PHILADELPHIA – Judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit have upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit from a former mayoral candidate who claimed he was the target of a wide-ranging and retaliatory conspiracy meant to undermine his candidacy.
Mike Robinson is a former candidate for Mayor of the Pennsylvania town of Shamokin. Along with related litigation, Robinson filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 and state law, against an entity he identified as Geisinger Hospital.
Robinson claimed that a Geisinger employee improperly accessed his phone while he was involuntarily committed for psychiatric treatment. Following various orders and additional filings, a magistrate judge ultimately allowed Robinson to file a third amended complaint.
“In his complaint, Robinson named over 60 defendants and alleged a wide-ranging conspiracy to harm him in retaliation for his mayoral candidacy, during which he claims to have uncovered evidence of criminal activity,” per the Third Circuit.
“Robinson alleged that defendants obtained his involuntary commitment, prosecuted him (successfully) for harassing his own lawyer and his mayoral opponent, refused to investigate his complaint that his opponent accused him of pedophilia, caused him to lose custody of his children, wrongfully ticketed his car for parking violations, and planned to murder him.”
Robinson sought the referral of criminal charges to state and federal attorneys general and an order appointing Robinson as a “special RICO investigator/ attorney” to investigate the defendants’ alleged pension fraud and other matters.
The magistrate judge recommended that the District Court dismiss Robinson’s federal claims for failure to state a claim and with prejudice, decline to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over his state-law claims and deny more than 30 motions that Robinson had filed seeking restraining orders, the institution of criminal charges, and other forms of relief.
Robinson filed objections to the Magistrate Judge’s analysis, but did not raise a specific challenge within them. Over those objections, the District Court adopted the Magistrate Judge’s recommendation, dismissed Robinson’s complaint and denied his pending motions – leading Robinson to appeal.
The Third Circuit explained it would affirm the trial court verdict for reasons already pointed out by the magistrate judge. Specifically, that Robinson raised “no specific allegations regarding most of the defendants and his largely conclusory allegations against others fail to state a federal claim.”
“Robinson’s only specific allegation that might conceivably have supported such a claim is his allegation that a Municipal Court clerk ‘forged’ a judge’s signature on a November 2018 warrant for non-payment of fines and that, as a result, the judge ‘vacated’ the warrant,” the court said.
“As the Magistrate Judge explained, however, that allegation does not state a Fourth Amendment claim because Robinson does not allege that he was arrested or otherwise seized pursuant to that warrant. Nor did Robinson allege sufficient detail regarding this incident, or any other, to state a plausible federal claim.”
The federal appellate bench concluded that it saw no basis to disturb the District Court’s conclusion that any further amendment of Robinson’s complaint would have been futile, since Robinson’s numerous filings on appeal did not suggest otherwise and, to the contrary, tend to confirm that conclusion.
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit case 19-3438
U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania case 4:18-cv-00989
From the Pennsylvania Record: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com