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Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 14‐3223

MARY ZAPPA and RANDALL HAHN,

Plaintiffs‐Appellants,

v.

CARLOS GONZALEZ, et al.,  

Defendants‐Appellees.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 13 C 6623 — Thomas M. Durkin, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED NOVEMBER 3, 2015 — DECIDED APRIL 18, 2016

____________________

Before WOOD, Chief Judge, EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge,

and BRUCE, District Judge.*

WOOD, Chief Judge. This case involves a consumer dispute

that blew up, unfortunately, into a federal case. Plaintiffs

Randall Hahn and Mary Zappa thought that they had pur‐

chased a certain motorcycle, but it turned out that they had

                                                 

* The Hon. Colin S. Bruce, of the Central District of Illinois, sitting by

designation.

Case: 14-3223 Document: 32 Filed: 04/18/2016 Pages: 8
2 No. 14‐3223

the wrong one. Conversations between them and the dealer‐

ship degenerated into accusations of theft, which led to the

involvement of the police. In the end, Hahn returned the mo‐

torcycle. Believing that their rights under the Fourth

Amendment and state law had been violated, however, he

and Zappa filed this lawsuit against the private entities in‐

volved, the municipality, and the police officer who was

swept up in this dispute. The district court dismissed the

federal claims and declined to exercise supplemental juris‐

diction over the state theories, and this appeal follows. We

affirm.

I

Matters began simply enough when, in early July 2013,

Hahn spotted an internet advertisement for a black FLTHTC

Harley‐Davidson motorcycle (“the 1997 motorcycle”), which

was available at City Limits Harley Davidson (formally

OAG Motorcycle Ventures, Inc.). City Limits is located in

Palatine, Illinois, northwest of Chicago. Interested, Hahn and

Zappa went on July 19 to the dealership and test‐drove a dif‐

ferent motorcycle (“the 2004 motorcycle”). They examined

the motorcycle they had tested and took a few pictures, and

then let City Limits know that they wanted to buy it. That

was where the confusion became serious: Hahn and Zappa

thought that they were buying the 2004 motorcycle, but the

bill of sale listed the VIN, the year, and the mileage for the

1997 motorcycle. There was a significant difference between

the two motorcycles: the newer model had roughly half the

mileage of the older one, and so presumably was worth

more than the advertised one. Hahn and Zappa paid $6,500

(exclusive of taxes and fees) for the motorcycle they thought

they were buying and made a down payment of $1,626.66;

Case: 14-3223 Document: 32 Filed: 04/18/2016 Pages: 8
No. 14‐3223 3

the remaining balance was $6,000. On July 22, they returned

to City Limits, paid the rest of the money, and drove the 2004

motorcycle home. At no time did they spot the fact that the

VIN and other identifying information on the paperwork

did not correspond to the motorcycle they were given.  

The next day, they tried to arrange insurance for their

new motorcycle. It was then that they discovered that the bill

of sale had the wrong VIN. A little bit of detective work re‐

vealed that their bill of sale described the 1997 motorcycle,

not the 2004 motorcycle. Hahn thought this was just a

scrivener’s error and called City Limits to ask it to provide

the correct information for the 2004 motorcycle. Initially he

was able only to leave a message; later, he spoke with Garri‐

son Bennett, City Limits’s sales manager. Bennett promised

to call him back. Hahn received not one, but six phone calls

from the dealership, and none was to his liking. In one, Ben‐

nett said that if Hahn and Zappa wanted to keep the 2004

motorcycle, they would need to pay an additional $1,000; in

another, City Limits upped the ante and said it would redo

the paperwork only for an additional $2,500. Hahn believed

that he owed nothing more and rejected anything along

these lines. Eventually, City Limits threatened a couple of

times to report to the police that Hahn had stolen the 2004

motorcycle. (Illinois law states that “[a] person commits theft

when he or she knowingly ... exerts unauthorized control

over property of the owner.” 720 ILCS 5/16‐1(a)(1). It thus

does not appear to matter whether the original taking was or

was not authorized.) Hahn said that he wanted to consult a

lawyer about the whole situation.

At 7:16 p.m. on July 24, Hahn received a call from Officer

Carlos Gonzalez of the Palatine Police Department. Gonzalez

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4 No. 14‐3223

told him that the police had a report that Hahn had stolen a

motorcycle and unless he returned it that night, Gonzales

would come to arrest Hahn and Zappa. Gonzalez was acting

on information he had received from City Limits; he had

been dispatched to the dealership and had been told that

Hahn had bought a 1997 black Harley, but had somehow

driven off in a 2004 model. The general manager told Gonza‐

lez that “he just wanted the motorcycle returned, and [that]

Randall could have the motorcycle he actually bought.”  

Hahn and Zappa argue that this account of Gonzalez’s

visit to City Limits shows that he knew that at worst this was

a civil matter that arose from a mistake—not a crime. Hahn

said as much to Gonzalez over the telephone, and he ac‐

cused City Limits of a bait‐and‐switch tactic. Gonzalez was

unmoved by this explanation and threatened to come to

Hahn and Zappa’s house and arrest Hahn for grand theft if

the motorcycle was not returned that night.  

More phone calls ensued, but eventually Hahn took ac‐

tion. He picked up the motorcycle from the place where he

was storing it and took it to the Lake Zurich, Illinois, Police

Department, which was near his home. He explained to the

police there that he did not want to take it to Palatine, be‐

cause he was afraid that he might be arrested there. The

Lake Zurich police took the motorcycle, called Officer Gon‐

zalez, and Gonzalez went to Lake Zurich with a City Limits

employee and retrieved it. According to the Lake Zurich po‐

lice, the motorcycle was never actually reported as stolen.

This left one item of unfinished business: the refund of Hahn

and Zappa’s $7,626.66. They represent in their brief to this

court that they have neither gotten that money back, nor has

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No. 14‐3223 5

City Limits offered to give them the 1997 Harley that it says

was the correct motorcycle.  

Hahn and Zappa lost little time in filing this lawsuit

against everyone who had played a role in their unpleasant

experience: OAG Motorcycle Ventures, Inc., d/b/a City Lim‐

its Harley Davidson; Jeffrey J. Smith, City Limits’s general

manager; Garrison Bennett, City Limits’s sales manager; Of‐

ficer Gonzalez, and the Village of Palatine. They alleged that

Officer Gonzalez violated their Fourteenth Amendment

rights by depriving them of their property without due pro‐

cess; they sought indemnification from the Village pursuant

to 745 ILCS 10/9‐102, and they alleged that the Harley de‐

fendants (City Limits, Smith, and Bennett) had violated the

Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices

Act, 815 ILCS 510/2. Federal‐question jurisdiction supported

the first count, and supplemental jurisdiction supported the

other two counts. See 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331, 1367. The district

court granted Officer Gonzalez’s motion to dismiss the claim

against him, and it declined to exercise supplemental juris‐

diction over the state claims.

II

In order to proceed against Officer Gonzalez (and the Vil‐

lage, for indemnification, though we need not repeat that),

Hahn and Zappa must show that they had a property inter‐

est in the motorcycle and that he did something wrong when

he contacted them and threatened to arrest Hahn if Hahn

did not return it to City Limits. We will assume for present

purposes that they did have a sufficient property interest in

the 2004 motorcycle in their possession to support a constitu‐

tional claim. We will also assume (though we are stretching

here) that an officer’s threat to arrest someone, conveyed

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6 No. 14‐3223

over the telephone, is enough to raise constitutional con‐

cerns. Even on this generous basis, the case can be resolved

readily. The dispositive question is whether Officer Gonzalez

had probable cause to believe that their possession of the

2004 motorcycle was unlawful.  

Probable cause does not require legal certainty, nor does

it demand that all the facts in the officer’s possession point in

only one direction. See, e.g., Fox v. Hayes, 600 F.3d 819, 833

(7th Cir. 2010). As the Supreme Court put it long ago,

“[probable] cause exists where the facts and circumstances

within [the officers’] knowledge and of which they had rea‐

sonably trustworthy information (are) sufficient in them‐

selves to warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief

that an offense has been or is being committed.” Brinegar v.

United States, 338 U.S. 160, 175–76 (1949) (internal quotation

marks omitted).  

With this in mind, we ask whether Officer Gonzalez had

reasonably trustworthy information that Hahn and Zappa

were in possession of a motorcycle that did not belong to

them and that they were refusing to return it to its rightful

owner, City Limits. Putting to one side the overreaction that

this incident seems to have sparked in everyone concerned,

we think that he did. Gonzales visited City Limits personal‐

ly, and there he learned that Hahn and Zappa had driven off

in the 2004 motorcycle, while the price they paid and all the

information on the paperwork revealed that this was not

their vehicle. Gonzalez had no duty to investigate defenses

that Hahn and Zappa might have. See Baker v. McCollan, 443

U.S. 137, 145–46 (1979). By the same token, the fact that the

situation seems to have escalated far too quickly into allega‐

tions of criminal misbehavior, rather than a civil dispute

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No. 14‐3223 7

over a mistaken delivery, does not undermine Officer Gon‐

zalez’s probable cause. Civil law and criminal law are not

hermetically sealed off from one another; the choice of one

or the other is a typical prosecutorial matter, and as long as

probable cause exists, the police do no wrong in taking in‐

vestigatory steps.

This case is a far cry from the situation the Supreme

Court faced in Soldal v. Cook County, Ill., 506 U.S. 56 (1992), in

which law enforcement officers helped a private mobile‐

home‐park owner forcibly detach a home from its spot and

tow it off. The deputy sheriffs knew that the park owner did

not have an eviction order and that its actions were unlaw‐

ful. Id. at 59. Under those circumstances, the Supreme Court

concluded that the seizure and removal of the family whose

home was carried away implicated their Fourth Amendment

rights. Following Soldal, we have said that in general the

Fourth Amendment governs property seizures when there is

“some meaningful interference with an individual’s posses‐

sory interests” in the property. Pepper v. Village of Oak Park,

430 F.3d 805, 809 (7th Cir. 2005). Here, no such interference

occurred. No one ever took the 2004 motorcycle from Hahn

and Zappa, and neither one of them was ever arrested. The

worst that happened was a threat of arrest, to which Hahn

responded by returning the motorcycle to the Lake Zurich

police.

There is no allegation in this case that Officer Gonzalez

violated any state law by making the telephone calls he did,

or by facilitating the return of the 2004 Harley to City Limits.

And even if there were such an allegation, it is well estab‐

lished that the federal constitution is not automatically vio‐

lated every time the police fail to follow state or local rules.  

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8 No. 14‐3223

Hahn and Zappa did include state‐law claims in their

complaints, but only against the private actors. These claims

fell only under the district court’s supplemental jurisdiction.

Once the court concluded that the federal claims against

Gonzalez and the related indemnification claim against the

Village had to be dismissed, it decided to relinquish jurisdic‐

tion over the state claims. It did not abuse its discretion in

doing so. Should Hahn and Zappa choose to pursue those

claims in Illinois’s courts, they will be free as well to ask

those courts for whatever restitution or money damages they

may be owed for the returned motorcycle.  

The present case, however, was correctly dismissed, and

so we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.  

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