Opinion ID: 199293
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Federal Tort Claims Act Claims

Text: 16 Under the Federal Tort Claims Act, the United States waives its sovereign immunity for injury or loss of property . . . caused by the negligent or wrongful act or omission of any employee of the Government while acting within the scope of his office or employment, under circumstances where the United States, if a private person, would be liable to the claimant in accordance with the law of the place where the act or omission occurred. 28 U.S.C. § 1346(b). The FTCA exempts intentional torts from its sovereign immunity waiver but expressly allows actions against the United States for claims of assault, battery, false imprisonment, false arrest, abuse of process, or malicious prosecution arising out of acts or omissions of investigative or law enforcement officers of the United States Government. 28 U.S.C. § 2680(h). 17 Plaintiffs' FTCA claims of false arrest, false imprisonment, and malicious prosecution are premised upon their contention that the agents relied on an improper and unreliable identification of Abreu as co-conspirator Junior, which thus infects the reasonableness of their belief that there was probable cause to arrest, detain, and indict Abreu. The district court granted summary judgment to the United States on all of plaintiffs' FTCA claims, finding that agents had reasonable ground to believe Abreu was the person identified in the warrant. We review the court's dismissal de novo, applying Puerto Rico law to resolve plaintiffs' tort claims against the DEA according to the FTCA's law of the place provision, since the material acts and omissions alleged took place in Puerto Rico. See, e.g., Rodriguez v. United States, 54 F.3d 41, 44 (1st Cir. 1995). 18 The essential premise of plaintiffs' tort claims -- that the agents acted negligently because no reasonable agents could have found probable cause to arrest Abreu as Junior -- is dispatched by our analysis of plaintiffs' Bivens claim that defendants violated Abreu's Fourth Amendment right to be free from arrest without probable cause. Under Puerto Rico law, false arrest and false imprisonment claims share identical elements and focus on whether the arresting officers lacked reasonable cause for believing that [the suspect] committed a felony. Harrington v. United States, 748 F. Supp. 919, 933 (D.P.R. 1990) (internal quotation marks omitted). Similarly, a plaintiff alleging malicious prosecution under Puerto Rico law must demonstrate, inter alia, that defendants acted with malice and without probable cause, defined as a suspicion founded upon circumstances sufficiently strong to warrant a reasonable man in the belief that the charge is true. Lora-Rivera v. Drug Enforcement Admin. Dep't of Justice, 800 F. Supp. 1049, 1051-52 (D.P.R. 1992) (internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, our finding the agents could have an objectively reasonable belief that there was probable cause that Abreu was Junior named in the arrest warrant extinguishes any basis for finding liability for false arrest, false imprisonment, or malicious prosecution. 19 Accordingly, we find that the district court properly granted defendants motion for summary judgment, dismissing plaintiffs' FTCA claims against the United States.