Mohammed v. School District

Opinions of the United
2006 Decisions States Court of Appeals
for the Third Circuit
6-5-2006
Mohammed v. Phila Sch Dist
Precedential or Non-Precedential: Non-Precedential
Docket No. 05-1599
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NOT PRECEDENTIAL
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
No. 05-1599
SHARON MOHAMMED,
on behalf of Richard Mohammed, a minor,
Appellant
v.
THE SCHOOL DISTRICT OF PHILADELPHIA, PAUL G. VALLAS,
EDWARD MONASTRA, THOMAS SMYTH,
NILVIA FRANCO-DEJESUS, GORDON ELDER, JOSEPH MEYER, IZZY PADRON,
SHAWN RHODES, FRANK ROMAN, BRYAN SINGLETARY1
On Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
(No. 03-cv-4766)
The Honorable Cynthia M. Rufe, District Judge
Submitted Under Third Circuit LAR 34.1(a)
May 8, 2006
Before: BARRY and SMITH, Circuit Judges, and RODRIGUEZ2, District Judge
(Filed: June 5, 2006)
1
All Defendants other than the School District, Paul G. Vallas, Superintendent of the
School District, Edward Monastra, principal of Olney High School, and Thomas Smyth,
the sergeant in charge of the school police officers, were dismissed from the case prior to
the district court’s ruling on Defendants’ motion for summary judgment.
2
The Honorable Joseph H. Rodriguez, Senior District Judge, United States District
Court for the District of New Jersey, sitting by designation.
OPINION OF THE COURT
RODRIGUEZ, District Judge.
Sharon Mohammed, on behalf of her minor son, appeals from an order granting the
Defendants’ motion for summary judgment on her section 1983 case grounded in the
“state-created danger” theory. The underlying Complaint alleged a violation of Olney
High School student Richard Mohammed’s substantive due process rights to bodily
integrity and safety (Count I) as well as willful misconduct (Count II).
I.
On the morning of February 4, 2003, tenth grader Richard Mohammed was
punched in the face by another high school student while walking in a stairwell at Olney
High School in Philadelphia. Upon arriving at the school on the morning of the attack,
Richard Mohammed took “stairwell four,” on his way to his advisory room on the fourth
of six floors. Stairwell four was the only stairwell available to students at that time of the
morning. Between the third and fourth floors, an unidentified student attempted to attack
the student in front of Richard, but the intended victim ducked, and the attacker punched
Richard in the eye. Richard suffered traumatic hyphema of the eye and a fracture of the
right facial bone; he was in the hospital for six days.
Despite the fact that the number of violent incidents at Olney High School had
2
increased steadily from 1999 through 2003,3 there was no surveillance camera in stairwell
four and no security personnel were present to witness the attack. Attendance records
indicated that Olney High School was short four security officers on the day of the attack,
even though the school’s principal, Defendant Edward Monastra, had written a
memorandum to the School District on October 29, 2002 (and again on February 12, 2003
and March 18, 2003), imploring the District to provide the full complement of security
officers to which Olney High School was entitled. In fact, when the principal met with
security officials to address the problem on January 29, 2003, just days before the attack
on Richard Mohammed, Olney High School had been short a full complement of security
officers on 83 out of the previous 85 school days. Monastra described “a tremendous
amount of fights, serious incidents, fires like crazy . . . the building basically was out of
control.”
II.
This Court has jurisdiction over appeals from all final decisions of the district
courts pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291. We review a grant of summary judgment de novo,
applying the same test as the district court. MBIA Ins. Corp. v. Royal Indem. Co., 426
F.3d 204, 209 (3d Cir. 2005). Summary judgment should be awarded only when “the
pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with
3
There were 60 reported assaults or attacks on students or faculty/staff in 1999-2000, 87 in
2000-2001, and with 57 in the first half of 2002-03, Mohammed’s expert projected that well over
100 incidents would have been reported for the 2002-03 school year.
3
the affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that
the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c). All
reasonable inferences must be made in favor of the nonmoving party, and the court may
not weigh the evidence or assess credibility. Id.
III.
This Court recently had occasion to review the “state-created danger” theory of
liability in cases brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983. See Bright v. Westmoreland
County, 443 F.3d 276 (3d Cir. 2006). There, the Court reiterated the four salient elements
of a viable state-created danger claim. Id. at 281. First, the harm ultimately caused must
have been foreseeable and fairly direct. Kneipp v. Tedder, 95 F.3d 1199, 1208 (3d Cir.
1996). Second, a state actor must have acted with a degree of culpability that shocks the
conscience. County of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833 (1998); Miller v. City of
Philadelphia, 174 F.3d 368, 375-76 (3d Cir. 1999). Such culpability is more than the state
actor acting in willful disregard for the plaintiff’s safety. Rivas v. City of Passaic, 365
F.3d 181, 194 (3d Cir. 2004). Third, a special relationship must have existed between the
state and the plaintiff such that “the plaintiff was a foreseeable victim of the defendant's
acts,” or a “member of a discrete class of persons subjected to the potential harm brought
about by the state's actions,” as opposed to a member of the public in general. Kneipp, 95
F.3d at 1209, n.22; Morse v. Lower Merion Sch. Dist., 132 F.3d 902, 906, 913 (3d Cir.
1997).
Finally, a state actor must have “used his or her authority in a way that created a
4
danger to the citizen or that rendered the citizen more vulnerable to danger than had the
state not acted at all.” Bright, 443 F.3d at 281. As to the fourth element, the Court
stressed that “[i]t is misuse of state authority, rather than a failure to use it, that can
violate the Due Process Clause.” Id. at 282. In other words, “[l]iability under the state-
created danger theory is predicated upon the states' affirmative acts which work to the
plaintiffs' detriments in terms of exposure to danger.” D.R. by L.R. v. Middle Bucks
Area Vo. Tech. School, 972 F.2d 1364, 1374 (3d Cir. 1992) (en banc) (emphasis
supplied); contra Bright, 443 F.3d at 290 (Nygaard, J., dissenting) (stressing that the
Court should not focus on whether the act is appropriately characterized as “affirmative”).
Although the Court is “naturally sympathetic” to the plight of Richard
Mohammed, see DeShaney v. Winnebago Cty. Soc. Servs. Dept., 489 U.S. 189, 212
(1989), we cannot find that the Defendants created the danger that he faced.
IV.
Because of the atmosphere of violence that permeated Olney High School, it was
foreseeable that Richard Mohammed, or any student, could have been attacked at any
time and in any location by another student. Such an attack, however, was not a fairly
direct result of the Defendants’ actions. The state actors in this case had no knowledge
that Richard Mohammed was in any more danger than each and every other student at
Olney High. Indeed, he was not even the intended victim of the assault. Nor did the
Defendants have knowledge that stairwell four was in need of monitoring, as only one of
the almost 200 violent incidents prior to the day of this attack took place in stairwell four.
5
Although their security plan obviously failed in this instance, Defendants did not ignore
the rampant violence at Olney High, nor did they conceal any of the incidents.
Surveillance in stairwell four may have aided in apprehending the attacker, but it is
speculation to say that it would have prevented the attack. It is also speculative to assume
that if the full complement of security officers reported to Olney High that day, one of
them would have been assigned to monitor stairwell four. Thus, the Court cannot find
that the attack was a fairly direct result of any lack of surveillance or monitoring.
Further, the Defendants’ actions neither injured Richard Mohammed nor rendered
him “more vulnerable to injury from another source than he . . . would have been in the
absence of state intervention.” Scheiber v. City of Philadelphia, 320 F.3d 409, 416 (3d
Cir. 2003). Even considering that the full complement of security officers was not
present at the school on the day of the attack, we cannot say that such a shortage “created
an opportunity that otherwise would not have existed,” Mark v. Borough of Hatboro, 51
F.3d 1137, 1152 (3d Cir. 1995), for the attack to occur. There is nothing about the state’s
conduct that placed Richard Mohammed in a position of increased danger. Although
Mohammed produced an expert report indicating that Defendants’ “actions and failures to
supervise on or prior to February 4, 2003 were negligent and reckless and as such were a
significant contributing cause to [the incident] and subsequent injuries to [Richard
Mohammed],” mere negligence or recklessness is insufficient to sustain a claim under the
state-created danger theory.
Similarly, any negligence or recklessness of the individual Defendants in failing to
6
monitor the stairwell cannot serve as the basis of a claim for willful misconduct under 42
Pa. C.S.A. § 8550. Willful misconduct occurs only where “the actor desired to bring
about the result that followed or at least was aware that it was substantially certain to
follow, so that such desire can be implied.” Bright, 443 F.3d at 287 (quoting Robbins v.
Cumberland County Children and Youth Services, 802 A.2d 1239, 1252-53 (Pa. Commw.
Ct. 2002)). The Defendants’ conduct in this case cannot be described as intentional, so it
cannot come under the purview of willful misconduct.
Therefore, we will affirm the decision of the district court granting summary
judgment in favor of the Defendants.
7