Parton v. Dorning

STEVE PARTON, Plaintiff, v. BLAKE DORNING et al., Defendants.

Civil Action No. 5:15-CV-02221-CLS

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ALABAMA NORTHEASTERN DIVISION

June 29, 2016

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDERS

The amended complaint of plaintiff, former Madison County Deputy Sheriff Steve Parton, asserts one claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for an alleged violation of his Fourth Amendment right to be free from an illegal seizure (i.e., false arrest).¹ He named sixteen individuals as defendants, including: Blake Dorning, the Sheriff of Madison County, Alabama; twelve present or former officers of the Madison County Sheriff's Department; Robert Broussard, the District Attorney for the 23rd Judicial Circuit of Alabama (Madison County); and, two Assistant District Attorneys. The action is before the court on defense motions to dismiss the sole claim alleged in plaintiff's amended complaint. The first motion (doc. no. 35) was filed by Blake Dorning, the Sheriff of Madison County, Alabama, and five of his deputies: Charles Berry; Brian Chaffin; T.A. Miller;Forrest Edde; and Steve Finley.² The second motion (doc. no. 40) was filed by the seven remaining Madison County Deputy Sheriffs sued by plaintiff: Steve Watson; Curtis Sanders; Chris Stephens; Kerry Phillips; Marion Bullock; Charles Zeissler; and Robert Hayes.³ The final motion (doc. no. 43) was filed by District Attorney Robert Broussard and Assistant District Attorneys Marc Sandlin and Robert Becher.⁴ Upon consideration, the court finds that each motion is due to be granted, and all claims dismissed.

I. LEGAL STANDARDS FOR MOTIONS TO DISMISS

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b) permits a party to move to dismiss a complaint for, among other reasons, "failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted." Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6). That rule must be read together with Rule 8(a), which requires that a pleading contain only a "short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief." Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2). While that pleadingstandard does not require "detailed factual allegations," Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 550 (2007), it does demand "more than an unadorned, the-defendant-unlawfully-harmed-me accusation." Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (citations omitted). As the Supreme Court stated in Iqbal:

A pleading that offers "labels and conclusions" or "a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do." [Twombly, 550 U.S., at 555]. Nor does a complaint suffice if it tenders "naked assertion[s]" devoid of "further factual enhancement." Id., at 557.

To survive a motion to dismiss founded upon Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), [for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted], a complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to "state a claim for relief that is plausible on its face." Id., at 570. A claim has facial plausibility when the plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged. Id., at 556. The plausibility standard is not akin to a "probability requirement," but it asks for more than a sheer possibility that a defendant has acted unlawfully. Ibid. Where a complaint pleads facts that are "merely consistent with" a defendant's liability, it "stops short of the line between possibility and plausibility of 'entitlement to relief.'" Id., at 557 (brackets omitted).

Two working principles underlie our decision in Twombly. First, the tenet that a court must accept as true all of the allegations contained in a complaint is inapplicable to legal conclusions. Threadbare recitals of the elements of a cause of action, supported by mere conclusory statements, do not suffice. Id., at 555 (Although for the purposes of a motion to dismiss we must take all of the factual allegations in the complaint as true, we "are not bound to accept as true a legal conclusion couched as a factual allegation" (internal quotation marks omitted)). Rule 8 marks a notable and generous departure from the hyper-technical, code-pleading regime of a prior era, but it does not unlock the doors of discovery for a plaintiff armed with nothing more than conclusions. Second, only a complaint that states a plausible claim for relief survives a motion to dismiss. Id., at 556.

Determining whether a complaint states a plausible claim for relief will, as the Court of Appeals observed, be a context-specific task that requires the reviewing court to draw on its judicial experience and common sense. 490 F.3d, at 157-158. But where the well-pleaded facts do not permit the court to infer more than the mere possibility of misconduct, the complaint has alleged — but it has not "show[n]" — "that the pleader is entitled to relief." Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 8(a)(2).

In keeping with these principles a court considering a motion to dismiss can choose to begin by identifying pleadings that, because they are no more than conclusions, are not entitled to the assumption of truth. While legal conclusions can provide the framework of a complaint, they must be supported by factual allegations. When there are well-pleaded factual allegations, a court should assume their veracity and then determine whether they plausibly give rise to an entitlement to relief.

Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678-79 (emphasis supplied) (first and third alterations supplied, other alterations in original).

II. FACTUAL ALLEGATIONS OF PLAINTIFF'S

AMENDED COMPLAINT

The essence of the claim raised by plaintiff, Steve Parton, is that defendants unlawfully arrested him for Theft of Property in the Second Degree as part of a conspiracy to conceal, or divert attention from, two events: the arrest and beating of an individual named Robert Bryant; and, the subsequent murder of Jason Klonowski, who was the most outspoken supporter of Robert Bryant, and, a vocal critic of the Madison County Sheriff's Department.⁵ Accordingly, it is necessary to begin by summarizing the facts pertaining to those events.

Robert Bryant was arrested during a traffic stop in August of 2012, and brutally beaten by a group of Madison County Deputy Sheriffs "in retaliation for a barfight over a woman" that had occurred between Bryant and Madison County Deputy Sheriff Justin Watson several weeks prior to the traffic stop.⁶ Bryant's account of the events was summarized in an article published by The Huntsville Times reading, in part, as follows:

Bryant . . . claimed he got in a dispute in a pool hall with Deputy Justin Watson. He said he was later followed by deputies, pulled over without cause, asked to step out of the vehicle, and assaulted. He said that night in August of 2012 several deputies joined in stomping him while he was handcuffed at the side of the road. He said they knocked his teeth out, beat him unconscious, used a stun gun on him, hit him with a collapsible baton and charged him with assaulting an officer.

Challen Stephens, "Madison County Sheriff's Department settles 'revenge beatdown' lawsuit for $625,000," al.com (July 31, 2014) (ellipsis supplied).⁷ As Bryant prepared to file a civil rights complaint against Deputy Watson and other members of the Madison County Sheriff's Department involved in the August 2012 roadside assault and arrest,⁸ one of his friends, Jason Klonowski, financed the legal expenses attendant to Bryant's defense of the "assaulting an officer" charge, held rallies in support of Bryant, and displayed signs on his property protesting the "brutality" of the Madison County Sheriff'sDepartment.⁹

Jason Klonowski was murdered by a gunshot wound to the back of his head on or about October 30, 2013.¹⁰ His body was discovered on November 3, 2013, by Denise Nunley Brown, who was a friend of Klonowski, and also of Robert Bryant.¹¹ After Ms. Brown reported the death to the 911 dispatch center, the plaintiff in this action, Madison County Deputy Sheriff Steve Parton, was the first law enforcement officer to arrive at the scene.¹²

Notably, plaintiff and Denise Brown had been involved in an intimate relationship for approximately a decade, and had lived together on the same road as JasonKlonowski's residence until the year before Klonowski was murdered.¹³ One document attached to the amended complaint described Ms. Brown as plaintiff's "ex common law wife."¹⁴ Plaintiff also knew Klonowski and Robert Bryant, and allegedly was a friend of both.¹⁵

After plaintiff arrived on the scene, Fire Department personnel notified him that there was an unsecured firearm in a leather holster "on the open tailgate or in the bed of Klonowski's pickup,"¹⁶ which was parked "within just a few feet of where [Klonowski's body] was found, directly in the middle of the crime scene area."¹⁷ Plaintiff alleges that he "picked up the gun to secure it for safety reasons,"¹⁸ unloaded it, and placed theweapon inside Denise Brown's automobile, on the front passenger seat.¹⁹ Plaintiff alleges that he performed those acts in plain sight, and that he was not secretive when doing so,²⁰ but he fails to explain why, if his object was to secure the weapon for "safety reasons," he did not place it in his own patrol vehicle, rather than placing it inside his ex-girlfriend's automobile — a vehicle, it must be noted, that belonged to the person who claimed to have discovered Jason Klonowski's body.

Plaintiff attempts to explain the foregoing actions by alleging that he then had "no knowledge or reason to believe that Klonowski had been shot,"²¹ because his body was discovered sitting in an upright position on a chair inside his barn, wearing a baseball cap, and forensic examiners did not discover bullet wounds in the back of Klonowski's head until an autopsy was performed.²²

Plaintiff subsequently called-in the serial number engraved on the firearm to dispatch, and learned that it was registered to Donnia Monroe, who was Klonowski's stepmother and business partner.²³ The record does not explain how Ms....