Morris v. Altomare

MARGUERITE R. MORRIS v. TIMOTHY ALTOMARE, et al.

No. 2496

COURT OF SPECIAL APPEALS OF MARYLAND

September Term, 2019

July 12, 2021

Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County

Case No. C-02-CV-19-003135

UNREPORTED

Nazarian, Friedman, Kenney, James A. III (Senior Judge, Specially Assigned), JJ.

Opinion by Friedman, J.

*This is an unreported opinion, and it may not be cited in any paper, brief, motion, or other document filed in this Court or any other Maryland Court as either precedent within the rule of stare decisis or as persuasive authority. Md. Rule 1-104.

Appellant Marguerite R. Morris appeals the grant, by the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County, of motions to dismiss her complaint against appellee Anne Arundel County ("the County")¹ and appellees Timothy Altomare, James Teare, Sr., Jacklyn Davis, Vincent Carbonaro, Keith Clark, and John Poole, all employees or former employees of the Anne Arundel County Police Department.

Representing herself, Morris presents ten questions for our review, all of which may be distilled into the single question of whether the circuit court was legally correct in granting the County's and appellees' motions to dismiss her complaint.² For the reasons that follow, we will affirm the circuit court's orders.

BACKGROUND

On May 6, 2012, Morris's 22-year-old daughter, Katherine Morris,³ was found dead in her car at Arundel Mills Mall. She died of carbon monoxide poisoning from two charcoal grills lit inside the car. Following an investigation by appellees and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of Maryland, Katherine's death was ruled a suicide.

At the request of the Morris family, who believed that Katherine may have been murdered, Teare, then Chief of Police, reopened the investigation into the manner of Katherine's death.⁴ The re-opened investigation ended with the same ruling of suicide. Forthe next seven years, Morris continued to assert that appellees undertook a "less than stellar" investigation into Katherine's death, as a result of "a series of serious investigative errors" and an ensuing coverup that was meant to ensure a finding of suicide, "regardless of any evidence to the contrary."⁵

On October 3, 2019, Morris filed a 193-page complaint against the County and appellees, alleging libel, defamation per se, intentional infliction of emotional distress, fraud, and conspiracy. She claimed that she had been injured by the "libelous and fraudulent actions," corruption, and "malicious and reckless behavior" of members of the Anne Arundel County Police Department and sought $800,000 in damages.

The County filed a motion to dismiss or in the alternative for summary judgment, on the ground that as a governmental entity, it is immune from liability. Appellees also filed a motion to dismiss or in the alternative for summary judgment, and argued that Morris had failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted because: (1) most of the counts in her complaint were beyond the applicable statutes of limitations; (2) a private citizen has no legal right to compel a public official to investigate or prosecute a crime and no standing to pursue such a claim in court; (3) the conclusion of the police department concerning the manner of Katherine's death cannot be defamatory as a matter of law;(4) Morris could not establish the elements of fraud; (5) Morris could not establish a causal connection between appellees' actions and her alleged emotional distress, nor had she presented a factual claim of severe emotional distress; and (6) Morris had alleged no facts to suggest that an unlawful agreement existed between or among any of the appellees to support a finding of conspiracy.

In her response to the County's and appellees' motions, Morris claimed that, under the discovery of harm rule, the October 3, 2016 receipt of documents in response to her Public Information Act request "constituted a restarting of the statute of limitations" as of that date, and, therefore, none of her claims should be dismissed. She further disagreed with appellees' argument that she had not alleged facts in support of the elements of each tort count in her complaint.

In their replies to Morris's response, the County and appellees added that Morris's complaint should be dismissed because she had failed to provide the County timely written notice of her claim, which is required under Maryland's Local Government Tort Claims Act ("LGTCA"). See MD. CODE, CTS. & JUD. PROC. ("CJ") § 5-301 et seq.; CJ § 5-304(b) (requiring a person seeking liquidated damages from a local government or its employees to provide written notice of the claim "within 1 year after the injury").

At the January 27, 2020 hearing on the motions to dismiss, the County's and appellees' attorney again asserted that the County had governmental immunity and should be dismissed from Morris's lawsuit. For the individual appellees, counsel argued that there were "three overall bases for dismissal for all the claims:" (1) they were time barred by the applicable statutes of limitations; (2) Morris's required LGTCA notice was untimely andinadequate; and (3) Morris could not establish the required elements of any of her tort claims.

Regarding the statute of limitations argument, defense counsel explained that all the actions taken by the individual appellees—except statements made by Altomare and Davis in 2018—occurred before October 3, 2016. Despite Morris's claim that the three-year general statute of limitations was tolled as a result of her October 3, 2016 receipt of documents pursuant to a Maryland Public Information Act request, Morris, who alleged an inadequate investigation dating back to 2012, was on inquiry notice well before 2016, and, in any event, her complaint did not list any actions taken by the appellees after 2014.

Referring to the LGTCA claim, counsel explained that, notwithstanding Morris's claim that she had sent the required notice in a timely manner, the County Attorney's Office had received no tort claims notification until November 21, 2018. Therefore, Morris's right to sue did not accrue until that date, which was well past a year from October 3, 2016, the latest arguable discovery date. And Morris was clearly on notice of potential claims well before then, as evidenced by mention in the LGTCA notice that appellees had repeatedly caused Morris emotional distress over a six-and-a-half-year period. Finally, the only individual appellee identified in the notice was Altomare.

As to the specific torts listed in Morris's complaint, counsel continued, "one or more of the elements just aren't there." For example, Altomare's and Davis's statements that Morris claimed were defamatory merely recited what they had done during the investigation and did not expose Morris to public scorn, hatred, contempt, or ridicule. Therefore, neither appellee had made a defamatory statement to support either the libel ordefamation per se counts. In addition, Morris's claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress failed because no action taken by the appellees was outrageous or extreme, and Morris had not included any allegation of a severe disabling emotional response in her complaint. Regarding the fraud count, even assuming, solely for the sake of argument, that Altomare and Davis had made false representations in their statements, no such statement was directed at Morris, nor did she plead that she had relied on those statements to her detriment. Finally, counsel concluded, the conspiracy count must be dismissed because Morris had alleged no agreement between or among the appellees.

Morris responded that she had met the notice requirement of the LGTCA because "[t]his lawsuit and any legal actions [she] took was not a surprise to" the appellees, who were well aware of the complaints she had about the investigation.⁶ She also repeated her argument that the statute of limitations did not begin to run until October 3, 2016, when she received the more than 9,000 pages of documents in response to her Maryland Public Information Act request, which clarified to her "exactly what was wrong" with the investigation. Additionally, Morris argued that she had sufficiently set forth facts pertaining to the elements of the alleged torts and that her complaint should not be dismissed on that ground.

The circuit court considered the matter, and entered written memoranda and orders granting the County's and appellees' motions to dismiss, with prejudice, on February 11, 2020.

Therein, the circuit court ruled that the County was immune from liability for its actions in performing a governmental function and found that the County had not waived its governmental immunity to permit Morris to proceed against it. Pointing out that Morris had not made any argument that the County should remain as a party to the case, the circuit court granted the County's motion to dismiss. The circuit court further explained that Morris's claim for damages, based on her belief that Katherine's death was not investigated in the manner she believed it should have been, "does not comport with current Maryland law" because a private citizen does not have standing to pursue a claim against public officials or employees for failure to investigate a matter in the way in which the citizen would find appropriate.

As to the individual appellees, the circuit court agreed that the general three-year statute of limitations for tort actions barred any action taken by appellees that occurred before October 3, 2016 and that the one-year statute of limitations for libel and defamation claims barred any action taken by appellees that occurred before October 3, 2018. The circuit court disagreed with Morris's claim that the discovery rule should alter the start of the running of the statutes of limitations because Morris conceded that she was on notice of concerns about the police investigation beginning the week of May 10, 2012. The circuit court ruled that Morris was prevented from reviving claims that...