McGuire ex rel. Neidig v. City of Pittsburgh

285 A.3d 887

Shane MCGUIRE ON BEHALF OF Colby NEIDIG, Appellant

v.CITY OF PITTSBURGH, Appellee

No. 26 WAP 2021

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Argued: April 13, 2022

Decided: November 23, 2022

Margaret Schuetz Coleman, Esq., Timothy P. O'Brien, Esq., Alexander Brening Wright, Esq., O'Brien, Coleman & Wright, LLC, for Appellant.

Wendy Kobee, Esq., Emily Clare McNally, Esq., Julie Elizabeth Koren, Esq., City of Pittsburgh, Law Department, for Appellee.

BAER, C.J., TODD, DONOHUE, DOUGHERTY, WECHT, MUNDY, BROBSON, JJ.

OPINION

JUSTICE WECHT

This case involves a dispute about whether the City of Pittsburgh has a statutory duty to indemnify one of its police officers for a judgment entered against him in a federal civil rights lawsuit. We reject the argument that a federal jury's finding that a police officer acted "under color of state law" for purposes of Section 1983¹ necessarily constitutes a "judicial determination" that he also acted within the "scope of his office or duties" for purposes of the Political Subdivision Tort Claims Act.² Thus, we affirm.

In late 2012, 16-year-old Shane McGuire and a group of his friends smashed pumpkins and stacked bricks on the doorstep of a home in McGuire's neighborhood. The teens were still on the property when the homeowner—City of Pittsburgh Police Officer Colby Neidig—arrived home with his wife and children. McGuire watched the family's reaction to the vandalism and then banged on the front door and ran away, accidently tripping over his own brick booby trap in the process.

Neidig heard the commotion, saw McGuire running, and gave chase. After a half-mile pursuit, Neidig caught McGuire, knocked him to the ground, and punched him in the face. Neidig was not wearing his police uniform at the time, nor did he identify himself as a police officer. Neidig called 911 and restrained McGuire until Officer David Blatt, an on-duty City of Pittsburgh police officer, arrived.

Two years later, McGuire filed a federal lawsuit against Neidig, Blatt, and the City of Pittsburgh, asserting excessive use of force in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983³ and state law assault and battery claims. Blatt and the City were dismissed from the case at the summary judgment stage, and the claims against Neidig proceeded to a jury trial. Ultimately, the jury returned a verdict in McGuire's favor, finding that Neidig used unreasonable force against McGuire while acting under color of state law under Section 1983, and that Neidig was liable for McGuire's assault and battery claims as well. The jury awarded McGuire damages for all three claims. After molding the jury's verdict into a single award and adding attorney's fees to that amount, the court entered judgment against Neidig for $235,575.

Neidig did not seek indemnification from the City of Pittsburgh. Instead, he assigned to McGuire his right to sue the City for indemnification either under the Political Subdivision Tort Claims Act ("PSTCA"), 42 Pa.C.S. §§ 8541 - 8564, or under any other legal theory.⁴ McGuire then sued the City in the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas ("the trial court"), seeking a declaratory judgment that the City was statutorily obligated to indemnify Neidig under Subsection 8548(a) of the PSTCA.⁵ The trial court held a jury trial in August 2019 and the jury returned a verdict in favor of the City. The jury concluded that Neidig was not acting within the scope of his duties when he assaulted McGuire, meaning that the City was not required to indemnify Neidig under the PSTCA.⁶

McGuire then appealed to the Commonwealth Court, which affirmed in a published decision. On appeal, McGuire claimed that the City was collaterally estopped from arguing that Neidig was not acting within the scope of his office or duties as a City of Pittsburgh police officer when he used force against McGuire because the federal jury had already concluded that Neidig assaulted McGuire while acting under color of state law. In McGuire's view, "color of state law" (for purposes of Section 1983 ) is synonymous with the "scope of office or duties" (as used in the PSTCA), and the City therefore was estopped from relitigating the issue in state court.

The Commonwealth Court explained that the doctrine of collateral estoppel precludes a party from relitigating an issue when:

the issue is the same as in the prior litigation; the prior action resulted in a final judgment on the merits; the party against whom the doctrine is asserted was a party or in privity with a party to the prior action; and the party against whom the doctrine is asserted had a full and fair opportunity to litigate the issue in the prior action. In some renditions, courts add a fifth element, namely, that resolution of the issue in the prior proceeding was essential to the judgment.⁷

The Commonwealth Court began and ended its collateral estoppel analysis with the first element of the above test. The court held that "the determination in the instant Federal Court Action that Neidig acted under color of law does not dictate that Neidig acted within the scope of his employment" for purposes of the PSTCA.⁸ In support of that conclusion, the Commonwealth Court cited federal precedent holding that "a determination that [a police officer] acted ‘within the scope of his office or employment’ does not inevitably flow from a concession that he acted ‘under color of’ Pennsylvania law."⁹ Thus, the court found that the first element of collateral estoppel was not met, since the issue in the state court litigation was different from the issue in the federal case. As a result, the Commonwealth Court affirmed the trial court's judgment.¹⁰

McGuire then petitioned for allowance of appeal arguing, among other things, that a federal jury's finding that a police officer acted "under color of state law" for purposes of Section 1983 constitutes a "judicial determination" that the officer acted within the "scope of his office or duties" under the PSTCA. While McGuire no longer argues in terms of collateral estoppel, the issue before us, in its simplest terms, remains whether the PSTCA requires the City to indemnify Neidig for the federal judgment entered against him. McGuire continues to argue that the "color of state law" concept embodied in Section 1983 is synonymous with the phrase "scope of office or duties" as used in the PSTCA. Thus, McGuire claims that the judgment entered against Neidig in the federal action constitutes a judicial determination that Neidig acted within the scope of his office or duties for purposes of the PSTCA.¹¹ According to McGuire, this means that the City was required to indemnify Neidig for the federal judgment, and that the state court was wrong to resubmit to a jury a question that had already been answered in the federal litigation.

The City disagrees with McGuire. It contends that color of state law (under Section 1983 ) and scope of office or duties (under the PSTCA) are two entirely different concepts, with the federal jury finding only the former and not the latter.¹² The City therefore argues that the trial court correctly held a jury trial on the unanswered question of whether Neidig acted within the scope of his office or duties for purposes of the PSTCA, with the jury concluding that he did not.

We begin our analysis with 42 U.S.C. § 1983, which creates a right of action against anyone who violates the constitutional or federal statutory rights of another while acting under "color of state law."¹³ "The traditional definition of acting under color of state law requires that the defendant in a § 1983 action have exercised power ‘possessed by virtue of state law and made possible only because the wrongdoer is clothed with the authority of state law.’ "¹⁴ Thus, "under color of state law" essentially means under "pretense" of state law, since a public employee who misuses or abuses the authority given to him by the state still acts under color of state law while clothed with official state authority.¹⁵

Subsection 8548(a) of the PSTCA, by contrast, does not turn on those same considerations. The critical inquiry under the PSTCA is whether the public employee's actions were "within the scope of his office or duties," or whether he "in good faith reasonably believed" that they were.¹⁶ While decisions interpreting Subsection 8548(a) are not plentiful, our precedent has interpreted comparable language in different contexts. Pennsylvania's sovereign immunity statute, for example, turns on whether a public employee was acting within "the scope of their duties."¹⁷ This Court has interpreted that language as embracing the common law "scope of employment" inquiry, which we analyze using the factors set forth in the Restatement (Second) of Agency.¹⁸ Under that test, an employee's conduct falls within their scope of their employment if:

(a) it is of the kind he is employed to perform;

(b) it occurs substantially within the authorized time and space limits;

(c) it is actuated, at least in part, by a purpose to serve the master; and

(d) if force is intentionally used by the servant against another, the use of force is not unexpectable by the master.

Restatement (Second) of Agency § 228 (1958). The Restatement also makes clear that the "[c]onduct of a servant is not within the scope of employment if it is different in kind from that authorized, far beyond the authorized time or space limits, or too little actuated by a purpose to serve the master." Id. , § 228(2).

Given that the PSTCA "was intended to provide for indemnification for any judgment that may be rendered against an employee while acting within the scope of his employment,"¹⁹ we believe that the Restatement's scope-of-employment test should govern the inquiry under the PSTCA just as it does under the sovereign immunity statute. We acknowledge that the PSTCA refers to an employee's "scope of office or duties" while the sovereign immunity statute uses the more streamlined "scope of duties." McGuire argues that this difference in language is...