Daywitt v. Harpstead

Background

Kenneth S. Daywitt is civilly committed to the Minnesota Sex Offender Program in Moose Lake, Minnesota. He alleged that defendants knowingly or negligently placed him in the same cell as a person who was known to be homophobic, threatening, and mentally ill. According to the amended complaint, Daywitt told defendants about threats from that person, but the person later attacked him and caused injuries.

Daywitt asserted state-law negligence and constitutional claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against 16 employees in their individual capacities. He also sued the Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Human Services and the Executive Director of the Minnesota Sex Offender Program in their official capacities. That claim alleged that the program maintained an unconstitutional practice of failing to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer patients or clients from attacks and harassment based on sexual orientation, and failed to train staff to recognize and respond to such threats.

Legal standard

The defendants asked the court to dismiss the amended complaint under Rule 12(b)(6), which tests whether a complaint alleges enough facts to present a plausible claim. At this stage, the court accepts plausible factual allegations as true but does not accept bare legal conclusions.

Individual-capacity constitutional claim

A civil detainee claiming deliberate indifference or failure to protect must allege both a sufficiently serious risk of harm and that officials actually knew of and disregarded that risk. The court found that Daywitt’s allegations about the 16 individual-capacity defendants were too vague and did not explain what any particular defendant did or failed to do. The court also found it implausible that every defendant witnessed every incident described in the complaint.

The court therefore dismissed the individual-capacity claim under § 1983 with leave to re-plead. The court noted that qualified immunity was more appropriately considered on a motion for summary judgment rather than at this stage.

Official-capacity claim

The court refused to dismiss the official-capacity claim against Commissioner Harpstead and Executive Director Johnston. It held that dismissal of the individual-capacity claim did not establish that Daywitt had failed to allege a constitutional violation; instead, the individual-capacity claim failed because the complaint did not adequately describe each defendant’s personal involvement.

The court concluded that Daywitt plausibly alleged that staff were not trained to recognize the danger posed by his homophobic cellmate and that the program later attempted to house the assailant with a transgender patient. Taking those allegations as true for purposes of the motion, the court found that they could establish an unconstitutional failure to train or protect LGBTQ individuals. The motion to dismiss was denied as to this claim.

Negligence claim and disposition

The court also found that Daywitt did not plausibly allege how any specific defendant was negligent. Because Minnesota’s official-immunity rule requires a plaintiff seeking damages for state-law torts against state officials to show that each defendant committed a willful or malicious wrong, the court dismissed the negligence claim without prejudice.

The court orally granted Daywitt’s motion to amend and deemed the amended complaint filed. It ordered that the motion to dismiss was granted in part and denied in part. Counts 1 and 3 of the amended complaint were dismissed without prejudice, and Daywitt was permitted to re-plead those claims within 30 days of the order.