Estate of Gaither v. District of Columbia

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
ESTATE OF MIKAL R. GAITHER,
by and through Pearl Gaither, Personal
Representative,
Plaintiff,
Civil Action No. 03-01458 (CKK)
v.
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, et al.,
Defendants.
MEMORANDUM OPINION
(February 26, 2011)
Plaintiff Pearl Gaither (“Plaintiff”) commenced this action on July 1, 2003, as the
personal representative of the estate of Mikal R. Gaither. Named as defendants are the District of
Columbia, Odie Washington, Marvin L. Brown, Dennis Harrison, Zerline Brooks, Gounod
Toppin, and Joseph White (collectively, “Defendants”). Presently before the Court is Plaintiff’s
[201] Motion for Leave to File to [sic] Amended Complaint (“Motion to Amend”), which
Defendants have opposed. Based on the parties’ submissions, the attachments thereto, the
relevant authorities, and the record as a whole, the Court shall GRANT Plaintiff’s [201] Motion
to Amend.1
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While the Court renders its decision today on the record as a whole, its consideration
has focused on the following documents, listed in chronological order of their filing: Pl.’s Mem.
of Law in Supp. of Pl.’s Mot. to Amend Compl., Docket No. [201-1]; Pl.’s [Proposed] Third Am.
Compl. (“3d Am. Compl.”), Docket No. [201-2]; Defs.’ Mem. of P. & A. in Opp’n to Pl.’s Mot.
for Leave to File Am. Compl. (“Defs.’ Opp’n”), Docket No. [207]; Pl.’s Reply in Supp. of Mot.
to Amend Compl., Docket No. [210].
I. BACKGROUND
The Court assumes familiarity with its prior opinions in this action, which set forth in
detail the extensive history of this case, and shall therefore only address the factual and
procedural background necessary to address the discrete issues currently before the Court.
Plaintiff first commenced this action on July 1, 2003, as the personal representative of the
estate of Mikal R. Gaither (“Gaither”), who was fatally stabbed on December 14, 2002 while
incarcerated at the District of Columbia Central Detention Facility (the “Jail”). See Compl.,
Docket No. [1]. On July 21, 2003, before anyone had appeared as a defendant in this action,
Plaintiff filed an amended complaint as a matter of right. See Am. Compl., Docket No. [5].
Subsequently, upon Defendants’ motion and with Plaintiff’s consent, the action was stayed for
over three years—from October 8, 2003 through January 4, 2007—pending resolution of a
criminal investigation into the circumstances surrounding Gaither’s death. See Min. Order (Oct.
8, 2003); Min. Order (Jan. 4, 2007).
Shortly after the stay was lifted, Plaintiff filed a second amended complaint, which
remains the current iteration of the complaint in this action. See Second Am. Compl. (“2d Am.
Compl.”), Docket No. [34]. Therein, Plaintiff asserted three causes of action against Defendants.
In addition to claims for negligence/survival and wrongful death, which are not immediately
relevant here, Plaintiff asserted a claim pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (“Section 1983”),
predicated upon alleged violations of Gaither’s rights under the Fifth Amendment. 2d Am.
Compl. ¶¶ 62-68. More specifically, Plaintiff alleged that Defendants subjected Gaither to a
“serious and unreasonable risk of violent injury as a result of the unconstitutional conditions at
the Jail that were well-known,” including “pervasive violence; overcrowding; a shortage of
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necessary correctional officers; inadequate training of correctional officers; negligent supervision
of correctional officers; inadequate policies, procedures, and practices for critical staffing,
classification, and security; and failure to enforce such policies, procedures, and practices relating
to critical staffing and security that were in effect.” Id. ¶ 63. According to Plaintiff, Defendants’
“ongoing failure to address these unconstitutionally dangerous conditions was the result of a
conscious and deliberate decision or of reckless disregard for the safety of inmates at the Jail,”
and violated Gaither’s rights under the Fifth Amendment. Id. ¶¶ 64-66, 69-71.
On September 8, 2009, the Court issued a 61-page decision resolving the parties’
respective cross-motions for summary judgment. See Estate of Gaither ex rel. Gaither v. District
of Columbia, 655 F. Supp. 2d 69 (D.D.C. 2009). Therein, the Court chastised both parties for
failing to articulate the legal principles governing Plaintiff’s Section 1983 claim. Id. at 85. Most
notably, the Court observed that, while the “Constitution imposes certain obligations on prison
officials to ensure the health and safety of incarcerated individuals, whether that right is
guaranteed under the Fifth Amendment (as Plaintiff alleges) or under the Eighth Amendment
depends upon the status of the incarcerated individual—a point that neither party [] addressed.”
Id. The Court explained:
It is well established that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on
“cruel and unusual punishment” imposes various obligations upon
prison officials, including as is relevant to the case at hand, a duty to
protect prisoners from violence at the hands of other prisoners. It is
equally well settled, however, that the Eighth Amendment’s
prohibition applies only to persons who are subject to “punishment”
which excludes pretrial detainees who have not been adjudicated as
guilty of any crime and are therefore not subject to “punishment.”
Accordingly, courts have recognized that pretrial detainees have an
independent due-process right under the Fifth and Fourteenth
Amendments to humane conditions while incarcerated. Although the
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exact contours of a pretrial detainee’s right under the Fifth
Amendment have not yet been established, it is clear that the [Fifth]
Amendment provides a pretrial detainee [protections] at least as great
as the analogous Eighth Amendment right. Thus, although the rights
under the Fifth and Eighth Amendments are comparable, it appears
that the Fifth Amendment may provide a greater degree of protection
to pretrial detainees who are not yet subject to punishment of any
kind.
Id. at 85-86 (internal citations omitted and quotation marks and notations altered). In light of this
distinction, the question of whether “Gaither—as an individual who had already pled guilty, but
had not yet been sentenced—[was] a pretrial detainee, whose rights are guaranteed under the
Fifth Amendment, or [was] [] a convicted inmate, whose rights are guaranteed under the Eighth
Amendment,” was of potentially constitutional significance. Id. at 86. Indeed, if an individual,
like Gaither, who has pled guilty but has not yet been sentenced should be treated as a convicted
inmate, rather than a pretrial detainee, Plaintiff’s claim that Defendants violated Gaither’s Fifth
Amendment rights would be “on shaky ground.” Id. at 87. But because the parties completely
failed to address Gaither’s detention status, and because the same basic standard of “deliberate
indifference” is generally applied to both Fifth and Eighth Amendment claims, the Court
declined to resolve the question of Gaither’s status “on the inadequate record [then] before it”
and proceeded to address in detail the factual disputes that otherwise precluded summary
judgment on Plaintiff’s Section 1983 claim. Id.Immediately on the heels of the Court’s decision, the parties filed motions for
reconsideration and proceeded to brief those motions. See Defs.’ Mot. for Recons., Docket No.
[195]; Pl.’s Mot. for Partial Recons., Docket No. [196]. Then, on October 20, 2009, six weeks
after the issuance of the Court’s decision, Plaintiff filed the present [201] Motion to Amend,
through which Plaintiff seeks leave to amend her complaint in order to plead her Section 1983
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claim in the alternative under the Fifth and Eighth Amendments.2 See generally 3d Am. Compl.
II. LEGAL STANDARD
Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a party may amend its pleadings once as a
matter of course within twenty-one days after service or within twenty-one days after service of a
responsive pleading. Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(a)(1). Where, as here, a party seeks to amend its
pleadings outside that time period, they may do so only with the opposing party’s written consent
or the district court’s leave. Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(a)(2). The decision whether to grant leave to
amend a complaint is within the discretion of the district court, but leave “should be freely given
unless there is a good reason, such as futility, to the contrary.” Willoughby v. Potomac Elec.
Power Co., 100 F.3d 999, 1003 (D.C. Cir. 1996), cert. denied, 520 U.S. 1197 (1997). As the
Supreme Court has observed:
If the underlying facts or circumstances relied upon by a plaintiff may
be a proper subject of relief, he ought to be afforded an opportunity
to test his claim on the merits. In the absence of any apparent or
declared reason—such as undue delay, bad faith or dilatory motive on
the part of the movant, repeated failure to cure deficiencies by
amendments previously allowed, undue prejudice to the opposing
party by virtue of allowance of the amendment, futility of
amendment, etc.—the leave sought should, as the rules require, be
“freely given.”
2
Plaintiff also proposes to omit references to a series of John Doe Defendants, who were
voluntarily dismissed from this action after the Court issued its decision resolving the parties’
respective cross-motions for summary judgment. See Notice of Dismissal of Pl.’s Claims
Against John Does 1-20, Docket No. [198]. Although the Local Rules of the United States
District Court for the District of Columbia require parties to “narrow the areas of disagreement”
before filing or opposing non-dispositive motions, Local Rule LCvR 7(m), Defendants fail to
address the component of Plaintiff’s motion in its opposition, and the Court shall therefore treat
it as conceded. See Phrasavang v. Deutsche Bank, 656 F. Supp. 2d 196, 201 (D.D.C. 2009)
(where party fails to respond to arguments in opposition papers, the district court may treat them
as conceded) (citing Fed. Deposit Ins. Co. v. Bender, 127 F.3d 58, 68 (D.C. Cir. 1997)).
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Foman v. Davis, 371 U.S. 178, 182 (1962). With these principles in mind, the Court turns to the
merits of Plaintiff’s Motion to Amend.
III. DISCUSSION
Defendants proffer three arguments in opposition to the present Motion to Amend: first,
Defendants contend that Plaintiff has unreasonably delayed in seeking leave to amend; second
Defendants assert that they would be unduly prejudiced were leave to amend granted; third, and
finally, Defendants argue that amendment would be futile because Plaintiff has failed to state a
plausible claim for relief. The Court addresses each argument in turn.
A. The Timing of Plaintiff’s Motion to Amend Does Not Warrant Denying the
Relief Sought
Defendants first characterize Plaintiff’s delay in seeking leave to amend as “undue and
inexcusable,” and intimate that it alone justifies denying leave to amend. Defs.’ Opp’n at 2.
However, Defendants concede, as they must, that the mere passage of time does not preclude
amendment—the delay must result in some prejudice to the judicial system or the opposing
party. Indeed, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has
consistently held that “[w]here an amendment would do no more than clarify legal theories or
make technical corrections . . . delay, without a showing of prejudice, is not a sufficient ground
for denying the motion.” Harrison v. Rubin, 174 F.3d 249, 253 (D.C. Cir. 1999). As explained
in greater detail below, see infra Part III.B, Defendants cannot credibly claim that Plaintiff seeks
to inject a fresh claim or new allegations into this action or that amendment would cause them
any undue prejudice; rather, properly understood, Plaintiff’s proposed amendment would merely
clarify the theories upon which she relies without expanding or otherwise altering the scope of
this action in any meaningful manner.
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In any event, by focusing on the overall duration of this action and failing to place
Plaintiff’s prior amendments in their proper context, Defendants misconstrue the magnitude of
the alleged delay, to the extent it may even be characterized as such. Plaintiff first amended her
complaint in the earliest stages of this action, before any defendant had entered an appearance;
and she amended her complaint a second time immediately after the three-year stay in this action
was lifted, a stay which was clearly requested because Defendants believed that the resolution of
the criminal investigation into Gaither’s death would have a bearing on the substance of this
action. See supra Part I. Only thereafter did the parties proceed to conduct discovery.
Meanwhile, as previously observed by the Court, it is clear that the legal ramifications emanating
from Gaither’s detention status never crystallized for the parties prior to the filing of their
respective cross-motions for summary judgment. See Estate of Gaither, 655 F. Supp. 2d at 85-
87. As such, while Plaintiff certainly could have acted sooner, this simply is not a case where a
party has made successive post-discovery amendments and yet failed to remedy clear gaps or
defects in its pleadings. Indeed, Plaintiff acted with reasonable promptness once potential
defects in her Section 1983 claim were brought out into the open, filing the present Motion to
Amend within weeks of the Court’s decision. Under the circumstances of this case, the timing of
Plaintiff’s Motion to Amend does not warrant denying the relief sought.
B. Defendants Have Failed to Establish that They Would Be Unduly Prejudiced
By Amendment
Defendants next assert that they would be prejudiced by the “addition of a new claim . . .
when discovery is essentially complete and trial strategy already planned.” Defs.’ Opp’n at 3.
For at least two reasons, the argument is unavailing.
First, Plaintiff does not, strictly speaking, seek to add a new claim to this action; her
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claim still arises under Section 1983, the principal difference being that Plaintiff seeks to plead
the predicate constitutional violation in the alternative under both the Fifth and Eighth
Amendments. See 3d Am. Compl. ¶¶ 58-70. More to the point, the underlying conduct
challenged by Plaintiff under the Fifth and Eighth Amendments is identical; in both cases,
Plaintiff contends that Defendants were deliberately indifferent to and recklessly disregarded the
same substantial reasonable risk of harm to Gaither. Id. The factual allegations are coterminous
and, as previously observed by the Court, the same basic standard of “deliberate indifference”
would apply to both claims. See Estate of Gaither, 655 F. Supp. 2d at 87. In other words,
Plaintiff seeks to “clarify [the] legal theories” upon which she will rely in prosecuting this action
and does not seek to inject an entirely new claim at the advanced stage of these proceedings.
Harrison, 174 F.3d at 253. Amendments that do not radically alter the scope and nature of the
action, such as the one now proposed, are especially favored. Smith v. Cafe Asia, 598 F. Supp.
2d 45, 58 (D.D.C. 2009); see also Harrison, 174 F.3d at 253 (district court should have granted
employee’s motion to amend complaint to substitute the Rehabilitation Act for the American
with Disabilities Act as basis for disability discrimination claim, where “[c]laims and defenses
under the two statutes [were] virtually identical”).
Second, because amendments are to be freely given absent good reason, Defendants bear
the burden of adducing a colorable basis for denying leave to amend. Abdullah v. Washington,
530 F. Supp. 2d 112, 115 (D.D.C. 2008). However, Defendants’ arguments as to prejudice
reduce to little more than generalities. Most notably, Defendants make absolutely no attempt to
articulate what additional discovery would be required to meaningfully respond to a claim arising
under the Eighth Amendment, and in light of the fact that the challenged conduct underlying such
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a claim would be coterminous with the conduct challenged under the Fifth Amendment, the
omission is fatal. See City of Moundridge v. Exxon Mobil Corp., 250 F.R.D. 1, 6 (D.D.C. 2008)
(“Undue prejudice is not mere harm to the non-movant but a denial of the opportunity to present
facts or evidence which would have been offered had the amendment been timely.”) (internal
quotation marks and notations omitted). Similarly, even crediting Defendants’ dubious assertion
that their “trial strategy is already planned” when a pre-trial conference has not even been
scheduled, Defs.’ Opp’n at 3, the Court fails to see—and Defendants certainly fail to
articulate—how permitting Plaintiff to assert an alternative legal theory for her Section 1983
claim would meaningfully alter the evidence to be presented at trial.
C. Defendants Have Failed to Show that Amendment Would Be Futile
In a last-ditch effort, Defendants assert that leave to amend should be denied because
amendment would be futile. Defs.’ Opp’n at 4. Incredibly, Defendants posit that the proposed
amended complaint merely restates the same facts that were set forth in the previous iteration of
the complaint, and contends that those allegations are so “sweeping” and “conclusory” that they
cannot survive the pleading requirements articulated by the Supreme Court in Ashcroft v. Iqbal,
__ U.S. __, 129 S. Ct. 1937 (2009). In the course of two paragraphs, Defendants restate a host of
the factual allegations in the proposed amended complaint seriatim and then argue, with minimal
explication, that those factual allegations fail to state a “plausible” claim for relief under the
Eighth Amendment. Defs.’ Opp’n at 6-8. The argument lacks merit given that, as previously
explained, this Court already held that these identical factual allegations were sufficient to
survive summary judgment under the same “deliberate indifference” standard that would apply to
Plaintiff’s Section 1983 claim were it analyzed under the rubric of the Eighth Amendment. See
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Estate of Gaither, 655 F. Supp. 2d at 88-94. Regardless, whatever the ultimate merits of
Plaintiff’s claim, it is clear that Defendants have utterly failed to show that it would be futile to
permit amendment. Plaintiff shall therefore be “afforded an opportunity to test [her] claim on the
merits.” Foman, 371 U.S. at 182.
IV. CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, the Court shall GRANT Plaintiff’s [201] Motion to Amend.
An appropriate Order accompanies this Memorandum Opinion.
Date: February 26, 2011
/s/
COLLEEN KOLLAR-KOTELLY
United States District Judge
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