Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 1980

Carlson v. Green

446 U.S. 14 | 100 S. Ct. 1468 | 64 L. Ed. 2d 15 | 1980 U.S. LEXIS 120

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Takeaway

In short, Carlson held that the FTCA ordinarily complements rather than displaces a Bivens claim for deliberate indifference by federal prison officials, and that federal common law preserves such a claim when the alleged constitutional violation caused the victim's death.

Background

Joseph Jones, a federal prisoner with chronic asthma, died after an asthmatic attack at the Federal Correctional Center in Terre Haute, Indiana. His administratrix alleged that federal prison officials knew both of his condition and the facility's inadequate medical resources but kept him there, delayed competent treatment and transfer to an outside hospital, administered contraindicated drugs, and attempted to use an inoperative respirator. She alleged deliberate indifference to Jones's serious medical needs, in violation of the Eighth Amendment, and sought compensatory and punitive damages against the officials personally under federal-question jurisdiction.

The District Court concluded that the allegations stated an Eighth Amendment claim under Estelle v. Gamble and a damages claim under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents. It nevertheless dismissed the action because Indiana survivorship and wrongful-death law, as the court understood it, left the estate with insufficient recoverable damages to meet the then-$10,000 amount-in-controversy requirement of 28 U.S.C. § 1331(a).

The Seventh Circuit agreed that the complaint alleged an Eighth Amendment violation and stated a Bivens claim. It reversed, holding that federal common law permits a Bivens action to survive when the applicable state survival rule would otherwise abate a claim arising from conduct that caused the victim's death. The Supreme Court granted review and affirmed.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether a federal prisoner may pursue a Bivens damages action against individual federal prison officials for an alleged Eighth Amendment violation when the same facts could also support an action against the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act.

Holding

Yes. The FTCA does not displace the Bivens remedy here, and no special factors counsel hesitation in recognizing a damages action against the individual officials.

Reasoning

Bivens permits a victim of a constitutional violation by a federal officer to recover damages directly from the officer even without an express statutory cause of action. The Court described two circumstances in which such a claim may be unavailable: where special factors counsel hesitation before the judiciary creates a remedy, or where Congress has supplied an alternative remedy that it intended to replace the Bivens remedy and considered equally effective.

No special factor justified withholding a remedy against these prison officials. They possessed no constitutional status suggesting that they should be immune from a judicially created damages action, and the qualified immunity available to federal officials adequately protects them from undue interference with the performance of their duties.

Congress had not declared the FTCA to be the exclusive substitute for constitutional damages claims. To the contrary, when Congress amended the FTCA in 1974 to allow suits against the United States for certain intentional torts by federal law-enforcement officers, accompanying legislative history treated the FTCA action and the Bivens action as parallel and complementary remedies. Congress also knew how to make FTCA relief exclusive and had done so expressly in other statutory contexts.

The FTCA was not equally effective as a Bivens action. A personal damages action against an individual officer more directly deters unconstitutional conduct than a suit solely against the United States, and Bivens actions may allow punitive damages while the FTCA expressly forbids them.

Other differences reinforced that conclusion. A Bivens plaintiff may seek a jury trial, while an FTCA case is tried to a judge. In addition, FTCA liability depends on the tort law of the State where the misconduct occurred, whereas constitutional liability of federal officers should not turn on state-law variations. Taken together, these differences meant that the FTCA was not an adequate exclusive protector of federal constitutional rights.

Issue #2

Whether the survival of a Bivens action is governed by federal common law or by the survival statute of the State where the alleged constitutional violation occurred.

Holding

Federal common law governs, and it allows a Bivens action to survive when the defendants' alleged conduct caused the plaintiff's death and state law would otherwise abate the claim.

Reasoning

Because Bivens actions are created by federal law to remedy violations of the Federal Constitution by federal officers, the survival of the claim is itself a question of federal law. The Court rejected the proposed rule of automatically incorporating forum-state survivorship law in this setting.

A uniform federal survival rule was necessary to fully vindicate constitutional rights and to deter future unconstitutional conduct. Indiana law would have prevented Jones's claim from surviving, while another State's law might allow survival. The personal liability of federal officers for the same federal constitutional wrong should not depend on the State in which a prisoner happened to be confined.

Allowing abatement when the unconstitutional conduct caused death would perversely weaken deterrence: an official's potential liability could be lessened by the victim's death. Federal common law therefore preserves the claim in this circumstance, preventing officials from escaping the consequences of conduct that allegedly caused a prisoner's death.

Robertson v. Wegmann did not require a different result. Robertson applied state survivorship law to a § 1983 claim when the plaintiff died from causes unrelated to the defendants' conduct. Here, by contrast, the alleged constitutional violation itself caused the death, so applying an abatement rule would substantially frustrate Bivens's compensatory and deterrent purposes.

Concurrences

Justice Powell

Reasoning

Justice Powell, joined by Justice Stewart, agreed that the FTCA did not provide an adequate remedy and that this Bivens action should survive. He objected, however, to the majority's broad formulation that a Bivens action must proceed unless defendants establish either special factors or an alternative remedy that Congress explicitly designated as a substitute. In his view, courts retain principled discretion when asked to infer a damages remedy directly from the Constitution.

Powell believed the majority improperly required Congress to use nearly prescribed language before an adequate statutory remedy could displace a Bivens action. A court should be able to consider congressional intent expressed in other ways and should not give plaintiffs a choice between remedies merely because Congress did not expressly call one remedy exclusive.

He also resisted the suggestion that uniform federal rules should ordinarily govern liability and procedural questions in Bivens cases. Federal courts often use state law to fill gaps in federal remedial schemes, and Powell saw no need to reject state survivorship law as a general matter. Still, because applying Indiana law here would undermine the federal interests at stake where the alleged wrongdoing caused the prisoner's death, he agreed that federal common law should allow this particular claim to survive.

Dissents

Chief Justice Burger

Reasoning

Chief Justice Burger would have treated the FTCA as an adequate remedy for a prisoner's claim of medical mistreatment and would therefore have rejected the Bivens action. Although he remained critical of Bivens, he maintained that even under Bivens's premises, an available and effective statutory remedy should end the inquiry.

He objected to the majority's requirement that Congress explicitly declare an alternative remedy to be exclusive. In his view, that rule could permit unnecessary constitutional damages actions alongside comprehensive statutory schemes simply because Congress had not used the majority's preferred formulation. He warned that the Court's approach placed prior decisions recognizing exclusive statutory remedies, including Brown v. General Services Administration, in doubt.

Burger also feared that the decision's survivorship holding would allow plaintiffs to avoid otherwise applicable state-law limits by recasting claims as Bivens-type constitutional actions. He expected that the Court would eventually have to retreat from the breadth of its new test.

Justice Rehnquist

Reasoning

Justice Rehnquist would have overruled or declined to extend Bivens because, in his view, the Constitution does not itself authorize federal courts to create private damages actions against federal officials. Decisions about whether to create such remedies, their scope, available damages, required intent, and official immunities are legislative policy choices properly left to Congress.

He argued that federal-question jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1331 permits federal courts to hear cases arising under the Constitution but does not itself create a substantive right to damages. The federal courts' traditional authority to provide equitable relief for constitutional violations did not, in his view, support creating legal damages remedies without statutory authorization.

Rehnquist also disagreed with the majority's conclusion that the FTCA was insufficient. Congress had furnished a tort remedy against the United States, and he believed the Court should defer to Congress's policy choice rather than speculate that personal liability, punitive damages, jury trials, and uniform federal rules would produce superior deterrence. Those judgments involve competing concerns, including the risk that personal liability will distort officials' decisionmaking.

Finally, he rejected the majority's presumption that a statutory remedy complements Bivens unless Congress expressly makes it exclusive. When Congress establishes a remedy and defines its limits, it ordinarily has balanced relevant considerations; courts should not add a separate constitutional damages remedy absent a clear congressional authorization.