Buck v. City of Highland Park

CARLETON BUCK, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CITY OF HIGHLAND PARK, MICHIGAN;SGT. CURTIS WHITE; HEATHER HOLCOMB, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 17-2151

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

May 2, 2018

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION

File Name: 18a0229n.06

ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN

BEFORE: GILMAN, COOK, and GRIFFIN, Circuit Judges.

GRIFFIN, Circuit Judge.

Plaintiff Carleton Buck was shot and injured as a bystander to an ongoing robbery at a pawnshop in the City of Highland Park, Michigan. He sued the City and its two police officers who responded to the silent burglar alarm, alleging a state-law claim of gross negligence against each officer and violations of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the City and one of the officers. The district court granted judgment in favor of defendants pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(c). Plaintiff now appeals. For the reasons that follow, we affirm.

I.

Sergeant Curtis White and his partner, Officer Heather Holcomb, responded to a silent burglar alarm at the Gold Nugget pawnshop on October 10, 2009.¹ Buck coincidentally hadbusiness there that day, and parked behind the officers' squad car just after they arrived on scene. Holcomb was looking into the front window of the pawnshop when Buck got out of his car. As Buck approached the pawnshop, he crossed paths with White on the sidewalk and the two "exchanged greetings."

Holcomb entered the Gold Nugget first, followed by White and then Buck. After White passed through the building's vestibule and into the pawnshop, he turned to the right and was immediately confronted by an escaping armed robber. The robber shot at White, hitting the sergeant in his left arm. Holcomb returned fire, shooting at the robber as he exited the building through the vestibule. As the robber passed "within a few inches" of Buck, who was also attempting to flee through the vestibule, Buck alleges that Holcomb shot him twice in the buttocks.

In August 2012, Buck sued the City, Sergeant White, and a "Jane Doe" police officer in Michigan state court. He alleged that his federal and state substantive due-process rights were violated by the City's failure to train its officers and by certain actions of the defendant officers that increased the risk of danger at the scene. The trial court granted summary disposition in favor of the defendants, and the Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed. Buck v. City of Highland Park, No. 12-010985-NO, 2015 WL 4374145, at *1 (Mich. Ct. App. July 16, 2015) (per curiam). The Michigan Supreme Court denied leave to appeal. Buck v. City of Highland Park, 876 N.W.2d 524 (Mich. 2016).

Undeterred, Buck returned to the state trial court in August 2016 and a filed a motion to reopen the case and for relief from judgment. The motion was granted, and Buck filed an amended complaint. Defendants filed a second motion for summary disposition, and the parties engaged in discovery. Two months later, the trial court granted Buck's motion to amend hiscomplaint by adding Holcomb. In his Second Amended Complaint, Buck newly alleged that Holcomb violated his Fourteenth Amendment substantive due-process right to bodily integrity. And he added claims that White and Holcomb's respective conduct was grossly negligent under MCL § 691.1407(2)(c), (8)(a). Buck also renewed his failure-to-train allegations against the City.

Defendants removed this action to federal court and filed a motion for judgment on the pleadings under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Rule 12(c). The district court granted defendants' motion, and plaintiff timely appeals from that decision.²

II.

As a threshold matter, we note that defendants prematurely filed their Rule 12(c) motion before their answer to the Second Amended Complaint. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(c). A motion pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b) is the typical vehicle for testing a complaint's sufficiency before the pleadings have "closed." See id. at 12(b)-(c); see also Ohio v. United States, 849 F.3d 313, 318 (6th Cir. 2017). This technical defect is not fatal, however, because we review a district court's grant of either kind of motion de novo, and under the same general standards. D'Ambrosio v. Marino, 747 F.3d 378, 383 (6th Cir. 2014); cf. 5C Wright & Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure § 1368 (3d ed.).

Our precedent instructs that, for a complaint to survive such motions, it must contain "either direct or inferential allegations respecting all material elements necessary for recovery under a viable legal theory." Philadelphia Indem. Ins. Co. v. Youth Alive, Inc., 732 F.3d 645, 649 (6th Cir. 2013) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). We construe the record inthe light most favorable to the nonmoving party and accept all well-pleaded factual allegations as true. Id. But we "need not accept as true legal conclusions or unwarranted factual inferences, and conclusory allegations or legal conclusions masquerading as factual allegations will not suffice." Terry v. Tyson Farms, Inc., 604 F.3d 272, 276 (6th Cir. 2010) (citation and quotation marks omitted). "[A] plaintiff's obligation to provide the 'grounds' of his 'entitlement to relief' requires more than labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do." Republic Bank & Trust Co. v. Bear Stearns & Co., Inc., 683 F.3d 239, 246-47 (6th Cir. 2012) (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007)). Rather, "a complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face." Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (citation and quotation marks omitted).

With these standards in mind, we turn to the parties' arguments and note that this court may affirm the district court's judgment "on any grounds supported by the record even if different from the reasons of the district court." Abercrombie & Fitch Stores, Inc. v. Am. Eagle Outfitters, Inc., 280 F.3d 619, 629 (6th Cir. 2002).

III.

Buck alleges that Holcomb violated his constitutional right to bodily integrity when she shot at the armed robber while Buck was "within inches of the fleeing suspect" and thus "plainly and clearly visible" in the officer's "line of fire." The parties dispute whether Buck is alleging a Fourth or Fourteenth Amendment claim, but we adjudicate "constitutional tort claims asserted by persons collaterally injured by police conduct who were not intended targets of an attempted official 'seizure' . . . according to substantive due process norms." Claybrook v. Birchwell, 199 F.3d 350, 359 (6th Cir. 2000).

A.

Holcomb successfully argued before the district court that Buck's constitutional claim against her was time-barred, and renews that defense on appeal.³ Because Congress did not specifically adopt a statute of limitations governing § 1983 actions, "federal courts must borrow the statute of limitations governing personal injury actions in the state in which the section 1983 action was brought." Banks v. City of Whitehall, 344 F.3d 550, 553 (6th Cir. 2003). We have held that the appropriate statute of limitations to be borrowed for § 1983 actions arising in Michigan is the state's three-year limitations period for personal-injury claims. MCL § 600.5805(10); Chippewa Trading Co. v. Cox, 365 F.3d 538, 543 (6th Cir. 2004). Here, Buck brought his § 1983 claim against Holcomb nearly seven years after the shooting.

Buck urges that this claim can proceed regardless because he added Holcomb as a necessary party, precluding her from asserting any statute of limitations defense.⁴ Buck looks to Michigan Supreme Court precedent in support of this contention, and in particular to its recent decision in Graham v. Foster, 893 N.W.2d 319 (2017) (mem). In Graham, the Court consideredwhether the presumed father of a minor child could be added to a paternity suit as a necessary party after the applicable statute of limitations for asserting such a claim had passed. Id. at 320.

Graham does not help Buck. Although the Court "le[ft] undisturbed the Court of Appeals' determination that [the presumed father] constitute[d] a necessary party," it made clear that the presumed father could still raise a statute of limitations defense once he was added to the dispute. Id. at 321-22. Notably, the Court acknowledged and also left undisturbed its prior holding in Miller v. Chapman Contracting, 730 N.W.2d 462, 464 (Mich. 2007) (per curiam), that the relation-back doctrine for amended pleadings did not apply to the addition of new parties.⁵ Graham, 893 N.W.2d. at 321. And it expressly vacated "the portion of the Court of Appeals' decision concerning the relation-back doctrine" and a "supposed necessary-party exception" to the statute of limitations "of the sort presumed by the Court of Appeals." See id. at 321-22, 322 n.4.

Here, Holcomb has raised a statute-of-limitations defense, and Buck makes no argument that she did so improperly under any federal caselaw or procedural rule.⁶ As to the merits of the district court's conclusion that the defense bars Buck's claim, Buck merely states without exposition that he "relies on the necessary party exception to the statute of limitations." Yet even assuming this exception exists, Buck cites no case in which a court has successfully applied it under Michigan law to prevent the operation of an otherwise-applicable statute-of-limitationsdefense. See id. at 320 n.1 (explaining that a necessary-party exception had been discussed in previous Court of Appeals decisions, but never applied); see also id. at 322 (vacating the portion of the lone Court of Appeals opinion that presumed and applied the exception). And Buck develops no argument explaining why we should break ranks in this case. Without more, we have no reason to disturb the district court's ruling on this issue.

B.

Even if Buck's § 1983 claim against Holcomb is not time-barred, he has not alleged sufficient facts to give rise to a...