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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. 14-1269

DZEVAD HUREM,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

NICKOLAS TAVARES, JOHN DINEEN, LILLIAN BEDIA, CAROL 

FONTANETTA, and HECTOR DAVILA,

Defendants-Appellees.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 11 C 1418—Virginia M. Kendall, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED JANUARY 7, 2015 — DECIDED JULY 14, 2015

____________________

Before WOOD, Chief Judge, and POSNER and EASTERBROOK,

Circuit Judges.

WOOD, Chief Judge. In October 2010 Nasreen Quadri 

bought an apartment in the West Ridge area of Chicago. At 

some point thereafter, she learned that the police had investigated a disturbance there, and so in January 2011 she visited the apartment with her real estate agent and a locksmith. 

Quadri’s agent called 911 after the group found Dzevad

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Hurem in the unit. Hurem told an arriving police officer he 

had paid rent to Quadri’s husband Moshim and obtained 

keys from him, but he failed to obtain a receipt, lease, or any 

other paperwork about his residence there. He refused to 

leave. Two days later, Quadri again found Hurem in the 

apartment, and her agent again called 911. Hurem still could 

not produce anything proving he had a right to be there, 

save for the keys and a piece of paper with Moshim’s phone 

number written on it. Hurem again refused to leave. This 

time the officers arrested him, but ultimately he was not 

charged with any crime. Hurem sued the Quadris, the arresting officers, and the City of Chicago in state court for 

wrongful eviction and various civil rights violations. After 

removal, and after the Quadris and the City were dismissed 

as defendants, the district court granted partial summary 

judgment in favor of all but one remaining officer defendant 

and Hurem dropped his case against the last one. Hurem 

appeals, and we affirm.

I

Nasreen Quadri purchased apartment 3F at 6126 North 

Damen Avenue in Chicago in a foreclosure sale held in October 2010. As we have noted, the events underlying this 

case began on January 5, 2011, when Quadri and her property agent, Daniel Ju, visited the apartment along with a locksmith to investigate a report of a disturbance. They found 

Hurem inside; the police came in response to a 911 call; and 

Hurem told them that he was there legitimately. He said that 

the previous tenant had given him the keys before the foreclosure, and that he had paid rent to Moshim. The parties 

dispute the reason Hurem was not arrested at that time.

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No. 14-1269 3

Two days later, Moshim and Nasreen Quadri returned to 

the Damen Avenue apartment, again with the real estate 

agent and locksmith in tow. Hurem was still there, and so 

Quadri’s agent called 911. Chicago police officers responded 

to the call. Nasreen showed them paperwork confirming that 

she owned the apartment and told them that she and Moshim did not know Hurem. The officers asked Hurem for 

documentation of his right to be in the apartment, and he 

handed them a piece of paper with Moshim’s phone number 

on it. He also told the new officers that he had paid rent to 

Moshim, but Moshim denied this. Beyond that, Hurem did 

not produce any proof that he had paid Moshim anything. 

Before the officers arrested Hurem, they gave him the option 

of leaving the apartment on his own. He refused to do so, 

and so they arrested him on the spot, without a warrant. 

Hurem later experienced chest pain at the police station and 

was taken to a nearby hospital. In the end, Hurem never 

faced charges in connection with the Quadris’ apartment. 

Invoking 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Hurem sued the Quadris 

along with the city and the five Chicago police officers who 

responded to the 911 call on January 7. His operative complaint at the time of summary judgment asserted claims of 

deprivation of property, deprivation of liberty (that is, the 

alleged false arrest), and excessive force. Before the summary judgment motion was filed, Hurem amended his complaint to omit the city as a defendant and settled with the 

Quadris. This left the five officers as defendants. The district 

court granted partial summary judgment to four of the officer defendants on most of Hurem’s claims, leaving only the 

excessive force claim against Bedia for disposition. That part 

of the case was transferred to a magistrate judge after the 

parties consented to his jurisdiction. 28 U.S.C. § 636(c).

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About seven months later, Hurem voluntarily dismissed his 

remaining claim against defendant Bedia and the court terminated the case. Hurem has appealed from that final judgment. See 28 U.S.C. § 1291.

II

We begin, as Hurem does, with his claim of false arrest. 

He contends that the officers who arrested him lacked probable cause to do so. See Gibbs v. Lomas, 755 F.3d 529, 537 (7th 

Cir. 2014). He must prevail on that point in order to move 

forward, because “the presence of probable cause makes a 

warrantless arrest reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.” Id. The existence of probable cause is therefore an absolute defense to a § 1983 claim for false arrest. As we often 

have observed, “[p]robable cause to make an arrest exists 

when a reasonable person confronted with the sum total of 

the facts known to the officer at the time of the arrest would 

conclude that the person arrested has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime.” Venson v. Altamirano, 

749 F.3d 641, 649 (7th Cir. 2014). The defendants contend 

they had probable cause to arrest Hurem for criminal trespass to real property. See 720 ILCS 5/21-3(a)(1) (crime occurs 

when a person “knowingly and without lawful authority enters or remains within or on a building”).

Hurem offers two reasons to reject that conclusion. The 

first is based on his understanding of the facts relating to his 

January 7 arrest along with events before that day, including

Nasreen’s first visit to the apartment on January 5. Hurem 

says, for example, that he had been living in the apartment 

for at least a month pursuant to a verbal agreement with the 

Quadris, and that on January 5 Moshim admitted that 

Hurem had paid him rent. (The defendants dispute both of 

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No. 14-1269 5

these assertions.) The difficulty with Hurem’s reliance on 

these earlier events, assuming they occurred, is that there is 

no indication in the record that the arresting officers knew 

about them. Our evaluation of probable cause requires us to 

consider the arresting officers’ knowledge at the time of the 

arrest. We cannot impute Hurem’s own knowledge of past 

events to the officers who arrested him. Hurem refers to the 

presence of a Sergeant Willoughby at the January 5 incident, 

implying that Willoughby knew of Hurem’s verbal rent 

agreement with Moshim, but there is no indication that 

Willoughby spoke to any of the officers who are defendants 

in this case before they responded to the 911 call on January 

7. In fact, the January 7 team heard Moshim deny that such 

an arrangement existed, while everyone was at the apartment. Moreover, although the defendants acknowledge that 

one officer (Davila) who came to the apartment on January 7

also responded on January 5, Davila testified that he arrived 

on January 5 as Willoughby was leaving and never learned

what occurred in the apartment that day. 

The situation before the officers who responded on January 7 provided sufficient information for them reasonably to 

believe that Hurem had committed criminal trespass. They 

were confronted with conflicting stories—one from Hurem

that he legitimately lived in the apartment and paid rent, the 

other from the Quadris to the contrary. Nothing prevented 

them from deciding to believe the Quadris. Officers may rely 

upon information that a reasonably credible putative witness 

or victim provides in deciding to make an arrest, even if the 

suspect says otherwise. See Williamson v. Curran, 714 F.3d 

432, 441 (7th Cir. 2013) (collecting cases). Although Hurem 

had a piece of paper with Moshim’s phone number on it, 

that is the sole document he presented to show that he was 

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legally renting the apartment. He had no lease, no mail in his 

name showing the address of the apartment, and no person 

who could confirm his account. Even had there been mail, all 

that would have shown would be longer-term occupancy; it 

would have said little about whether that occupancy was authorized. The fact that he had keys to the apartment and 

claimed that the furniture was his did not automatically disqualify him as an unauthorized squatter. The Quadris, on 

the other hand, came to the apartment with a property agent

and a locksmith and presented the officers with proof that 

they owned the apartment. They told the officers they had 

not rented it to Hurem.

Although it is certainly possible to envision a landlordtenant relationship that is paper-free—indeed, we do not 

doubt that such relationships exist—the mere possibility of 

such an arrangement was not sufficient to defeat the existence of probable cause. Hurem’s dearth of evidence that he 

had actually rented the apartment certainly did not help 

him. On the facts as they stood, the police reasonably found 

probable cause for the arrest.

Hurem’s second argument about probable cause is a legal 

one: he contends that the defendants’ failure to adhere to Illinois’s Forcible Entry and Detainer Act in arresting him

transformed his arrest into an unreasonable seizure as a matter of law. See 735 ILCS 5/9-101 et seq. This law prohibits anyone from entering property by force and provides a cause 

of action to those who are “entitled to the possession of 

lands or tenements” against those without such entitlement 

who occupy the owner’s property. 735 ILCS 5/9-102(a)(2); see 

also In re Williams, 144 F.3d 544, 547–48 (7th Cir. 1998) (describing operation of the statute). Hurem contends that the 

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officers lacked probable cause to arrest him because “Illinois 

law did not allow police to evict and arrest an occupant for 

trespass as the Forcible Entry & Detainer Act was the sole 

means of evicting a person from his residence.” Yet Hurem

fails to connect the dots between the defendants’ supposed 

violation of that statute and probable cause analysis.

We begin with a point that could, on its own, dispose of 

this argument: “state restrictions do not alter the Fourth 

Amendment’s protections.” Virginia v. Moore, 553 U.S. 164, 

176 (2008); see also Jackson v. Parker, 627 F.3d 634, 640 (7th 

Cir. 2010) (“[S]tate law does not control the reasonableness 

inquiry under the Fourth Amendment.”). A state may 

“choose[] to protect privacy beyond the level that the Fourth 

Amendment requires,” but the Fourth Amendment requires 

only that an arrest be based upon probable cause, which

“serves interests that have long been seen as sufficient to justify the seizure.” Moore, 553 U.S. at 171, 173. The remedy for 

a violation of such a state law is in state court. We recognized in Gordon v. Degelmann, 29 F.3d 295, 301 (7th Cir. 1994), 

that Illinois’s forcible entry statute imposes a prior procedural requirement before a person can be removed from a particular property: there must be a judicial hearing to determine a person’s entitlement to remain. We observed that this 

procedure went beyond what the Fourth Amendment requires and concluded that a police officer’s failure to afford 

the plaintiff the hearing mandated by state law “does not 

matter—not, at least, to a claim under the fourth amendment 

and § 1983,” given the plaintiff’s violation of Illinois’s criminal trespass law. Id.

So it is in Hurem’s case, and we decline his invitation to 

overrule Gordon. It may be that, as in People v. Evans, 

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516 N.E.2d 817 (Ill. App. Ct. 1987), the Quadris should have 

sought a remedy under Illinois’s forcible entry law rather 

than call 911 after confronting Hurem at the apartment. But 

that does not mean that the police violated the Fourth 

Amendment in arresting Hurem. They had probable cause 

to arrest Hurem for violation of Illinois’s criminal trespass 

statute, which as in Gordon “forbids exactly the conduct in 

which [Hurem] appeared (to [the defendants]) to be engaged.” Gordon, 29 F.3d at 301. Hurem points to Soldal v. Cook 

Cnty., 506 U.S. 56 (1992), as a reason for us to depart from 

this conclusion. We were already familiar with Soldal when 

we decided Gordon, where we noted that the question in 

Soldal “was whether taking away a mobile home is a ‘seizure’

under the fourth amendment.” Gordon, 29 F.3d at 301; see 

also Soldal, 506 U.S. at 60 (issue was “whether the seizure 

and removal of the Soldals’ trailer home implicated their 

Fourth Amendment rights”). No one disputes that Hurem 

was seized. In Soldal, the Supreme Court did not reach the 

question whether the removal of the mobile home was unreasonable and thus in violation of the Fourth Amendment, 

as is the issue here. So it is not the case, as Hurem argues, 

that Soldal controls our decision.

Hurem finally argues that the defendants are not entitled 

to qualified immunity against his claims. As in Gordon, because we conclude that the defendants did not violate the 

Fourth Amendment, we need not discuss whether they have 

immunity from suit.

III

Hurem also argues that the defendants violated his Fifth 

Amendment right to due process by seizing his property 

without notice or an opportunity for a hearing. He interminCase: 14-1269 Document: 56 Filed: 07/14/2015 Pages: 9
No. 14-1269 9

gles this issue with allusions to seizure of property (by 

which Hurem means his eviction from the apartment, not 

any kind of seizure of his furniture, for example) under the 

Fourth Amendment. This argument requires little comment 

because Hurem waived it. Not even a generous reading of 

the record reveals that Hurem adequately presented a constitutional due process claim related to his property in the 

district court. In his complaint, Hurem argued that he had 

been deprived of property, but only as a matter of state and 

municipal law, not under the federal constitution. At summary judgment, Hurem did not oppose the officers’ motion 

on due process grounds; he presented only his excessive 

force and false arrest claims. We thus cannot consider these

arguments on appeal. Frey Corp. v. City of Peoria, 735 F.3d 

505, 509 (7th Cir. 2013). Nonetheless, we note that in arresting Hurem, the officers did not seize Hurem’s property; they 

seized only Hurem himself. Thus he may have found it difficult to prevail on such a claim.

IV

Hurem’s dispute with the Quadris was unfortunate, but 

the events surrounding it did not give rise to a constitutional 

violation. He has not shown that the defendants lacked 

probable cause to arrest him, a necessary predicate for his 

false arrest claim, and he has waived any due process claim. 

We therefore AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.

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