United States Court of Appeals 

For the First Circuit 

No. 14-2244 

LOUISE DURAND, 

Plaintiff, Appellant, 

v. 

DR. THERESA HARPOLD, 

Defendant, Appellee. 

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS 

[Hon. Richard G. Stearns, U.S. District Judge] 

Before 

Torruella, Lynch, and Barron, 

Circuit Judges. 

 Christopher J. Trombetta and Law Office of Christopher J. 

Trombetta, on brief for appellant. 

 Sean E. Capplis, Sandra P. Wysocki Capplis, and Capplis, 

Connors & Carroll, PC, on brief for appellee. 

December 7, 2015 
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BARRON, Circuit Judge. Louise Durand appeals the 

District Court’s dismissal of her 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claim against 

Dr. Theresa Harpold. Durand alleges that Harpold violated Durand’s 

federal constitutional rights when Harpold issued an order, 

pursuant to Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 123, § 12, authorizing Durand to 

be seized from her home and brought to a hospital for a psychiatric 

evaluation. We affirm. 

I. 

Harpold, Durand's co-worker at a Massachusetts 

Department of Mental Health facility in Norton, Massachusetts, 

issued the order after she was approached by another co-worker, 

Marleen Mills.1 Mills reported that Durand was having "visual 

hallucinations of worms coming out of her body and across telephone 

[lines]," had "been driving to parts unknown," had been "sending 

threatening texts" to Mills, had "not been attending to her blood 

sugar[, and] has diabetes and reported a [blood sugar level] of 

30." 

Harpold signed the § 12 order on this basis, certifying 

that there was a "[v]ery substantial risk" that Durand would injure 

herself. Pursuant to the order, the police took Durand from her 

 1 The facts are taken from the operative complaint, and are 

assumed true for the purpose of resolving the motion to dismiss. 

See Gargano v. Liberty Int'l Underwriters, Inc., 572 F.3d 45, 48-

49 (1st Cir. 2009). 
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home and drove her to a hospital. At the hospital, Durand was 

evaluated by a doctor, who found Durand lucid and released her. 

II. 

 The District Court dismissed Durand's § 1983 claim 

against Harpold for failure to state a claim that Harpold had 

violated her federal constitutional rights. We review the District 

Court's dismissal de novo, construing all inferences in favor of 

Durand. See, e.g., Moralez-Cruz v. Univ. of P.R., 676 F.3d 220, 

224 (1st Cir. 2012). 

 Durand contends that she has stated a plausible 

claim that Harpold violated her right, under the Fourth Amendment, 

to be free from unreasonable seizures because Harpold violated 

Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 123, § 12, by (1) not evaluating Durand before 

issuing the order to have her seized and brought to the hospital; 

and (2) not contacting Durand to learn if she would refuse to be 

examined before issuing the order. We disagree. 

 Durand alleges violations of Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 

123, § 12, but a state law violation is not itself enough to render 

a seizure unreasonable for Fourth Amendment purposes. See Boveri 

v. Town of Saugus, 113 F.3d 4 (1st Cir. 1997) (stating that a 

violation of state law is not "inherently sufficient" to support 

a § 1983 claim); see also Ahern v. McDonnell, 109 F.3d 809, 816-

17 (1st Cir. 1997) (evaluating the constitutionality of a police 

officer's decision to seize the plaintiff pursuant to Mass. Gen. 
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Laws ch. 123, § 12, under the framework of "reasonableness"); 

McCabe v. Life-Line Ambulance Serv., 77 F.3d 540, 544-45 (1st Cir. 

1996) (evaluating the constitutionality of a city's policy of 

allowing police to enter a home without a warrant to execute a 

civil commitment order issued pursuant to Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 123, 

§ 12, under the framework of "reasonableness"). Durand's only 

argument that the state law violation she alleges does amount to 

a Fourth Amendment violation relies on precedent that does not 

stand for the propositions for which she cites it. 

 Contrary to Durand's contention, Rockwell v. Cape 

Cod Hospital, 26 F.3d 254, 257 (1st Cir. 1994), did not hold that 

involuntary confinement for compulsory psychiatric evaluation is 

a violation of the Fourth Amendment, or that placing an individual 

in custody absent satisfaction of Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 123, § 12, 

is "unquestionably a violation of the Fourth Amendment." In fact, 

Rockwell does not mention the Fourth Amendment at all. Nor do 

Carrion v. Singh, No. 12-CV-0360-JFB-WDW, 2013 WL 639040 (E.D.N.Y. 

Feb. 21, 2013), and Blyden v. N.Y.P.D., No. 05-CV-4740-SJF-LB, 

2005 WL 3388609 (E.D.N.Y. Dec. 12, 2005), stand, as Durand alleges 

they do, for the proposition that "failure to follow [the] 

requirement[s] of [a] civil commitment statute cause[s] [an] 

involuntary examination to be in violation of the Fourth 

Amendment." Those cases held that, where the plaintiffs had not 

alleged that the defendants had failed to comply with New York's 
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governing legal standard for civil commitment, and where that legal 

standard had been interpreted to comport with constitutional 

requirements, the plaintiffs had failed to state a claim that their 

civil commitment in New York violated the Fourth Amendment. 

Carrion, 2013 WL 639040, at *8; Blyden, 2005 WL 3388609, at *3; 

see also Glass v. Mayas, 984 F.2d 55, 57 (2d Cir. 1993) (noting 

that "New York [civil commitment] law has been interpreted to 

require a finding of dangerousness" in light of Supreme Court 

precedent regarding confinement of nondangerous individuals). 

 In sum, Durand does not address the limits the 

Fourth Amendment places on the need for warrantless seizure in the 

scenario at hand, even though the District Court dismissed her 

claim below for failure to identify the violation of a 

constitutional right (as opposed to the violation of a state law). 

Because Durand has failed to provide any developed argumentation 

regarding how Harpold's actions rendered Durand's seizure 

unreasonable for that particular purpose, her Fourth Amendmentbased § 1983 claim cannot proceed. See United States v. Zannino, 

895 F.2d 1, 17 (1st Cir. 1990) ("Judges are not expected to be 

mindreaders," and "a litigant has an obligation to spell out its 

arguments squarely and distinctly, or else forever hold its peace." 

(quoting Rivera-Gomez v. de Castro, 843 F.2d 631, 635 (1st Cir. 

1988))). 
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 Durand also argues that she has stated a plausible 

claim that Harpold violated her Fourteenth Amendment right to 

procedural due process. But although Durand acknowledges that the 

violation of a state law is not in itself sufficient to demonstrate 

a violation the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of the right to 

due process, Durand makes no more than the conclusory 

allegation -- in one paragraph of her brief -- that Harpold's 

failure to comply with Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 123, § 12, "deprived 

Ms. Durand of her rights to procedural due process under the 

Fourteenth Amendment." Thus, this argument, too, is not 

sufficiently developed to merit appellate review. See Cioffi v. 

Gilbert Enterprs., Inc., 769 F.3d 90, 93 (1st Cir. 2014) (quoting 

Zannino, 895 F.2d at 17, for the proposition that "[i]t is not 

enough merely to mention a possible argument in the most skeletal 

way, leaving the court to do counsel's work"). 

 For the foregoing reasons, the decision of the 

District Court is affirmed.