Perkins v. Daniels
- Susan Nelson
- 0:19-cv-02663
- U.S. District Court · District of Minnesota
- 11
In Perkins v. Daniels, Judge Nelson adopted the magistrate judge’s recommendations, dismissed certain claims, and denied Perkins’s motions.
Victor B. Perkins’s official-capacity claims were dismissed without prejudice for lack of jurisdiction, and his Fourteenth Amendment claims were dismissed with prejudice. His Fifth Amendment claims against Dr. Jack Daniels and Dr. Dionne Hart in their individual capacities were described as viable. Perkins’s five listed motions were denied.
What happened
Perkins v. Daniels involved Victor B. Perkins, a civil detainee at the Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minnesota, who sued Dr. Jack Daniels and Dr. Dionne Hart under a civil-rights law. He alleged that they forced him to take medication without a court order, violating his due process rights.
The court adopted the magistrate judge’s recommendations. It dismissed Perkins’s claims against the doctors in their official capacities without prejudice because the court lacked jurisdiction, and dismissed his Fourteenth Amendment claims with prejudice because that amendment applies to state action, not the federal officers sued here. The court said Perkins’s Fifth Amendment claims against the doctors individually were viable and allowed him to proceed with those claims after providing service information.
Judge Susan Richard Nelson overruled Perkins’s objections and denied each of his five listed motions, including his motions for summary judgment and immediate adjudication. The court concluded that some motions were rendered moot by the amended complaint and that the others were premature because the defendants had not had an opportunity for discovery.
The detailed version
- Perkins v. Daniels · No. 0:19-cv-02663
- Susan Nelson
- Sept. 11, 2020
Background
Victor B. Perkins, proceeding without a lawyer, filed a civil-rights action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against Dr. Jack Daniels and Dr. Dionne Hart, psychiatrists at the Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minnesota. Perkins alleged that the doctors forced him to take certain medication without a court order, violating his due process rights. He filed an amended complaint in March 2020, along with several motions seeking summary judgment or immediate adjudication and damages.
Magistrate Judge’s recommendations
Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Cowan Wright reviewed the amended complaint as part of the court’s screening process under 28 U.S.C. § 1915 and also considered whether the court had subject-matter jurisdiction. She recommended dismissing Perkins’s official-capacity claims without prejudice for lack of jurisdiction because sovereign immunity protected the United States and its agencies from those claims. “Without prejudice” means the dismissal did not itself bar refiling the claims, although the opinion did not determine that refiling would be successful.
The magistrate judge also recommended dismissing Perkins’s Fourteenth Amendment due-process claims with prejudice. The court explained that the Fourteenth Amendment’s due-process protection applies to state action, while the defendants were sued as federal officers. Because amendment could not make those claims viable, the recommended dismissal was with prejudice.
The magistrate judge found that Perkins’s Fifth Amendment substantive and procedural due-process claims against the defendants in their individual capacities were viable. She determined that Perkins qualified for permission to proceed without paying the filing fee and ordered him to provide service information for the defendants.
The magistrate judge recommended denying Perkins’s motions. The first three summary-judgment motions were based on the original complaint, which the amended complaint replaced. The two later motions were also premature because the defendants had not been properly served and had not had sufficient time to conduct discovery. The magistrate judge treated Perkins’s motion for immediate adjudication as another summary-judgment motion because it referred to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56 and sought immediate damages.
District court’s review and ruling
The district court reviewed the magistrate judge’s non-dispositive rulings under the deferential “clearly erroneous or contrary to law” standard and reviewed the dispositive recommendations anew where Perkins made specific objections. The court rejected Perkins’s argument that mailing the pleadings to defense counsel had completed service. It held that Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 4 governed service and that the statute Perkins cited concerned congressional-election procedures, not service of a summons and complaint.
The court also rejected Perkins’s request for summary judgment and $10,000,000 in damages. It agreed that the first three motions were moot to the extent they relied on the original complaint and agreed that the remaining summary-judgment requests were premature because discovery had not occurred.
The court rejected Perkins’s challenge to sovereign immunity. It held that the defendants’ alleged knowledge of constitutional violations did not establish jurisdiction and that the amended complaint did not plausibly allege that the United States had waived immunity for damages based on constitutional violations. The court therefore dismissed the amended complaint’s official-capacity claims without prejudice for lack of jurisdiction.
The court agreed that Perkins’s Fourteenth Amendment claims against the federal officers were not viable and dismissed those claims with prejudice. It affirmed and adopted the Order and Report and Recommendation, overruled Perkins’s objections and amended objections, and denied each of the five listed motions: the motions at docket numbers 3, 4, 5, and 11, and the motion for immediate adjudication at docket number 14.
Classification
This is a procedural order because the court’s dismissals rested on jurisdictional immunity and the inapplicability of the Fourteenth Amendment to federal action, while the motion denials rested on mootness, lack of service, and the absence of discovery. The order did not decide the merits of Perkins’s remaining Fifth Amendment claims.
Read the full 11-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.