Opinion ID: 4554939
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Claims Against McCabe

Text: We affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment to McCabe based on qualified immunity. First, Tlapanco provided no evidence that McCabe was involved in the search of Tlapanco’s apartment or the seizure of his electronic devices, entitling him to summary judgment as to those claims. Second, because McCabe returned Tlapanco’s electronic devices the same day the Michigan trial court filed its written decision, we find McCabe was also entitled to summary judgment as to that claim. We conclude that there was no clearly established Fourth Amendment right against investigators retaining a forensic mirror of electronic devices after returning the physical devices. As this issue is one of first impression and the factual record is not comprehensively developed, we decline to address the merits of the alleged constitutional violation.
The district court correctly determined that McCabe was entitled to summary judgment on Tlapanco’s unlawful search and seizure claim as Tlapanco provided no evidence that McCabe was involved in the investigation, preparation of the affidavit, search of Tlapanco’s apartment, or seizure of the electronic devices. See Burley v. Gagacki, 729 F.3d 610, 619 (6th Cir. 2013) (“To establish liability against an individual defendant acting under color of state law, a plaintiff must show that the defendant was ‘personally involved’ in [unlawful conduct].” (quoting Binay v. Bettendorf, 601 F.3d 640, 650 (6th Cir. 2010))). We affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment on this claim. No. 19-1392 Tlapanco v. Elges, et al. Page 20
Tlapanco claims that McCabe violated his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures of his personal property. He first claims that the retention of his electronic devices after the Michigan trial court’s oral decision granting the government’s motion to dismiss the criminal charges without prejudice was an unlawful seizure. We, however, agree with McCabe that Michigan trial court’s order went into effect with its written decision, rather than oral pronouncement.4 Because the electronic devices were returned the same day the written order was issued, McCabe’s retention of the devices for the two days in between the pronouncement of the oral decision and filing of the written decision was not an unreasonable seizure. The district court properly granted McCabe qualified immunity on this claim as Tlapanco failed to provide evidence of a Fourth Amendment violation. Second, Tlapanco claims that making a forensic mirror (i.e., copying) of his electronic devices, including his cell phone and laptops, after the trial court’s oral decision to return his property was an unlawful search and that then retaining the forensic mirrors after returning the physical devices and dismissal of the criminal prosecution is a continuing unlawful seizure. We first note that it is not mandatory to address the qualified immunity prongs sequentially; rather, discussion of the first prong will in some cases result “in a substantial expenditure of scarce judicial resources on difficult questions that have no effect on the outcome of the case.” Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 236–37 (2009) (permitting federal courts to skip to the clearly established prong of the qualified immunity analysis). We decline to address the first prong of the qualified immunity analysis and proceed directly to the clearly established prong in assessing this claim against McCabe as that prong is dispositive here. 4 The parties dispute when the trial court’s order went into effect. There was a two-day period between the Michigan trial court’s oral decision on August 12, 2014, and written order on August 14, 2014, during which Tlapanco’s devices were retained. The parties dispute the effect of the oral decision. Although “courts generally speak through their judgments and decrees,” Arbor Farms, LLC v. Geostar Corp., 305 Mich. App. 374, 387 (Mich. Ct. App. 2014), oral rulings in Michigan courts are binding when they contain the “indicia of formality and finality comparable to that of a written order.” Id. at 388. Here, the oral ruling contained no such indicia of formality as the defendants’ counsel was directed to “prepare the order and provide it to the Court.” DE 44-8, Prelim. Examination Tr., PageID 725. No. 19-1392 Tlapanco v. Elges, et al. Page 21 This circuit has not previously addressed the Fourth Amendment implications of mirroring a suspect’s electronic files prior to returning the physical device and maintaining the forensic mirror after dropping a criminal prosecution. Indeed, no circuit has assessed the constitutionality of this practice, let alone deemed it unlawful. The Second Circuit considered the issue in the context of a motion to suppress in United States v. Ganias (Ganias I), 755 F.3d 125 (2d Cir. 2014), but ultimately, after en banc rehearing, the full court decided not to reach the issue of whether the retention of copied hard drive data was a Fourth Amendment violation warranting suppression of the documents because it found the agents acted in good faith reliance on the basis of a valid warrant. United States v. Ganias (Ganias II), 824 F.3d 199, 221–25 (2d Cir. 2016). Similarly, in the context of a motion to suppress, the First Circuit considered whether the retention of all copied emails collected pursuant to a warrant during the pendency of a defendant’s criminal appeals warranted suppression and held that it was reasonable to interpret the warrant to permit retention of the data until the appeals were completed. United States v. Aboshady, 951 F.3d 1, 6–8 (1st Cir. 2020). The absence of any existing precedent on this issue is dispositive of Tlapanco’s unlawful search and seizure claims against McCabe. In the absence of any guiding precedent, a reasonable officer in McCabe’s position would not have known that he was committing a constitutional violation when he mirrored electronic devices seized pursuant to a search warrant and then retained the forensic mirrors after the charges had been dismissed and the devices returned to their owner. Therefore, we affirm the district court’s grant of qualified immunity to McCabe on these claims.