Jensen v. Chaddock

KIM JENSEN, Plaintiff, v. CHADDOCK, Defendant.

No. 18-cv-3087

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT CENTRAL DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS SPRINGFIELD DIVISION

FILED: September 18, 2018

September 17, 2018

OPINION

SUE E. MYERSCOUGH, U.S. District Judge.

Before the Court is Defendant Chaddock's Motion to Dismiss the Complaint (d/e 20) pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), on the ground that the Complaint fails to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. For the reasons stated herein, the Motion to Dismiss (d/e 20) is DENIED.

I. BACKGROUND

The facts as stated in the Complaint must be accepted as true by the Court when ruling on a motion to dismiss. Tamayo v. Blagojevich, 526 F.3d 1074, 1081 (7th Cir. 2008). The following information is taken from the allegations in the Complaint.

Plaintiff Kim Jensen brings this suit on behalf of her minor daughter, KJ, who was fifteen at the time of the events giving rise to the claim. From September 2016 to September 2017, KJ resided at Chaddock, a residential treatment facility for children and young adults who have suffered trauma. Chaddock provides clinical, educational, and therapeutic programing to its residents.

Plaintiff enrolled KJ at Chaddock to address KJ's multiple psychological and developmental issues. KJ reads at a second-grade level and her general language function is at a third-to-fourth-grade level. She suffers from several psychological disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder, major depressive disorder with recurrent and severe psychotic symptoms, reactive attachment disorder, and intermittent explosive disorder. While living at Chaddock, KJ was also diagnosed with several developmental disorders, such as major neurocognitive disorder, autism spectrum disorder, and severe language disorder.

The events giving rise to this action occurred on August 27, 2017. That night, at about 11:00 pm, KJ and two other girls, ages 14 and 15, who were also residents of Chaddock, walked out of KJ's cottage to a home outside of the Chaddock property. While at thehome for several hours, KJ was struck in the head and knee with a pipe, pornography was played for the girls on the television, the girls were given alcohol and drugs, adult males at the home had sex with the other two girls in front of KJ, and KJ was also sexually assaulted. The other two girls left KJ at the home that night, and the adult males brought KJ back to Chaddock the following morning.

II. JURISDICTION

This Court has jurisdiction over "all civil actions where the matter in controversy exceeds the sum or value of $75,000, exclusive of interest and costs, and is between . . . citizens of different States." 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a).

Plaintiff is a citizen of Iowa. Defendant is a not-for-profit corporation incorporated in Illinois with its principal place of business in Illinois. The factual content of the Complaint supports a finding that the value of Plaintiff's prayer for compensatory and punitive damages exceeds $75,000. Therefore, the Complaint invokes the Court's diversity jurisdiction.

III. LEGAL STANDARD

"To survive a motion to dismiss, 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). Plausibility means that the alleged factual content is sufficient to allow a court to reasonably infer that the defendant is liable for the alleged misconduct. See Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 547 (2007). A complaint must suggest a right to relief, "raising that possibility above a speculative level." Kubiak v. City of Chicago, 810 F.3d 476, 480 (7th Cir. 2016).

When considering a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, the Court construes the complaint in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, accepting all well-pleaded allegations as true and construing all reasonable inferences in the plaintiff's favor. Roberts v. City of Chicago, 817 F.3d 561, 564 (7th Cir. 2016).

IV. ANALYSIS

In a case where federal jurisdiction is based on diversity of citizenship under 28 U.S.C. § 1332, "[s]tate substantive law applies, but federal procedural rules govern." Doermer v. Callen, 847 F.3d 522, 529 (7th Cir. 2017). "To state a claim for negligence underIllinois law, a Plaintiff must plead that the defendant owed the plaintiff a duty, the defendant breached that duty, and the breach proximately caused the plaintiff's injury." Allstate Indem. Co. v. ADT LLC, 110 F. Supp. 3d 856, 862-63 (N.D. Ill. 2015) (citing Simpkins v. CSX Transp., Inc., 965 N.E.2d 1092, 1097 (Ill. 2012)). In Illinois, "every person owes to all other persons a duty to exercise ordinary care to guard against injury which naturally flows as a reasonably probable and foreseeable consequence of his act." Jane Doe-3 v. McLean Cty. Unit Dist. No. 5 Bd. of Dirs., 973 N.E.2d 880, 890 (Ill. 2012). Whether this duty arises in a particular context depends on "the reasonable foreseeability of the injury, the likelihood of the injury, the magnitude of the burden of guarding against the injury, and the consequences of placing the burden on defendants." Id. Whether a duty exists is a question of law to be decided by the Court. Simpkins, 965 N.E.2d at 1096.

A. Counts I Through VI Sufficiently State Claims for Negligence.

In support of her negligence claims, Plaintiff asserts that Defendant agreed to take custody of and responsibility for KJ for the purpose of providing residential treatment. Plaintiff alleges thata custodial relationship existed between Defendant and KJ that gave rise to Defendant's duty to adequately supervise, protect, and provide a safe environment for KJ. Plaintiff also asserts that Defendant's duty to KJ and Defendant's custodial relationship with the other residents created Defendant's duty to control other residents to prevent them from harming KJ or exposing KJ to an unreasonable risk of harm. Id. ¶¶ 30, 35, 40. These allegations concerning the relationship between Defendant and its residents allow the Court to infer that Defendant owed a duty of care to KJ. See Ryan v. Yarbrough, 823 N.E.2d 259, 262 (Ill. App. Ct. 2005) (a child's caretaker has a duty to protect the child from harm).

The Complaint states that Defendant breached these duties in several ways: (1) failing to adequately monitor residents at night; (2) failing to take reasonable precautions to secure the cottage exits and to otherwise prevent residents from walking off campus at night; (3) failing to supervise residents who were known to leave the campus and take vulnerable residents like KJ with them; and (4) failing to provide a reasonably safe environment free from threat of being taken off campus by other residents. Id. ¶¶ 14, 21, 26, 31, 36, 41. Plaintiff asserts that these failures caused KJ's sexualassault and her other physical and emotional injuries. Id. ¶¶ 15, 22, 27, 32, 37, 42.

The Complaint also pleads facts to support an inference of foreseeability. Plaintiff asserts that Defendant knew that the two other girls had previously walked off campus at night and had been sexually assaulted at the same home where KJ was assaulted. Plaintiff further states that Defendant knew that the Quincy Police Department had responded to more than 100 calls in the year preceding September 2017 related to Chaddock's minor residents walking off campus. Based on these allegations, Plaintiff has sufficiently pleaded negligence by Defendant.

Defendant makes several arguments against the existence of such a duty in its Motion to Dismiss. First, Defendant seeks dismissal of the claims against it on the ground that Defendant had no duty to protect KJ from the criminal acts of third parties that occurred off campus. Generally, there is no duty in Illinois to protect another from the criminal acts of third parties. Doe v. Goff, 716 N.E.2d 323, 326 (Ill. App. Ct. 1999). An exception exists where the defendant has a special relationship with the plaintiff and the criminal act was foreseeable. Id. Defendant argues that itsrelationship with KJ as a residential treatment facility did not extend to a voluntary assumption of a duty to supervise or protect KJ while she was away from the facility. At such times, KJ was outside of Defendant's control and custody, and thus Defendant's special relationship was suspended during that time.

Defendant's position does not directly address the duties and breaches alleged in the Complaint. The counts of the Complaint rest on Defendant's duty to KJ when she was on campus, prior to leaving. The Complaint asserts that Defendant breached its duties to KJ to monitor her, to prevent her from leaving, and to prevent other residents from taking her off campus. Such duties governed Defendant's conduct when KJ was on campus and was within Defendant's custody and control.

Second, Defendant argues that it had no duty to keep KJ on campus due to contractual limits. In support of this argument, Defendant attached to its Motion to Dismiss an affidavit of Mathias Obert, Chaddock's Vice President of Operations, to which areattached a Voluntary Placement Agreement and a Behavior Management Notification. Mot. to Dismiss, Ex. A, 1, 2.¹

Ordinarily, the court may not consider materials outside of the pleadings when deciding a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6) without converting the motion to dismiss into a motion for summary judgment under Rule 56. Venture Assocs. Corp. v. Zenith Data Sys. Corp., 987 F.2d 429, 431 (7th Cir. 1993); Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(d). The court may, however, consider documents attached to a motion to dismiss to be part of the pleadings "if they are referred to in the plaintiff's complaint and are central to his claim." Wright v. Assoc. Ins. Cos., 29 F.3d 1244, 1248 (7th Cir. 1994). The documents attached by Defendant here are not specifically referred to in Plaintiff's complaint, but while "[a] plaintiff is under no obligation to attach to her complaint documents upon which her action is based, . . . a defendant may introduce certain...