Opinion ID: 4562743
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Deliberate or Reckless Conduct

Text: We therefore must determine whether Hart has plausibly alleged that the misstatements or omissions were made “knowingly and deliberately, or with a reckless disregard for the truth.” Id. (citation omitted). In assessing the Defendants’ degree of fault, we note that our court is rarely the appropriate forum in which to resolve factual disputes regarding intent—especially on a motion to dismiss. See United States v. Bonds, 12 F.3d 540, 568–69 (6th Cir. 1993) (“We review for clear error the conclusions of the district court as to reckless disregard for the truth and intent to deceive, since these are issues of fact that reflect the affiant’s credibility.”). First, we consider the possibility of deliberate action. But Hart’s only allegations regarding deliberate or intentional behavior are the bare assertions that Defendants behaved deliberately. We are not required to accept these unadorned legal conclusions as true. See Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 679; see also Mills v. Barnard, 869 F.3d 473, 481 (6th Cir. 2017) (“To be sure, the plain statement that Jenkins ‘intentionally, maliciously, or with reckless disregard’ subjected Mills to malicious prosecution is insufficient standing on its own.” (brackets and ellipsis omitted)). In the absence of factual allegations creating an inference that one or more of the Defendants knew Hart was not required to register and ignored that fact, Hart has not plausibly alleged deliberate misconduct. We also consider the possibility, urged by Defendants, that their behavior was objectively reasonable. In a case involving an ambiguously worded statute that had never been construed by 3The Dissent’s reliance on the unpublished case Sinclair v. Lauderdale County, 652 F. App’x 429 (6th Cir. 2016), is misplaced. Though both cases involved inapplicable state statutes, the Sinclair court found probable cause to arrest the plaintiff despite the sheriff’s reliance on both a mistake of fact and a mistake of law “[g]iven the other probative evidence carrying the full weight of legal authority.” Id. at 435. We determined that a “Consent Order, signed by the circuit judge,” authorized the “escape” charge and the program’s letter established “the triggering event in the Consent Order.” Id. The dissent incorrectly concludes that Ms. Sinclair was not subject to the Consent Order—the Order “explicitly mandated” her responsibility for her son’s transportation, id. at 437—so it is true that no comparable authority is present in this case. This record contains no consent order judicially authorizing a legally enforceable agreement of the parties or other authority that would support a finding of probable cause that Hart was breaking the law or show that the officers made a comparable, reasonable mistake of law. The officers relied solely on the database, and the law is clear that Hart was no longer required to register as a sex offender and thus was not breaking the law. Nos. 18-1305/1307 Hart v. Hillsdale Cty., Mich., et al. Page 10 the state’s higher courts, the Supreme Court instructed that an officer’s reasonable mistake of law entitled him to qualified immunity. See Heien v. North Carolina, 574 U.S. 54, 68 (2014). But, the Court cautioned, this rule “does not discourage officers from learning the law” because “[t]he Fourth Amendment tolerates only reasonable mistakes, and those mistakes—whether of fact or of law—must be objectively reasonable.” Id. at 66. No objectively reasonable reading of SORA includes Hart within its scope. SORA is long, but it is perfectly clear. Juvenile offenders are required to register only if two requirements are met: “[t]he individual was 14 years of age or older at the time of the offense” and he was categorized as a “tier III offender.” Mich. Comp. Laws § 28.722(b)(iii). There is no objectively reasonable argument that Hart, a tier II juvenile offender, is covered by this language. We turn to recklessness. Officers’ misrepresentations cannot support a § 1983 claim when they exhibit only “negligence or perhaps a lack of attention to detail.” Newman v. Township of Hamburg, 773 F.3d 769, 772 (6th Cir. 2014). Our caselaw provides instructive examples of the distinction between negligence and recklessness. For example, when two officers had different recollections about an interview (one “remember[ed] Masters being more specific, giving a 5:00 p.m. approximation,” and the other “remember[ed] him being more vague”), relying on the memory of just one officer demonstrated “at worst” negligence. See id. On the other hand, omitting evidence casting doubt on the accusations of a lone child witness “demonstrate[s] ‘deliberateness’ or a ‘reckless disregard for the truth,’ given that any reasonable officer would have recognized the importance of [the child’s] reliability on the question of probable cause.” Wesley, 779 F.3d at 433 (brackets omitted). As a middle ground, where the police obtained a warrant to search a house that only partially matched an informant’s description, we held that “[i]t is up to a jury, not a judge, to decide whether [certain architectural details] are such salient features that they would make it less than reckless to select the house that exhibited them.” Hill v. McIntyre, 884 F.2d 271, 276 (6th Cir. 1989). In this case, the City and County Defendants argue that they could not have been reckless because they were entitled to rely on the MSP and the database the MSP maintained. In analyzing this argument, we draw all reasonable inferences in favor of Hart and against the City and County Defendants. For ongoing proceedings against the State Defendants, the district court Nos. 18-1305/1307 Hart v. Hillsdale Cty., Mich., et al. Page 11 may draw different inferences as warranted, leaving the fact finder to decide which inferences are correct. The Supreme Court clarified decades ago that one law enforcement agency may rely on another agency’s statement that they have a warrant or “a reasonable suspicion of involvement with a crime.” United States v. Hensley, 469 U.S. 221, 231 (1985); see also Whiteley v. Warden, 401 U.S. 560, 568 (1971). But here, there is no indication that an MSP employee prompted this arrest by telling one of the City or County Defendants that Hart was subject to SORA and had violated its registration requirements. The only MSP communication referenced in the complaint is the transmittal of Hart’s Certified Record on February 10, 2014. The City and County Defendants could not have relied on that to arrest Hart because the arrests had already taken place on January 23, and six months before that, in July 2013. There is no basis to conclude, at this stage of the proceedings, that the City and County Defendants were relying on MSP’s affirmative representations. Instead, the officers paint Hart’s continued inclusion in the databases as an indirect representation by the MSP. SORA requires the MSP to remove a registrant from the law enforcement database “[i]f the [MSP] determines that [the] individual has completed his or her registration period, including a registration period reduced by law under [the 2011 amendments to SORA].” Mich. Comp. Laws § 28.728(9). In light of this statutory responsibility, the City and County Defendants argue that their actions in reliance on the database could not have been reckless. At the motion to dismiss stage, we may not draw that inference against Hart unless it is the only plausible conclusion that can be reached on these facts. See Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 682. Three considerations counsel against that result here. First, the complaint does not describe how (or, indeed, whether) the MSP complies with its statutory duty to maintain an accurate database. At this stage, we cannot assume that legal requirements were satisfied merely because they exist, and we do not know what the City and County Defendants knew at the time they relied on the Nos. 18-1305/1307 Hart v. Hillsdale Cty., Mich., et al. Page 12 database. Without this factual background, we cannot decide as a matter of law whether an officer was reckless to rely on the database without independently verifying its results.4 Second, SORA excuses anyone who “is homeless or otherwise lacks a fixed or temporary residence,” from the duty to register an exact address. Mich. Comp. Laws § 28.722(p). A homeless registrant need only provide to the authorities “the village, city, or township where the person spends a majority of his or her time.” Id. Hart was “effectively homeless” at the time of his July 2013 arrest, living in a treehouse in a backyard. And during the period before the second arrest, he bounced back and forth among six different addresses in Hillsdale, in addition to a stint with no address at all. Because the authorities apparently always knew “the village, city, or township” where Hart lived (Hillsdale), see id., a reasonable officer might plausibly have concluded that Hart was homeless and so had not violated SORA, despite his inclusion in the database. Third, Michigan law does not seem to permit unconsidered reliance on the database. The provision of SORA giving local law enforcement the authority to enforce the Act comes with a caveat: the local agency is charged with “[s]eek[ing] a warrant for the individual’s arrest if the legal requirements for obtaining a warrant are satisfied.” Mich. Comp. Laws § 28.728a(1)(d) (emphasis added). This cautionary language has meaning, and we may not fail to “give effect to every word, phrase, and clause in a statute.” State Farm Fire & Cas. Co. v. Old Republic Ins. Co., 644 N.W.2d 715, 717 (Mich. 2002). Thus, SORA contemplates an independent obligation on the part of enforcing officers to check for satisfaction of SORA’s requirements prior to arrest. Defendants submit, however, that even a diligent check would not have caught this mistake because the Certified Record incorrectly lists Hart’s conviction type as “Michigan Adult,” showing the 2011 amendments for juvenile offenses to be inapplicable. But once again, 4As the Dissent points out, and Hart’s counsel conceded at argument, Hart does not allege that there was a history of errors by the MSP to maintain the database or that the database was commonly known to be inaccurate. As our case law makes clear, however, “[a] complaint need not set down in detail all the particularities of a plaintiff’s claim against the defendant.” Dunn v. State of Tenn., 697 F.2d 121, 125 (6th Cir. 1982). There is no dispute that Hart alleges a claim for false arrest, a claim that legally may depend on whether the actions of the officers were reckless. What the officers knew or were aware of regarding the database is relevant to the issue of recklessness, and at this stage, unknown. The dissent is incorrect in concluding that recognition of the legal components of a claim pled constitutes rewriting the complaint. Nos. 18-1305/1307 Hart v. Hillsdale Cty., Mich., et al. Page 13 reaching that conclusion requires drawing inferences that are neither grounded in Hart’s complaint nor favorable to him. We do not know what the officers knew about the database or mistakes in it that might affect the need for external confirmation of its results to avoid recklessness. Indeed, Hart’s own record contains at least three mistakes: in addition to listing his conviction as an adult matter, his date of conviction is blank, in violation of Mich. Comp. Laws § 28.728(1)(w), and his registration end date (in 2054) is decades beyond the 25-year period appropriate for a tier II offender, see id. § 28.725(11). We do not even know whether the information we see in the Certified Record is the same information that would have appeared when an officer looked Hart up in the database at the time of his two arrests. Taking the facts in the light most favorable to Hart, a reasonable officer could not believe that Hart was subject to SORA’s requirements based solely on his inclusion in the database. That reasonable officer, aware that the database can contain erroneous registrations and seeing apparent mistakes in Hart’s record, would have followed the statutory directive to determine whether “the legal requirements for obtaining a warrant [were] satisfied,” id. § 28.728a(1)(d), including whether Hart’s failure to register was excused by his homelessness. The City and County Defendants did not do so, even though they had both the time and all the necessary information available. Because “any reasonable officer would have known that [Hart’s satisfaction of SORA’s legal requirements] would be ‘the kind of thing the judge would wish to know,’” Wesley, 779 F.3d at 433 (quoting Peet v. City of Detroit, 502 F.3d 557, 570 n.3 (6th Cir. 2007)), Hart has plausibly alleged that the Defendants behaved recklessly by incorrectly representing in their warrant applications that he was subject to SORA’s restrictions. We leave it to the court at summary judgment or the factfinder at trial to resolve the factual question of whether the steps Defendants skipped and the problems they overlooked were serious enough to allow an inference of recklessness. See Hill, 884 F.2d at 276.5 5We also note that the Dissent’s reliance on Sinclair is inappropriate because it was decided at the summary judgment stage, after all the facts and relevant circumstances were explored through discovery. The Sinclair court made clear that “[t]he probability of criminal activity is assessed under a standard of reasonableness and is ‘based on an examination of all facts and circumstances within an officer’s knowledge at the time of the arrest.’” Sinclair, 652 F. App’x at 434 (emphasis in original) (quoting Green v. Throckmorton, 681 F.3d 853, 865 Nos. 18-1305/1307 Hart v. Hillsdale Cty., Mich., et al. Page 14