December 11, 1995 [NOT FOR PUBLICATION]
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIRST CIRCUIT
No. 95-1701
BERNARD M. BANE,
Plaintiff, Appellant,
v.
REGISTRY OF MOTOR VEHICLES,
Defendant, Appellee.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
[Hon. William G. Young, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Selya, Cyr and Boudin,
Circuit Judges.
Bernard M. Bane on brief pro se.
Per Curiam. The district court dismissed
plaintiff's complaint as frivolous under 28 U.S.C. 1915(d),
after informing plaintiff that his complaint was deficient
and giving him an opportunity to supply applicable legal
authority to support why his action should proceed. We
affirm the dismissal.
Plaintiff has failed to show a deprivation of any
federal or constitutional right, an essential element of a
1983 cause of action. None of plaintiff's filings allege
facts indicating that Massachusetts fails to provide a
constitutionally adequate remedy to redress the purported due
process deprivation, here, the non-renewals of plaintiff's
license to operate and automobile registration. Such an
allegation is critical to a procedural due process claim, and
its omission warrants dismissal of that claim. Rumford
Pharmacy v. City of East Providence, 970 F.2d 996, 999 (1st
Cir. 1992).
Mass. Gen. L. ch. 90, 20A 1/2, clearly provides
predeprivation safeguards to avert erroneous non-renewals.
It is the issuance of parking tickets that triggers a
potential non-renewal. Aside from the unelaborated and
conclusory assertion that 20A 1/2 is unconstitutional,
plaintiff failed completely to indicate in what way those
statutory safeguards are inadequate or what additional
process is required to challenge the ticketing in the first
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instance. Given the express provisions of ch. 20A 1/2,
adequate predeprivation process was available. See Lowe v.
Scott, 959 F.2d 323, 344 (1st Cir. 1992).
Further, Massachusetts appears to provide adequate
postdeprivation tort remedies. Smith v. Massachusetts Dep't
of Correction, 936 F.2d 1390, 1402 (1st Cir. 1991).
Plaintiff has failed to allege that a state-law tort remedy
could not adequately cure the alleged wrong. Without facts
showing the inadequacy of the Massachusetts predeprivation
and postdeprivation remedies, plaintiff cannot state a 1983
procedural due process claim.1 Rumford Pharmacy, 970 F.2d
at 1000; see also Campo v. New York City Employee's
Retirement System, 843 F.2d 96, 101-02 (2d Cir.), cert.
denied, 488 U.S. 889 (1988) (plaintiffs cannot manufacture a
1983 claim by pointing to allegedly defective agency
procedure while ignoring other state process that serves to
redress administrative error). Because plaintiff has failed
to plead an actionable claim of deprivation of due process,
his ancillary 1985 conspiracy claim necessarily fails as
1. The conduct here involved is hardly "conscience
shocking", should plaintiff be attempting to assert a
substantive due process claim. See, Senra v. Cunningham, 9
F.3d 168, 173 (1st Cir. 1993).
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well. Rumford Pharmacy, 970 F.2d at 1000 n.7; Torres v.
Superintendent of Police,893 F.2d404, 410 n.8(1st Cir.1990).2
In short, despite an opportunity to supply
additional substance to the due process claim, see Purvis v.
Ponte, 929 F.2d 822, 826 (1st Cir. 1991), the complaint
lacked sufficient allegations that constitutionally adequate
state law remedies were not available, and was properly
dismissed.
Affirmed.
2. To the extent that plaintiff's conspiracy theory attempts
to rely on grounds other than due process, such as equal
protection or the First Amendment, plaintiff's speculative
and improbable conspiracy claim--that he has been singled out
by defendants because of his previous litigation or political
views--fails to identify facts that could support the kind of
racial or class-based animus required to obtain 1985(3)
relief, and is plainly without merit. Griffin v.
Breckenridge, 403 U.S. 88, 102 (1971); see also Rumford
Pharmacy, 970 F.2d at 1000 n.9.
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