Court Opinion

ID: 9378992
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-03-14 14:00:50.396154+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:16:29.000660
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 22-11398    Document: 25-1     Date Filed: 03/14/2023   Page: 1 of 8

                                                  [DO NOT PUBLISH]
                                   In the
                United States Court of Appeals
                        For the Eleventh Circuit

                          ____________________

                                No. 22-11398
                          Non-Argument Calendar
                          ____________________

       D’ERICA THOMAS,
       TA’NIYAH RELIFORD,
       MINOR CHILD, JR, by his next friend and natural guardian Fonzel
       Reliford, as the child of Dietri Nakee Reliford, deceased,
       FONZEL RELIFORD, administrator of the estate of Dietri Nakee
       Reliford, deceased,
                                                    Plaintiff-Appellants,
       versus
       CITY OF AMERICUS, GA,

                                                   Defendant-Appellee.
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       2                      Opinion of the Court                 22-11398

                            ____________________

                  Appeal from the United States District Court
                      for the Middle District of Georgia
                     D.C. Docket No. 1:21-cv-00107-LAG
                           ____________________

       Before NEWSOM, GRANT, and LUCK, Circuit Judges.
       PER CURIAM:
             The plaintiffs appeal the district court’s dismissal of their
       claims under 42 U.S.C. section 1983 and Georgia tort law. We af-
       firm.
           FACTUAL BACKGROUND AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

              In February 2019, Dietri Nakee Reliford was murdered by
       her ex-boyfriend, Kenneth Lee Harvey, in front of her children.
       The plaintiffs, acting on behalf of Reliford’s estate and individually
       as her children, filed an action against the City of Americus, Geor-
       gia, alleging that before Reliford’s murder, she and her family
       “made numerous attempts and requests of the Americus Police De-
       partment to protect” her from Harvey.
              The first attempt occurred on December 7, 2018, when Har-
       vey entered Reliford’s home. After Harvey took Reliford’s cell
       phone from her hand, refused to return it, and refused to leave her
       home, Reliford told her son to call the police. When police officers
       arrived, Reliford asked them to make Harvey leave, but the officers
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       22-11398               Opinion of the Court                         3

       told her they couldn’t do so. When a police department supervisor
       asked Reliford and her landlord what they wanted him to do about
       Harvey, they asked to have Harvey barred from the property. The
       next morning, Reliford’s landlord took out a criminal trespass no-
       tice against Harvey.
              On January 11, 2019, Harvey returned to Reliford’s home,
       again took her cell phone, refused to return it, and refused to leave.
       Reliford’s daughter called her uncle, Reliford’s brother, for help.
       When Reliford’s brother arrived, Reliford used his cell phone to
       call the police for help. Reliford’s brother pushed Harvey off Reli-
       ford, and Harvey left before the police showed up. When officers
       arrived, they “again advised Reliford that they could not do any-
       thing to restrain Harvey or to keep him from coming to her home.”
               Less than a week later, on January 17, 2019, Reliford and her
       children were awakened by the sound of gunshots outside their
       home. On January 22, 2019, security cameras identified Harvey on
       the premises of Reliford’s home between 6:15 and 7:00 a.m. On
       the morning of February 1, 2019, two of Reliford’s children were
       boarding the school bus when they saw Harvey pull into their
       driveway and block their mother’s car. When the bus driver
       wouldn’t let the children off the bus, Reliford’s son borrowed a
       classmate’s cell phone and called his mother. He heard Reliford
       screaming at Harvey to let her phone go. Reliford told her son to
       call the police because Harvey refused to leave her home. Officers
       arrived at Reliford’s home but told her “that they could not make
       Harvey leave.” That afternoon, Reliford went to her landlord, who
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       4                      Opinion of the Court                22-11398

       called the police again. Reliford told an officer that Harvey had
       entered her residence, physically blocked her car from leaving,
       taken her cell phone, and again refused to return it. Although Har-
       vey had been issued a trespass notice in December 2018, the police
       didn’t arrest Harvey, remove him from Reliford’s home, or protect
       her. Reliford filed a police report and, with help from her landlord,
       started the process of obtaining a restraining order against Harvey.
              On February 8, 2019, Reliford was leaving for work when
       Harvey showed up at her home with a gun. Harvey opened her
       car door, “declared that it was over,” and shot Reliford. Reliford
       later died from the gunshot wound. After Reliford’s death, the
       plaintiffs filed their complaint in the Middle District of Georgia.
              The plaintiffs’ complaint raised claims against the city under
       federal and state law. The plaintiffs claimed that the city’s failure
       to protect their mother from her ex-boyfriend violated Reliford’s
       due process rights under section 1983 and was negligent under
       Georgia tort law. The city moved to dismiss for failure to state a
       claim.
               The district court granted the city’s motion to dismiss. The
       district court concluded that government entities can’t be held lia-
       ble under section 1983 based on their failure to protect individuals
       from harm by private actors. The district court declined to exercise
       supplemental jurisdiction over the plaintiffs’ state law claims and
       dismissed the plaintiffs’ complaint without prejudice. The plaintiffs
       timely appealed.
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       22-11398                Opinion of the Court                           5

                            STANDARD OF REVIEW

               We review de novo a district court’s dismissal of a complaint
       for failure to state a claim. See Henderson v. McMurray, 987 F.3d
       997, 1001 (11th Cir. 2021). We review a district court’s decision to
       decline to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over claims for abuse
       of discretion. See Parker v. Scrap Metal Processors, Inc., 468 F.3d
       733, 738, 743 (11th Cir. 2006).
                                   DISCUSSION

              The plaintiffs argue that the district court erred by dismiss-
       ing their section 1983 due process claim and by declining to exer-
       cise supplemental jurisdiction over their claims for personal injury
       and wrongful death under Georgia state law. We address each ar-
       gument in turn.
              The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment pro-
       vides that “[n]o [s]tate shall . . . deprive any person of life, liberty,
       or property, without due process of law.” U.S. Const. amend. XIV,
       § 1. “The purpose of the Due Process Clause is to protect the peo-
       ple from the state, not to ensure that the state protect[s] the people
       from each other.” Wooten v. Campbell, 49 F.3d 696, 700 (11th Cir.
       1995). Consequently, “the Due Process Clause does not require
       the [s]tate to provide its citizens with particular protective ser-
       vices.” DeShaney v. Winnebago Cnty. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 489
       U.S. 189, 196 (1989). Thus, with limited exceptions, “a [s]tate’s fail-
       ure to protect an individual against private violence simply does
       not constitute a violation of the Due Process Clause.” Id. at 197;
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       6                      Opinion of the Court                   22-11398

       see also Mitchell v. Duval Cnty. Sch. Bd., 107 F.3d 837, 838 (11th
       Cir. 1997) (“[A] person does not have a constitutional right under
       the Fourteenth Amendment to be protected from the criminal acts
       of third parties.”).
               The plaintiffs argue that the city deprived Reliford of her
       right to substantive due process because the police officers failed to
       remove Harvey from her home when he was engaged in a criminal
       act in their presence—namely, by trespassing in her home. This
       argument boils down to a claim that the city is liable for Reliford’s
       death under a theory of respondeat superior. Our law on this issue
       is well settled:
             The Supreme Court has placed strict limitations on
             municipal liability under section 1983. There is no re-
             spondeat superior liability making a municipality lia-
             ble for the wrongful actions of its police officers . . . .
             Instead, a municipality may be held liable for the ac-
             tions of a police officer only when municipal official
             policy causes a constitutional violation. [A plaintiff]
             must identify a municipal policy or custom that
             caused his injury[.] It is only when the execution of
             the government’s policy or custom inflicts the injury
             that the municipality may be held liable under [sec-
             tion] 1983.
       Gold v. City of Miami, 151 F.3d 1346, 1350 (11th Cir. 1998) (cleaned
       up). Accordingly, for the plaintiffs’ claim to survive, they must
       identify a specific policy or custom that caused Reliford’s death.
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       22-11398                 Opinion of the Court                           7

       But they haven’t done so. Instead, their claim rests on a conclusory
       allegation that the city “apparently had a custom or policy not to
       intervene in cases of domestic violence.” This is insufficient.
              But even if the plaintiffs could identify such a policy, their
       due process argument fails because they don’t allege facts sufficient
       to support any of the limited exceptions to the general rule that
       failure to protect against private violence doesn’t constitute a vio-
       lation of due process. Specifically, the plaintiffs fail to allege that
       Reliford had the sort of special relationship with the city that would
       create liability for the city or that the city’s conduct rose to the level
       required to state a claim for deprivation of substantive due process.
              Municipal governments may “be held liable for substantive
       due process violations for their failure to protect victims from harm
       caused by third parties where the state had a ‘special relationship’
       with the victim.” White v. Lemacks, 183 F.3d 1253, 1256 (11th Cir.
       1999). The plaintiffs identify no such relationship between Reliford
       and the city. Instead, they imply that the officers’ mere presence
       in Reliford’s home when Harvey was there, coupled with
       knowledge that he intended her harm, gave rise to the sort of rela-
       tionship that would trigger liability. Again, this is insufficient.
               Outside the custodial context, “conduct by a government ac-
       tor will rise to the level of a substantive due process violation only
       if the act can be characterized as arbitrary or conscience shocking
       in a constitutional sense.” Waddell v. Hendry Cnty. Sheriff’s Off.,
       329 F.3d 1300, 1305 (11th Cir. 2003). “Acts intended to injure in
       some way unjustifiable by any government interest are most likely
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       8                        Opinion of the Court                   22-11398

       to rise to the conscience-shocking level.” Id. (quotations omitted).
       The plaintiffs do not allege that the city intended to harm Reliford.
       Instead, they allege only that the officers acted with “deliberate in-
       difference” toward her. But we’ve never held that “deliberate in-
       difference is a sufficient level of culpability to state a claim of viola-
       tion of substantive due process rights in a non-custodial context.”
       Waldron v. Spicher, 954 F.3d 1297, 1309 (11th Cir. 2020). Because
       this argument fails as well, the district court properly dismissed the
       plaintiffs’ claim under section 1983.
               This leaves us with the plaintiffs’ state law claims. Although
       the district court had supplemental jurisdiction to hear the plain-
       tiffs’ state law claims related to their section 1983 due process
       claim, it had discretion to “decline to exercise supplemental juris-
       diction over a claim” if it had “dismissed all claims over which it
       ha[d] original jurisdiction.” 28 U.S.C. § 1367(c). We’ve said that
       when a district court decides not to exercise supplemental jurisdic-
       tion because only state claims remain, the proper action is dismissal
       without prejudice so that the complaining party may pursue the
       claim in state court. Crosby v. Paulk, 187 F.3d 1339, 1352 (11th Cir.
       1999). This is exactly what the district court did here. Upon deter-
       mining that the plaintiffs’ federal claim couldn’t survive and con-
       cluding that the plaintiffs wouldn’t be prejudiced because the stat-
       ute of limitations would be tolled upon dismissal, the district court
       dismissed their claims without prejudice. The district court thus
       didn’t abuse its discretion.
              AFFIRMED.