Court Opinion

ID: 9482961
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:06:26.919867+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:19.436708
License: Public Domain

BEAM, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Because the majority opinion disregards accepted legal principles applicable to cases such as this, I respectfully dissent. Without reason or precedent, the district court, advancing dubious policy justifications, has *862elevated the 42 U.S.C. § 1983 judgment against Finnel to a status that it does not merit. Further, the district court used an inapplicable procedural rule, Fed.R.Civ.P. 69(a), to cut a pathway for this prisoner-plaintiff through immunity barriers erected by the Constitution.
Finnel was an employee of the State of Missouri and, while serving in this capacity, violated the constitutional rights of Hankins. The cause of action was against Finnel in his personal capacity and sought to (and did) impose personal liability. The suit was not and could not have been an official capacity case. “[Ojfficial capacity suits ... represent only another way of pleading an action against an entity of which an officer is an agent.” Monell v. Department of Social Servs., 436 U.S. 658, 690 n. 55, 98 S.Ct. 2018, 2035 n. 55, 56 L.Ed.2d 611 (1978). Of course, the Eleventh Amendment precluded a suit by Hankins directly against the State of Missouri. Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651, 663, 94 S.Ct. 1347, 1355, 39 L.Ed.2d 662 (1974). To repeat, the State of Missouri was not and could not have been the object of Hankins’ claim.
The state enters the picture in only a limited way — through its statute-making powers. Missouri, furnishing an additional benefit to its workers, provides and pays for a lawyer when a state employee is sued for task-related activities and, through the State Legal Expense Fund, Mo.Rev.Stat. § 105.711 (Supp.1991), indemnifies the employee for any judgment rendered. Some states use tax money to buy commercial insurance coverage while others, like Missouri, appropriate an indemnity fund, a form of self-insurance. So Finnel was, in essence, provided indemnity coverage by the State to satisfy his liability to Hankins.
The judgment was entered and the State paid off. It satisfied the judgment, as Finnel’s indemnitor, by paying the money into Hankins’ account at the institution. Since Hankins could not carry cash around in prison, it was necessary for the money to be handled this way. Perhaps if he had had another bank account or a legal guardian, his lawyer could have had the tender transferred to him in some other way. Presumably Missouri could also have paid the money into the registry of the federal court. In any event, Missouri had (and should have had) access to the funds now owned by Hankins. That the satisfaction of judgment was handled through Hankins’ prison account or in any other way is irrelevant to the legitimate issues in this case.
In a separate state court proceeding, under the Missouri Incarceration Reimbursement Act, Mo.Rev.Stat. §§ 217.825-217.841 (Supp.1991), the State impounded the money and sought a judgment against Hankins for ninety percent of the judgment payment made into the prison account. As noted by the majority, the Reimbursement Act seeks money to repay the State for costs of Hankins’ incarceration. No attack is made on the validity of the Reimbursement Act, constitutional or otherwise.1 Had Hankins inherited money or obtained a federal court judgment for breach of contract or through a tort claim, the Act would presumably have functioned without this interference from the federal district court. However, since this was a section 1983 judgment, the district court, for reasons difficult to follow from the clear language of the rule and the facts at work here, applied Fed.R.Civ.P. 69(a)2 in an effort to *863help the prisoner defeat the claim of the State, a nonparty to the underlying action in federal court. Since Missouri, as indemnitor of Finnel, had, in essence, paid over to creditor Hankins the full amount of the federal court judgment, this rule was simply not applicable. The rule outlines a process to enforce an unpaid judgment through a writ of execution. When a third party holds funds of a judgment debtor, Rule 69(a) may be used to reach the funds. Here, there were no such funds remaining in the hands of the indemnitor, they were in Hankins’ prison account.
The majority relies upon Argento v. Village of Melrose Park, 838 F.2d 1483 (7th Cir.1988), for support of the use of a Rule 69(a) procedure. Beyond the fact that the dissent in Argento presents the better reasoned argument, the case, and all the cases cited by the Argento majority, are inapposite here. None of the actions involved a sovereign state with Eleventh Amendment protections, they involved governmental subdivisions subject to being made parties to the action in the first instance. Further, Argento presented a situation where the section 1983 judgment against the employees remained unsatisfied, a scenario, as earlier indicated, we do not face in this matter.
The second error more directly involves the Eleventh Amendment. In support of some supposed public policy consideration involving section 1983 actions,3 the district court and the majority seek to blur the line drawn by the Supreme Court which separates a state from its employees in this kind of litigation. The reasoning employed by the district court and the majority runs upstream from the unambiguous holdings of the Supreme Court. For instance, in Kentucky v. Graham, 473 U.S. 159, 105 S.Ct. 3099, 87 L.Ed.2d 114 (1985), a successful section 1983 plaintiff sought to collect attorney fees allowed by 42 U.S.C. § 1988 from the Commonwealth. “[I]t is clear that a suit against a government official in his or her personal capacity cannot lead to imposition of fee liability upon the governmental entity. A victory in a personal-capacity action is a victory against the individual defendant, rather than against the entity that employs him.” Id. at 167-68, 105 S.Ct. at 3106. The Supreme Court further stated that when a party prevails against one party it has no entitlements against even another party, let alone a nonparty. Id. at 168, 105 S.Ct. at 3106. In Brandon v. Holt, 469 U.S. 464, 105 S.Ct. 873, 83 L.Ed.2d 878 (1985), the Supreme Court chastised the Sixth Circuit for failing to carefully adhere to the personal-official distinction in section 1983 litigation. Id. at 473, 105 S.Ct. at 878.
The majority contends, in the face of this concept, that the Missouri indemnity fund legislation and/or the Missouri Reimbursement Act, jointly or severally, work an implied waiver of Eleventh Amendment immunity sufficient to bring the State into this federal court garnishment proceeding. The law is to the contrary. If waiver occurred as a result of the indemnity scheme or the Reimbursement Act, Missouri should have been made a party defendant in the underlying suit, not brought in through the back door as a quasi party. More importantly, however, applying solidly established precedent, waiver did not occur.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected constructive waiver arguments such as those made here and has established that waiver can be found “only where stat*864ed ‘by the most express language or by such overwhelming implications from the text as [will] leave no room for any other reasonable construction.’ ” Edelman, 415 U.S. at 673, 94 S.Ct. at 1361 (quoting Murray v. Wilson Distilling Co., 213 U.S. 151, 171, 29 S.Ct. 458, 464, 53 L.Ed. 742 (1909)). The Court has continuously applied this standard, construing even express state waivers of sovereign immunity very narrowly. See Florida Dep’t of Health & Rehab. Servs. v. Florida Nursing Home Ass’n, 450 U.S. 147, 149-50, 101 S.Ct. 1032, 1033-34, 67 L.Ed.2d 132 (1981) (per curiam) (general statutory waiver of state agency’s immunity applies only to suits in state courts and not federal courts); Atascadero State Hosp. v. Scanlon, 473 U.S. 234, 241, 105 S.Ct. 3142, 3146, 87 L.Ed.2d 171 (1985) (state constitution’s general waiver of state’s sovereign immunity applies only to suits in state courts and not federal courts as well).
Here, the Missouri indemnity statute goes even a step further, it specifically disavows any waiver of Eleventh Amendment immunity. Even ignoring the express disavowal of waiver, the holdings of the district court and the majority are wrong given the nearly insurmountable presumption against constructive waivers of Eleventh Amendment immunity. See Edelman, 415 U.S. at 671-74, 94 S.Ct. at 1359-61.
In Williams v. Bennett, 689 F.2d 1370, 1377-79 (11th Cir.1982), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 932, 104 S.Ct. 335, 78 L.Ed.2d 305 (1983), and Gamble v. Florida Dep’t of Health & Rehab. Servs., 779 F.2d 1509, 1516-18 (11th Cir.1986), the Eleventh Circuit has twice considered whether indemnity statutes waive immunity. Williams examined an Alabama statute, and, Gamble, as indicated, analyzed Florida law. The Alabama statute discussed in Williams is comparable to the Missouri legislation; it contains an express disavowal of waiver. The Eleventh Circuit found the indemnity language to be an employee benefit “analogous to liability insurance for any ... correctional employee ... sued individually for acts arising in the course of employment.” Williams, 689 F.2d at 1377. A situation squarely on point with this case. Our holding should be the same as that of the Williams court in terms of employee benefits and waiver of immunity.
The majority’s use of the Reimbursement Act as a source of limited waiver is puzzling, especially since Rule 69(a) is used as the vehicle to force payment of this judgment. Although the Act’s definition of “assets” includes “[a] money judgment received by the offender from the state as a result of a civil action,” Mo.Rev.Stat. § 217.827(1)(a)b, it is difficult to even speculate how these words used by the Missouri legislature remotely approach a waiver of sovereign immunity “by the most express language or by such overwhelming implications from the text,” Edelman, 415 U.S. at 673, 94 S.Ct. at 1361. This section merely defines the assets subject to state claims under the Reimbursement Act, it does not implicate, much less waive, Missouri’s immunity in the separate and distinct federal court litigation that provides the source of the assets.
The majority nonetheless finds an implied waiver of immunity by concluding that Missouri seeks to take advantage of the judgment in Hankins’ section 1983 suit through the Reimbursement Act. The majority cites United States v. DCS Dev. Corp., 590 F.Supp. 1117 (W.D.N.Y.1984), and Sosna v. Iowa, 419 U.S. 393, 95 S.Ct. 553, 42 L.Ed.2d 532 (1975), to support its finding. The majority ignores, however, that the fundamental question addressed in these cases was the extent to which a state waives its immunity once it has voluntarily made an appearance in a suit. An appearance in the litigation is a prerequisite to applying the waiver standard, i.e., whether the state seeks to take advantage of the suit. As discussed above, Missouri did not waive its immunity in the section 1983 suit by satisfying Hankins' judgment. Missouri, therefore, has not appeared in the suit and does not seek to take advantage of it in the sense that DCS Dev. Corp. and Sosna contemplate. Instead, Missouri’s position is comparable to that of a tort victim who decides to sue a previously insolvent tortfeasor in another court upon learning that the tortfeasor has received a judgment from a third party. By overlooking the lack of an appearance by Missouri *865in Hankins’ section 1983 suit, the majority stretches the holdings of DCS Dev. Corp. and Sosna beyond their intended and reasonable scope.
In sum, the majority now establishes precedent for this circuit based upon erroneous policy arguments and a misapplication of established law.4 Accordingly, I would reverse the district court, set aside the Fed.R.Civ.P. 69(a) proceeding and let Hankins and the state settle their differences in the proper forum, the Missouri courts.

. I suspect there are several avenues of assault available, not limited to arguments that a reimbursement amounts to an additional criminal fine or that court ordered restitution arising outside the criminal process violates due process considerations. Nothing of this nature is referred to in the record and it is doubtful that such attacks, if made, would prevail in the final analysis.

. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 69(a) states: Process to enforce a judgment for the payment of money shall be a writ of execution, unless the court directs otherwise. The procedure on execution, in proceedings supplementary to and in aid of a judgment, and in proceedings on and in aid of execution shall be in accordance with the practice and procedure of the state in which the district court is held, existing at the time the remedy is sought, except that any statute of the United States governs to the extent that it is applicable. In aid of the judgment or execution, the judgment creditor or a successor in interest when that interest appears of record, may obtain discovery from any person, including *863the judgment debtor, in the manner provided in these rules or in the manner provided by the practice of the state in which the district court is held.

. The district court concluded that permitting the State to seize this section 1983 damage award would disincline prisoners from bringing such damage claims and would destroy the inducement for a state and its employees to comply with the federal Constitution. Any witness to the flood of prisoner petitions from the correctional facilities of this country will recognize this argument as fanciful. Further, section 1983 carries with it equitable as well as legal remedies. The Missouri Act confiscates only a portion of each judgment and, as in this case, the award of attorney fees to the plaintiff often, if not usually, far exceeds the amount of the section 1983 judgment. With these remedies and this knowledge in mind, it is almost certain that the actions of Missouri in this case, even if successful, will have absolutely no effect upon the number of prisoner claims asserted.

. Besides failing to justify the unprecedented status it accords a section 1983 judgment, the majority’s holding fails to provide a workable framework for future adjudication. For example, it is far from clear whether the majority’s holding would preclude a state from seeking reimbursement for prison expenses from the proceeds of a prisoner’s section 1983 suit unrelated to the conditions of his imprisonment. Presumably such reimbursement would undermine the purposes of section 1983 as directly as the claim for reimbursement in the present case supposedly does. As this example demonstrates, any attempt to restrict the scope of the majority’s holding would simply reveal the holding’s inherently arbitrary nature.