PITTSBURGH – A Pennsylvania federal court has both dismissed two civil rights claims from lawsuit brought by a woman against an Allegheny County police force and one of its detectives that claimed they conducted an unprofessional investigation of her sexual assault – and remanded consideration of her remaining state law claims to state court.
U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania Judge Robert J. Colville issued a judicial order to that effect on July 11, in Jane Doe’s case versus the Northern Regional Police Department of Allegheny County and Det. Scott Rick.
“In the second amended complaint, plaintiff asserts that she is a Latinx female who was born in Guatemala, and she identifies her race as Mayan/Native (Central) American and asserts that she is of Hispanic origin. Plaintiff asserts equal protection and due process claims against defendants under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983, as well as state law claims for intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress, arising out of what plaintiff characterizes as a ‘shoddy, unprofessional, and inadequate’ investigation of an alleged rape and sexual assault committed against plaintiff, when she was a minor student at Pine-Richland High School, by a minor male student. The investigation of this incident was undertaken by defendants, and the insufficient nature of the investigation ultimately resulted in the failure of the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office to prosecute A.M.,” Colville said.
The plaintiff asserted that Det. Rick’s conduct directly led to authorities not pursuing charges against A.M., due to his deliberately omitting portions of her statement that attempted to resist the assault and said “No”, portrayed the assault as a consensual encounter, misidentified her racial and ethnic background and that he sought to protect both the Pine-Richland School District’s reputation and that of the assailant, a member of the high school’s football team.
An earlier version of the plaintiff’s complaint was dismissed without prejudice by U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania Judge William S. Stickman IV, before a second amended version came before Colville.
Like Stickman, Colville would dismiss the plaintiff’s counts based in federal law, which had alleged violations of the Equal Protection Clause, Due Process Clause and Monell liability – only this time with prejudice.
“In the second amended complaint, plaintiff alleges the following facts for the first time: (1) that, following the incident involving plaintiff and A.M., Det. Rick failed to adequately document or investigate a different sexual assault allegation involving A.M. and a different victim; (2) that, in 2011, NRPD unlawfully detained a young woman of Hispanic descent for eleven hours on the basis of a mistaken belief that she might be an undocumented immigrant; (3) Det. Rick deliberately and substantially altered plaintiff’s statement in his incident report as to the nature and content of the incident, and he did so in an effort to weaken the case for prosecuting A.M. because he never believed plaintiff and took it upon himself to prevent anyone, including the District Attorney, from learning of plaintiff’s personal account of the events; and (4) that, in February of 2022, plaintiff’s father received a letter from the NRPD chief of police acknowledging limitations in prior investigative practices at NRPD. The remaining allegations in the second amended complaint otherwise re-allege allegations Judge Stickman has already addressed,” Colville stated.
“The first, third and fourth allegations again speak only to the purported inadequacy of Det. Rick’s investigation, and, importantly, in no way indicate that discriminatory animus was the basis for Detective Rick’s disbelief of plaintiff’s criminal complaint against A.M. or for defendants’ failure to properly investigate plaintiff’s criminal complaint. As with her prior complaint, plaintiff’s allegations merely tend to establish that Det. Rick, in plaintiff’s estimation, inadequately exercised discretionary investigatory authority in an individualized manner. The allegations as to the 2011 incident involving the detention of a young woman of Hispanic descent, while certainly troubling, are, in the Court’s estimation, so attenuated that the incident cannot serve as a basis to infer that defendants in this case failed to properly investigate plaintiff’s criminal complaint of rape and sexual assault against A.M. due to plaintiff’s race or ethnicity. The event took place seven or eight years before Det. Rick’s investigation, did not involve allegations of sexual assault or the failure to investigate the same, and, given that plaintiff has not alleged Det. Rick’s involvement and the fact that the article cited by plaintiff does not mention Det. Rick, seemingly did not involve Det. Rick. The Court finds that the same is not a sufficient ‘comparative case’ such that the Court could infer discriminatory intent on either Det. Rick’s or NRPD’s part in this particular case. For these reasons, the Court finds that plaintiff fails to allege facts sufficient to support a finding of discriminatory motive or that a similarly situated person in an unprotected class was treated differently. Count I will be dismissed.”
Colville added that the Due Process Clause violation claims remained substantively unchanged from the first version of her complaint – and as they were dismissed initially on that basis by Stickman, he too must render them dismissed for identical reasons.
“It is unclear what government action plaintiff is alleging shocks the conscience to the point of being an actionable substantive due process claim. All she has pled is that: ‘Defendants’ actions were an egregious, outrageous and arbitrary assertion of government authority that shocked the conscience and violated Ms. Doe’s right to substantive due process.’ She contends in response to defendants’ motion ‘that defendants’ actions in conducting a rape and sexual assault investigation based on bias and prejudice ‘shock the conscience,’ regardless of whether a rape and sexual assault investigation free from bias and prejudice would or would not have resulted in prosecution of A.M.’ Plaintiff’s conclusory assertions are devoid of any factual development and she fails to identify the basis for a substantive due process claim. As noted in the previous section, plaintiff has come forth with no specific facts as to defendants’ ‘bias and prejudice,” Stickman said, in the Court’s prior opinion.
“Without such facts, her allegations of negligence as to the police investigation – e.g., failing to follow up on additional leads, improperly identifying plaintiff as ‘Caucasian/Non-Hispanic’ on the Incident Report, not having plaintiff’s video-recorded interview transcribed – do not violate due process. There is simply no constitutional right to have an investigation by police conducted as one wishes. Courts have repeatedly recognized that inadequate investigation is not sufficient to state a civil rights claim unless there is some other recognized constitutional right involved. Plaintiff has merely recast her equal protection claim as a substantive due process claim, which the Court will not countenance. Count II will be dismissed.”
Likewise, Colville dismissed the Due Process Clause violation claim.
And finally, Colville dismissed the Monell claim by finding, again, as Stickman had, that the plaintiff had not shown evidence to establish the elements of municipal liability.
“Plaintiff does not set forth new allegations in support of a claim under Monell that were not at issue when Judge Stickman issued his memorandum opinion. Again, she has not set forth allegations to support an underlying constitutional violation or a widespread NRPD practice, and again relies on formulaic recitations of the existence of unlawful policies, practices, conducts or habits to support any Monell claim. For the same reasons set forth in Judge Stickman’s memorandum opinion, the Court concludes that any Monell claim against NRPD fails as a matter of law,” Colville said.
“The Court notes that, in issuing this decision, it in no way intends to diminish or discount the disturbing allegations set forth in the second amended complaint as to the incident that plaintiff alleges occurred between plaintiff and A.M., and the seemingly severe and persistent ramifications experienced by plaintiff as a result. That said, the requirements for stating a claim under Section 1983 are plain and exacting. Following an opportunity to amend, plaintiff has again come up short of stating a claim for a violation of her constitutional rights against either defendant. Judge Stickman’s prior memorandum order put plaintiff on full notice of the deficiencies in her prior pleading, and she failed to cure those deficiencies in the second amended complaint. Accordingly, the Court now finds that any future amendment of plaintiff’s federal claims would be futile, and Counts I and II will be dismissed with prejudice.”
As an end note, Colville declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the plaintiff’s state law claims, and remanded the case to the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas for future proceedings.
“The Court finds that the factors of judicial economy, convenience, fairness, and comity all weigh in favor of this Court declining to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over plaintiff’s remaining state law claims. With respect to judicial economy and convenience, the Court notes that this case is at a very early stage of the litigation process, as defendants have not yet answered the second amended complaint and deadlines for discovery have yet to be scheduled. Accordingly, the Court finds that the factors of judicial economy and convenience weigh in favor of declining to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over plaintiff’s state law claims,” Colville stated.
“The Court further finds that the factors of fairness and comity weigh heavily in favor of declining to exercise supplemental jurisdiction in this matter. State courts have a strong interest in applying state law, and a remand of this action will ensure that the parties receive a ‘surer-footed reading’ of applicable state law with respect to plaintiff’s state law claims. Having considered the relevant factors, the Court will remand plaintiff’s remaining state law claims to the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania for all further proceedings. Accordingly, the Court has not addressed the merits of the claims set forth at Counts III and IV of the second amended complaint herein.”
U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania case 2:22-cv-01628
Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas case GD-22-011734
From the Pennsylvania Record: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com