Barr v. The County Of Clarion

JASON BARR, Appellant

v. THE COUNTY OF CLARION, ADULT PROBATION/PAROLE OFFICERELIZABETH B. GRAHAM and JOHN DOES 1-5,

No. 10-1822

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT

Submitted : January 25, 2011

Opinion filed: March 14, 2011

NOT PRECEDENTIAL

On Appeal from the United States District Court

For the Western District of Pennsylvania

(D.C. No. 2:08-cv-866)

District Judge: Honorable Nora Barry Fischer

Before: FUENTES and CHAGARES, Circuit Judges, and POLLAK, Senior District

Judge^*

OPINION

POLLAK, District Judge

Plaintiff Jason Barr appeals from the District Court's order granting summary judgment to the defendants for alleged violations of Barr's due process rights. For the following reasons, we affirm the judgment of the District Court.

I.

Because we write primarily for the parties, who are of course fully familiar with the background of this case, we set forth only the facts and procedural history that are of central relevance to our decision. On November 4, 1998, Barr was sentenced to seven years of probation for forgery and theft by unlawful taking by the Clarion County Court of Common Pleas. On July 18, 2001, Barr was arrested for driving under the influence and possession of marijuana. This conduct violated the terms of his probation, prompting the district attorney's office to recommend to the Court of Common Pleas that Barr's probation be revoked and that he be imprisoned and sentenced to additional probation. On December 20, 2001, Judge James G. Arner ("Judge Arner") of the Court of Common Pleas held a revocation hearing at which the prosecutor and Barr's public defender agreed to the sentencing recommendations, including a five-year probation term. Because of a transcription error, however, the order issued by Judge Arner on that date included all of the sentencing recommendations except for the five-year probation term.

On February 20, 2002, Elizabeth Graham ("Graham"), Barr's probation officer, wrote a letter to Judge Arner which said the following:

Dear Judge Arner:

On December 20, 2001, Jason Barr was sentenced at a [revocation] hearing on a probation violation. It was my recommendation and the recommendation of the District Attorney that Jason [Barr] receive a sentence of [not less than] twenty-three days nor more than two years less one day, followed by a consecutive five year probation period.

After checking with [court stenographer] Barb Everman, she said that her notes indicated that the consecutive probation period was [ADA Mark Aaron's] recommendation, but that it did not appear in the order. Do you have any objection to signing the attached amended order, which includes the consecutive probation? Jason [Barr] agreed to the recommendation at the hearing.

Thank you for reviewing this matter. If you have any questions, please contact me.

Respectfully,

Elizabeth B. Graham

Adult Probation/Parole Officer

Graham did not provide a copy of this letter, or the enclosed proposed order, to the district attorney, to Barr, or to Barr's public defender. Judge Arner signed the proposed order on February 25, 2002, and Barr's sentence was amended and extended by an additional five years of probationary supervision. Judge Arner did not give notice to the district attorney, to Barr, or to Barr's public defender before issuing the amended order.

In November of 2005 and July of 2006, Barr violated the conditions of his probation and was incarcerated for a total of 188 days. On October 10, 2006, Barr filed a petition to vacate illegal sentence in the Court of Common Pleas. The petition argued that under 42 Pa. C.S. § 5505, ¹ a sentencing court may only amend a sentence withinthirty days of the initial order. Noting that sixty-seven days passed between the entry of the original sentence and the issuance of the amended order, the petition argued that the amended order was illegal and void ab initio. On October 13, 2006, Judge Arner granted the petition.²

Thereafter, Barr filed the present action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that defendants—probation officer Graham and the County of Clarion ("County")³ —violated his constitutional due process rights. Barr's complaint seeks to hold Graham individually liable for her actions which led to the modification of his sentence. It also seeks to hold the County municipally liable because the Office of Adult Probation/Parole for Clarion County allegedly maintained a policy or custom of communicating with judges regarding criminal cases ex parte. Following discovery, the District Court granted defendants' motion for summary judgment on February 23, 2010, finding that (1) Barr's claims were barred by the statute of limitations; (2) Barr had failed to establish that the defendants' conduct was the proximate cause of the alleged due process violation; (3) Barr failed to establish that the probation office's practice of communicating directly with Judge Arner was attributable to the County of Clarion; and (4) Barr's claims against defendant Graham were barred by qualified immunity.

Barr has appealed all of these rulings. Because we agree that Barr has failed to demonstrate proximate cause—a failure that is fatal to his claims against both Graham and the County—we affirm the judgment of the District Court on that basis, without reaching the district court's other rulings. ⁴

II.

The District Court had jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1331 and 28 U.S.C. § 1343. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. "Our standard of review applicable to an order granting summary judgment is plenary." Kossler v. Crisanti, 564 F.3d 181, 186 (3d Cir. 2009) (quotations and citations omitted). In exercising this review, "[w]e may affirm the order when the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law, with the facts viewed in the light most favorable to the non-moving party." Id. (quotations and citations omitted); Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c). We may affirm the District Court's summary judgment order on any grounds supported by the record. Shook v. Avaya, 625 F.3d 69, 72 (3d Cir. 2010).

III.

To properly state a claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause, a plaintiff must, among other things, establish that the defendant "subjected the plaintiff, or caused the plaintiff to be subjected to" the deprivation of a protected liberty interest without due process. Sample v. Diecks, 885 F.2d 1099, 1113 (3d Cir. 1989). In evaluating causation, "[i]t is axiomatic that „[a] § 1983 action, like its state tort analogs, employs the principle of proximate causation.'" Hedges v. Musco, 204 F.3d 109, 121 (3d Cir. 2000) (quoting Townes v. City of New York, 176 F.3d 138, 146 (2d Cir.1999)); see also Hector v. Watt, 235 F.3d 154, 160 (3d Cir. 2000). The concept of "proximate cause" has traditionally been defined "as a person's wrongful conduct which is a substantial factor in bringing about harm to another." Egervary v. Young, 366 F.3d 238, 246 (3d Cir. 2004) (citing Restatement (Second) of Torts § 431). However, "an intervening act of a third party, which actively operates to produce harm after the first person's wrongful act has been committed, is a superseding cause which prevents the first person from being liable for the harm which his antecedent wrongful act was a substantial factor in bringing about." Id. (citing Restatement (Second) of Torts § 440-441).

In Egervary v. Young, we recognized that "the actions of a judicial officer may sever the chain of causation" between the wrongful act of a party who appeared before the judicial officer and the harm that befell another as a result. Id. at 246. In Egervary, we distinguished between a party's misrepresentations of law and misrepresentations of fact in determining whether the chain of causation was broken. A judge's error of law isgenerally sufficient to sever the chain of causation, even if a party misrepresented the state of the law to the judge, because "it is axiomatic that, in any given case, the responsibility for determining the governing law and procedures lies with the judge." Id. at 249. However, because a judge depends on the party appearing before her to honestly state the facts relevant to the judge's decision, a judge's actions do not sever the chain of causation where the party makes "an inadequate or false representation of the factual basis upon which the legal ruling depended." Id.

Egervary noted that the Second Circuit's decision in Warner v. Orange County Department of Probation, 115 F.3d 1068 (2d Cir. 1997), suggests that some qualification of this general framework is called for when the case involves the conduct of a probation officer. See Egervary, 366 F.3d at 249 n.7.⁵ The plaintiff in Warner brought a § 1983 action against his probation department in Orange County, New York, alleging that a probation condition requiring his attendance at Alcoholics Anonymous ("A.A.") meetings forced him to participate in religious activity in violation of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause. The Warner court stated that:

The probation officer... is not a partisan advocate aligned with either the prosecutor or the defendant. He is a neutral adviser to the court.... Given the neutral advisory role of the probation officer toward the court, it is an entirely natural consequence for a judge to adopt the [probation officer's] recommendations as to a therapy provider without making an independent investigation of the qualifications and procedures of the recommended provider.

115 F.3d at 1072-73 (citations and alterations omitted). In Egervary, which involved misrepresentations of law by a party involved in an international child custody dispute, we distinguished Warner on the ground that judges confronting attorneys "appearing in a partisan capacity... should „know[] that scrutiny is warranted.'" 366 F.3d at 249 n.7 (quoting Warner, 115 F.3d at 1072).

The District Court, relying on Egervary, held that Graham's letter was not the proximate cause of Barr's alleged due process injury because the...