Plumtree v. City of Naperville

1

CLAYTON PLUMTREE, Plaintiff, v. CITY OF NAPERVILLE and JASON ARRES, police chief, in his official and individual capacities, Defendants.

No. 22 C 6635

United States District Court, N.D. Illinois, Eastern Division

June 26, 2024

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

REBECCA R. PALLMEYER, United States District Judge.

Plaintiff Clayton Plumtree, a former police officer for the City of Naperville, Illinois, alleges that Naperville Police Chief Jason Arres and Naperville's Board of Fire and Police Commissioners (the “Board”) fired him without due process after Plumtree complained about the Police Department's internal policy requiring officers to effect at least two traffic stops a day. The court dismissed Plumtree's Second Amended Complaint in part [34]. Plaintiff has now filed a Third Amended Complaint, which added two new counts but otherwise remains unchanged [37]. Defendants again move to dismiss [39], adding new arguments for dismissal of the counts that survived the court's earlier ruling. For the reasons stated below, the motion is denied.

BACKGROUND^[1]

I. Factual Background

In April 2021, Plumtree began working as an officer for the Naperville Police Department on an 18-month probationary period. (Third Am. Compl. (hereinafter “TAC”) [37] ¶¶ 18, 92.) At the time, the department employed a policy under which officers were “expected to average at least two traffic stops per working day” (the “Traffic Stop Expectation” policy) and warned that their compliance “w[ould] be monitored by their respective sergeant” such that they could “be held accountable” for failing to “meet expectations.” (TAC ¶ 31.) As the Complaint points out, quota systems like this-at least explicit ones-are illegal in Illinois. (Id. ¶¶ 25-30 (citing 65 ILCS 5/111-12 (2019) (stating that “[a] municipality may not require a police officer to issue a specific number of citations within a designated period of time”).)

According to the Complaint, numerous “Department supervisors and other police officers, including Plumtree, verbally expressed their concerns and opposition” to this de facto quota system the Naperville Police Department employed. (TAC ¶ 38.) Nonetheless, Plumtree appears to have been successful in achieving the department's expectations-enough so that he allowed fellow Officer Razionale, who was not meeting the quota, to take credit for some of Plumtree's own. (Id. ¶¶ 41-43, 45.) Plumtree told Sergeant Heun about this arrangement on August 16, 2022; Plaintiff alleges that Heun shared the information with Commander Deuchler, who told Heun that the practice fell into a “gray area,” but that the practice was permissible “'so long as everyone met their traffic stop quotas.'”^[2](Id. ¶ 47-50.) Later that August, however, evidently because body camera footage was inconsistent with traffic stop records, Deuchler told Sergeant Heun to direct Razionale and Plumtree to cease the practice of “sharing” stops, and warned that if the practice did not stop, “they could get in trouble.” (Id. ¶¶ 57-58.)

The Complaint does not make clear whether Plumtree in fact continued to share trafficticket credit with Razionale between August and September, but on September 2, 2022, an investigator informed Plumtree that he was being placed on paid administrative leave pending an inquiry into Razionale's “changed traffic stops.” (Id. ¶¶ 57-62.) Then, on October 14, 2022, Defendant Arres “unilaterally terminated” Plumtree. (Id. ¶ 64.) Arres cited general Department orders against officers being untruthful or making inaccurate statements.^[3](Id. ¶ 65.)

Soon after, the Naperville Fraternal Order of Police Lodge told Arres that he lacked the authority to unilaterally terminate Plumtree. (Id. ¶ 81.) In response, Arres withdrew the termination and “extended Plumtree's probationary period for an additional 30 days for ‘disciplinary purposes,'” and, in that period, the Board of Fire and Police Commissioners commenced formal termination proceedings. (Id. ¶¶ 82, 85.) In a memorandum that he submitted to the Board, Plumtree “outlined in explicit detail, the City's/Arres' improper traffic expectation system and further communicated that this policy created considerable confusion and discontent within the Department.” (Id. ¶ 86.) On or around October 24, 2022, the Board held a special meeting and voted unanimously to terminate Plumtree. (See id. ¶¶ 87-88.) Meanwhile, Sergeant Heun was suspended for fifteen days, and Officer Razionale “was permitted to resign before he was fired.” (Id. ¶ 129.)

II. Procedural Background

Plaintiff initiated this case in November 2022 [1]. Defendants moved to dismiss that complaint, and Plaintiff effectively responded by seeking leave to amend [17]. He filed a First Amended Complaint and then a Second Amended Complaint [19-2] asserting six claims: (I) a due process claim against all Defendants concerning the way Plumtree was terminated; (II) a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claim against Arres individually for civil rights violations; (III) a Monell claim against Naperville; (IV) a claim for Illinois state law administrative review pursuant to 735 ILCS 5/3-101 et seq. against Naperville; (V) an Illinois defamation claim against Arres; and (VI) an indemnification claim against Naperville. Defendants again moved to dismiss [22], and the court granted that motion in part, dismissing Counts II and IV-the § 1983 claim against Arres and the Illinois state law administrative review claim against the City-but denying Defendants' motion with respect to Counts I, III, and V.

Plaintiff has since amended his complaint once more. The Third Amended Complaint keeps Counts I, III, V, and VI unchanged. (TAC at 1 n.1.) It also adds two new counts: Count II states a claim for retaliatory discharge under Illinois law and Count IV seeks an order of mandamus that would direct Defendants to reinstate him as a Naperville police officer. (See Id. ¶¶ 112-18, 142-54.) Defendants have moved to dismiss Plaintiff's Third Amended Complaint in full, including the counts-which remain unchanged-that they unsuccessfully challenged in their last motion to dismiss. (Mem. of Law in Supp. of Defs.' Mot. to Dismiss Pl.'s Third Am. Compl. (hereinafter “MTD”) [40] at 3-4.) In response to Defendants' motion, Plaintiff voluntarily dismissed Count IV. (Pl. Clayton Plumtree's Resp. in Opp. to the Defs' Mot. to Dismiss (hereinafter “Resp.”) [55] at 5.) Defendants' challenges to the remaining counts are before the court.

DISCUSSION

The standards governing Defendants' motion are familiar. Under Rule 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure the court may dismiss a complaint that fails to “state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007); FED. R. CIV. P. 12(b)(6). To meet this plausibility threshold, the complaint must “plead[] factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.” Boucher v. Fin. Sys. of Green Bay, Inc., 880 F.3d 362, 366 (7th Cir. 2018) (quoting Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009)). Put differently, a plaintiff must “present a story that holds together.” Swanson v. Citibank, N.A., 614 F.3d 400, 404 (7th Cir. 2010). In making this assessment, the court “accept[s] as true all factual allegations in the . . . complaint and draw[s] all permissible inferences in [plaintiff's] favor.” Bible v. United Student Aid Funds, Inc., 799 F.3d 633, 639 (7th Cir. 2015).

I. Counts I, III, V, VI

Defendants' objections to Counts I, III, V, and VI of Plaintiff's complaint fail because their new motion to dismiss simply “rais[es] new arguments that [they] could have raised in [the] previous Rule 12(b)(6) motion.” Williams v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., No. 22 C 1422, 2023 WL 8827946, at *3 (N.D. Ill.Dec. 21, 2023).

As a formal matter, raising successive failure-to-state-a-claim arguments is permissible under the law of this circuit. Rule 12(g)(2) prohibits the filing of a motion “raising a defense or objection that was available to the party but omitted from its earlier motion,” but makes an exception for jurisdictional objections, or for an argument that the complaint fails to state a claim for relief. Thus, the Seventh Circuit has held that “a litigant need not consolidate all failure-to-state-a-claim arguments in a single dismissal motion.” Ennenga v. Starns, 677 F.3d 766, 773 (7th Cir. 2012) (“Rule 12(g)(2) does not prohibit a new Rule 12(b)(6) argument from being raised in a successive motion.”).

Relying on Ennenga, Defendants argue that they are not barred from raising new arguments to dismiss Counts I, III, V, and VI of Plumtree's Third Amended Complaint after their previous efforts to do so failed. (Reply in Supp. of Defs.' Mot. to Dismiss Pl.'s Third Am. Compl. (hereinafter “Reply”) [56] at 2.) Put differently, though these counts survived Defendants' prior motion to dismiss and remain wholly unchanged, Defendants contend they are nevertheless entitled to a second bite at the apple.

The court disagrees. In Ennenga, after defendants succeeded in dismissing the plaintiffs' first complaint for failure to state a claim, the plaintiffs amended their complaint to raise the same legal claims but allege wholly different theories of liability to support them.^[4] 677 F.3d at 771. In response, the defendants moved again to dismiss, this time “raising new arguments to address the new issues implicated by the plaintiff's amended complaint”-specifically, a statute-of-limitations defense. Kramer v. Am. Bank & Tr. Co., N.A., No. 11 C 8758, 2014 WL 3638852, at *2 (N.D. Ill. July 23, 2014) (citing Ennenga, 677 F.3d at 771-73)). The Seventh Circuit affirmed the district court's partial dismissal of the plaintiffs' amended complaint on these new grounds. In ...