Simmons v. Mischel
- Virginia Demarchi
- 5:18-cv-02193
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 15
In Simmons v. Mischel, Judge Demarchi dismissed claims against individual officials but allowed Joyce Marie Simmons’s supervisory-negligence claim against the United States to proceed.
Joyce Marie Simmons’s FTCA claim against the United States for supervisory negligence may proceed; her FTCA claims against the six individual defendants were dismissed with prejudice.
What happened
In Simmons v. Mischel, Joyce Marie Simmons, representing herself, alleged that prison employee Ashley Phillips injured her knee by kicking open her cell door. She sought damages under the Federal Tort Claims Act, adding the United States as a defendant.
The court ruled that only the United States could be sued under that statute, so it dismissed the claims against the six individual defendants. It also concluded that the allegations against Phillips described a battery, which the statute generally excludes, but that Simmons’s claim that supervisors negligently failed to prevent the injury could proceed against the United States. The court denied the motion as to that surviving claim.
Judge Virginia K. Demarchi granted in part and denied in part the defendants’ motion to dismiss and for summary judgment. The court dismissed the claims against the individual defendants with prejudice and required Simmons to file a notice within 28 days stating whether she intended to continue the claim against the United States.
The detailed version
- Simmons v. Mischel · No. 5:18-cv-02193
- Virginia Demarchi
- Mar. 3, 2020
Background
Joyce Marie Simmons, a federal prisoner representing herself, sued prison officials over an August 15, 2017 incident. She alleged that Ashley Phillips kicked open Simmons’s cell door while Simmons was seated on the toilet and struck Simmons’s right knee. Simmons alleged that she later experienced pain and swelling and sought $50,000 for physical injury and emotional distress.
Simmons first sued individual officials over alleged constitutional violations. The court previously dismissed those claims because she had not exhausted the required administrative remedies, but allowed her to file an amended complaint attempting to state a claim under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA). The amended complaint asserted one FTCA damages claim and added the United States as a defendant.
Motion and jurisdictional issues
The defendants moved to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1), arguing that the court lacked subject-matter jurisdiction, or alternatively sought summary judgment under Rule 56. They argued that the United States was the only proper defendant under the FTCA and that Simmons’s claim was filed after the six-month deadline following the Bureau of Prisons’ denial of her administrative claim.
The court agreed that the FTCA claim could be brought only against the United States, not the individual federal employees. It therefore granted the motion to dismiss the individual defendants from the FTCA action.
The court also found that Simmons filed the amended complaint after the six-month deadline. However, it concluded that the amended complaint related back to Simmons’s timely original complaint under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(c). The United States Attorney received notice of the original complaint within the period allowed for service, and the original complaint described the same underlying incident. The court therefore denied the motion to dismiss the FTCA claim against the United States on the relation-back issue. The court also concluded that equitable tolling did not apply, because Simmons had not shown diligence and extraordinary circumstances sufficient to excuse the delay.
Screening of the amended complaint
The court screened the amended complaint under 28 U.S.C. § 1915A, which requires preliminary review of a prisoner’s complaint against a governmental entity or employee. It treated Simmons’s allegations as asserting an FTCA claim against the United States.
The court explained that the FTCA permits certain tort claims for money damages against the United States, but excludes claims arising from specified intentional torts, including battery. Although Simmons labeled her claim against Phillips as negligence, the court looked to the conduct alleged. It concluded that the allegations that Phillips knowingly kicked the door into Simmons and injured her knee described battery, so the FTCA claim based directly on Phillips’s conduct was barred.
Simmons also alleged that supervisors Kimberly Luke, Gordon Castillo, and Tamara Mischel failed to intervene or take reasonable steps to prevent the injury. The court held that, at the screening stage, these allegations were sufficient to state an FTCA claim for supervisory negligence against the United States. The court allowed that claim to proceed, even though it related to the alleged battery by Phillips.
Disposition
The court granted in part and denied in part the defendants’ motion to dismiss and for summary judgment. It dismissed with prejudice Simmons’s FTCA claim against Tamara Mischel, Kimberly Luke, Ashley Phillips, Gordon Castillo, Timothy Brosnan, and W.Z. Jenkins for failure to state a claim for relief against those individual defendants. It denied the motion as to Simmons’s FTCA claim against the United States for supervisory negligence relating to the alleged battery by Phillips.
Because Simmons did not respond to the motion, the court required her to file, within 28 days after the order was filed, a notice stating whether she intended to continue prosecuting the surviving FTCA claim against the United States.
Read the full 15-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.