genuine issue of material fact as to whether defendants affirmatively enhanced the risk of violence by making explicit assurances to Sears that he could act with impunity. As the district court noted, even the most irresponsible and insulting behavior alleged by Okin, such as the officers' discussing sports with Sears on December 23, 2001, does not amount to explicit assurances to an aggressor that he will not be impeded or arrested. Yet, as is clear from Dwares, Hemphill, and Pena, explicit approval of violence is but a subset of the affirmative conduct by state actors that can enhance the danger to a victim. The affirmative conduct of a government official may give rise to an actionable due process violation if it communicates, explicitly or implicitly, official sanction of private violence. Pena, 432 F.3d at 111; Hemphill, 141 F.3d at 419; Dwares, 985 F.2d at 99. The district court did not consider whether a reasonable trier of fact could find that defendants' behavior enhanced the danger to Okin by implicitly but affirmatively encouraging or condoning Sears's domestic violence. As will be discussed further below, the Pena court held that a state actor's implicit encouragement of drunk driving, while actionable misconduct under the state-created danger theory, was not a clearly established violation of the Due Process Clause at the time of the defendants' actions, so that under principles of qualified immunity, they could not be held individually liable. Pena, 432 F.3d at 102, 114-15. The district court, following Pena, found that the individual defendants here  just like the individual defendants in Pena  would be entitled to qualified immunity, even if they implicitly facilitated Sears' abuse by not arresting him or closing out Okin's numerous complaints almost as soon as they were opened. Okin, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 75881, at , 2006 WL 2997296, at . Although the district court did not address the question of whether defendants violated the Due Process Clause by implicit encouragement of Sears's domestic violence, the record is sufficient for us to rule on the issue. [9] Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Okin, we find a genuine issue of material fact as to whether defendants implicitly but affirmatively encouraged Sears's domestic violence. A reasonable factfinder, as Okin argues, could infer that defendants' actions, such as discussing football with Sears during their response to Okin's complaint that he had beaten and tried to choke her, plainly transmitted the message that what he did was permissible and would not cause him problems with authorities. Moreover, the evidence suggests that the defendants repeatedly communicated to Sears that his violence would go unpunished, as when Sears told Williams that he could not help it sometimes when he smacks Michele Okin around and Williams made no arrest, and also, on the numerous occasions that defendants responded to Okin's complaints without filing a domestic incident report, interviewing Sears, or making an arrest. A reasonable view of the evidence supports the inference that defendants' actions rise to the level of affirmative conduct that created or increased the risk of violence to the victim. Pena, 432 F.3d at 111; Dwares, 985 F.2d at 99. The record demonstrates an escalating series of incidents that followed the officers' response to Okin's first complaint of domestic violence, where the officers and Sears had discussed sports, and the officers openly expressed camaraderie with Sears and contempt for Okin. The officers' conduct, both in response to that first complaint and thereafter, could be viewed as ratcheting up the threat of danger to Okin. See Hemphill, 141 F.3d at 419 (finding that a due process violation may occur if the defendants actually contributed to the vulnerability of the plaintiff); see also Koulta v. Merciez, 477 F.3d 442, 446 (6th Cir.2007) (explaining that the increased risk of violence turns on whether [the victim] was safer before the state action than he was after it) (quotation marks omitted); Munger v. City of Glasgow Police Dep't, 227 F.3d 1082, 1086 (9th Cir. 2000) (stating that officers' affirmative conduct endangers a victim if it left the person in a situation that was more dangerous than the one in which they found him). Okin would be more vulnerable once Sears was aware of the officers' dismissive and indifferent attitude toward Okin's complaints, as such awareness nullifies the deterrent capacity of police response. The implied message of the officers' conduct may have galvanized Sears to persist in violent encounters with Okin. A reasonable factfinder undoubtedly could conclude that defendants, by their affirmative conduct, enhanced the danger to Okin because they conveyed to Sears that he could continue to engage in domestic violence with impunity, and that defendants thus violated Okin's due process rights.
To establish a violation of substantive due process rights, a plaintiff must demonstrate that the state action was so egregious, so outrageous, that it may fairly be said to shock the contemporary conscience. County of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833, 847 n. 8, 118 S.Ct. 1708, 140 L.Ed.2d 1043 (1998); see also Matican v. City of New York, 524 F.3d 151, 155, 158-59 (2d Cir.2008). Lewis declared that intentionally inflicted injuries are the most likely to rise to the conscience-shocking level, 523 U.S. at 849, 118 S.Ct. 1708, that negligently inflicted harm is categorically beneath the threshold of constitutional due process, id. at 849, 118 S.Ct. 1708, and that recklessly inflicted harms are context-dependent closer calls. Id. In discussing the latter, the Court in Lewis noted that [d]eliberate indifference that shocks in one environment may not be so patently egregious in another. Id. at 850, 118 S.Ct. 1708. The Court specifically distinguished the circumstances of a high-speed chase that tends to show the absence of conscience-shocking conduct from situations, as in the care of prison inmates, when the opportunity for deliberation is typically available. Id. at 851, 118 S.Ct. 1708; see also Matican, 524 F.3d at 158-59; Pena, 432 F.3d at 113. In Pena, we found that the alleged behavior of the ... defendants... over an extended period of time and in the face of action that presented obvious risk of severe consequences and extreme danger, falls within the realm of behavior that can properly be characterized as ... conscience shocking, in a constitutional sense. ... [I]f the plaintiffs' allegations are accurate, it was not only feasible, it was obligatory, for the defendants to avoid tacitly encouraging [drunk driving]. 432 F.3d at 114 (quotation marks and citations omitted) (third ellipses in original). In Matican, on the other hand, we determined that the officers' use of force against a drug dealer during a sting operation, which may have revealed the identity of an informant who was later assaulted by the drug dealer, did not shock the conscience because the officers were faced with the competing obligations of protecting their safety and that of the informant. 524 F.3d at 159. Matican thus found that the officers' judgment was entitled to deference. Id. ; see also Lewis, 523 U.S. at 853, 118 S.Ct. 1708. We find the record in this case to support the conclusion that Okin raises a genuine issue of material fact as to whether the defendants' affirmative creation or enhancement of the risk of violence to Okin shocks the conscience. The serious and unique risks and concerns of a domestic violence situation are well known and well documented. [10] The officers' awareness of the serious consequences of domestic violence is further supported by their training and their knowledge of New York law on domestic violence. To the extent that the police officers were not aware of the seriousness of domestic violence, this reflects a deficiency in the officers' training, an issue we discuss infra. Given that domestic violence is a known danger that the officers were prepared to address upon the expected occurrence of incidents, the officers who responded to Okin's complaints had ample time for reflection and for deciding what course of action to take in response to domestic violence. Cf. Lombardi v. Whitman, 485 F.3d 73, 83 (2d Cir.2007). This is a case where deliberate indifference is the requisite state of mind for showing that defendants' conduct shocks the conscience. See Lewis, 523 U.S. at 851, 118 S.Ct. 1708. It requires no inferential leap, in light of what the officers must have known, for a reasonable factfinder to conclude that the officers' actions demonstrate a willful disregard of the obvious risks of a domestic violence situation, the serious implications of Okin's complaints over a fifteen-month period, and the likelihood that their misconduct would enhance the danger to Okin. See Pena, 432 F.3d at 114 (indicating that proof of deliberate indifference requires showing that the defendant deliberately assumed or acquiesced in [the] risk of unconstitutional conduct) (quotation marks omitted); see also Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 837, 114 S.Ct. 1970, 128 L.Ed.2d 811 (1994) (explaining, in the Eighth Amendment context, that a government official acts with deliberate indifference when he or she knows of and disregards an excessive risk). For the reasons already discussed, the officers' conduct is not necessarily attributable to a failure to appreciate the gravity of the situation, and thus cannot definitively be characterized as mere negligence. Neither can the officers' conduct in this case be explained away by the pull[] of competing obligations, Lewis, 523 U.S. at 853, 118 S.Ct. 1708, as there is no indication that equally important governmental responsibilities, id. at 852, 118 S.Ct. 1708 (quotation marks omitted), could justify an investigation that instead of mitigating the violence, actually may have contributed to increasing the risk. A reasonable factfinder, therefore, could find that the officers' affirmative creation or enhancement of the danger to Okin was the product of deliberate indifference.
Having determined that Okin raises a genuine issue of material fact as to whether defendants violated her rights under the Due Process Clause, we now turn to whether defendants are entitled to qualified immunity. Government actors are entitled to qualified immunity insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known. Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982). The principle of qualified immunity ensures that before they are subjected to suit, officers are on notice their conduct is unlawful. Saucier, 533 U.S. at 206, 121 S.Ct. 2151. If the law did not put the officer on notice that his conduct would be clearly unlawful, summary judgment based on qualified immunity is appropriate. Id. at 202, 121 S.Ct. 2151. A police officer who has an objectively reasonable belief that his actions are lawful is entitled to qualified immunity. The relevant, dispositive inquiry in determining whether a right is clearly established is whether it would be clear to a reasonable officer that his conduct was unlawful in the situation he confronted. Id. The contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right. This is not to say that an official action is protected by qualified immunity unless the very action in question has previously been held unlawful, but it is to say that in the light of pre-existing law the unlawfulness must be apparent. Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640, 107 S.Ct. 3034, 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987) (citation omitted); see also Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 741, 122 S.Ct. 2508, 153 L.Ed.2d 666 (2002) ([T]he salient question ... is whether the state of the law [at the time of the incidents in question] gave respondents fair warning that their alleged treatment of [the victim] was unconstitutional.). The objective reasonableness test is met, and police officers will enjoy qualified immunity, if the question whether the officers would be violating rights is one on which officers of reasonable competence could disagree. Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 341, 106 S.Ct. 1092, 89 L.Ed.2d 271 (1986). If, on the other hand, no officer of reasonable competence would conclude that the conduct in question is lawful, there is no immunity. [11] See Lennon v. Miller, 66 F.3d 416, 420-21 (2d Cir.1995). We look to Supreme Court and Second Circuit precedent existing at the time of the alleged violation to determine whether the conduct violated a clearly established right. Moore v. Vega, 371 F.3d 110, 114 (2d Cir.2004). And, while it is clear that [o]fficials sued for constitutional violations do not lose their qualified immunity merely because their conduct violates some statutory or administrative provision, see Davis v. Scherer, 468 U.S. 183, 194, 104 S.Ct. 3012, 82 L.Ed.2d 139 (1984), we may examine statutory or administrative provisions in conjunction with prevailing circuit or Supreme Court law to determine whether an individual had fair warning that his or her behavior would violate the victim's constitutional rights, see Hope, 536 U.S. at 741-45, 122 S.Ct. 2508 (finding that in light of binding circuit precedent, applicable state regulations, a Department of Justice report informing the state's department of corrections of the constitutional infirmity of handcuffing an inmate to a hitching post, and the obvious cruelty inherent in the practice, respondents had fair and clear warning that use of the hitching post in that case violated the victim's constitutional rights). The issue in this case is whether defendants were on notice that their affirmative interactions with an individual accused of domestic violence, their failure to arrest the accused individual, and their disregard of established procedures for responding to domestic violence incidents, which were reasonably likely to encourage the accused individual to believe that he would not be arrested, punished, or otherwise interfered with while engaging in domestic violence, would contribute to the vulnerability of the complainant by emboldening her abuser, thereby giving rise to a substantive due process violation. Dwares gave notice of the rule that a police officer can violate a person's due process rights by affirmatively creating or increasing the risk of private violence against that person. 985 F.2d at 99. Viewing the evidence in favor of Okin, defendants engaged in a pattern of behavior that unmistakably communicated to Sears that should he intend to commit acts of violence against Okin, they would do nothing to stop him. This behavior is similar to that which gave rise to actionable due process claims in Dwares, the only difference being that the officers in Dwares explicitly told the skinheads that their violence would not be stopped, whereas the officers here implicitly communicated to Sears that domestic violence against Okin would go unpunished. We do not see this difference to undermine the critical fact, again viewing the evidence favorably to Okin, that the officers were fully aware that private actors intended to commit intentional violence. Sears told Williams that he could not help it sometimes when he smacks Michele Okin around, and the officers gave official sanction to that violence. In Hemphill, the officers handed a gun to a store manager who had just been robbed and invited the manager to accompany them in pursuit of the suspect, who was then shot by the store manager during the pursuit. 141 F.3d at 418. The officers never told the store manager to shoot the suspect, but in handing over the gun, they implicitly communicated that the manager's subsequent use of the gun would be officially sanctioned. Id. at 419. This was the actionable substantive due process violation in Hemphill. Okin similarly alleges that the officers implicitly but affirmatively communicated to Sears that he could persist in intentional violence against her without threat of punishment. The officers did not give Sears a weapon, but that is of no moment. Their behavior, as in Hemphill, created the conditions for Sears to visit intentional violence upon Okin, unimpeded. We therefore find that the state-created danger theory, at the time of defendants' actions here, clearly established that police officers are prohibited from affirmatively contributing to the vulnerability of a known victim by engaging in conduct, whether explicit or implicit, that encourages intentional violence against the victim, and as that is the substantive due process violation alleged here, qualified immunity does not apply. Together, Dwares and Hemphill stand for the proposition that police officers may not engage in conduct that encourages or condones a private actor's infliction of intentional violence. Dwares, Hemphill, and Okin's case may show that affirmative police conduct runs along of spectrum of explicit and implicit actions, but the critical fact remains  these cases all involve affirmative police conduct that encourages, condones, or facilitates the infliction of intentional violence. See Hope, 536 U.S. at 741, 122 S.Ct. 2508 ([O]fficials can still be on notice that their conduct violates established law even in novel factual circumstances.). The prohibition on official sanction of intentional violence applies equally in each case, and provided the officers here with notice that their conduct would be unlawful. At first glance, this case also appears similar to Pena, where as noted above, we found that the application of Dwares in the context of that case was not clearly established at the time of defendants' actions, so that under principles of qualified immunity the defendants could not be held individually liable. Pena, 432 F.3d at 102, 114-15. Pena read Dwares to provide that officials may be liable under Section 1983 for approving the misconduct of private actors even though none of the defendants [is] alleged to have communicated the approval explicitly. Pena, 432 F.3d at 111. The issue in Pena, was whether it would have been clear to reasonable officers, after Dwares, but before Pena itself was decided, that they would violate a victim's constitutional rights by participating in, or generally condoning, an officer's reckless drunk driving, with the result that the officer's drunk driving caused fatalities. In finding that the principle of qualified immunity precluded liability, the court wrote: Although it is a close question, we think that the substantive due process violation that the plaintiffs allege here was not clearly established for purposes of qualified immunity. Dwares did not address, let alone decide, whether repeated inaction on the part of government officials over a long period of time without an explicit statement of approval, might effectively constitute such an implicit prior assurance that it rises to the level of an affirmative act. Dwares also did not indicate whether government officials may implicitly send a message of official sanction by engaging in related misconduct themselves or by participating in or tolerating such a practice. Pena, 432 F.3d at 115. The district court, while persuaded that Pena was controlling in Okin's case on the question of qualified immunity, read Pena too broadly. [12] In Pena, the officers sent the message to their off-duty colleague that he could be reckless in driving while intoxicated, and engag[e] in misconduct that is likely to endanger the life, liberty or property of others. Pena, 432 F.3d at 111. Here, by contrast, Okin seeks to show that the officers  in the course of their official duties while responding to her domestic violence complaints  sent the message that Sears was free to engage in intentional violence. The official sanction of intentional violence was the precise message conveyed by the officers acting pursuant to their official duties in Dwares, 985 F.2d at 99, and in Hemphill, 141 F.3d at 419. While Pena contains several broad statements regarding what Dwares did or did not decide, we are obligated to read those statements in light of the specific context of the case, not as a broad general proposition. Saucier, 533 U.S. at 201, 121 S.Ct. 2151. Pena correctly observed that Dwares did not provide an implicit sanction theory where police officers encouraged reckless violence. 432 F.3d at 114. But the statements in Pena regarding Dwares do not extend to Okin's case where police officers encouraged intentional violence. We draw support for this conclusion from our discussion above of cases that involved official sanction of intentional violence, and from the Pena court's explicit acknowledgment that the question of qualified immunity, where that case involved official sanction of reckless violence, was a close one, 432 F.3d at 115. As the officers in Pena encouraged reckless drunk driving, Pena is distinguishable from Dwares, Hemphill, and this case. The officers here, as in Dwares and Hemphill, affirmatively conveyed to Sears that he had carte blanche to perpetrate intentional violence against Okin. The officers had notice not only of the general prohibition on dangers created by state actors' affirmative conduct, but also, that their conduct, to the extent it implicitly encouraged intentional violence, specifically, could fall within the realm of that prohibition. See Hope, 536 U.S. at 741, 122 S.Ct. 2508 (explaining that `general statements of the law', while they may not indicate the universe of unlawful conduct, `are not inherently incapable of giving fair and clear warning' because `a general constitutional rule already identified in the decisional law may apply with obvious clarity to the specific conduct in question') (quoting United States v. Lanier, 520 U.S. 259, 270-71, 117 S.Ct. 1219, 137 L.Ed.2d 432 (1997)). We cannot accept that an officer of reasonable competence, Lennon, 66 F.3d at 420, would fail to understand, following Dwares and Hemphill, that discussing football scores with Sears after Okin's complaints that he had beaten and tried to choke her, repeatedly failing to interview or arrest Sears, or to file domestic incident reports, despite Okin's numerous complaints of abuse and statements of fear for her life, and Sears informing Chief Williams that he could not help it sometimes when he smacks Michele Okin around, would affirmatively communicate to Sears that he could continue to beat and threaten Okin without fear of police intervention, and would contribute to the vulnerability of the complainant by emboldening her abuser. Unlike the officers in Pena that encouraged reckless off-duty behavior, the officers in Okin's case, as in Dwares and Hemphill, were, in the course of their official duties, encouraging intentional violence by a private actor. The investigation of domestic violence complaints are, and were at the time of the events alleged by Okin, well-known to defendant police officers through extensive professional training in that area, including state law governing those investigations. [13] See Hope, 536 U.S. at 738, 122 S.Ct. 2508 (We may infer the existence of this subjective state of mind from the fact that the risk of harm is obvious.). The officers' failure to comply with their training and the relevant state law, provides strong support for the conclusion that the officers should have been aware of the wrongful character of their conduct. [14] See id. at 744, 122 S.Ct. 2508 (explaining that the defendants' course of conduct, which tended to prove that the defendants ignored a regulation that restricted the use of hitching posts, provided strong support for the conclusion that [defendants] were fully aware of the wrongful character of their conduct). In sum, the rule drawn from Dwares, although its application was not clearly established under the circumstances in Pena, applied with obvious clarity to Okin's case. Id. at 741, 122 S.Ct. 2508 (quotation marks omitted). Hence, we find that the actions taken by the officers in response to Okin's complaints clearly implicated the exception to DeShaney that we have repeatedly upheld  where the officer in some way had assisted in creating or increasing the danger to the victim, the officer's actions implicated the victim's rights under the Due Process Clause. Dwares, 985 F.2d at 99; see also Hemphill, 141 F.3d at 419. [15] We conclude that the state of the law in 2001 to 2003 gave defendants fair warning that police conduct that encourages a private citizen to engage in domestic violence, by fostering the belief that his intentionally violent behavior will not be confronted by arrest, punishment, or police interference, gives rise to a substantive due process violation, and that defendants, if found liable, would not be entitled to qualified immunity. We therefore reverse the district court's dismissal of Okin's due process claims as to Douglas, Lug, Weber and Williams. On extensive review of the record, we find that Okin does not raise a genuine issue of material fact as to repeated failures, of a kind that would have emboldened Sears, on the part of defendants Rusty O'Dell and Edward Manion, and we affirm the grant of summary judgment to them.