Court Opinion

ID: 9647122
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 13:24:03.871762+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:45.740473
License: Public Domain

PELLEGRINI, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. The majority characterizes a single inadvertent mistake on the part of the City’s Chief Housing Officer — not insuring that notice had been perfected before demolishing an unsafe building — as establishing a policy imposing liability in a Section 1983 action on the City of Wilkes-Barre (City). While the Owners could avail themselves of state remedies, I would hold that Section 1983 liability does not exist for failure to receive notice when it was the result of a simple mistake.
On March 9,1980, a building owned by Joseph J. Balent and George Barto (Owners) containing a tavern on the first floor and rental apartments on the second and third floors was severely damaged by fire. There was fire damage throughout the entire structure and through the roof causing considerable structural damage.
As a result of the fire, the Wilkes-Barre Bureau of Building Inspection began to undertake action against the property to have the Owners first secure and then either repair or demolish the property. It prepared three violation notices concern*572ing the building’s condition, of which two were actually received.
On March 10, 1980, the City advised the Owners to “close” the building within 10 days and to correct all violations to the building by April 9, 1980. The notice informed the Owners that they had 10 days to appeal the decision to the Board of Building Review. No appeal was taken. There is no question that the Owners received this violation notice but took no action to abate the conditions.
On March 18,1981, because the Owners had done nothing to repair the property, the City sent another violation notice to them stating that the building was going to be razed if repairs were not completed by June 26,1981. It also notified Owners that the violation notice could be appealed to the Wilkes-Barre Board of Review. Although a PS Form 3800 receipt for certified mailing of this notice had been found as well as a PS Form 3811, the green card that is returned to a sender of certified mail evidencing its receipt with a postmark dated May 20, 1981, stamped on the back side, the City could produce no evidence of a card that was signed by Owners. Owners failed to receive this notice and this is the basis for Owners’ Section 1983 action.
On June 3, 1981, having received no response from the Owners, the City sent a third violation notice to the Owners, stating that the repairs to the building were to be completed no later than June 10, 1981. No warning was given in this notice that the building was going to be razed if repairs were not made. However, this violation notice specifically said “THIS NOTICE DOES NOT SUPERSEDE VIOLATION NOTICE ISSUED 5-18-81.” Owners received this notice but took no action to abate the conditions or inquire as to what was contained in the referenced May 18, 1981 violation notice.
Because Owners had made no repairs to the property and, since the fire, vandalism, rotting wood and wind damage had made the building unsafe and an immediate hazard, on December 14, 1981, the City contracted to have the building demolished. Under the emergency provision, if it finds that the *573building constitutes an immediate danger, the City is to take immediate action to demolish the structure.1
After its Petition for the Appointment of Viewers alleging that the City’s action in demolishing the building was a de facto take was dismissed, and an appeal to this court failed (Balent I), Owners filed a Section 19832 action claiming that because they did not receive the May 18, 1981 violation notice that their property was to be razed if repairs were not made, their building was taken without due process of law in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. After filing its answer, the City filed a motion for summary judgment claiming that either res judicata or collateral estoppel applied because of Owners’ unsuccessful eminent domain proceeding. The trial court denied the motion and the case proceeded to a jury trial. The jury, finding that Owners’ rights under the Constitution were violated, awarded Owners $30,000 in damages.3
On appeal, the City contends that the trial court erred as a matter of law in instructing the jury that Joseph Chabala, the *574City’s Chief Housing and Zoning Officer (Chief Housing Officer) was a policymaker or that any of his actions could be considered to have instituted a policy not to perfect notice to property owners whose property was to be demolished because it was unsafe or open, vacant or vandalized. It contends that the Chief Housing Officer cannot be considered a policymaker because the City’s policy is contained in the Wilkes-Barre Housing Code and it requires that notice be given to all property owners before any property is demolished, absent a finding that the property is in danger of immediate collapse. Because the evidence established that this was the only instance that a violation notice had not been sent out, the City contends that Owners were only able to establish that there was an inadvertent mistake, not a policy not to perfect notice before demolishing unsafe buildings.
The majority rejects that contention because “[t]he May 18, 1981 letter informing the Owners that their building would be razed, which the jury could find was never received, was signed by Joseph Chabala, the City’s Chief Housing and Zoning Officer ... that the trial court could conclude as a matter of law that he was a person ‘whose edicts or acts may fairly be said to represent official policy.’ ” Because the Chief Housing Officer cosigned this letter, the majority then goes on to hold that he is personally responsible for insuring that notice was perfected and his failure to check this one notice this one time is a policy upon which Section 1983 liability can be imposed on the City.
I disagree with the majority that Owners have established any policy or custom not to give notice prior to demolishing deteriorated properties because the City’s Chief Housing Officer is not the policymaker who has the power to alter the notice requirements to be given to owners of property to be razed for failure to repair, and even if he was a policymaker, that any policy was created by his failure to perfect notice in this one case. Moreover, I disagree with the majority that Balent I’s claim on issue preclusion does not bar or control the issues in this action.
*575I.
Section 1983 provides a remedy against “any person” who, under color of state law, deprives another of a federally-protected right. In Monell v. Department of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658, 98 S.Ct. 2018, 56 L.Ed.2d 611 (1978), the Supreme Court held that municipalities and other local governmental entities are persons to whom Section 1983 applies. 436 U.S. at 690, 98 S.Ct. at 2035-36. At the same time, the court made it clear that municipalities may not be held liable “unless action pursuant to official municipal policy of some nature caused a constitutional tort.” Id. at 691, 98 S.Ct. at 2036. The court emphasized that “a municipality cannot be held liable solely because it employs a tort-feasor — or, in other words, a municipality cannot be held liable under Section 1983 on a respondeat superior theory. Therefore, ... a local government may not be sued under § 1983 for an injury inflicted solely by its employees or agents. Instead, it is when execution of a government’s policy or custom, whether made by its lawmakers or by those whose edicts or acts may fairly be said to represent official policy, inflicts the injury that the government as an entity is responsible under § 1983.” Id. at 691, 694, 98 S.Ct. at 2036, 2037.
Because Monell only imposes liability when the deprivation of a civil right results from “... a government’s policy or custom, whether made by its lawmakers or those whose edicts or acts may fairly be said to represent official policy ...” 436 U.S. at 694, questions arose as to who beyond lawmakers can set official policy as well as which “edicts or acts constitute official policy.” As a result of three decisions in three years, the Supreme Court has provided a framework to answer those questions. In Pembauer v. City of Cincinnati, 475 U.S. 469, 106 S.Ct. 1292, 89 L.Ed.2d 452 (1986), the Supreme Court stated that “Municipal liability attaches only when the decision maker possesses final authority to establish municipal policy with respect to the action ordered.” 475 U.S. at 483, 106 S.Ct. at 1299. Whether an official possesses policymaking authority with regard to a particular matter is a question that will be determined by state law. Id. Justice Brennan, writ*576ing for the plurality, however, suggested that state law was only a starting point, and that the policymaker is not the only one who legally has the power, but also includes those who actually exercised the policymaking powers. Under Brennan’s view, the factfinder was the one who ultimately would determine in whom actual final policymaking would reside.
In the second plurality opinion, this time written by Justice O’Connor, City of St. Louis v. Praprotnik, 485 U.S. 112, 108 S.Ct. 915, 99 L.Ed.2d 107 (1987), the court rejected the notion that the factfinder was to determine who was the policymaker. It held that the question of who is a policymaker is one of law for the courts to decide by reference to state law. The plurality also stated the importance of who was the final decision maker and the distinction between the authority to make final decisions and the authority to make discretionary decisions. “When an official’s discretionary decisions are constrained by policies not of the official’s making, those policies, rather than the subordinate’s departures from them, are the act of the municipality.” Id. at 127, 108 S.Ct. at 926. For a subordinate’s decision to be that of the governmental entity, the policymakers as determined by state law must affirmatively approve of the subordinate’s decisions. “Simply going along with the discretionary decisions of one subordinate ... is not a delegation to them to make policy.” Id. at 130, 108 S.Ct. at 927.
Finally, in Jeff v. Dallas Independent School District, 491 U.S. 701, 109 S.Ct. 2702, 105 L.Ed.2d 598 (1989), the court adopted the common elements of Pembauer and Praprotnik in a majority opinion. In that decision, the court determined that for a local government to be liable:
1. the judge as a matter of law must determine the official or governmental bodies by reference to state law or custom or usage that has the force of state law. Id. [491 U.S. at 735-36, 109 S.Ct.] at 2723; and
2. once the judge has determined who is the policymaker, the factfinder determines whether the policymaker’s actions deprived them of their civil rights by their policy or acquiescence in a long-standing practice or custom that constitutes *577the “standard operating procedure” of the governmental entity. Id.
Implementing the principles in Pembauer, Praprotnik and Jett, the Seventh Circuit in Auriemma v. Rice, 957 F.2d 397 (7th Cir.1992), held that a public official that implements a policy at variance with legislative mandates of that entity cannot change policy by acting contrary to that policy. In Auriemma, the City of Chicago police chief reshuffled the senior ranks of the Police Department purportedly along racial and political lines but, as here, the City had an ordinance that unequivocally bans racial and political discrimination. The Seventh Circuit held that the actions of the police chief did not establish a policy “because” if, in the course of selecting senior staff, Rice discriminated on account of race and politics, he violated rather than implemented the policy of Chicago. On Rice [not the City] falls the responsibility for his deeds.” Id. at 401. See also Wulf v. City of Wichita, 883 F.2d 842 (10th Cir.1989) (police chiefs actions may have violated an employee’s first amendment rights and he may be subject to individual liability because the manager was the final policymaker on terminations, the municipality cannot be held liable.)
Just as in Auriemma, the final policymaker in this was the City Council when it enacted the Housing Code and the Chief Housing Officer was merely a subordinate. Even if the Chief Housing Officer intended not to send Owners a notice or not to check on the return, that is totally at variance with the final policy set forth in Section 1009.1 of the Wilkes-Barre Housing Code. That section requires notice of demolition to be in writing, a description of the real estate to be included, allowance for a reasonable time for remedial acts to make the property safe before demolishing the building, and notification to the property owner that appeal procedures exist to challenge the notice. The notice is to be sent by certified mail or other methods where, unlike here, when the proper address of the owner cannot be ascertained. If the Chief Housing Officer did not give notice, he violated rather than implemented City policy.
*578Because the determination as to who is a policymaker is a legal one and, in this case, it is clear that City Council is the final policymaker to determine the notice that should be received, I would reverse the trial court’s determination that the Chief Housing Officer was the final policymaker and his actions could impose liability on the City.
II.
Assuming that the Chief Housing Officer is a policymaker, I disagree that the failure to check to see that Owners received the notice is a policy. The majority finds that the Chief Housing Officer created a policy merely because he cosigned the May 18, 1981 letter to the Owners that their building would be razed unless they complied with the ordinance and did not insure that the notice was received. Contrary to the majority’s holding, policy is not a mistake; policy is the deliberate choice of a local policymaker to pursue or not pursue a particular course of conduct. Praprotnik. Nothing in the record indicates that there was any intentional policy by the Chief Housing Officer not to send the notice of demolition or not to check to see if notice was received. Failure to check in one instance does not make a policy as the majority holds because a policy requires an intentional act on the policymaker and not, as here, a mistake.
That there is no policy became evident from the testimony of Kenneth F. Eick, the City’s assistant administrator that the Owners called on cross. He testified that it was the City’s practice at one time to determine whether notice had been perfected prior to letting a contractor demolish a property. (74a.) Moreover, he testified that he did not know of any other case in which notice was not received before this building was razed. Owners, who have the burden of proof, offered no other testimony as to the City’s practices in perfecting notice. No policy, no custom,4 no usage, no Section 1983 liability against the City.
*579hi.
The City also contends that the prior de facto taking case decided adversely to the Owners’ acts to bar the claim that a Fifth Amendment taking has occurred or at least precludes certain issues in this case. Specifically, the City contends that the trial court’s dismissing the de facto taking action and finding that the City demolished the building under a Housing Code provision authorizing the building inspector to take immediate action where an emergency conditions exists is res judicata or, at the very least, collateral estoppel offset on the Section 1983 action. The majority declines to apply either of these doctrines because a Section 1983 action is based on theories of trespass and constitutional .tort, while in Balent I, we only found that there was not an unconstitutional taking. The majority’s implication is that Section 1983 itself gives some sort of right different than the underlying federal right that a plaintiff is claiming was denied, and state actions litigating that right do not have preclusive effect.
In Urbanic v. Rosenfeld, 150 Pa.Commonwealth Ct. 468, 479, 616 A.2d 46, 52 (1992), we explained that was not the case by stating:
[A] Section 1983 action does not create any substantive rights, but merely serves as a “vehicle or ... ‘device’ by which a citizen is able to challenge conduct by a state official whom he claims has deprived or will deprive him of his civil rights.” Harry Blackmun, Section 1983 and Federal Protection of Civil Rights — Will The Statute Remain Alive or Fade Away?, 60 N.Y.U.L.Rev. 1,1 (1985). “[0]ne cannot go *580into court and claim a ‘violation of Section 1983’ — for Sec. 1983 by itself does not protect anyone against anything.” Chapman v. Houston Welfare Rights Organization, 441 U.S. 600, 617, 99 S.Ct. 1905, 1916, 60 L.Ed.2d 508 (1979). In effect, Section 1983 is a form of action akin to mandamus or equity which requires a party to meet certain threshold requirements before relief can be granted on the underlying violation. To maintain a cause of action under Section 1983, a plaintiff is required to establish only that some person has deprived him or her of some cognizable federal right; and deprived him or her of that right while acting under color of state law. West v. Atkins, 487 U.S. 42, 108 S.Ct. 2250, 101 L.Ed.2d 40 (1988); Gomez v. Toledo, 446 U.S. 635, 100 S.Ct. 1920, 64 L.Ed.2d 572 (1980); Flagg Brothers, Inc. v. Brooks, 436 U.S. 149, 98 S.Ct. 1729, 56 L.Ed.2d 185 (1978).
Section 1983 is just the form of the action establishing that certain preconditions be met to be able to maintain the action based on a deprivation of a federal right. Just because these preconditions need to be met and it’s a constitutional tort does not mean, as the majority seems to suggest, that claim or issue preclusion cannot be applied to a Section 1983 action. If a claim or a fact has been determined in previous litigation, the normal rules of claim and issue preclusion5 determine the *581effect that judgment has on a Section 1983 action and vice versa. Federal, e.g., Kirkland v. City of Peekskill, 828 F.2d 104, 109 (2nd Cir.1987) (applying claim preclusion as a result of an adverse state proceeding). As well as state courts, e.g., Swofford v. Stafford, 295 Ark. 433, 748 S.W.2d 660 (1988) (replevin); Barnes v. City of Atlanta, 186 Ga.App. 187, 366 S.E.2d 822 (1988) (mandamus), have applied these doctrines to Section 1983 actions.
Owners are claiming in this action that there was a deprivation of their Fifth Amendment rights because the property was taken without just compensation and without due process required by the Fourteenth Amendment. Balent I decided on the merit that a de facto taking did not occur. A de facto taking case is filed under Section 502 of the Eminent Domain Code, 26 P.S. § 1-502. Section 502 requires that the property owner establish that an entity clothed with the power of eminent domain has taken its property without first filing a declaration of taking. Appeal of Miller, 55 Pa.Commonwealth Ct. 612, 423 A.2d 1354 (1980). That’s exactly the underlying violation that Owners are required to establish in this action, i.e., that they received no notice and the City took their property. There is no need to decide if issue or claim preclusion applies because both have the same ultimate effect — preventing the relitigation of the underlying constitutional issues on which the Section 1983 action is based. Because the underlying constitutional issues have already been *582litigated, I do not believe Owners can maintain a Section 1983 action.
Because of the foregoing, I would reverse.

. In Balent v. City of Wilkes-Barre, 89 Pa.Commonwealth Ct. 578, 492 A.2d 1196 (1984) (Balent I), we stated that the trial court found that "the City’s Chief Building Inspector ordered the demolition under the emergency provision of Ordinance No. 32 of the Wilkes-Barre Code, Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Code § 7-23, Ord. No. 32-76, § 1 (1976), which provides as follows:
Emergency Work. In case there shall be, in the opinion of the building inspector’s office, actual immediate danger of failure or collapse of a building or any part thereof so as to endanger life or property, the building inspector’s office shall cause the necessary work to be done to render said building or structure or part thereof, temporarily safe, whether the procedure prescribed in this section has been instituted or not.”

. The section states, in relevant part:
"Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State ... subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States ... to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress....” 42 U.S.C. § 1983.

. Owners placed a value on the property of $37,000, while the City real estate appraiser placed a value on the property of minus $1,700 because the land was encumbered by the building.

. Mr. Eick’s testimony also establishes that there is no custom not to perfect notice. Monell recognizes that a practice in a local government can be "so permanent and well settled as to constitute a ‘custom or *579usage’ with the force of law.” 436 U.S. at 692. Unlike a custom where the violation occurs because of actions of the policymaker, a custom is a pattern of conduct undertaken by employees of a governmental body. The "custom or usage” in question will be attributable to the governmental body if it has been in existence for a sufficient length of time that reasonable policymakers knew or should have known that such practices had become customary. See Praprotnik. Because it must be a custom, isolated instances of violations by employees are not actionable against the government body. Carter v. District of Columbia, 795 F.2d 116 (D.C.Cir.1986). But here, the uncontroverted facts show that no custom or usage exists either not to give notice or not to see that notice has been perfected.

. Res judicata or claim preclusion is when a former judgment bars a later action proceeding on all or part of the very claim which was the subject of the former. As now interpreted under res judicata or claim preclusion, any final, valid judgment on the merits by a court of competent jurisdiction or, in the case of Section 1983 under federal law, an administrative proceeding (see University of Tennessee v. Elliott, 478 U.S. 788, 106 S.Ct. 3220, 92 L.Ed.2d 635 (1986)) precludes any future suit or action between the parties or their privies on the same cause of action. That judgment is conclusive as between the parties and their privies in respect to every fact which properly could have been considered in reaching the determination, and in respect to all points of law, relating directly to the cause of action and affecting the subject matter before the court. Claim preclusion applies not only to matters which were actually litigated, but also to matters which should have been litigated at the first proceeding if they were part of the same cause of action.
Collateral estoppel or issue preclusion deals with an issue determined in a first action when the same issue arises in a later action based upon a different claim or demand. It forecloses relitigation in a later action of an issue of fact or law which was actually litigated and which was *581necessary to the original judgment. Unlike claim preclusion, there is no requirement that there be an identity of parties between the two actions to preclude relitigation of an issue, and issue preclusion may be asserted as either a "sword or a shield” by a stranger to the prior action as long as the party against whom it is asserted was a party or in privity with a party. There is another important distinction between the principles of claim preclusion and issue preclusion. Claim preclusion involves the same claim or cause of action in both the prior and subsequent actions, but issue preclusion operates to prevent relitigation of an issue in a later action based upon a claim or cause of action different from the claim or cause of action previously asserted. Issue preclusion is designed to prevent relitigation of issues which have once been decided and have remained substantially static, factually and legally. See generally, Hebden v. Workmen’s Compensation Appeal Board (Bethenergy Mines), 142 Pa.Commonwealth Ct. 176, 597 A.2d 182 (1991), reversed on other grounds, 534 Pa. 327, 632 A.2d 1302 (1992).