Court Opinion

ID: 9482221
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:43:49.773947+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:50.740763
License: Public Domain

SLOVITER, Chief Judge,
concurring in the judgment.
I concur in the judgment and join in Part I, Part III.C, and Part IV of Judge Becker’s opinion, as well as in footnotes 26, 28-30, and 32-34, which represent Judge Becker’s response to Judge Weis’s dissent.1
Although I agree with some of the analysis of Judge Becker’s thoughtful opinion, I write separately because of some fundamental differences with respect to Judge Becker’s discussion of the City’s liability. One centers on the underpinnings of Judge Becker’s analysis regarding the proof that a section 1983 plaintiff must adduce as to a policymaker’s state of mind in order to establish municipal liability. Specifically, I believe that Judge Becker’s emphasis on production by plaintiff of “scienter-like evidence” when charging a municipality with deliberate indifference to deprivation of rights may impose on plaintiffs a heavier burden than mandated by the Supreme Court or prior decisions of this court. My other substantial concern is Judge Becker’s treatment of the issue of the cost of minimizing or eliminating policies effecting unconstitutional deprivation, an issue I would not reach in this case.2
I.
The conceptual difficulty in applying the deliberate indifference standard stems from the principle that municipalities can be liable only for policies or customs approved by policymakers (who are defined by state law). The formulation of policies is generally regarded as an intentional act. Therefore, it is anomalous to think in terms of a municipality having a conscious, intentional policy of being “indifferent” to deprivations of constitutional rights. As the *1090Supreme Court noted in City of Canton v. Harris, 489 U.S. 378, 390, 109 S.Ct. 1197, 1205, 103 L.Ed.2d 412 (1989), “[i]t may seem contrary to common sense to assert that a municipality will actually have a policy of not taking reasonable steps to train its employees.” The Court nevertheless provided guidance on how to determine whether there is such a policy or custom. “[I]t may happen that in light of the duties assigned to specific officers or employees the need for more or different training is so obvious, and the inadequacy so likely to result in the violation of constitutional rights, that the policymakers of the city can reasonably be said to have been deliberately indifferent to the need.” Id. (emphasis added).
Judge Becker recognizes that a municipality may be liable based on the “acquiescence” of the officials in a longstanding practice or custom. Becker Op. at 1063. Nonetheless, his focus on an identifiable policymaker’s “scienter” — a term the Supreme Court never used in City of Canton or the Pembaur trio of cases3 — suggests the need to prove an intentional course of action. Cf. Prosser & Keeton, The Law of Torts § 107, at 741-43 (5th ed. 1984) (generally equating “scienter” with “intent” in tortious misrepresentation actions).
Admittedly, for some purposes “scien-ter” may encompass action other than intentional action. Black’s Law Dictionary defines the term as including “the defendant’s previous knowledge of the cause which led to the injury complained of, or rather his previous knowledge of a state of facts which it was his duty to guard against, and his omission to do which has led to the injury complained of.” Black’s Law Dictionary 1207 (5th ed. 1979). Nonetheless, because of the common equation of “scienter” with intentional action, I am concerned that Judge Becker’s use of the term will be misread as limiting section 1983 cases to those where plaintiffs can show defendants knew of the constitutional deprivation and excluding those cases where plaintiffs argue that defendants should have known of it. Nor are my concerns allayed by Judge Becker’s attachment of the suffix “like” to “scienter.”
Nowhere in Judge Becker’s opinion is there an acknowledgement that liability may be based on the City's (i.e., policymaker’s) reckless refusal4 or failure to take account of facts or circumstances which responsible individuals should have known. Nothing in the current precedent of the Supreme Court suggests that liability against a municipality may not be based on its reckless disregard of the relevant circumstances.
Recklessness has been defined as conduct that “evince[s] disregard of, or indifference to, consequences, under circumstances involving danger to life or safety to others, although no harm was intended,” or a state of mind that “either pays no regard to its probably or possibly injurious consequences, or which, though foreseeing such consequences, persists in spite of such knowledge.” Id. at 1142-43. Failure of a municipality to fulfill a duty to guard against a foreseeable harm when its officials have knowledge of circumstances making that harm likely is clearly reckless and culpable conduct.
In Colburn v. Upper Darby Township (Colburn I), 838 F.2d 663, 670 (3d Cir. 1988), we noted that we had not yet had occasion to define, nor distinguish between, such terms as “deliberate indifference,” “reckless disregard,” and “reckless indifference” in the context of section 1983 civil rights litigation. We repeated that statement in Williams v. Borough of West Chester, 891 F.2d 458, 464 n. 10 (3d Cir. 1989), which was decided after City of Canton and the Pembaur trio of Supreme Court cases.5 Although these observations *1091were made in the context of individual officers’ liability for jail suicides, rather than in the context of municipal liability, there is no reason why the standard of proof of “deliberate indifference” should be any different for the latter.
In the Eighth Amendment context, where the deliberate indifference standard is also used, albeit as the prerequisite to a claim of cruel and unusual punishment, a plaintiff can demonstrate that the defendant was deliberately indifferent by proving either an intentional deprivation of rights or “by showing that he acted in reckless disregard of those rights”; this can be established by showing the plaintiff “was faced with a pervasive risk of harm and that [the defendant] failed to reasonably respond to that risk.” Bailey v. Wood, 909 F.2d 1197, 1199 (8th Cir.1990); see also Richardson v. Penfold, 839 F.2d 392, 394-95 (7th Cir.1988); Berg v. Kincheloe, 794 F.2d 457, 459 (9th Cir.1986).
I find nothing in City of Canton or the Pembaur trio of cases that calls on us to revise our established jurisprudence holding that deliberate indifference can be proven by demonstrating the defendants’ reckless conduct. In Jett v. Dallas Indep. School Dist., 491 U.S. 701, 737, 109 S.Ct. 2702, 2723, 105 L.Ed.2d 598 (1989), for instance, the Court stated that once official policymakers are identified by the trial judge, “it is for the jury to determine whether their decisions have caused the deprivation of rights at issue by ... acquiescence in a longstanding practice or custom which constitutes the ‘standard operating procedure’ of the local governmental entity.” Proof of such acquiescence might be reckless as well as intentional conduct.
The Supreme Court has not suggested that actual knowledge of the conditions by a municipal policymaker is a condition of municipal liability. Such a standard would put a premium on blinders. If Judge Becker’s emphasis on scienter is read to exclude liability for conditions that City officials should have known, it would be inconsistent with City of Canton, 489 U.S. at 390, 109 S.Ct. at 1205 (a city may be found to be deliberately indifferent if “the need ... is ... obvious, and the inadequacy ... likely to result in the violation of constitutional rights”).
I would not rely on the City’s waiver of the absence of scienter-like evidence to support affirmance. Instead, using the City of Canton standard, I would hold that the evidence of 20 jail suicides in Philadelphia prisons between 1980-85, of whom 15 were intoxicated, the City’s possession of knowledge before 1981 that intoxicated detainees presented a high risk of suicide, its awareness of published standards for suicide prevention, and its failure to implement the recommendations of experts, including its director of mental health services for the prison system, was sufficient basis for the jury to have found that unnamed officials with responsibility over the City’s prisons acted recklessly or with deliberate indifference, thereby contributing to the deprivation of constitutional rights of plaintiff’s decedent. If a city cannot be held liable when its policymakers had notice of a problem and failed to act, then it is difficult to posit a set of facts on which a city could be held to have been deliberately indifferent.
II.
I have a similar concern about the portions of Judge Becker’s opinion referring to the balancing of City officials’ decisions concerning “resource allocation” in determining whether the City breached a constitutional duty. See, e.g., Becker Op. at 1069-70. While I agree that “municipal officials often have to make difficult decisions concerning institutional security, as well as the allocation of resources” to ensure citizens’ safety, id. at 1069, I do not believe that Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 99 S.Ct. 1861, 60 L.Ed.2d 447 (1979), upon which Judge Becker relies, made a municipality’s decisions about resource allocation or cost efficiency a central factor for consideration by the courts in determining whether a municipality’s deliberate indif*1092ference to the medical and safety needs of detainees, such as Simmons, is culpable.
In Bell, the Court held that the conditions of incarceration to which pretrial detainees may be subjected violate due process only when they constitute “punishment” of the detainee. 441 U.S. at 535-37, 99 S.Ct. at 1871-73. The Court provided guidance for that inquiry:
A court must decide whether the disability is imposed for the purpose of punishment or whether it is but an incident of some other legitimate governmental pur-pose_ Absent a showing of an expressed intent to punish on the part of detention facility officials, that determination generally will turn on “whether an alternative purpose to which [the restriction] may rationally be connected is assignable for it, and whether it appears excessive in relation to the alternative purpose assigned [to it].” ... Thus, if a particular condition or restriction of pretrial detention is reasonably related to a legitimate governmental objective, it does not, without more, amount to “punishment.”
Id. at 538-39, 99 S.Ct. at 1873-74. Thus, the reference in Bell to a “legitimate governmental objective” was merely to ascertain whether the conditions imposed on pretrial detainees amount to “punishment.” The Court noted that there may be justifications for conditions of detention other than insuring the detainee’s presence at trial. These stem from the government’s need to manage the facility in which the individual is detained, which may require “steps to maintain security and order at the institution and make certain no weapons or illicit drugs reach detainees” as well as other actions necessary to “the effective management of the detention facility.” Id. at 540, 99 S.Ct. at 1874.
The context of this discussion in Bell was to evaluate the need for and legitimacy of the custodial restrictions which plaintiffs challenged, i.e., prohibitions on receipt of books and magazines as well as food and personal items; body cavity searches after visitation; room inspection procedures; and the bunking of detainees in areas not designed for sleeping. Id. at 528-29, 99 S.Ct. at 1868-69. This is far different from holding that administrative officials’ discretionary decisions concerning resource allocation are a legitimate excuse for deprivations of constitutional rights. The question whether a city can constitutionally “tolerate some relatively smaller number of yearly suicides,” Becker Op. at 1071 (emphasis added), is different from whether “the City has taken into account the serious medical needs of suicidal detainees and had taken all reasonable steps to protect them, in light of security, fiscal and other constraints.” Becker Op. at 1071 n. 27. In this case, the jury’s verdict for the plaintiffs reflects the jury’s determination that the City did not do all that it could reasonably have done. Under those circumstances, I see no need in this opinion to decide whether the Supreme Court precedent relied on by Judge Becker signifies that consideration of the high cost of constitutional compliance may be used as a justification for a constitutional violation. I note merely that it would be a cynical inquiry indeed to ascertain just how much cost saving to the City justifies its “toleration” of the preventable death of one young man detained only because of public intoxication.
Although I have other differences with Judge Becker’s opinion, I rely on the principal reasons set forth above for my decision to concur in the judgment of the court but limit my joinder in Judge Becker’s opinion.

. I do not join Part II.A of Judge Becker’s opinion because in my view of the case (as he ultimately concludes) the jury verdict can be upheld on the basis of the City's liability independent of Panati’s culpability. Therefore, neither the jury's alleged inconsistent responses nor the City's possible waiver with respect to them is relevant to my vote to affirm. I do agree, however, with Judge Becker's conclusion in Part III.B.l that the City waived its claim that plaintiff failed to identify the responsible policyholder in charge of training. I also agree with Judge Becker’s analysis of the distinction between this case and Colburn II as set forth in footnotes 31 and 35.

. In light of the phrasing of jury interrogatory 3 which merely required it to decide whether the City "had a custom, policy, or regulation which deprived the decedent of his constitutional rights,” see Becker Op. at 1053-54 n. 6, I do not discuss whether there is a conceptual distinction between an unconstitutional municipal custom or policy, discussed in Judge Becker’s opinion at Part II.A.2, and the City's failure to train, discussed at Part II.A.3. Even if they constitute a unitary claim for recovery, I believe the evidence is sufficient to support the jury’s verdict on that claim.

.Jett v. Dallas Indep. School Dist., 491 U.S. 701, 109 S.Ct. 2702, 105 L.Ed.2d 598 (1989); City of St. Louis v. Praprotnik, 485 U.S. 112, 108 S.Ct. 915, 99 L.Ed.2d 107 (1988); Pembaur v. City of Cincinnati, 475 U.S. 469, 106 S.Ct. 1292, 89 L.Ed.2d 452 (1986).

. As distinguished from what he denominates as a “particularly willful type of recklessness.”

. We need not decide whether "gross negligence" is itself a standard for liability because it is, in any event, of evidentiary significance. See Colburn I, 838 F.2d at 670 n. 4 (quoting Doe v. *1091New York City Dep't of Social Services, 649 F.2d 134, 143 (2d Cir.1981) (“gross negligent conduct creates a strong presumption of deliberate indifference")).