ST. LOUIS – An Eastern District of Missouri judge has dismissed a case against a local municipality brought on by a senior living home.
Judge Henry Edward Autrey dismissed The Grove Assisted Living LLC’s claims against the city of Frontenac for failure to properly state a claim upon which relief could be granted, according to a June 22 order.
Beginning the 22-page order, Autrey details the plaintiff’s prior attempts to file suit against the defendant to no avail and how it has returned with an amended petition including federal venue statues, zoning districts and capricious conduct among other amendments in its charge that the city of Frontenac rejected a builder’s plan that included its assisted living complex.
Citing Young v. City of St. Charles, Autrey detailed from the onset that the motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim as seen in Rule 12(b)(6) is "to test the legal sufficiency of a complaint so as to eliminate those actions ‘which are fatally flawed in their legal premises and deigned to fail, thereby sparing litigants the burden of unnecessary pretrial and trial activity,’” according to the order.
Autrey detailed all instances where the plaintiff failed to state a claim under the state constitution and the Fifth and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The judge also noted the plaintiff failed to state a claim for violating incorporated rights and or the substantive due process clause.
Detailing the assisted living’s applications to the zoning board and rejection by the city, which included allegations of delaying rezoning applications and rezoning property unlawfully, the judge ruled there was no foul play as alleged in 2015 or 2016.
“There was a rational basis, as stated in the meeting minutes, for the denials of plaintiff’s first and third applications to rezone the subject property (plaintiff did not pursue the second application to a vote after the moratorium was lifted),” Autrey wrote in the order.
Furthermore, the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals earlier "found there were no allegations of corruption or self-dealing on the part of the township when addressing the redevelopment of seven lots of land, and found the district court did not abuse its discretion in dismissing plaintiff’s substantive due process claim,” in a different case, he wrote.
The same denial posed in the past still holds true in the present, according to the judge, who cited Lochner v. New York to prove his point.
“Plaintiff’s new allegations in the amended petition regarding a delay intended to interfere with contractual rights should be dismissed for the same reasons,” Autrey wrote.
Concluding his opinion, the judge detailed how the defendant board members are in fact entitled to qualify for immunity in the charges of capricious conduct brought against them.
“Individual defendants are entitled to qualified immunity unless their alleged conduct violated ‘clearly established [federal] statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known,’” Autrey, wrote, citing Harlow v. Fitzgerald.
Furthermore, “qualified immunity allows public officials ‘to make reasonable errors so they do not always ‘err on the side of caution’ for fear of being sued,” Autrey wrote.