United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 10-1714
DONNA COSCIA, ADMINISTRATRIX OF THE ESTATE OF JASON COSCIA,
PLYMOUTH PROBATE COURT DOCKET #08P-0409AD1,
Plaintiff, Appellee,
v.
TOWN OF PEMBROKE, MASSACHUSETTS, ET AL.,
Defendants, Appellants.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
[Hon. Nancy Gertner, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Boudin, Circuit Judge,
Souter, Associate Justice,*
and Selya, Circuit Judge.
Joseph L. Tehan, Jr., with whom Katharine I. Doyle and
Kopelman and Paige, P.C., were on brief, for appellants.
Albert L. Farrah, with whom Karl F. Stammen, II, and Stammen
& Associates, were on brief, for appellee.
September 14, 2011
*
The Hon. David H. Souter, Associate Justice (Ret.) of the
Supreme Court of the United States, sitting by designation.
SOUTER, Associate Justice. In her capacity as
Administratrix of the estate of her son, Jason Coscia, the
plaintiff, Donna Coscia, has claimed violations of Fourteenth
Amendment due process in a suit for damages under 42 U.S.C. § 1983
(2006) against a number of Pembroke, Massachusetts police officers,
their superiors, and the town, for failing to prevent Jason
Coscia’s death. The nub of her case is the charge that they failed
to provide medical services for the decedent who threatened suicide
in police custody, as an alleged consequence of which he killed
himself some fourteen hours after release. This appeal in advance
of trial is brought by the individual defendants, who moved for
judgment on the pleadings under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure
12(c) on grounds including qualified immunity, see Ashcroft v.
Iqbal, 129 S. Ct. 1937, 1946 (2009), and the issue is the
sufficiency of the complaint to state a due process claim resting
on law established with sufficient clarity to apprise the
defendants of the duty they are said to have breached. We hold
that the complaint failed to allege a constitutional violation and
reverse the district court’s ruling sustaining the claim.
On this de novo review of a purely legal issue, see
Estate of Bennett v. Wainwright, 548 F.3d 155, 163 (1st Cir. 2008),
the governing allegations of the complaint can be stated shortly.
After twenty-one-year-old Jason Coscia had a one-car accident, he
was arrested about eleven o’clock in the morning and brought to the
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Pembroke police station. On the way there he said he intended to
throw himself in front of a train, and he continued to utter
suicide threats at the station house accompanied by self-
destructive behavior, to the point of licking an electrical outlet.
As a consequence, the police did not lock him in a cell, but placed
him in leg restraints and followed an evaluation protocol that
showed a high suicide risk. He was not examined by a doctor, but
was released on his own recognizance about six o’clock that
evening.1 Just before eight o’clock the next morning he committed
suicide by stepping in front of a train. The complaint claims that
“[t]he failure of the defendants to take appropriate action to have
Jason Coscia evaluated by medical professionals caused his death by
suicide.”2
A defense motion for judgment on grounds of qualified
immunity raises issues about the recognition of the constitutional
right said to have been violated, and the requisite clarity by
which it is established in the law. Failing either of them,
dismissal follows, Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223 (2009);
1
Although it is irrelevant to the decision of the case, it is
fair to note that the transcript of the hearing on the motion to
dismiss shows that the police released him in the company of a
friend.
2
Given our conclusion that no claim is stated against the
individual officers involved, there is no need to summarize
allegations claiming that supervisory failures led to the
violations claimed, or that a municipal policy of constitutionally
inadequate treatment made the town liable as well.
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failing both, a court dismissing the action has discretion to
choose either issue as cause for the disposition, see id. at 236.
The trial court held against the defendants on both points, of
course, but we decide the appeal on the ground that the complaint
fails to allege a due process violation.3 The question is thus
whether the allegations as considered most favorably to the
plaintiff “raise a right to relief above the speculative level on
the assumption that [those] allegations are true.” Bell Atlantic
Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007).
A state and its subdivisions are under a substantive
obligation imposed by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment to refrain at least from treating a pretrial detainee
with deliberate indifference to a substantial risk of serious harm
to health. City of Revere v. Mass. Gen. Hosp., 463 U.S. 239, 244
(1983); see Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 835 (1994) (standard
of deliberate indifference except as to excessive force claims).
Proof of deliberate indifference requires a showing of greater
culpability than negligence but less than a purpose to do harm,
Farmer, 511 U.S. at 835, and it may consist of showing a conscious
failure to provide medical services where they would be reasonably
appropriate, Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 104 (1976).
With these general legal premises to start with, the
3
Since the motion was filed under Federal Rule of Civil
Procedure 12(c), not 12(b)(6), all pleadings may be considered, but
here it suffices to analyze the complaint.
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argument that the complaint fails to state a claim for relief turns
on the allegation that Jason Coscia killed himself, not while in
custody, but some fourteen hours after his release.4 Like the
district judge, we have been apprised of no case recognizing due
process liability for suicide based on police conduct except for
death during custody, and the defendants have cited one case
comparable to this one that found no liability for the reason that
the suicide occurred after release. The district court nonetheless
decided that a liability claim had been pleaded adequately despite
the non-custodial death because a causal relationship (in fact and
law) had been plausibly stated between the failure to furnish
medical care during the temporary custody and the self-destructive
act the next morning:
[T]he plaintiff’s theory depends on whether
the officers violated Coscia’s rights by
failing to offer medical care during his
custody and whether these actions caused his
suicide. . . . [T]raditional causation
principles provide the appropriate limits on a
government official’s liability for harms that
occur after a detainee has left the official’s
custody.
Coscia v. Town of Pembroke, 715 F. Supp. 2d 212, 223, 226 (D. Mass.
2010).
4
Thus, we express no opinion on the sufficiency of the
complaint to charge that the conduct of the police during custody
was deliberately indifferent to the risk of harm or death during
that period; it is unnecessary to deal with this question.
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We assume that the District Court was correct that the
familiar principles of tort causation requiring connection in fact
would be satisfied by the complaint here. It is plausible for
pleading purposes that medical intervention during the seven-hour
custody (say, by administering psychotropic medication to relieve
suicidal anxiety, or by observation and care in a hospital) could
have deflected the decedent from the course leading to the suicidal
act fourteen hours after custody ended. Hence, we can accept the
allegations as claiming causation in fact of foreseeable harm. See
Rodriguez-Cirilo v. Garcia, 115 F.3d 50, 52 (1st Cir. 1997). But
although principles of liability under Section 1983 borrow from the
understanding of tort causation, Garcia, 115 F.3d at 52, we think
the rationale for official responsibility under the Due Process
Clause requires a limit on liability that stops short of the point
that may be reached by fact causation analysis, and this accounts
for our disagreement with the district court.
In setting out our reasons, it is well to keep in mind
that we are not dealing with an allegation of harm from a risk
created by the state itself or by its local officers. See DeShaney
v. Winnebago Cnty. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 489 U.S. 189, 201 (1989).
We agree with the district judge that the pleadings raise no claim
that the treatment by the police gave rise to a suicidal inclination
on the decedent’s part when he would otherwise have had none, and
nothing in the complaint suggests even in a conclusory way that his
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self-destructive tendency was intensified by state action, or that
anything done or omitted by the police weakened any instinct for
self-preservation and made him more dangerous to himself. The
causation alleged is not that the absence of medical attention
during custody was in any way creative of suicidal vulnerability by
working a change in him for the worse, but consists rather of a
failure to prevent the consequence of his preexisting suicidal
disposition, a failure to intervene in a way that would change him,
or his circumstances, for the better in the period after his
release. We think this claim of causation leads to a liability
beyond what due process imposes, for although the existing law does
recognize a custodial duty to take some preventive action, its
rationale does not extend official protective responsibility as far
as the plaintiff would take it.
In DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social
Services, the Supreme Court pointed to the limit of the government’s
due process obligation to prevent harm to individuals, reiterating
the reasoning behind Estelle’s recognition of an obligation to
provide medical care to prisoners (hence, City of Revere’s due
process rule for detainees). The official responsibility rests on
the fact of custody, “because the prisoner is unable by reason of
the deprivation of his liberty [to] care for himself,” DeShaney, 489
U.S. at 198-99 (alteration in original)(internal quotation marks
omitted). “An inmate must rely on prison authorities to meet his
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medical needs; if the authorities fail to do so, those needs will
not be met.” Estelle, 429 U.S. at 103, quoted in DeShaney, 489 U.S.
at 200. The government’s obligation to prevent avoidable harm by
providing medical care during custody is, in other words, a
substitute for the responsibility that a reasonable person would
bear for himself, if he were not detained. But a substitute duty
that obligates the government while a person in custody “must rely”
on those who control him does not support liability for harm
occurring after release when the individual is no longer forced to
rely on authorities who limit action on his own behalf or
intervention by others on the outside that would avoid harm.5
And because it is substantive due process that must
account for any requirement that the government answer for harm that
is avoidable after the official restriction has ceased, see
DeShaney, 489 U.S. at 199-200, such liability could be recognized
only if it would be fundamentally or shockingly unreasonable for the
authorities to disclaim, and be left by state law without,
responsibility for whatever may befall an erstwhile detainee once
he again is free from restrictions on acting effectively for
himself, or from benefitting from help that others may provide. We
think that no such argument could seriously be made, and no such
5
Of course, ministrations during custody might change an
individual permanently for the better, so that when a detainee’s
release leaves him free from the government’s limits on his liberty
he will actually have no need for medical services. But, for the
reasons set out, that is incidental to due process.
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conclusion is entailed by existing law. With the restoration of the
detainee’s liberty, then, the legal chain of preventive (as distinct
from state-created) causation must be taken to have ended. We
accordingly hold that in the absence of a risk of harm created or
intensified by state action there is no due process liability for
harm suffered by a prior detainee after release from custody in
circumstances that do not effectively extend any state impediment
to exercising self-help or to receiving whatever aid by others may
normally be available.6
That rule requires the dismissal of this complaint. As
mentioned, there is no claim here of a state-created or augmented
risk, and fourteen hours at liberty is not reasonably compatible
with any claim that normal sources of support were effectively
blocked. So far as it appears from the complaint, when the police
released the decedent they “placed him in no worse position than
that in which he would have been had they not acted at all . . . .”
DeShaney, 489 U.S. at 201. When he was arrested, he was thinking
about suicide, though not at that point actually attempting it, and
the pleadings are fairly read to allege the same at the time of
release. While we recognize the possibility that state tort law may
bind the police to a more demanding standard of conduct and a more
6
Given the requirement of effective opportunity to take action
or to be open to action by others, there is no reason to fear a
perverse incentive for the police to avoid liability by releasing
an individual attempting suicide.
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extended period of liability than the Due Process Clause’s
limitations on state authority (and the town’s regulations may do
the same), there are no state law claims before us.
Reversed.
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