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

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*

After examining the briefs and record, we have concluded that oral argument is

unnecessary.  Thus, the appeal is submitted on the briefs and record.  See FED. R. APP. P.

34(a)(2).

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Submitted January 21, 2010*

Decided February 26, 2010

Before

JOHN L. COFFEY, Circuit Judge

JOEL M. FLAUM, Circuit Judge

MICHAEL S. KANNE, Circuit Judge

No. 09‐2508

HILLARD JAY QUINT,

Plaintiff‐Appellant,

v.

VILLAGE OF DEERFIELD, et al.,

Defendants‐Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District

Court for the Northern District of Illinois,

Eastern Division.

No. 07 C 5413

George W. Lindberg,

Judge.

O R D E R

Hillard Quint has sued the Village of Deerfield, Illinois, and two of its police officers

individually.  As relevant here, he claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 that the officers violated

his constitutional rights at the time of his arrest as they entered and searched his home

without consent or without a warrant, and seized personal property from the residence;

these actions, Quint maintains, were the policy of the Deerfield Police Department.  Quint’s

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with

 Fed. R. App. P. 32.1

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No. 09‐2508 Page 2

amended complaint, filed by counsel, also includes state‐law claims for defamation,

intentional infliction of emotional distress, and civil conspiracy.  The district court

dismissed Quint’s illegal search claim on the basis of a qualified‐immunity defense raised

by the individual defendants and the court dismissed all other federal claims for failure to

state a claim.  See FED. R. CIV. P. 12(b)(6).  The court also concluded that all of the state‐law

claims, other than the defamation claim, were time‐barred, but as to that claim the court

declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction because all claims based in federal law had

been dismissed.  See 28 U.S.C. § 1367(c)(3); Schor v. City of Chicago, 576 F.3d 775, 779 (7th Cir.

2009).  Quint appeals.  We affirm in part and vacate and remand in part.

Because the district court dismissed Quint’s complaint at the pleading stage, we

accept the facts in the complaint as true and construe them in the light most favorable to

Quint.  See Tamayo v. Blagojevich, 526 F.3d 1074, 1081 (7th Cir. 2008); Christensen v. County of

Boone, 483 F.3d 454, 457 (7th Cir. 2007).  In February 2007 the individual defendants, both

detectives from the Village of Deerfield, arrested Quint on the street outside his apartment

in Chicago, Illinois.  The detectives, Juan Mazariegos and Vince Nichols, informed Quint

they were acting on an arrest warrant issued in Georgia three years earlier for writing a bad

check.  They told Quint they were going to hold him until Chicago police arrived to take

him into custody.  While they were waiting, the detectives frisked Quint and searched his

car.  They did not find any contraband, but in a pants pocket they did find his house keys,

which they then used to enter and search his apartment without consent or a warrant.  The

items seized by Mazariegos and Nichols included financial documents, tax records, a

computer, and photographs; Quint was never charged with a crime in the detectives’

jurisdiction, and the items taken from his home were never used in any prosecution.

Instead, the detectives turned some of the items they confiscated over to various media

sources, as well as accusations that Quint was responsible for swindling multiple women

out of millions of dollars.  Mazariegos went a step further; he used a seized picture of Quint

to make fliers calling Quint a “fraud.”  The police department has never returned the

illegally seized property to Quint nor inventoried the confiscated property.

Based on these events, Quint sued the Village of Deerfield and the two detectives

individually.  In his claim against Mazariegos and Nichols, Quint alleged that they violated

his rights under the Fourth Amendment by arresting him, entering and searching his home,

and seizing his property.  The district court dismissed this claim, reasoning that the validly

issued arrest warrant provided undisputed probable cause to justify the arrest, and that the

detectives were entitled to qualified immunity for the search of the house.  The district court

dismissed Quint’s claim dealing with the seizure of his personal property on the

assumption that Quint was required to plead, but did not refer to any allegations regarding

the inadequacy of state remedies.  As for his claim against the municipality, Quint alleged

that the Village of Deerfield had violated his constitutional rights by maintaining a policy

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that condoned (among other things) harassment, defamation, and improper and illegal

arrests and seizures.  The district court rejected this claim on the grounds that Quint’s

allegations were vague and failed to challenge a municipal policy implemented by an

individual with policy‐making authority.  In addition to these federal claims, Quint asserted

supplemental state‐law claims for defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress,

and civil conspiracy.  The court concluded that only the defamation claim was timely, but

with only that claim remaining declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction.

Our review of a dismissal under Rule 12(b)(6) is de novo.  See, e.g., Christensen, 483

F.3d at 458.  A complaint is sufficient if it includes enough factual content to “‘state a claim

to relief that is plausible on its face.’” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 129 S. Ct. 1937, 1949 (2009) (quoting

Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007)).  That standard is met when the factual

content allows a court “to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the

misconduct alleged.”  Id.; Rodriguez v. Plymouth Ambulance Serv., 577 F.3d 816, 821 (7th Cir.

2009).

We start with the one claim that the individual (police) defendants have, from the

beginning, effectively conceded is sufficient to satisfy Rule 12(b)(6): that Mazariegos and

Nichols entered Quint’s home without consent or a warrant and confiscated several items of

his personal property.  The two detectives have never disputed that, if Quint’s allegations

are true, they violated the Fourth Amendment; the detectives instead maintain that they are

shielded from liability by the affirmative defense of qualified immunity.  Mazariegos and

Nichols contend, as they did in the district court, that reasonable police officers could have

believed that the discovery of house keys during a search incident to arrest authorized a

warrantless, nonconsensual entry and search of the home unlocked by those keys.  This

contention is without merit, and the district court erred in accepting it as a basis for

dismissal.

The defendants tell us that they believed “it was within their discretion” to search

Quint’s home “based on the Georgia warrant and the nature of the underlying crime (bad

checks).”  They stop short of asserting that they had probable cause to search the house, but if

they did it would not matter.  An arrest warrant is not a warrant to search for evidence, and

even if Quint had been seized in his apartment, the arrest warrant would not have

authorized a search beyond a “cursory visual inspection of those places in which a person

might be hiding.”  Maryland v. Buie, 494 U.S. 325, 327 (1990); Peals v. Terre Haute Police Depʹt,

535 F.3d 621, 627‐28 (7th Cir. 2008); Cuevas v. De Roco, 531 F.3d 726, 735 (9th Cir. 2008);

El Bey v. Roop, 530 F.3d 407, 419‐420 (6th Cir. 2008).  More to the point, although an arrest

warrant allows entry into the suspect’s home to effect the arrest, Payton v. New York, 445 U.S.

573, 603 (1980), Quint alleges that he was in custody and removed from the scene before the

detectives entered his home, so the arrest warrant cannot help the detectives.

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“Qualified immunity is applicable unless the officialʹs conduct violated a clearly

established constitutional right,” Pearson v. Callahan, 129 S. Ct. 808, 816 (2009); see Gonzalez v.

City of Elgin, 578 F.3d 526, 541 (7th Cir. 2009), and here the detectives’ conduct was “so

egregious that no reasonable person could have believed that it would not violate clearly

established rights,” Smith v. City of Chicago, 242 F.3d 737, 742 (7th Cir. 2001).  It has long

been established that warrantless entries and searches of a residence are “presumptively

unreasonable” under the Fourth Amendment.  See, e.g., Groh v. Ramirez, 540 U.S. 551, 559

(2004); Payton, 445 U.S. at 586; Green v. Butler, 420 F.3d 689, 694 n.4 (7th Cir. 2005).  Of

course, various exceptions to this rule are also clearly established.  Warrantless entries are

permitted to prevent the imminent destruction of evidence, see, e.g., Brigham City v. Stuart,

547 U.S. 398, 403 (2006); United States v. Bell, 500 F.3d 609, 612 (7th Cir. 2007), but even then

the police may do no more than conduct a protective sweep and then secure the premise

until a search warrant can be obtained, Segura v. United States, 468 U.S. 796, 810 (1984);

United States v. Alexander, 573 F.3d 465, 476 (7th Cir. 2009).  Nothing in Quint’s complaint

remotely hints at the possibility of exigent circumstances, and the defendants have not

suggested any.  They arrested Quint on the street outside his apartment on a three‐year‐old

fugitive warrant, and by the time of the entry and search, he was in custody and had been

removed from the scene.  There was no risk to the detectives’ safety, no obligation to protect

the public safety, and no need to prevent the destruction of evidence because no one was in

the house at the time of the arrest.  “[A]n arrest on the street does not create an exigent

circumstance which allows the police to conduct a warrantless search of the arrestee’s

house,” United States v. Marshall, 157 F.3d 477, 483 (7th Cir. 1998), and that rule of law is not

weakened by the discovery of Quint’s house keys.  Under these circumstances, a reasonable

officer—having already arrested Quint and removed him from the area—would have

known that a search warrant was needed to enter and scour his home for evidence.  The

facts may not be as Quint alleges, but if they are, the officers have no entitlement to the

shield of qualified immunity.

We also disagree with the treatment of Quint’s claim regarding the taking of his

property.  Quint’s appellate brief makes clear that he is concerned with the seizure of his

property that occurred immediately following his arrest.   The district court analyzed this

claim under the rubric of due process, but unreasonable seizures of personal property

violate the Fourth Amendment.  See United States v. Place, 462 U.S. 696, 701 (1983); United

States v. James, 571 F.3d 707, 713 (7th Cir. 2009).  Accordingly, Quint’s seizure claim must be

remanded as well.

Because we are reinstating Quint’s constitutional claims against the two detectives

arising from the warrantless entry, search, and seizure, our remand encompasses his

state‐law defamation claim as well.  See, e.g., Hall v. Bennett, 379 F.3d 462, 464, 466 (7th Cir.

2004). However, Quint’s § 1983 claim for unlawful arrest, his § 1983 claims of municipal

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liability against the Village of Deerfield, and his state law claims were properly dismissed.

To pursue a claim that his arrest violated the Fourth Amendment, Quint would need to

establish that it was not supported by probable cause. See Gonzalez, 578 F.3d at 537.  But he

does not dispute that Georgia authorities had issued a valid warrant for his arrest, and that

document supplied probable cause to justify the arrest. See, e.g., United States v. Sims, 553

F.3d 580, 582 (7th Cir. 2009); United States v. Martin, 399 F.3d 879, 881 (7th Cir. 2005).

Instead, Quint asserts that the arrest was conducted in a manner that violated Illinois law,

but that contention is irrelevant because state law does not define the scope of federal

constitutional requirements.  See Virginia v. Moore, 128 S. Ct. 1598, 1604 (2008); Sims, 553 F.3d

at 585.  As for Quint’s municipal‐liability theory under § 1983, the complaint is no more

than a “formulaic recitation of the elements,” which is insufficient to satisfy Federal Rule of

Civil Procedure 8(a). See Twombly, 550 U.S. at 545.  The complaint sets forth no factual

content, and this complete lack of detail is fatal to that claim.  See, e.g., Justice v. Town of

Cicero, 577 F.3d 768, 773 (7th Cir. 2009) (“failure to allege any policy or practice causing the

allegedly illegal search is fatal to [the] claim”); McTernan v. City of York, 564 F.3d 636, 659

(3d Cir. 2009).   And, finally, as to the claims for intentional infliction of emotional distress

and civil conspiracy, Quint does not challenge the district court’s conclusion that they were

time‐barred, and this failure dooms these claims.

The dismissal of Quint’s claims regarding the lawfulness of his arrest, municipal

liability, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and civil conspiracy are AFFIRMED.  In

all other respects, the judgment of the district court is VACATED, and the case is

REMANDED to the district court for further proceedings.

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