Court Opinion

ID: 9891715
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-19 16:01:16.915287+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:00:23.102321
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 20-13528   Document: 79-1    Date Filed: 10/19/2023   Page: 1 of 15

                                                 [DO NOT PUBLISH]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

                         ____________________

                               No. 20-13528
                         ____________________

        DORAL 10, LLC,
        LIZBETH ARENCIBIA,
        RENE ARENCIBIA,
                                                  Plaintiﬀs-Appellants,
        versus
        CITY OF DORAL,
        a Florida Municipal Corporation,
        EE&G ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES, LLC,
        BCC ENGINEERING, LLC,
        JOSE MARIO ALVAREZ, et al.,

                                                Defendants-Appellees,
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        2                      Opinion of the Court                 20-13528

        JVA ENGINEERING CONTRACTOR, INC.,

                                                        Defendant-Appellee.

                             ____________________

                   Appeal from the United States District Court
                       for the Southern District of Florida
                       D.C. Docket No. 1:19-cv-24830-JLK
                            ____________________

        Before WILSON, LUCK, and LAGOA, Circuit Judges.
        PER CURIAM:
               Plaintiffs-Appellants Doral 10, LLC, Lizbeth Arencibia, and
        Rene Arencibia (collectively, Doral 10) contracted with the City of
        Doral (the City) to buy Doral 10’s property for use in an upcoming
        roadway project. Before closing on the property, the City and the
        city managers, through various contractors, illicitly used Doral 10’s
        property and caused a significant amount of damage to the prop-
        erty. Doral 10 sued the City, the city managers, and various con-
        tractors (collectively, the defendants) under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for vi-
        olating Doral 10’s Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights. Relevant
        to this appeal, the district court dismissed Doral 10’s Amended
        Complaint, stating that Doral 10 failed to allege municipal liability
        against the City.
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        20-13528               Opinion of the Court                         3

                After careful review and with the benefit of oral argument,
        we find that, at the motion to dismiss stage, Doral 10 has plausibly
        alleged that the city managers acted as final policymakers in au-
        thorizing the use of Doral 10’s property. Thus, we reverse the dis-
        trict court’s dismissal of Doral 10’s § 1983 claims against the City.
                              I.     BACKGROUND
                Accepting the well-pleaded factual allegations in Doral 10’s
        Amended Complaint as true, as we must, Doral 10 alleges the fol-
        lowing. See MacPhee v. MiMedx Grp., Inc., 73 F.4th 1220, 1228 (11th
        Cir. 2023). On January 9, 2019, Doral 10 and the City signed a Let-
        ter of Intent for the City to buy Doral 10’s property for $10,750,000.
        Doral 10’s property abutted a roadway slated for an improvement
        project (Improvement Project). The City awarded JVA Engineer-
        ing Contractor, Inc., the contract to complete the Improvement
        Project. The City entered an agreement with BCC Engineering,
        LLC, to provide engineering services.
                The City “unlawfully and without consent or authorization
        knowingly seized and utilized” Doral 10’s property before the par-
        ties closed on the property. Relying on its inchoate agreement to
        buy Doral 10’s property, the City “falsely and knowingly repre-
        sented” to the various contractors that “the City had secured Doral
        10’s consent or authorization to utilize” Doral 10’s property for the
        Improvement Project, “when it had not.”
               During the five-month-long occupation of the property, the
        City, “in concert and together” with two different city managers,
        Edward Rojas and Albert Childress, and various contractors,
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        4                      Opinion of the Court                20-13528

        knowingly seized and utilized Doral 10’s property as a staging area
        for the Improvement Project. During that occupation, the contrac-
        tors took clean fill material from Doral 10’s property and mixed it
        with contaminated soil excavated from the Improvement Project.
        As a result, the contractors placed a large pile of contaminated soil
        on Doral 10’s property, causing damage. Additionally, the contrac-
        tors used the clean fill material from Doral 10’s property to create
        embankments for the Improvement Project. Doral 10 knew noth-
        ing about this occupation, nor did it approve or authorize the use
        of its property. “The City took active efforts to prevent [Doral 10]
        from learning of the entry onto, use of, and contamination of”
        Doral 10’s property.
               While the occupation was underway, the defendants, in-
        cluding Rojas and Childress, circulated reports that “contained de-
        tailed pictures of work done” on the Improvement Project and the
        staging area set up on Doral 10’s property. The defendants also
        “held bi-weekly progress meetings.” Doral 10 alleged that Rojas
        and Edwards “at all times acted under color of state law as the
        City’s final policymaker[s],” and that they “personally participated
        in the described conduct” and were “responsible for the damages
        to [Doral 10’s] property.” Thus, throughout the occupation, the
        city manager—Rojas initially, and then Childress—were involved.
        Indeed, the city managers negotiated and “agreed to the essential
        contract terms” of the Letter of Intent with Doral 10. The City’s
        elected officials later ratified the agreement previously negotiated
        by the city managers. And Doral’s “City Manager, City staff, and
        other responsible persons then unilaterally and without any due
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        20-13528               Opinion of the Court                          5

        process or permission or consent from” Doral 10 allowed for the
        illicit occupation of Doral 10’s property by various private contrac-
        tors.
               As a result of the various contractors’ actions, which were
        taken “with the City’s consent,” the City notified Doral 10 that its
        property “required environmental remediation at a minimum cost
        of $2,800,000.00 to excavate three feet of surface material” found
        throughout Doral 10’s property. The City used EE&G Environ-
        mental Services, LLC, as a construction remediation company for
        the property. According to Doral 10, the City used the remediation
        cost to affect the underlying sale, which, at the time of this appeal,
        had not been effectuated by the parties. In total, at least 800 feet of
        soil on Doral 10’s property was “disturbed, devalued, contami-
        nated, and affected by the actions” of the City, the city managers,
        and the various contractors.
               Doral 10 alleged § 1983 claims against the City, two city
        managers, and private contractors for violating its Fifth Amend-
        ment rights to due process and just compensation, and for violating
        its Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches
        and seizures. As to its claims against the City, Doral 10 alleged that
        “[t]he City’s decisions were authorized and/or most certainly con-
        doned and approved by the decisions of a government’s lawmakers
        such that they constituted the acts of its policymaking officials” and
        constituted “practices that [were] so persistent and widespread as
        to practically have [had] the force of law.” Doral 10 also asserted
        that “the City failed to correct the constitutionally offensive actions
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        6                          Opinion of the Court                       20-13528

        of its employees and authorized agents, such that the City’s actions
        rose to the level of a custom or policy because the City acted with
        deliberate indifference towards the misconduct of its authorized
        agents.” Moreover, Doral 10 alleged that the two relevant city
        managers, Rojas and Childress, were the “City’s final policy-
        maker[s]” with respect to these allegations, “were aware and either
        personally authorized or ratified the alleged constitutional law violations
        by the City, its employees, and the private [contractor] defendants.” (Em-
        phasis added).
               The defendants moved separately to dismiss the claims as-
        serted against them. The district court granted the defendants’ mo-
        tions to dismiss. Relevant to this appeal, the district court found
        that Doral 10 failed to identify an official custom or practice by the
        City that supported a theory of municipal liability under § 1983.
        The district court also found that Doral 10 failed to show that the
        contractors (including JVA) were state actors subject to liability un-
        der § 1983.
              Doral 10 timely appealed the dismissal of its claims against
        the City and JVA. Before oral argument, we granted Doral 10’s
        motion to dismiss its appeal against JVA. 1

        1 After we dismissed Doral 10’s claims against JVA from this appeal, JVA

        moved for its attorney’s fees. JVA’s Motion for Appellate Attorney’s Fees is
        TRANSFERRED to the district court for its consideration of whether JVA is
        entitled to appellate attorney’s fees and the amount of appellate attorney’s fees
        to which JVA is entitled, if any. See 11th Cir. R. 39-2(d).
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        20-13528                  Opinion of the Court                         7

                         II.      STANDARD OF REVIEW
               “We review de novo the district court’s grant of a motion to
        dismiss . . . for failure to state a claim, accepting the factual allega-
        tions in the complaint as true and construing them in the light most
        favorable to the plaintiff.” Glover v. Liggett Grp., Inc., 459 F.3d 1304,
        1308 (11th Cir. 2006) (per curiam). Although the complaint need
        not include detailed factual allegations, it must set forth “more than
        labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the elements
        of a cause of action will not do.” Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S.
        544, 555 (2007). Still, “[t]o survive a motion to dismiss, a complaint
        must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a
        claim to relief that is plausible on its face.’” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556
        U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 570).
                                    III.   ANALYSIS
                Section 1983 provides a cause of action by private citizens
        against a “person” acting under color of state law for violating their
        constitutional rights and other federal laws. 42 U.S.C. § 1983. A
        municipality is a “person” within the meaning of the statute. Mo-
        nell v. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 436 U.S. 658, 688–89 (1978).
               “It is well established that a municipality may be held liable
        under § 1983 only when the deprivation at issue was undertaken
        pursuant to city ‘custom’ or ‘policy,’ and not simply on the basis of
        respondeat superior.” Brown v. City of Fort Lauderdale, 923 F.2d 1474,
        1479 (11th Cir. 1991). A plaintiff “has two methods by which to
        establish a [city’s] policy: identify either (1) an officially promul-
        gated [city] policy or (2) an unofficial custom or practice of the
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        8                      Opinion of the Court                  20-13528

        [city] shown through the repeated acts of a final policymaker for
        the [city].” Grech v. Clayton Cnty., 335 F.3d 1326, 1329 (11th Cir.
        2003) (en banc).
                Under the first method, “a single incident of unconstitu-
        tional activity” can establish municipal liability if the incident “was
        caused by an existing, unconstitutional municipal policy, which
        policy can be attributed to a municipal policymaker.” City of Okla-
        homa City v. Tuttle, 471 U.S. 808, 823–24 (1985). Under the second
        method, the plaintiff must show the custom is “a longstanding and
        widespread practice [that] is deemed authorized by the policymak-
        ing officials because they must have known about it but failed to
        stop it.” Brown, 923 F.2d at 1481. For this method, “random acts
        or isolated incidents are insufficient to establish a custom or pol-
        icy.” Depew v. City of St. Marys, 787 F.2d 1496, 1499 (11th Cir. 1986).
               Under both methods, the plaintiff must show the policy-
        maker either ratified the unconstitutional conduct, Hoefling v. City
        of Miami, 811 F.3d 1271, 1279–80 (11th Cir. 2016), or delegated to a
        subordinate official whose “discretionary decisions are not con-
        strained by official policies and are not subject to review,” Mandel
        v. Doe, 888 F.2d 783, 792 (11th Cir. 1989); see also Holloman ex rel.
        Holloman v. Harland, 370 F.3d 1252, 1291 (11th Cir. 2004) (“A mu-
        nicipal governing body may be held liable for acts or policies of in-
        dividuals to whom it delegated final decisionmaking authority in a
        particular area.”). We have also noted that the fact that someone
        “acted as a final decision maker in [one] context does not mean that
        he always acts as such.” Holloman, 370 F.3d at 1292–93. Indeed, the
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        20-13528                     Opinion of the Court                                 9

        “theme reiterated through much of our caselaw” is that “in as-
        sessing whether a governmental decision maker is a final policy
        maker, we look to whether there is an actual ‘opportunity’ for
        ‘meaningful’ review” of the decisionmaker’s actions in the relevant
        context. Id. at 1292 (quoting Oladeinde v. City of Birmingham, 230
        F.3d 1275, 1295 (11th Cir. 2000)).
               While we agree that Doral 10’s Amended Complaint does
        not stake out a plausible claim for the second method, our agree-
        ment ends there. We conclude that Doral 10 has made sufficient
        allegations for the first method to satisfy the pleading requirements
        at the motion to dismiss stage. Specifically, when the City entered
        and began using Doral 10’s property without its authorization or
        consent in January 2019, the City seized Doral 10’s property—a
        “single incident of unconstitutional activity.” Tuttle, 471 U.S. at
        823.
               Turning to who was the final policymaker, Doral 10 has
        pleaded sufficient allegations, that taken as true, could establish
        that the city managers were the final policymakers when it came
        to the management of the contract for the Improvement Project.2

        2 Counsel for Doral 10 confirmed as much at oral argument when counsel

        stated:
                  The City Council is exactly the ﬁnal decisionmaker in the de-
                  cision whether or not to issue the contracts for [the City].
                  Once the contract is issued, the management of the contract,
                  within the terms of it, is completely up to the city manager. . . .
                  Once the contract is executed, meaning signed, the city man-
                  ager is the person who manages the contract. We are talking
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        10                       Opinion of the Court                        20-13528

        In reviewing the complaint—and taking its allegations as true, as
        we must—Doral 10 alleges that Rojas was the city manager until
        Childress replaced him around February 2019. Doral 10 also al-
        leges that Rojas and Childress, as the city managers, acted as final
        policymakers with regard to the Improvement Project. For sup-
        port, Doral 10 alleges that Rojas and Childress authorized and per-
        sonally participated in the at-issue conduct alleged in the Amended
        Complaint. Doral 10 further alleges that, at a minimum, Rojas and
        Childress maintained some form of delegated authority from the
        City to effectuate the implementation of the Improvement Project,
        given their day-to-day involvement in managing it and their ability
        to authorize private contractors.
               Next, “[t]o determine if someone is a final policy maker, we
        look not only to ‘state and local positive law,’ but also ‘custom and
        usage having the force of law.’” Holloman, 370 F.3d at 1292 (quot-
        ing McMillian v. Johnson, 88 F.3d 1573, 1577 (11th Cir. 1996)). The
        City’s charter vests the City Council “with all legislative powers of
        the City.” Doral Municipal Charter, art. II, § 2.01. But the charter

              about the management of the contract, not the issuance of the
              contract, here. The city manager, once a contract is issued and
              approved by the [City Council] is the decisionmaker, in terms
              of how to manage that [contract]. . . . We have alleged . . . that
              [the city manager] is the decisionmaker. . . . There is certain
              plausibility in alleging that [the city manager] is the deci-
              sionmaker, in showing that, once the contract has been is-
              sued, . . . it is up to the [city manager] to manage [the con-
              tract]. . . . [T]he purpose of a city manager is to run the day-
              to-day operation of the city.
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        20-13528               Opinion of the Court                        11

        also gives the city manager the power to “[e]xecute contracts,
        deeds and other documents on behalf of the City as authorized by
        the Council” and the power to “[p]erform such other duties as are
        specified in th[e] Charter or as may be required by the Council.”
        Id., art. III, § 3.04(9), (11). Further, as applicable to the Improve-
        ment Project, the City Council awarded the relevant private con-
        tractor, JVA, the Improvement Project contract in Resolution No.
        19-26 but also authorized the city manager to “execute the con-
        struction contract” and to “take such further action as may be nec-
        essary to implement the purpose and the provisions of th[e] Reso-
        lution.” Id. §§ 2–4. Viewing these provisions in the light most fa-
        vorable to Doral 10 and its pleaded allegations, it is plausible that
        the City vested the city managers with final policymaking author-
        ity when it came to decisions about the management of the Im-
        provement Project, including the decision to authorize the use of
        Doral 10’s property as a staging area for the project.
               Summary judgment and evidence produced through discov-
        ery might very well prove the dissent correct about whether the
        City Council could review the respective city managers’ actions in
        this project. But given the intimate involvement of the city man-
        agers leading up to, and during the occupation of the property, and
        given Doral 10’s allegation that they wielded final policymaking au-
        thority, Doral 10 has sufficiently pleaded enough facts to survive
        the City’s motion to dismiss. See Brown, 923 F.2d at 1480
        (“Whether a particular official has final policymaking authority is a
        question of state law . . . . Our task, however, is not to determine
        who, in fact, wields final policymaking authority but only to
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        12                     Opinion of the Court                  20-13528

        consider whether plaintiff has alleged sufficient facts to withstand
        the city’s motion to dismiss. . . . The district court on remand will
        need to consider all available evidence of policymaking authority
        before deciding the issue of municipal liability.”); see also Hoefling,
        811 F.3d at 1280 (“We therefore believe that identifying and prov-
        ing that a final policymaker acted on behalf of a municipality is ‘an
        evidentiary standard, and not a pleading requirement.’” (quoting
        Swierkiewicz v. Sorema, N.A., 534 U.S. 506, 510 (2002))).
                               IV.    CONCLUSION
              Accordingly, we reverse the district court’s dismissal of
        Doral 10’s § 1983 claims against the City and remand for further
        proceedings.
               REVERSED AND REMANDED.
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        20-13528                 LUCK, J., Dissenting                        1

        LUCK, Circuit Judge, Dissenting:
                Doral 10, LLC alleges that the City of Doral unreasonably
        seized its property, in violation of the Fourth Amendment, and
        took its property without just compensation, in violation of the
        Fifth Amendment, when the City Manager used Doral 10’s real
        property in a roadway improvement project without obtaining
        Doral 10’s permission or compensating Doral 10. Doral 10 con-
        tends that the City is liable under Monell v. Department of Social Ser-
        vices, 436 U.S. 658 (1978) because the City Manager was the final
        policymaker in the relevant area of the City’s affairs. Because Doral
        10 is wrong about the City’s final policymaker—and thus does not
        make necessary allegations against the actual final policymaker—I
        would affirm the dismissal of the claims against the City.
                The identity of the final policymaker is a question of state
        law. See Brown v. City of Ft. Lauderdale, 923 F.2d 1474, 1480 (11th
        Cir. 1991). According to the City’s charter, the City Council
        wielded “all legislative powers of the City,” Doral Municipal Char-
        ter, art. II, § 2.01, and the City Manager had the power to “[e]xecute
        contracts, deeds[,] and other documents on behalf of the City as
        authorized by the Council,” id., art. III, § 3.04(9) (emphasis added).
        Here, through Resolution No. 19-04 sections 2 and 3, the City
        Council authorized the City Manager to purchase Doral 10’s prop-
        erty and to take “such further action as may be necessary” for the
        purchase. The City Council also authorized the City Manager,
        through Resolution No. 19-26 sections 3 and 4, to execute the con-
        tract for the roadway improvement project and to take “such
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        2                        LUCK, J., Dissenting                 20-13528

        further action as may be necessary” for the contract. Under state
        law, the City Council was the final policymaker for taking or buy-
        ing property and authorizing the roadway improvement project.
                 Doral 10 asserts that “controlling law already recognizes
        that city managers in . . . mayor-council-manager local govern-
        ments [in the City’s county] are the final decisionmakers.” But the
        cases that Doral 10 cites for this proposition say that the City Man-
        ager was the final policymaker for the City’s employment deci-
        sions, not for property acquisition or roadway improvement. As
        we’ve explained, “[a]n official or entity may be a final policymaker
        with respect to some actions but not others.” McMillian v. Johnson,
        88 F.3d 1573, 1578 (11th Cir. 1996). The policymaker inquiry fo-
        cuses on the “particular subject matter” of the alleged constitu-
        tional violation. Morro v. City of Birmingham, 117 F.3d 508, 514 (11th
        Cir. 1997) (explaining that “a municipal official does not have final
        policymaking authority over a particular subject matter when that of-
        ficial’s decisions are subject to meaningful administrative review”
        (emphasis added)); Bannum, Inc. v. City of Ft. Lauderdale, 901 F.2d
        989, 997 (11th Cir. 1990) (explaining that for “a single decision [to]
        be sufficient to establish unconstitutional municipal policy under
        section 1983 . . . [t]he challenged action must have been taken pur-
        suant to a policy adopted by the official or officials responsible for
        making policy in that particular area of the city’s business” (emphasis
        added) (citing City of St. Louis v. Praprotnik, 485 U.S. 112, 123 (1988)
        (plurality opinion))). Here, the City’s charter and the resolutions
        gave the City Council the authority to take or purchase property
        and authorize contracts.
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        20-13528               LUCK, J., Dissenting                      3

               Because the City Council was the final policymaker, its de-
        cisions—not the City Manager’s—represented the City’s official
        policy. And because Doral 10 does not plausibly allege a taking or
        seizure by the City’s final policymaker—the City Council—it has
        not established that the City was liable for the City Manager and
        JVA Engineering’s alleged unconstitutional acts. Thus, I would af-
        firm the district court’s dismissal of the claims against the City.