William Davis v. City of Murfreesboro

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION
File Name: 09a0776n.06
No. 08-6495
FILED
Dec 10, 2009
LEONARD GREEN, Clerk
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
WILLIAM T. DAVIS, )
) ON APPEAL FROM THE
Plaintiff-Appellant, ) UNITED STATES DISTRICT
) COURT FOR THE MIDDLE
v. ) DISTRICT OF TENNESSEE
)
CITY OF MURFREESBORO, ) OPINION
)
Defendant-Appellee. )
BEFORE: SUHRHEINRICH, McKEAGUE, and KETHLEDGE, Circuit Judges.
Per Curiam. This is an appeal from a magistrate judge’s order granting the City of
Murfreesboro’s motion for summary judgment in William Davis’s § 1983 action alleging that city
officials deprived him of his First Amendment rights by serving an administrative inspection warrant
on him in retaliation for filing state lawsuits.
On December 28, 2003, Murfreesboro Police Officer Anthony Whitehead saw a loose dog
run through an open front door into Davis’s condominium. Upon approaching and then entering the
condo in order to check on the health of the residents, Whitehead encountered an “almost
unbearable” smell and found an apartment in “complete disarray,” populated by sick-looking cats
and covered with feces and trash. The Animal Control officers who arrived in response to
Whitehead’s report found “dog feces, cat feces, and all kinds of urine all over the carpets,” sick cats
without any water, and – most startlingly – over one hundred dead cats, along with a dead dog and
No. 08-6495
William Davis v. City of Murfreesboro
five dead snakes, in the condominium’s freezers. See State v. Davis, 2005 WL 2255968, at *1-*3
(Tenn. Crim. App. Sept. 15, 2005). Codes Inspector Monty Kapavik of the Murfreesboro Building
and Codes Department (“Department”) declared Davis’s home unhabitable and issued a repair order.
Davis ultimately pled guilty to one count of cruelty to animals, see id. at *1, but continued to contest
the validity of the 2003 searches; he also launched a series of lawsuits against various city and
county officials and departments. Once Davis’s legal challenge to the searches was concluded in
2005, the Department began insisting on reinspecting Davis’s condo. In July of 2006, Chief
Building Official Betts Barbier Nixon obtained an administrative inspection warrant to search the
building. Kapavik executed the warrant, entered the apartment, and then issued a revised repair
order. In response, Davis brought this suit, alleging that the search and resulting repair notice were
acts of retaliation against him because he had brought his earlier lawsuits, and were an attempt to
prevent him from continuing to exercise his First Amendment rights.
In two memoranda, on September 29, 2008 and October 28, 2008, Magistrate Judge Juliet
Griffin granted the City’s motion for summary judgment, concluding that Davis could not show the
third element of a retaliation claim, that the Department’s actions were motived at least in part by
Davis’s exercise of his constitutional rights in bringing state lawsuits. See, e.g., Jenkins v. Rock Hill
Local School Dist., 513 F.3d 580, 586 (6th Cir. 2008). “Even . . . viewed in the light most favorable
to the plaintiff,” Judge Griffin concluded, “there is simply insufficient evidence . . . showing the
existence of a causal connection between the plaintiff’s pursuit of a lawsuit against the City and the
enforcement action taken against him by the Building Codes Department. No reasonable jury could
find in favor of the plaintiff if this claim proceeded to trial.” (Magistrate Judge Memo, October 28,
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No. 08-6495
William Davis v. City of Murfreesboro
2008, at 6.) Davis now appealing, arguing that while “it is simply impossible” for him “to provide
the type of direct evidence that might be considered a ‘smoking gun[,]’” (Pl. Br. at 7), he has
presented sufficient circumstantial evidence to permit a reasonable jury to conclude that such a
causal connection exists.
Having duly considered Davis’s appellate arguments, we find Davis’s appeal to be meritless.
Davis’s arguments were fairly and adequately addressed in Judge Griffin’s October 28, 2008
memorandum granting the City of Murfreesboro’s motion for summary judgment. Because the
issuance of a full opinion would serve no jurisprudential purpose and would be duplicative, we
AFFIRM on the basis of the magistrate judge’s memorandum the dismissal of this action.
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