Clark v. St. Lawrence County

25-1989 Clark v. St. Lawrence County UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT SUMMARY ORDER RULINGS BY SUMMARY ORDER DO NOT HAVE PRECEDENTIAL EFFECT. CITATION TO A SUMMARY ORDER FILED ON OR AFTER JANUARY 1, 2007, IS PERMITTED AND IS GOVERNED BY FEDERAL RULE OF APPELLATE PROCEDURE 32.1 AND THIS COURT’S LOCAL RULE 32.1.1. WHEN CITING A SUMMARY ORDER IN A DOCUMENT FILED WITH THIS COURT, A PARTY MUST CITE EITHER THE FEDERAL APPENDIX OR AN ELECTRONIC DATABASE (WITH THE NOTATION “SUMMARY ORDER”). A PARTY CITING TO A SUMMARY ORDER MUST SERVE A COPY OF IT ON ANY PARTY NOT REPRESENTED BY COUNSEL. At a stated term of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, held at the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, 40 Foley Square, in the City of New York, on the 10th day of November, two thousand twenty-six. PRESENT: ALISON J. NATHAN, MARIA ARAÚJO KAHN, Circuit Judges, DIANE GUJARATI, District Judge. ∗ _____________________________________ Rudolph R. Clark, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. 25-1989 St. Lawrence County, St. Lawrence County Solid Waste Department, ∗ Judge Diane Gujarati, of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, sitting by designation.  Defendants-Appellees. † _____________________________________ FOR PLAINTIFF-APPELLANT: JOHN MININNO, Florio Perrucci Steinhardt Cappelli & Tipton LLC, Cherry Hill, NJ. FOR DEFENDANTS-APPELLEES: COREY A. RUGGIERO, Fitzgerald Morris Baker Firth, P.C., Glens Falls, NY. Appeal from a judgment of the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York (David N. Hurd, Judge). UPON DUE CONSIDERATION, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED, ADJUDGED, AND DECREED that the judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED. Rudolph R. Clark appeals from the district court’s judgment dismissing his complaint against St. Lawrence County and St. Lawrence County Solid Waste Department (together, the County) and denying his motion to amend. We assume the parties’ familiarity with the underlying facts and procedural history, to which we refer only as necessary to explain our decision to affirm. Clark sued the County and Casella Waste Management, Inc. (Casella) for negligence after suffering a traumatic brain injury at a transfer station and landfill. Clark contends that he was injured when a crane controlled by the County released the rear door of a trash truck owned by Casella, causing the door to fall and hit a railing, which † The Clerk of Court is respectfully directed to amend the caption as reflected above. 2 then hit Clark in the head. The County moved to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(c), arguing, in relevant part, that because it was performing a governmental function by operating the transfer station, it could not be liable in negligence unless it owed Clark a “special duty,” which Clark had failed to allege. Joint App’x 54–58. In response, Clark conceded the need to plead a special duty and filed a cross-motion for leave to amend. The proposed amended complaint that Clark filed included only a boilerplate recitation of the special-duty elements with no supporting factual allegations. The County opposed Clark’s cross-motion, arguing first that he had failed to comply with a local rule requiring proposed amendments to be redlined, and second that the amendments were futile because the special-duty allegations were conclusory. The next day, Clark’s attorney filed a declaration explaining that his office had inadvertently filed a non-final version of the proposed amended complaint. Clark’s attorney asked the court to accept the corrected version of the amended complaint and to excuse his initial failure to file the changes in redline. The corrected version of the proposed amended complaint included greater factual detail. Among other things, it asserted that the County owed Clark a special duty because it assumed control over a known and dangerous safety condition by taking “possession and control of a 1,000+ pound steel door on a truck, with a crane in the vicinity of the visitors of the transfer 3 station, including the Plaintiff.” Joint App’x 124. The complaint added that it was “known that [the trash truck’s] unchained and unsecured compactor door was a dangerous safety condition” and that the County’s control of the door with the crane violated established safety standards. Id. The district court granted the motion to dismiss and denied the cross-motion for leave to amend. It began by noting that Clark conceded that the County was engaged in a governmental function, rather than a proprietary one, at the transfer station. 1 The district court next recognized the absence of any allegations in the operative complaint regarding a special duty owed to Clark. It then determined that amendment would be futile because Clark’s proposed changes were conclusory. In reaching this conclusion, the court appears to have looked only to the boilerplate allegations in the inadvertently 1 In each of his complaints, Clark alleged that the County owned and/or operated the transfer station, and in both versions of the proposed amended complaint, he alleged that the County was engaged in a proprietary and/or governmental function at the transfer station. When a negligence claim is brought against a municipality, “a court must first decide whether the municipal entity was engaged in a proprietary function or acted in a governmental capacity at the time the claim arose.” Ferreira v. City of Binghamton, 194 N.E.3d 239, 246 (N.Y. 2022) (citation modified). A governmental entity engaging in a proprietary function is generally subject to ordinary principles of tort law. Grasso v. N.Y. State Thruway Auth., 71 N.Y.S.3d 604, 610 (2d Dep’t 2018) (“[T]he ownership and operation of a landfill has been deemed a proprietary function, subjecting the governmental entity to general principles of tort law[.]”); cf. Ferreira, 194 N.E.3d at 246 (requiring the existence of a special duty “if the action challenged in the litigation is governmental”). Clark subsequently conceded, both in his motion in opposition to the County’s motion to dismiss and at oral argument before this Court, that he was pursuing only a governmental function theory of liability. Therefore, because Clark abandoned his proprietary function theory of liability, neither the district court nor this Court had occasion to review its applicability in this case. 4 filed complaint. The court did, however, acknowledge the existence of the corrected, later-filed complaint in a footnote. With the County dismissed, Clark continued to pursue his claims against Casella. Roughly two years later, Clark and Casella settled, and Clark timely filed a notice of appeal seeking review of the County’s dismissal. The issue now before us is whether the district court erred in denying Clark’s motion for leave to amend his claims against the County. “We review a district court’s denial of leave to amend for abuse of discretion, unless the denial was based on an interpretation of law, such as futility, in which case we review the legal conclusion de novo.” Solomon v. Flipps Media, Inc., 136 F.4th 41, 47 (2d Cir. 2025). Any failure by the district court to consider the additional allegations in the corrected proposed amended complaint does not require reversal, as our own review of those allegations reveals that they fail to state a claim. Under New York law, “[w]hen a claim is made that a municipality has negligently exercised a governmental function, liability turns upon the existence of a special duty to the injured person, in contrast to a general duty owed to the public.” Garrett v. Holiday Inns, Inc., 447 N.E.2d 717, 721 (N.Y. 1983). “[T]he special duty rule minimizes a municipality’s exposure to open-ended liability of enormous proportions and with no clear outer limits, which could otherwise discourage municipalities from undertaking activities to promote the general welfare that may expose them to liability.” Ferreira v. 5 City of Binghamton, 194 N.E.3d 239, 252 (N.Y. 2022) (citation modified). There are three ways a special duty can be formed: “(1) when the municipality violates a statutory duty enacted for the benefit of a particular class of persons; (2) when it voluntarily assumes a duty that generates justifiable reliance by the person who benefits from the duty; or (3) when the municipality assumes positive direction and control in the face of a known, blatant and dangerous safety violation.” Metz v. State, 982 N.E.2d 76, 79 (N.Y. 2012) (quoting McLean v. City of New York, 905 N.E.2d 1167, 1171 (N.Y. 2009)). This case involves the third situation. In Smullen v. City of New York, 268 N.E.2d 763 (N.Y. 1971), the New York Court of Appeals explained that this situation arises where a municipality takes “positive action in assuming direction and control” of a known danger, and that action “directly affect[s]” a “particular individual.” Id. at 766–67. There was a special duty in Smullen “running directly to the accident victim” because a municipal agent encouraged him to enter a trench that subsequently collapsed. Id. at 764, 766. Likewise, in Garrett v. Holiday Inns, Inc., the Court of Appeals found a special duty where a town “affirmatively certified [motel] premises as safe” despite “having knowledge that blatant fire and safety code violations were involved[.]” 447 N.E.2d at 721. Although the motel guests who were injured in a subsequent fire “alleged no more than a violation of a general duty owed by the town to the public at large” and therefore could not sustain claims against the town, id. at 719, “much more in the way of a special 6 relationship” existed between the town and the motel’s owners and operators, as the town made specific representations to these individuals about the safety of the premises, and they justifiably relied on those representations, id. at 721–22. Distilling these cases, New York appellate courts have explained that municipal actors “must affirmatively act to place the plaintiff in harm’s way,” Sutton v. City of New York, 990 N.Y.S.2d 546, 548 (2d Dep’t 2014), by, for example, “induc[ing] the plaintiff to embark on a dangerous course he or she would otherwise have avoided,” Szydlowski v. Town of Bethlehem, 78 N.Y.S.3d 454, 457 (3d Dep’t 2018) (citation modified). Here, even assuming the County’s operation of the crane constituted direction and control of a known danger, Clark’s claim still fails because he has not alleged any duty that the County owed to him in particular as distinct from that owed to the public generally. Clark does not allege that he justifiably relied on any safety assurances made by the County, see Garrett, 447 N.E.2d at 721–22, or that he was encouraged by the County to enter a dangerous area, see Smullen, 268 N.E.2d at 764. Instead, he alleges simply that he was present in the area of a danger directed and controlled by the County, and that anyone near such a danger is owed a special duty. That is incorrect. New York law requires a specific duty running to a particular individual; mere presence at or near a government-created danger is insufficient. Indeed, if mere presence were enough, the motel guests in Garrett—who were injured by the fire—would also have had claims 7 against the town. Clark derives his mere-presence rule from the New York Court of Appeals’ decision in Ferreira v. City of Binghamton, 194 N.E.3d 239 (N.Y. 2022), but he overreads that case. Ferreira held that the third kind of special duty “arises when the police plan and execute a no-knock search warrant at an identified residence, [with the duty] running to the individuals within the targeted premises at the time the warrant is executed.” Id. at 253. “In such circumstances, the police direct and control a known and dangerous condition, effectively taking command of the premises and temporarily detaining occupants of the targeted location.” Id. Because the police take “temporary control of the premises and its occupants[,] . . . the municipality’s duty to the individuals in the targeted premises, a limited class of potential plaintiffs, exceeds the duty the municipality owes to the members of the general public.” Id. In other words, the special duty runs not to everyone who might be in the vicinity of the no-knock warrant, but to the “limited class” of people inside the premises, as the municipality takes affirmative control over those individuals by temporarily detaining them. Id. Clark is therefore correct that a municipality need not induce an individual to embark on a dangerous course for there to be a special duty—in some circumstances, the special duty arises from the municipality’s exercise of affirmative control over the individual’s person. But he is incorrect to suggest that this is such a case. Clark does 8 not allege that he was detained by the County, ordered to remain in a particular location, directed to move to a different one, or anything along those lines. At bottom, he has not shown that the County “affirmatively act[ed] to place [him] in harm’s way,” either by inducing him to confront a known danger or by exercising control over him in the face of one. See Sutton, 990 N.Y.S.2d at 548. Though he states that the County placed him in harm’s way by negligently operating the crane, that is no different from saying that any time a municipality engages in dangerous conduct, it owes a special duty to those whom it injures. Where, as here, a state actor performs a governmental function, New York’s law of negligence does not sweep so broadly. CONCLUSION We have considered Clark’s remaining arguments and conclude that they are without merit. Accordingly, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court. FOR THE COURT: Catherine O’Hagan Wolfe, Clerk of Court 9