Justia Federal District Court Opinions

Appellants, citizens of Dallas, Texas, brought this suit against defendants,¹ officers and employees of said city, acting as such, for alleged violations of their civil rights and for damages² claimed to have resulted therefrom.

The gist of the complaint,³ to which as an exhibit there was attached Ordinance No. 4370, the fire code of the City of Dallas, was: that the City Attorney, the Judge of the Corporation Court, two Assistant City Attorneys, two Fire Inspectors and the Fire Marshall, entered into a conspiracy to deprive the Appellants of their civil rights, in that the two Fire Inspectors entered upon the premises of appellant L. L. McGuire and demanded the right to inspect the garage and shed on the premises for fire hazards; that as a result of refusal to permit the inspection, appellant L. L. McGuire's mother was charged in Corporation Court, by complaint sworn to before a notary public, of hindering and refusing to permit the inspection, was convicted in the Corporation Court, and, on appeal to the County Criminal Court, the complaint was later dismissed; that in the meantime the defendant Rhea returned and, over protest, inspected the garage.

The defendants moved to dismiss (1) for want of jurisdiction; (2) for failure to state a recoverable claim; and (3) because of the immunity of the officials involved; and, subject to their motion to dismiss, filed an answer denying plaintiff's charges of malice and conspiracy, and setting up their defenses that they were acting in the discharge of their public duties, and, because they were, they were immune from suit.

The district judge heard the motion to dismiss, granted it, and dismissed the complaint. Plaintiffs, appealing from the order, are here insisting, upon the authority of cases cited⁴ by them, that it was wrongly entered and must be reversed.

Defendants, on their part, upon the authority of cases cited5 by them, insist that the judgment was right and should be affirmed. We agree.

We shall not, in the present confused and confusing state of the law, attempt to mark out the general scope and sweep of the civil rights statutes appellants invoke. Neither shall we, other than as our other opinions and this one have done, and may do, it for us, range ourselves on the one side or the other of the general struggle to so extend the scope of these statutes, that, upon the mere allegation, in a suit for damages, or conspiracy, fraud, or malice, every suit in a state court may be subjected to retrial, and every action of a state officer, in the discharge of the duties of his office, may be re-examined in the federal court.

Examples of cases in which it is contended that a Court of Appeals has gone almost, if not quite, that far, are the Picking case from the Third Circuit, the McShane case from the Sixth Circuit, and the Brandhove case from the Ninth Circuit, note 4, supra.

Examples of cases, in which it is claimed that opposing views to these have been maintained, are cited in note 5, supra, and in note 12 of Stefanelli v. Minard, supra.

It is sufficient for us in this case to say: that, as other courts have done, we disregard, as mere conclusions, the loose and general, the factually unsupported, characterizations of the complained of acts of the defendants, as malicious, conspiratorial, and done for the purpose of depriving plaintiffs of their constitutional rights; that the things defendants are alleged to have done, as distinguished from the conclusions of the pleaders with respect to them, do not constitute a deprivation of the civil rights of plaintiffs, do not give rise to the cause of action claimed; and that the judgment dismissing the complaint should be affirmed.

Affirmed.