Court Opinion

ID: 9657023
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 20:10:55.809454+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:39.691921
License: Public Domain

SUNDBY, J.
(dissenting). Increasingly, defendants subject to claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 defend, as defendants have done here, on the ground that the plaintiff has an adequate postdeprivation remedy and thus does not state a claim. The defendants are seemingly indifferent to the nature of the claims stated. However, the adequacy-of-a-postdeprivation-remedy defense is a "special application[ ] of the settled principles expressed in Monroe [v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167 (1961)] and Mathews [u. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319 (1976)]." Zinermon v. Burch, 494 U.S. 113, 110 S. Ct. 975, 990 n.20 (1990). The defense is limited to certain procedural due process claims.
The principle settled in Monroe, is as follows: *583Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 183 (1961). "Thus, overlapping state remedies are generally irrelevant to the question of the existence of a cause of action under § 1983." Zinermon, 110 S. Ct. at 982.
*582It is no answer that the State has a law which if enforced would give relief. The federal remedy is supplementary to the state remedy, and the latter need not be first sought and refused before the federal one is invoked.
*583The settled principle expressed in Mathews, is the weighing process which determines what procedural protections the Constitution requires in a particular case, as follows:
[F]irst, the private interest that will be affected by the official action; second, the risk of an erroneous deprivation of such interest through the procedures used, and the probable value, if any, of additional or substitute procedural safeguards; and finally, the Government's interest, including the function involved and the fiscal and administrative burdens that the additional or substitute procedural requirement would entail.
Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319, 335 (1976). Thus, Mathews emphasizes that procedural due process is not concerned with the trivial.
The principles expressed in Monroe and Mathews have been obscured by such decisions as Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S. 527 (1981) and Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U.S. 517 (1984). Parratt held that a § 1983 action did not lie against state officials for their random, unauthorized negligent act in losing a prisoner's $23.50 hobby kit. Hudson extended Parratt's random-unauthorized action doctrine to the intentional act of a prison guard who allegedly deliberately and maliciously destroyed a prisoner's personal property during a search of the prisoner's cell.
A number of federal courts of appeals have found Parratt inapplicable where the defendant state official had the state-clothed authority to effect a deprivation, *584and had the power to provide the plaintiff with a hearing before they did so. See Zinermon, 110 S. Ct. at 978 n.2. Other courts of appeals have held that Parratt applies even to deprivations effected by the very state officials charged with providing predeprivation process. Id.
Probably no decision decided by the Court has provoked as much uncertainty and controversy as Parratt. Recognizing this, a sharply divided Court in Zinermon, attempted to place Parratt and Hudson in their proper context. Zinermon presented the ideal fact situation to do so.
In Zinermon, Darrell Burch brought a § 1983 action against officials of the Florida State Hospital, and others, alleging that they deprived him of his liberty, without due process of law, by admitting him to the hospital as a "voluntary" mental patient, when he was incompetent to give informed consent to his admission. The defendants, citing Parratt and Hudson, argued that Burch's complaint failed to state a claim because it alleged only a random, unauthorized violation of the Florida statutes governing admission of mental patients. The Court held, however, that Burch's complaint did state a claim under § 1983. Zinermon, 110 S. Ct. at 990.
The Court first stated the Monroe rule that the existence of a state remedy is generally irrelevant to the question of the existence of a cause of action under § 1983. The Court said: "This general rule applies in a straightforward way to two of the three kinds of § 1983 claims that may be brought against the State under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment." Zinermon, 110 S. Ct. at 983. The two kinds of § 1983 claims to which the Monroe rule applies "in a straightforward way" include those brought by a plaintiff for a state official's violation of his or her rights under specific protections defined in the Bill of Rights. Also, the due *585process clause contains a substantive component that bars arbitrary, wrongful government actions "regardless of the fairness of the procedures used to implement them." Id. (quoting Daniels v. Williams, 474 U.S. 327, 331 (1986)). The Zinermon court noted that as to these actions, the constitutional violation is complete when the wrongful action is taken. Therefore, the existence of a state-law remedy is irrelevant.
However, the due process clause also encompasses a third type of protection, a guarantee of fair procedure. Zinermon, 110 S. Ct. at 983.
The constitutional violation actionable under § 1983 is not complete when the deprivation occurs; it is not complete unless and until the State fails to provide due process . . .. [I]t is necessary to ask what process the State provided, and whether it was constitutionally adequate. This inquiry would examine the procedural safeguards built into the statutory or administrative procedure of effecting the deprivation, and any remedies for erroneous deprivations provided by statute or tort law.
Id. In a fair-procedure case, applying the Mathews v. Eldridge test, the Court "usually has held that the Constitution requires some kind of a hearing before the State deprives a person of liberty or property." Id. at 984 (emphasis in original). See Cleveland Bd. of Educ. v. Loudermill, 470 U.S. 532, 542 (1985).
The Zinermon court continued, "In some circumstances, however, the Court has held that a statutory provision for a postdeprivation hearing, or a common-law tort remedy for erroneous deprivation, satisfies due process." Zinermon, 110 S. Ct. at 984 (citing Logan v. Zimmerman Brush Co., 455 U.S. 422, 436 (1982)) "(" 'the necessity of quick action by the State or the impracticality of providing any predeprivation pro*586cess,' " may mean that a postdeprivation remedy is constitutionally adequate, quoting Parratt, 451 U.S. at 539 . . Id.
The Court said:
This is where the Parratt rule comes into play. Parratt and Hudson represent a special case of the general Mathews v. Eldridge analysis, in which postdeprivation tort remedies are all the process that is due, simply because they are the only remedies the State could be expected to provide.
Id. at 985. The Court explained that in Parratt, ”[t]he very nature of a negligent loss of property made it impossible for the State to predict such deprivations and provide predeprivation process." Id.
The Court said that Parratt is not an exception to the Mathews balancing test, "but rather an application of that test to the unusual case in which one of the variables in the Mathews equation — the value of predeprivation safeguards — is negligible in preventing the kind of deprivation at issue." Id. The State "cannot be required constitutionally to do the impossible by providing predeprivation process." Id.
The Court explained that Hudson is consistent with the Parratt doctrine, in that the state could not anticipate and control in advance the random, unauthorized intentional conduct of the prison guard. Id. at 985. The fact that the guard could "foresee" the wrongful deprivation was "of no consequence" because the proper inquiry is whether the state is in a position to provide for predeprivation process. Id. at 985-86.
The focus of those courts which have seized upon Parratt and Hudson as a way of disposing of § 1983 claims, has, erroneously, been on the availability of a postdeprivation remedy, and not on the ability of the *587state to provide predeprivation process. That is the mistake of the majority. An act of a state official is "random and unauthorized" only if it was impossible for the state to predict the action and provide predeprivation process. "In situations where the State feasibly can provide a predeprivation hearing before taking property, it generally must do so regardless of the adequacy of a postdeprivation tort remedy to compensate for the taking." Zinermon, 110 S. Ct. at 987. The exception is where a predeprivation hearing is unduly burdensome in proportion to the property or liberty interest at stake, or the state is truly unable to anticipate and prevent a random deprivation of a property or liberty interest. Id. at 987.
Applying these principles to Burch's claim, the Court concluded that the state could have provided predeprivation safeguards which would have prevented the hospital officials from making random and unauthorized errors in the admission process. Zinermon, 110 S. Ct. at 988-89. The Court explained:
Florida chose to delegate to petitioners a broad power to admit patients to F.S.H., i.e., to effect what, in the absence of informed consent, is a substantial deprivation of liberty. Because petitioners had state authority to deprive persons of liberty, the Constitution imposed on them the State's concomitant duty to see that no deprivation occur without adequate procedural protections.
Id. at 988.
The Court pointed out that, "Burch is not simply attempting to blame the State for misconduct by its employees. He seeks to hold state officials accountable for their abuse of their broadly delegated, uncircum-*588scribed power to effect the deprivation at issue." Id. at 989.
The Court found that the case before it was not controlled by Parratt and Hudson, for three basic reasons:
First, the officials could not claim that the deprivation of Burch's liberty was unpredictable. Zinermon, 110 S. Ct. at 989. The state could have predicted that any erroneous deprivation would occur, if at all, at a specific, predictable point in the admission process — when a patient is given admission forms to sign. Id.
Second, providing predeprivation process was not impossible. In contrast to the situations in Parratt and Hudson, "had the State limited and guided petitioners' power to admit patients, the deprivation might have been averted." Id.
Third, the officials' conduct was not "unauthorized" in the sense the term was used in Parratt and Hudson. Zinermon, 110 S. Ct. at 990. The state had delegated to the officials the power and authority to "effect the very deprivation complained of here." Id. "The deprivation here is 'unauthorized' only in the sense that it was not an act sanctioned by state law, but, instead, was a 'deprivation] of constitutional rights . . . by an official's abuse of his position.' " Id. (quoting Monroe, 365 U.S. at 172).
Under the principles explained in Zinermon, Lewis states claims which are not satisfied by the existence of postdeprivation remedies, if, in fact, such remedies exist. It is the obligation of a reviewing court when presented with a prisoner's pro se document seeking relief to determine whether the petitioner may be entitled to any relief. bin-Rilla v. Israel, 113 Wis. 2d 514, 521, 335 N.W.2d 384, 388 (1983). We must look to the facts, not the pro se inmate's pleadings. Id. The facts are undis*589puted. Lewis assists other inmates in their legal work. His wife purchased at retail outlets and forwarded to him typing paper, a legal pad and a box of envelopes, which defendant Paschke, as the supervisor of the WCI property department, confiscated. Through his complaints to Superintendent Young, Lewis was able to get this property from Paschke. However, his wife then sent him two additional reams of typing paper, which Paschke confiscated. Lewis went through the same process but this time Young upheld Paschke's decision.
Lewis has an electronic memory typewriter which he sent out to have its memory expanded. When the typewriter was returned to WCI, Paschke confiscated it and claimed it was contraband because the added disc drive was not an integral part of the typewriter. Paschke permitted Lewis's wife to return the typewriter to the retail store and have its expanded memory removed. The typewriter was then returned to Lewis.
At the time, defendant Paschke operated under Internal Management Procedure No. 1, effective September 1, 1984. That procedure provided that, "Under certain conditions, inmate personal property is permitted to enter institutions through the mail from retail outlets, family and friends and on visits where authorized." Section 1-B permitted inmates to purchase an electronic typewriter. Personal property which could be obtained through the mail from retail outlets included stamped envelopes, stationery, typing paper, and carbon paper.
Lewis claims that denying him the right to purchase and receive from retail outlets typing paper, legal pads and envelopes violated his right to equal protection and to be free, under the substantive component of the due process clause, from the arbitrary denial of his access to such personal property. Thus, Lewis states two *590claims — equal protection and substantive due process — which are unaffected by the existence of a postdeprivation remedy. I express no opinion as to the merits of his claims or others which arose after he began this action, but simply demur from the proposition that he does not state claims because of the existence of adequate postdeprivation remedies.
Further, Lewis claims that the denial of his right to acquire such personal property violated his right to procedural due process under the fourteenth amendment. I find that his claim falls within the perimeters outlined in Zinermon. First, the defendants cannot claim that the deprivation of Lewis's property interest was unpredictable. Any erroneous deprivation will occur, if at all, at a specific, predictable point in the acquisition process — when the property is received at WCI's property department. Second, it was not impossible to provide a predeprivation process before defendant Paschke confiscated Lewis's property and denied him possession of property under the internal management procedure. Third, the defendants cannot characterize their conduct as "unauthorized" in the sense that the term is used in Parratt and Hudson. The deprivation here is "unauthorized" only in the sense that Paschke's act was not sanctioned by state law, but was, instead, an abuse of his official position.
For these reasons, I conclude that Lewis states claims which are not satisfied by the existence of postdeprivation remedies. I dissent.