Shatney v. LaPorte

634 F. App'x 53

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
• Decided: February 22, 2016
• Docket: 15-600
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

SUMMARY ORDER

Ray Shatney and Janet Steward appeal from the January 28, 2015 judgment of the United States District Court for the District of Vermont (Crawford, /.), granting defendants’ motion for summary judgment and denying plaintiffs’ motion for leave to amend their complaint. We assume the parties’ familiarity with the underlying facts, procedural history, and specification of issues for review.

“We review a district court’s grant of summary judgment de novo.” Baldwin v. EMI Feist Catalog, Inc., 805 F.3d 18, 25 (2d Cir.2015). In reviewing the district court’s grant of summary judgment, we “constru[e] all evidence in the light most favorable to the non-moving party, and affirm[] only where ‘there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and the mov-ant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.’ ” Hubbs v. Suffolk Cty. Sheriff’s Dep’t, 788 F.3d 54, 59 (2d Cir.2015) (citation omitted) (quoting Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(a)).

We review a district court’s refusal to grant leave to amend a complaint “for abuse of discretion[,] which ordinarily we will not identify absent an error of law, a clearly erroneous assessment of the facts, or a decision outside the available range of permitted choices.” In re Arab Bank, PLC Alien Tort Statute Litig., 808 F.3d 144, 159 (2d Cir.2015) (quoting Knife Rights, Inc. v. Vance, 802 F.3d 377, 389 (2d Cir.2015)).

We turn first to the dismissal of plaintiffs’ state-law malicious prosecution claim. Under Vermont law, “[t]o recover for malicious prosecution, a claimant must show that the opposing party had instituted a proceeding against him without probable cause, with malice, and that the proceeding had terminated in the claimant’s favor.” Chittenden Tr. Co. v. Marshall, 146 Vt. 543, 507 A.2d 965, 969 (1986). Probable cause exists “when the facts and circumstances known to an officer are sufficient to lead a reasonable person to believe that a cxdme was committed and that the suspect committed it.” State v. Arrington, 188 Vt. 460, 8 A.3d 483, 487 (2010) (internal quotation marks omitted). Here, the district court did not err in granting summary judgment to defendants because, under the undisputed facts, the police had probable cause to cite Shatney for aggravated assault.

Nor did the district court err in dismissing plaintiffs’ state-law negligence claim. Under Vermont law, “[t]o prove negligence, plaintiff must show that defendant owed her a legal duty, that a breach of that duty was a proximate cause of harm, and that she suffered actual damages.” Kane v. Lamothe, 182 Vt. 241, 936 A.2d 1303, 1307 (2007). Here, for the reasons explained by the district court in its thorough opinion, plaintiffs did not “establish that defendants owed them a legal duty to protect them from criminal acts of third parties or to investigate their complaints in a particular manner.” Shatney v. LaPorte, No. 5:12-CV-00023, 2014 WL 7240522, at *3 (D.Vt. Dec. 18, 2014). Accordingly, their state-law negligence claim was properly dismissed.

The district court also did not err in dismissing plaintiffs’ class-of-one equal protection claim. Although the Equal Protection Clause “has traditionally been applied to governmental classifications that treat certain groups of citizens differently than others,” Fahs Constr. Grp., Inc. v. Gray, 725 F.3d 289, 291 (2d Cir.2013), a plaintiff who is in a “class of one” may bring an equal-protection claim “where the plaintiff alleges that she has been intentionally treated differently from others similarly situated and that there is no rational basis for the difference in treatment,” Vill. of Willowbrook v. Olech, 528 U.S. 562, 564, 120 S.Ct. 1073, 145 L.Ed.2d 1060 (2000). “[T]o succeed on a ‘class of one’ claim, the level of similarity between plaintiffs and the persons with whom they compare themselves must be extremely high.” Neilson v. D’Angelis, 409 F.3d 100, 104 (2d Cir.2005), overruled on other grounds by Appel v. Spiridon, 531 F.3d 138 (2d Cir.2008). The plaintiff must establish that:

(i) no rational person could regard the circumstances of the plaintiff to differ from those of a comparator to a degree that would justify the differential treatment on the basis of a legitimate government policy; and (ii) the similarity in circumstances and difference in treatment are sufficient to exclude the possibility that the defendant acted on the basis of a mistake.

Id. at 105. Applying this standard, the district court properly granted summary judgment to defendants because plaintiffs failed to put forward evidence of other individuals who were in virtually the same situation as they were and yet were treated differently by defendants, and because no reasonable juror could infer from the evidence that any differential treatment of the plaintiffs relative to other individuals was irrational or based on an illegitimate government policy.

Finally, the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying plaintiffs’ leave to amend their complaint. “Leave to amend, though liberally granted, may properly be denied for: ‘undue delay, bad faith or dilatory motive on the part of the movant, repeated failure to cure deficiencies by amendments previously allowed, undue prejudice to the opposing party by virtue of allowance of the amendment, futility of amendment, etc.’” Ruotolo v. City of New York, 514 F.3d 184, 191 (2d Cir.2008) (quoting Foman v. Davis, 371 U.S. 178, 182, 83 S.Ct. 227, 9 L.Ed.2d 222 (1962)). The district court found that defendants would be prejudiced by an amendment because plaintiffs’ new retaliation claim would require additional discovery. Amendment would have also prejudiced defendants because they had already incurred fees and expenses in filing a motion for summary judgment against what they reasonably believed were all of the claims plaintiffs intended to assert. In view of these considerations, the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying plaintiffs’ motion for leave to amend their complaint.

* * *

We have considered the remainder of plaintiffs’ arguments and find them to be without merit. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court hereby is AFFIRMED.