MEMORANDUM OPINION
CHRISTOPHER R. COOPER, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE.
On an
October day in 2015, Jason Goolsby was pondering whether to
withdraw money from an ATM outside a Citibank in Washington,
D.C. From inside the ATM vestibule, Goolsby saw a young
couple with a child in a stroller approaching and, he says,
held the door to help them in. The mother, Caucasian,
apparently felt uneasy in the presence of Goolsby and his two
friends, all African-American. So she told her husband that
she forgot something in the car, immediately left the
vestibule, and called the police. What transpired next is the
subject of this lawsuit.
Goolsby
alleges that dispatchers in the District of Columbia
Metropolitan Police Department (“MPD”)
misreported the woman's 911 call and that responding MPD
officers attacked him without good reason. He brought a spate
of federal constitutional and D.C. common-law claims, seeking
redress for the injuries he allegedly sustained. In an
earlier decision considering only the constitutional claims,
the Court held that the dispatchers and officers were
entitled to qualified immunity and dismissed all but one of
the claims. Turning now to the defendants' motion to
dismiss the common-law claims-with the barrier of qualified
immunity no longer standing in the way-the Court reaches a
different result: almost all of Goolsby's common-law
claims survive dismissal and must proceed to discovery.
I.
Background
A.
Factual History
On a
motion to dismiss, a plaintiff's factual allegations must
be taken as true, Lee v. District of Columbia, 733
F.Supp.2d 156, 159 (D.D.C. 2010), so the facts set forth here
are taken exclusively from Goolsby's
rendering.[1] The defendants no doubt dispute certain
aspects of his account.
On
October 12, 2015, Goolsby and two other young
African-American men walked into the vestibule of a Citibank
in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, D.C. to use
an ATM. Am. Compl. ¶¶ 12, 14. A Caucasian family of
three-a mother, father, and baby in a stroller- approached.
Id. ¶¶ 15-16. Goolsby held the door open
for the family to enter. Id. ¶ 17. He then
overheard the mother say she had left something in the car,
and the family left the bank without using the ATM.
Id. ¶ 18.
After
leaving, the woman called 911. Id. ¶ 20. She
reported to the dispatcher that she felt uneasy about Goolsby
and the other two young men standing in the vestibule.
Id. ¶¶ 20, 23, 51. The dispatcher then
“relayed false and/or misleading information” to
several District police officers, informing them that they
were responding to “an imminent or already attempted
robbery.” Id. ¶¶ 26-27, 29-34.
When
the responding officers arrived, they observed Goolsby and
his friends walking down the street near the bank.
Id. ¶¶ 37-38. They then “converged
on the teenagers as if they were apprehending a dangerous
felon.” Id. ¶ 40. One of the officers
drove his SUV directly toward Goolsby “at a very high
rate of speed” before exiting the car and yelling at
Goolsby to get down on the ground or he would pepper spray
him. Id. ¶¶ 41-42. Goolsby instead fled.
Id. ¶ 42. Following a “short pursuit,
” the officers caught Goolsby and “violently
slamm[ed] [him] to the ground, ” “twist[ed] [his]
arm to a gut-wrenching degree while [he] screamed in pain,
” and handcuffed him. Id. ¶¶ 44-45,
47.
While
Goolsby was handcuffed, the officers contacted the woman who
had placed the 911 call. Id. ¶ 48. The woman
informed the officers that there had been no robbery, but
that she had been alarmed by the young men's presence and
thought the police should investigate. Id.
¶¶ 50-51. After speaking to the woman, the officers
informed Goolsby that he had been detained because of the 911
call and released him. Id. ¶¶ 53-54.
Goolsby alleges that he suffered unspecified “severe
injuries to his face, left arm, neck, back, and thighs”
at the hands of the officers. Id. ¶ 57.
B.
Procedural History
Goolsby
subsequently brought suit against the District of Columbia as
well as the individual officers and dispatchers involved in
the incident. He alleged violations of his constitutional
rights under the Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments
pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, premised on claims of
illegal arrest or seizure, use of excessive force, and
deprivation of his due process rights. Id.
¶¶ 78-95. He also raised parallel D.C. law claims
for negligence, false imprisonment, assault and battery, and
intentional infliction of emotional distress against the
individual defendants as well as against the District of
Columbia under a respondeat superior theory of
liability. Id. ¶¶ 60-77, 96-104.
The
Defendants moved to dismiss the suit in its entirety. In an
earlier ruling, the Court dealt only with the
federal-constitutional claims, finding all of them-except for
a false arrest claim against the dispatchers-barred by
qualified immunity. Goolsby, 317 F.Supp.3d at 596.
Shortly thereafter, the parties stipulated to the dismissal
of that claim. Stipulation of Dismissal, ECF No. 45. At the
same time, the parties asked the Court to retain jurisdiction
over the D.C. common-law claims. Joint Motion Requesting that
the Court Retain Supplemental Jurisdiction, ECF No. 44. The
Court granted the motion, and after the parties informed the
Court that no further briefing on the common-law claims was
necessary, the matter is now ripe for the Court's
resolution.
II.
Legal Standard
The
District and all individual defendants have moved to dismiss
Goolsby's complaint under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure
12(b)(6). To withstand such a motion, “a complaint must
contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to
‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its
face.'” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662,
678 (2009) (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550
U.S. 544, 570 (2007)). When resolving a 12(b)(6) motion, the
Court must treat as true the factual allegations in the
complaint and draw all reasonable inferences in the
non-moving party's favor. See, e.g.,
Lee, 733 F.Supp.2d at 159. However, the Court need
not accept legal conclusions in the complaint. See,
e.g., id.
III.
Analysis
The
Court will address each common-law claim in the order it
appears in the complaint, splitting the analysis, where
appropriate, for the dispatchers and the responding police
officers.
A.
Count I: Negligence
“The
elements of a cause of action for negligence are [1] a duty
of care owed by the defendant to the plaintiff, [2] a breach
of that duty by the defendant, and [3] damage to the
interests of the plaintiff, [4] proximately caused by the
breach.” Taylor v. District of Columbia, 776
A.2d 1208, 1214 (D.C. 2001). Goolsby contends that the
dispatchers and the responding officers breached their duty
of care to him by conveying false or inaccurate information
from a citizen's 911 call, failing to investigate the
information provided in the dispatch in order to
“accurately assess and respond to a potential criminal
situation[, ]” stopping a citizen without reasonable
and articulable suspicion, and using excessive force in
detaining him. Id. at ¶¶ 61-63. The
dispatchers counter that Goolsby has failed to plead facts
that could establish the duty and causation elements. The
officers, for their part, argue that Goolsby's negligence
claim is improperly pled because his allegations in support
of the claim are coextensive with his allegations in support
of his intentional tort claims. The Court disagrees on both
fronts.
1.
Dispatchers
The
dispatchers submit that Gooslby's allegations, even if
taken as true, fail to establish the duty and causation
elements of a negligence claim.
Turning
first to duty, the critical question is whether the District
of Columbia's “public duty” doctrine-which
holds that law enforcement personnel “are not generally
liable to victims of criminal acts for failure to provide
adequate police protection”-applies to the facts in
this case. Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d
1, 4 (D.C. 1981). The District of Columbia Court of Appeals
has applied the public duty doctrine to a wide range of
emergency-services personnel. See Hines v. District of
Columbia, 580 A.2d 133 (D.C. 1990) (expanding the
doctrine to shield city ambulance drivers); Wanzer v.
District of Columbia, 580 A.2d 127, 129, 132 (D.C. 1990)
(holding that the doctrine barred a suit alleging death
resulting from delayed dispatch of an ambulance); Johnson
v. District of Columbia, 580 A.2d 140, 143 (D.C. 1990)
(reasoning that the facts pled “could not sustain
liability insofar as they merely represent the failure of the
firefighters to perform any particular step that might have
alleviated [the decedent's] condition”). When the
doctrine applies, liability is barred unless the plaintiff
can establish that he was in some special relationship with
the defendant. Turner v. District of Columbia, 532
A.2d 662, 667 (D.C. 1987); Hines, 580 A.2d at 138.
Crucially,
though, the public duty doctrine typically applies in cases
where a plaintiff complains about law enforcement's
failure to act. See Liser v. Smith, 254
F.Supp.2d 89, 102 (D.D.C. 2003) (collecting cases);
District of Columbia v. Evans, 644 A.2d 1008, 1017
n.8 (D.C. 1994) (explaining that the public duty doctrine
“deals with the question whether public officials have
a duty to protect individual members of the general public
against harm from third parties or other independent
sources”). Here, however, Goolsby complains that it was
the dispatchers' (and the responding officers')
affirmative misconduct-rather than their failure to
protect-that caused his injuries. He alleges that the
dispatchers “passed on false information to the MPD
Officers, ” Pl's Opp., ECF No. 25, at 15, an
affirmative act that he says caused the responding officers
to respond over-aggressively, id. at 16. Because ...