The district court thought that the
Wideman case clearly established that Duncan's actions in this case violated Hamilton's constitutional rights. The district court drew from
Wideman the general proposition that a constitutional duty can arise when a state or municipality exercises a significant degree of custody or control over an individual and places that individual in a worse situation than if the government had not acted at all.
The
Wideman Court said that such a situation could arise if the government affirmatively placed an individual in a position of danger or cut off potential sources of private aid; but the
Wideman opinion itself characterized those statements as only “general guidelines.”
826 F.2d at 1035. Moreover, the general propositions discussed in
Wideman had little to do with the facts of that case, which in turn are not sufficiently similar to the facts of this case.
See Rodgers v. Horsley, 39 F.3d 308, 311 (11th Cir.1994) (“the question in this case, as in all qualified immunity cases, is fact specific”);
Adams v. St. Lucie County Sheriff's Dep't., 962 F.2d 1563, 1575 (11th Cir.1992) (Edmondson, J., dissenting) (“The facts need not be the same as the facts of the immediate case. But they do need to be materially similar.”),
approved en banc, 998 F.2d 923 (11th Cir.1993). In short, the district court relied upon dicta from
Wideman as having clearly established the law, something that dicta cannot do.