Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-azd-3_15-cv-08103/USCOURTS-azd-3_15-cv-08103-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Gunnar Hancock
Defendant
Curtis Plumb
Defendant
Dave Willett
Plaintiff

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1

The plaintiff left off two exhibits to his motion when it was filed. Instead

of filing a notice of errata, the plaintiff re-filed the motion to dismiss with the inclusion

of the two exhibits (Doc. 8). The docket lists the original motion (Doc. 7) as the

pending motion, so the Court refers to it by that docket number.

WO

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF ARIZONA

Dave Willett,

 Plaintiff,

vs.

Arizona Department of Safety Officer

Curtis Plumb, #PS5899, et al.,

 Defendants.

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No. CV-15-08103-PCT-PGR 

 ORDER

 

 

Pending before the Court is defendants’ Motion to Dismiss (Doc.7)1

, wherein

the defendants seek the dismissal of the federal claims against them on the basis

of qualified immunity and the state law claim against them on the basis that the

plaintiff failed to file the required notice of claim. Having reviewed the parties’

memoranda, the Court finds that the motion should be granted.

Background

According to the complaint, the plaintiff was driving a rental car on business

on I-40 in Arizona on July 27, 2014 when he was pulled over for speeding by

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2

The Court notes that Counts One and Two appear in effect to be the

same claim. It also notes, as to Count Two, that the plaintiff cannot bring a claim

directly under the Constitution since all federal claims alleging a violation of a

constitutional right must be brought pursuant to § 1983. Azul-Pacifico, Inc. v. City

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defendant Curtis Plumb, an Arizona Department of Public Safety officer. Plumb,

after informing the plaintiff that many drug smugglers drive rental cars, asked the

plaintiff for consent to search his car, which the plaintiff denied. Plumb then forced

the plaintiff to get out of the car and remain at the scene while waiting for a drug

sniffing dog to arrive. The canine unit took seventeen minutes to arrive. The dog

circled the car twice before alerting on something. Plumb and co-defendant Gunnar

Hancock, another Arizona Department of Public Safety officer, then searched the

plaintiff’s car and found nothing illegal in it. Only then did Plumb and Hancock allow

the plaintiff to leave the scene of the traffic stop. Although it is not absolutely clear

from the complaint, the plaintiff was apparently issued a citation for speeding,

presumably by Plumb, but no facts are alleged in the complaint establishing at what

point during the plaintiff’s detention the citation was issued, or what Plumb was doing

during the wait for the arrival of the dog, or how long the entire stop took. While the

complaint also fails to allege when Hancock appeared at the scene of the traffic stop,

the Court presumes for purposes of the motion to dismiss that he was the officer

who brought the drug dog to the scene.

The complaint alleges three claims against both defendants: a federal claim

pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for violating the plaintiff’s civil rights under color of

state law and subjecting him to unreasonable searches and seizures (Count One);

a federal claim alleging a violation of the plaintiff’s right under the Fourth and

Fourteenth Amendments to be free from searches and seizures without a warrant

(Count Two); and a state law claim for false imprisonment (Count Three).2

 The

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of Los Angeles, 973 F.2d 704, 705 (9th Cir.1992) (“Plaintiff has no cause of action

under the United States Constitution. We have previously held that a litigant

complaining of a violation of a constitutional right must utilize 42 U.S.C. § 1983.”)

3

For this reason, the Court has not considered the two declarations from

the defendants regarding the non-service of a notice of claim that were attached as

exhibits to the motion to dismiss.

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complaint seeks general and punitive damages for the plaintiff’s mental injury,

mental anguish and emotional losses.

Discussion

A. Count Three

The defendants have moved to dismiss Count Three, the state law false

imprisonment claim, on the ground that the plaintiff failed to comply with the notice

of claim requirement of A.R.S. § 12-821.01(A). See Salerno v. Espinoza, 115 P.3d

626, 628 (Ariz.App.2005) (“Compliance with the notice provision of § 12-821.01(A)

is a ‘mandatory’ and ‘essential’ prerequisite to such an action, . . . and a plaintiff’s

failure to comply ‘bars any claim.’”) (emphasis in original). The Court concludes that

Count Three must be dismissed because the complaint fails to allege that the

plaintiff filed and served a notice of claim as to either defendant, and because the

plaintiff is deemed to have consented to the dismissal of this claim inasmuch as his

response to the motion to dismiss totally ignores this issue.3

B. Counts One and Two

The defendants have moved to dismiss Counts One and Two, the federal

claims, on the ground that both defendants are entitled to qualified immunity. Public

officials, such as the defendants, who are sued pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 are

entitled to qualified immunity unless it is shown that they have “violated a statutory

or constitutional right that was clearly established at the time of the challenged

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conduct.” Reichle v. Howards, __ U.S. __, 132 S.Ct. 2088, 2094 (2012). The purpose

of qualified immunity is to give “government officials breathing room to make

reasonable but mistaken judgments about open legal questions. When properly

applied, it protects all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violated the

law.” Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, __ U.S. __, 131 S.Ct. 2074, 2085 (2011). A two-part test

is used to determine whether a public official is entitled to qualified immunity: first, do

the facts alleged by the plaintiff show a violation of a constitutional right, and second,

was the right clearly established at the time of the alleged misconduct. Carillo v.

County of Los Angeles, 798 F.3d 1210, 1218 (9th Cir.2015). 

1. Violation of a constitutional right

The first prong of the qualified immunity test is met if the facts alleged in the

complaint, taken in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, show that the official’s

conduct violated a constitutional right. Brosseau v. Haugen, 543 U.S. 194, 197

(2004). The Court concludes that the plaintiff has sufficiently met this first prong as

to Plumb, albeit fairly marginally so given the relatively spare factual allegations in the

complaint, and the defendants do not appear to seriously argue otherwise. While the

defendants argue that the complaint’s allegations that the continued detention of the

plaintiff while waiting for the drug dog to arrive violated internal regulations of the

Arizona Department of Public Safety are irrelevant to the qualified immunity analysis,

the relevant issue is whether the plaintiff has sufficiently pleaded that his continued

detention to facilitate a dog sniff violated the Fourth Amendment, and the Court

believes that he has as to Plumb. See Rodriguez v. United States, __ U.S. __, 135

S.Ct 1609 (2015) (Court held that prolonging a police stop exceeding the time

needed to handle the matter for which the traffic stop was made in order to conduct

a dog sniff violates the Constitution’s shield against unreasonable seizures unless the

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additional time is supported by independent reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing.)

The Court cannot reach the same conclusion as to Hancock because the

plaintiff’s response in effect focuses solely on his argument that Plumb is not entitled

to qualified immunity; Hancock is never so much as mentioned by name in the

response, nor do the factual allegations of the complaint sufficiently show that

Hancock, who presumably brought the dog to the scene after the alleged 17 minute

delay following Plumb’s traffic stop of the plaintiff, violated any of the plaintiff’s

constitutional rights. All the complaint cursorily alleges as to Hancock is that he and

Plumb searched the plaintiff’s car after the dog alerted on something and, after

finding nothing illegal, sent the plaintiff on his way. The complaint alleges no facts

showing any involvement by Hancock in the decision to stop the plaintiff or to detain

him pending the arrival of the dog, nor any facts showing how long Hancock detained

the plaintiff after he arrived on the scene. The Court concludes that the Hancock is

entitled to qualified immunity because the first prong of the test, the showing of a

violation of a constitutional right, has not been met as to him.

2. Clearly established law

Because the plaintiff has pleaded a constitutional violation as to Plumb,

whether Plumb is entitled to qualified immunity depends on whether the constitutional

right that the plaintiff asserts was violated by Plumb was “clearly established” at the

time of the alleged misconduct. Garcia v. County of Riverside, __ F.3d __,

2016WL1392326, at *7 (9th Cir. April 8, 2016). The plaintiff bears the burden of proof

that the right allegedly violated was clearly established as of July 27, 2014, the date

of the traffic stop. Tarabochia v. Adkins, 766 F.3d 1115, 1125 (9th Cir. 2014). In order

for a right to be clearly established, its contours must be sufficiently clear that a

reasonable official would understand that his actions violated that right. Id. 

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The gist of the plaintiff’s argument is that “[i]t was clearly established at the

time of the stop that a traffic stop becomes an unreasonable seizure if the stop is

prolonged for a purpose unrelated to the purpose of the stop, or longer than

necessary to complete the traffic stop.” While this contention is correct as a broad

general proposition, that is not sufficient for qualified immunity purposes inasmuch

as the Supreme Court has often emphasized that the inquiry into whether the

unlawfulness of the official’s conduct was clearly established at that time “must be

undertaken in light of the specific context of the case, not as a general proposition.”

Brosseau v. Haugen, 543 U.S. at 198; see also, Plumhoff v. Rickard, __ U.S. __, 134

S.Ct 2012, 2023 (2014) (Supreme Court stated that it has “repeatedly told courts ...

not to define clearly established law at a high level of generality since doing so avoids

the crucial question whether the official acted reasonably in the particular

circumstances that he or she faced.”) (internal citation omitted). The Court’s inquiry

must be whether at the time of the traffic stop the law clearly established that Plumb’s

conduct violated the plaintiff’s Fourth Amendment right in the particularized sense of

continuing the plaintiff’s traffic stop for the length of time it took for the drug dog to

arrive, for the dog to conduct a sniff of his car, and for defendants to then search his

car. Although existing precedent as to this issue need not be a case directly on point,

especially in this Fourth Amendment context, that precedent “must have placed the

statutory or constitutional question beyond debate.” Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 131 S.Ct. at

2083; see also, Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 739 (2002) (“This is not to say that an

official action is protected by qualified immunity unless the very action in question has

previously been held unlawful, ... but it is to say that in light of pre-existing law the

unlawfulness must be apparent.”) The Court’s inquiry is ended if the decisional

authority of the Supreme Court or the Ninth Circuit then clearly established the right

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at issue, but in the absence of such authority, the Court may look to whatever

decisional law is available, including decisions of other circuits. Tarabochia v. Adkins,

766 F.3d at 1125.

Notwithstanding the many cases giving shape to the contours of when a Terry

stop becomes an unlawful seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment, given the

Supreme Court’s “demanding standard” for disallowing qualified immunity, Thomas

v. Dillard, __ F.3d __, 2016WL1319765, at *15 (9th Cir. April 5, 2016), the Court

cannot conclude that the plaintiff has met his burden of showing that the

constitutional issue here was “beyond debate” at the time of the traffic stop. Although

the Supreme Court, pursuant to Rodriguez v. United States, has now clearly

established that a traffic stop cannot be extended in order to conduct a dog sniff

absent reasonable suspicion, the Supreme Court did not issue that decision until

some nine months after the traffic stop of the plaintiff. As the Supreme Court noted

in Rodriguez, it granted certiorari in that case “to resolve a division among lower

courts on the question whether police routinely may extend an otherwise-completed

traffic stop, absent reasonable suspicion, in order to conduct a dog sniff.” 135 S.Ct.

at 1614.

The plaintiff cites to some pre-Rodriguez Supreme Court cases related to Terry

stops such as Illinois v. Caballes, 543 U.S. 405 (2005), to support his position, but the

Court does not believe that any of them, singularly or collectively, are sufficient to

definitely establish that Plumb reasonably should have understood that his extension

of the traffic stop under the circumstances here was then unconstitutional. For

example, in Caballes, the Supreme Court, while noting that a traffic stop can become

unlawful if it is prolonged beyond the time reasonably required to complete the

mission of the stop, held that a dog sniff conducted during the pendency of a lawful

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4

 The Court notes that the resolution of the”clearly established” issue in

Terry-stop situations often depends very much on the facts of the case. Here, the

Court’s resolution of the issue has been complicated by the plaintiff’s failure to allege

pertinent facts in his complaint. For example, although the plaintiff’s asserts in his

response that “[t]raffic stops for speeding do not take 17 minutes,” the complaint

does not allege facts pertaining to when the traffic stop was completed in relation to

the dog sniff and vehicle search or how long the plaintiff was detained after the

completion of the mission of the traffic stop.

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traffic stop that lasted less than ten minutes was constitutional.4

The plaintiff’s argument is not further supported by citation to any Ninth Circuit

precedent related to traffic stops, or to any supporting decisions from other circuits.

While it may be a close question, the Court concludes that the relevant law was not

clearly established because there are decisions prior to July 2014from other circuits

that lend support to the defendants’ position that existing case law did not then make

the particular right at issue here beyond debate given that there was no established

per se rule as to how long a traffic stop could be constitutionally continued for

purposes of a dog sniff. By way of brief example, the Eighth Circuit, in its decision

in January 2014 in United States v. Rodriguez, 741 F.3d 905 (8th Cir. 2014), which

is the decision that the Supreme Court vacated and remanded after the traffic stop

at issue here, concluded that an officer who prolonged a traffic stop, that lasted a

total of some 29 minutes overall, for seven or eight minutes after its completion in

order to conduct a dog sniff did not violate the Fourth Amendment, and the Eighth

Circuit, in United States v. Gregory, 302 F.3d 805 (8th Cir.2002), had previously

concluded that a short detention for a dog sniff after the completion of a traffic stop

did not violate the Fourth Amendment when just over twenty minutes elapsed from

the beginning of the traffic stop to the completion of the dog sniff. Similarly, the

Eleventh Circuit, in United States v. Moore, 570 Fed.Appx. 848 (11th Cir. 2014), had

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concluded prior to the stop here that a traffic stop was reasonable in duration for

Fourth Amendment purposes when the dog sniff occurred some twenty-four minutes

after the traffic stop began. Therefore,

IT IS ORDERED that the defendants’ Motion to Dismiss (Doc. 7) is granted and

that this action is dismissed in its entirety. The Clerk of the Court shall enter

judgment accordingly.

DATED this 25th day of April, 2016.

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