Corrente v. Rhode Island, Department of Corrections

759 F. Supp. 73, 1991 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3644, 1991 WL 38077
CourtDistrict Court, D. Rhode Island
DecidedMarch 21, 1991
DocketCiv. A. 90-0524-L
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 759 F. Supp. 73 (Corrente v. Rhode Island, Department of Corrections) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Rhode Island primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Corrente v. Rhode Island, Department of Corrections, 759 F. Supp. 73, 1991 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3644, 1991 WL 38077 (D.R.I. 1991).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

LAGUEUX, District Judge.

Plaintiffs Michael Corrente and Richard Alan Burke are correctional officers at the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institutions (“ACI”). They allege that in Novem *76 ber of 1989 an inmate at the ACI was assaulted by fellow correctional officers. Plaintiffs contend that they reported the incident and identified the officers responsible for the assault. As a consequence of this exercise of their first amendment rights, plaintiffs allege that they have been subjected to harassment and threats.

There are two groups of defendants: the State defendants and the Brotherhood defendants. The State defendants are the Governor of Rhode Island and the Director of the State Department of Corrections, both sued in their official capacity. 1 The Brotherhood defendants are various officers and individual members of the Rhode Island Brotherhood of Correctional Officers (the “Brotherhood”), as well as the Brotherhood itself.

Plaintiffs filed suit under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 claiming that defendants punished them for exercising their first amendment rights, and thus violated their civil rights. Plaintiffs also claim that defendants conspired to interfere with their civil rights in violation of 42 U.S.C. Section 1985. 2 For relief, plaintiffs pray for compensatory damages, punitive damages, attorneys’ fees, and costs. Plaintiffs also seek an injunction ordering defendants to cease the harassment and mandating the State defendants to transfer the plaintiffs to a lateral position in another department.

All defendants moved to dismiss the Section 1983 and 1985 claims pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The 12(b)(6) motions to dismiss for failure to state a claim under Section 1983 are granted with respect to the Governor and the following Brotherhood defendants: John Sabalewski, President; John Doe, Secretary; Alan Silverman, Treasurer; William Bovi, First Vice President; and Captain Julio Costa. Plaintiffs have stated a claim under Section 1983 with respect to the remaining defendants, and their 12(b)(6) motions to dismiss are denied. Each defendant’s motion to dismiss the Section 1985 claim is granted.

DISCUSSION

When passing on motions to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), this Court must accept the facts alleged in the complaint as true and construe those facts in the light most favorable to the plaintiff. Scheuer v. Rhodes, 416 U.S. 232, 236, 94 S.Ct. 1683, 1686, 40 L.Ed.2d 90 (1974); Knight v. Mills, 836 F.2d 659, 664 (1st Cir.1987). Furthermore, it is well-established that a Rule 12(b)(6) motion should not be granted “unless it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief.” Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 45-46, 78 S.Ct. 99, 101-02, 2 L.Ed.2d 80 (1957). This liberal standard is mandated to effectuate the purposes of Rule 8(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure which requires in part only a “short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.”

The standard for determining whether a complaint satisfactorily pleads a *77 Section 1983 claim was set out by the First Circuit in Dewey v. University of New Hampshire, 694 F.2d 1, 3 (1st Cir.1982), cert. denied, 461 U.S. 944, 103 S.Ct. 2121, 77 L.Ed.2d 1301 (1983). There the Court stated:

We require more than conclusions or subjective characterizations. We have insisted on at least the allegation of a minimal factual setting. It is not enough to allege a general scenario which could be dominated by unpleaded facts....
... Therefore, although we must ask whether the ‘claim’ put forth in the complaint is capable of being supported by any conceivable set of facts, we insist that the claim at least set forth minimal facts, not subjective characterizations, as to who did what to whom and why.

Dewey, 694 F.2d at 3.

See also Culebras Enters. Corp. v. Rivera Rios, 813 F.2d 506, 518-19 (1st Cir.1987) (“This court has not looked with favor on complaints which, trading on mere conclu-sory charges, fail to set out the specifics of a tenable claim.”).

A. The Section 1983 Claim

Section 1983 provides:

Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress. For the purposes of this section, any Act of Congress applicable exclusively to the District of Columbia shall be considered to be a statute of the District of Columbia.

42 U.S.C. § 1983.

In order to make out a Section 1983 claim the entity responsible for the alleged deprivation of civil rights must be a “person” within the terms of the statute. In addition, two fundamental allegations must be pleaded in conformity with the Dewey standard. First, the person must have allegedly acted under color of state law. Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S. 527, 535, 101 S.Ct. 1908, 1912, 68 L.Ed.2d 420 (1981). Second, the person’s action must have allegedly deprived another of rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the federal Constitution or federal laws. Id.

1. State Defendants

In Will v. Michigan Department of State Police, 491 U.S. 58, 71, 109 S.Ct.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
759 F. Supp. 73, 1991 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3644, 1991 WL 38077, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/corrente-v-rhode-island-department-of-corrections-rid-1991.