Dittimus-Bey v. Taylor

244 F.R.D. 284, 68 Fed. R. Serv. 3d 1308, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 55294, 2007 WL 2212852
CourtDistrict Court, D. New Jersey
DecidedJuly 31, 2007
DocketCivil Action No. 05-0063 (JBS)
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 244 F.R.D. 284 (Dittimus-Bey v. Taylor) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. New Jersey primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Dittimus-Bey v. Taylor, 244 F.R.D. 284, 68 Fed. R. Serv. 3d 1308, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 55294, 2007 WL 2212852 (D.N.J. 2007).

Opinion

OPINION

SIMANDLE, District Judge.

This matter comes before Court on a motion for class certification, pursuant to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 23(a) and 23(b)(2). For the reasons stated in this Opinion, the Court shall grant the motion and certify a class of all individuals incarcerated at the Camden County Correctional Facility, either as pretrial detainees or as convicted prisoners, from the inception of this lawsuit on January 6, 2005 until its termination.1

I. BACKGROUND

Plaintiffs, who initially filed this action pro se, allege that severe overcrowding at the Camden County Correctional Facility (“CCCF” or “the Correctional Facility”) has caused serious deprivations of their health and safety in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. The Correctional Facility houses inmates awaiting trial or those sentenced to less than one year in prison. Plaintiffs seek to represent the fluid class of individuals incarcerated at CCCF during the pendency of this litigation. They filed this motion for certification pursuant to Rule 23(b)(2) and seek only declaratory and injunctive relief.2 The Court held oral argument on this motion on April 26, 2007 and reserved decision.

II. STATUS OF THE NAMED PLAINTIFFS

At the time Plaintiffs filed this action they were all incarcerated in the Correctional Facility. Plaintiffs filed the action on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated. (Compl. 116). After Magistrate Judge Rosen appointed pro bono counsel for Plaintiffs, they filed an Amended Complaint, which is [288]*288also a class complaint. (Am.Compl. HH 1, 36-45). At that time, three of the four named plaintiffs were still incarcerated at CCCF. Soon after, Plaintiffs filed this motion for class certification — but by then none of the named plaintiffs were still inmates at the Correctional Facility. Thus, although the issue was not raised by the parties, the Court shall address whether it has authority to decide this motion for class certification.

Article III of the U.S. Constitution generally limits this Court’s jurisdiction to “cases” and “controversies” in which the parties have a personal stake. United States Parole Comm’n v. Geraghty, 445 U.S. 388, 396, 100 S.Ct. 1202, 63 L.Ed.2d 479 (1980). However, exceptions exist for class actions, for cases that are capable of repetition yet evading review, and for claims that are “inherently transitory,” as the claims in this case are. For the reasons explained, although the named plaintiffs have lost their stake in the outcome because they are no longer incarcerated at CCCF, the Court retains the power to hear this action pursuant to Article III. See Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103, 110 n. 11, 95 S.Ct. 854, 43 L.Ed.2d 54 (1975); Sosna v. Iowa, 419 U.S. 393, 402 n. 11, 95 S.Ct. 553, 42 L.Ed.2d 532 (1975) (acknowledging that some actions may be viable despite named plaintiff losing personal stake before class certification).

Although generally plaintiffs must maintain a personal stake in the outcome of a case throughout the litigation, special rules apply when the claims are, by their nature, inherently transitory. See Bowers v. City of Philadelphia, No. . 06-3229, 2006 WL 2818501, at *6-7, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 71914, at *19-24 (E.D.Pa. Sept. 28, 2006) for a succinct explanation of this doctrine. In such situations, the dissipation of the named plaintiffs personal stake in the outcome will not deprive the Court of the power to hear the case. See, e.g., Hubbard v. Taylor, 399 F.3d 150, 168 n. 27 (3d Cir.2005)(because pretrial confinement is temporary, pretrial detainees’ pursuit of injunctive relief not moot once named plaintiffs are no longer pretrial detainees). As the Third Circuit explained in Rosetti v. Shalala, for cases that are inherently transitory, the issue is whether the named plaintiffs had the requisite interest in the case at the time they filed their complaint; when such a named plaintiffs claim becomes moot prior to certification, “the traditional requirements of the mootness doctrine are suspended in order to preserve the merits of the case for judicial resolution.” Rosetti v. Shalala, 12 F.3d 1216, 1228 n. 25 (3d Cir.1993).

The Supreme Court further explained this exception in County of Riverside:

We recognized in Gerstein that “some claims are so inherently transitory that the trial court will not have even enough time to rule on a motion for class certification before the proposed representative’s individual interest expires.” In such cases, the “relation back” doctrine is properly invoked to preserve the merits of the case for judicial resolution.

County of Riverside v. McLaughlin, 500 U.S. 44, 51-52, 111 S.Ct. 1661, 114 L.Ed.2d 49 (1991) (quoting Geraghty, 445 U.S. at 399, 100 S.Ct. 1202) (citations omitted). The Supreme Court looked back to the filing of the Amended Complaint and found that because the plaintiff had an unaddressed injury at that point in time, because the government had not ceased its allegedly unconstitutional conduct as to other members of the proposed class, and because the claims were inherently transitory, the plaintiffs had standing to pursue the action in federal court. 500 U.S. at 51-52, 111 S.Ct. 1661.

Courts in this Circuit have invoked this exception for plaintiffs who were pretrial detainees, see Hubbard v. Taylor, 399 F.3d 150 and Bowers, 2006 WL 2818501, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 71914, as well as for inmates at a juvenile detention facility, Santiago v. Philadelphia, 72 F.R.D. 619, 624 (E.D.Pa.1976). In Hubbard the Third Circuit found that the brevity of pretrial detainment made suitable for adjudication claims for injunctive relief asserted by plaintiffs who were not members of a certified class even after the plaintiff-inmates ceased being held in pretrial detainment. Hubbard, 399 F.3d at 168 n. 27. Likewise, in Santiago the Eastern District of Pennsylvania held that there was a case or controversy and that it could certify a class of all present and future inmates at a youth [289]*289detention facility even though all the named plaintiffs had been released because (1) the average stay at the facility was less than two weeks,(2) the class of inmates was “continuously being augmented by new residents who are allegedly suffering the same constitutional and statutory deprivations” and (3) “at least one named plaintiff for the class and each subclass was confined at [the facility] at the time the complaint was filed.” Santiago, 72 F.R.D. at 624.

Similar factors merit relating the case or controversy back to the date of the Amended Complaint here. Three of the four named plaintiffs were still incarcerated at CCCF at the time they filed the Amended Complaint.

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Bluebook (online)
244 F.R.D. 284, 68 Fed. R. Serv. 3d 1308, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 55294, 2007 WL 2212852, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/dittimus-bey-v-taylor-njd-2007.