Opinion ID: 4356115
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Limiting Principle

Text: ¶ 47. The question remains, however, whether this Court should impose any limitations on this judicially recognized constitutional damage remedy. In Town Highway, we stated that the caution we raised in Shields about creating a private damage remedy when the Legislature had not created an alternative civil remedy was “magnified in the context of recognizing a tort remedy under the broad mandate of Article 7.” 2012 VT 17, ¶ 36. We concluded, therefore, that in addition to requiring a plaintiff to show the absence of an adequate alternative remedy to vindicate the interest asserted, it was “necessary and appropriate to establish stringent additional requirements to obtain monetary relief for a violation of Article 7.” Id. ¶ 37. We held that a plaintiff alleging a constitutional tort claim pursuant to Article 7, the Common Benefits Clause, would have to show that: (1) the plaintiff was denied a common benefit; (2) the denial favored another individual or group over the plaintiff; and (3) the decision to deny the benefit to the plaintiff not only “was wholly irrational and arbitrary, but also . . . actuated by personal motives unrelated to the duties of the defendant’s official position, such as ill will, vindictiveness, or financial gain.” Id. We stated that this last element was necessary to “defer to any reasonable and just basis supporting a discretionary judgment by a government decisionmaker” and “to bar routine suits aimed merely at forcing a political body to change its decision, not through representative politics, but through judicial action.” Id. ¶¶ 37-38 (quotation omitted). ¶ 48. The superior court rejected the State’s argument that any establishment of a constitutional tort with respect to alleged violations of Article 11 should be limited by stringent requirements similar to those set forth in Town Highway. The court rejected this argument in a footnote, summarily stating that recognizing a private right of action under Article 11 would not result in a flood of litigation for routine law enforcement actions and that there is no need for a heightened standard of proof to secure damages because Article 11 provides its own standard— the unreasonable exercise of authority by a state actor. On appeal, plaintiff argues that the superior 27 court correctly rejected a heightened standard for establishing a private damage remedy under Article 11 and that a qualified immunity limitation is unnecessary to prevent a chilling effect on law enforcement officers when the State rather than the individual officer is subject to liability. ¶ 49. In considering whether a rigorous standard is appropriate to limit a private damage remedy directly under Article 11, we first note that the U.S. Supreme Court has applied an objective qualified immunity limitation on Bivens actions—the constitutional tort progenitor that itself involved a claim of an unlawful search under the Fourth Amendment. See Butz v. Economou, 438 U.S. 478, 507 (1978). We recognize that we are not bound by federal law concerning Bivens actions and that such actions are brought against government officials rather than the government itself. We also recognize that the U.S. Supreme Court has suggested that there would be less of a deterrent effect on unlawful government action in a suit brought against a governmental agency rather than a government official.13 See F.D.I.C. v. Meyer, 510 U.S. 471, 485 (1994). But the U.S. Supreme Court plainly contemplated that a private direct constitutional damage remedy would not be available every time there was an adjudicated violation of the federal constitution, irrespective of its nature or impact. See Bivens, 403 U.S. at 410-11 (Harlan, J., concurring) (stating that direct constitutional damage remedy should at least be available “for the most flagrant and patently unjustified sorts of police conduct,” keeping in mind that “the countervailing interests in efficient law enforcement of course argue for a protective zone with respect to many types of Fourth Amendment violations”). 13 As noted above, in our view, making the State responsible for the actions of its employees would deter unlawful conduct by motivating the State to better train its employees and to discipline or discharge them when the training proved ineffective. See Brown, 674 N.E.2d at 194-95. Moreover, beyond any goals of compensation and deterrence, constitutional tort actions serve to establish and clarify “constitutional rights that both protect individuals from governmental injury and regulate the discretion of the government to inflict injury.” J. Park, supra, at 396. 28 ¶ 50. State courts are divided on whether to allow the government to assert common law defenses such as qualified immunity or other limitations in civil rights suits seeking damages for breaches of state constitutional provisions. G. Gildin, supra, at 902-03. Compare Clea v. Mayor and City Council of Balt., 541 A.2d 1303, 1314 (Md. 1988) (“To accord immunity to the responsible government officials, and leave an individual remediless when his constitutional rights are violated, would be inconsistent with the purposes of the constitutional provisions.”), and Dorwart, 2002 MT 240, ¶¶ 68-69 (holding that qualified immunity is not applicable to claims alleging violation of rights guaranteed by state constitution because it would be inconsistent with constitutional requirement that courts afford remedy for claims recognized by law), with Moresi, 567 So. 2d at 1094 (adopting qualified immunity in action against state officers acting under color of state law for violations of state constitution), and Spackman v. Bd. of Educ. of the Box Elder Cty. Sch. Dist., 2000 UT 87, ¶¶ 22-25, 16 P.3d 533 (holding that plaintiff seeking damages for alleged constitutional tort must establish that there are no existing alternative remedies and that constitutional violation was flagrant in that it violated clearly established constitutional rights of which reasonable person would have been aware). ¶ 51. State courts have limited constitutional tort actions in other ways as well. Most notably, in Martinez v. City of Schenectady, 761 N.E.2d 560 (N.Y. 2001), the New York Court of Appeals limited the reach of its decision in Brown, in which it had determined that the court of claims had jurisdiction over a constitutional tort claim seeking damages for unconstitutional searches. The suit in Brown was a class action brought by nonwhite males who were stopped and searched by officers investigating a crime, but who were never charged with a crime. A later constitutional tort case was brought by a plaintiff whose drug conviction had been reversed on appeal because it was based on evidence obtained pursuant to an invalid search warrant. In that case, the New York Court of Appeals stated that the constitutional tort remedy it had recognized in Brown was “not boundless” and that, in addition to proving that their constitutional rights had 29 been violated, claimants had to “establish grounds that entitle[d] them to a damages remedy.” Martinez, 761 N.E.2d at 563. The court ruled that recognition of a constitutional tort claim under the circumstances of that case was “neither necessary to effectuate the purposes of the State constitutional protections plaintiff invokes, nor appropriate to ensure full realization of her rights.” Id. The court explained that the deterrence objective of the constitutional tort would “be satisfied . . . by exclusion of the constitutionally challenged evidence,” and that the plaintiff had failed to show “how money damages [were] appropriate to ensure full realization of her asserted constitutional rights.” Id. at 564. The court stated that the plaintiff had “not distinguished her case from that of any criminal defendant who ha[d] been granted suppression, or reversal of a conviction, based on technical error at the trial level,” and that she had “shown no grounds that would entitle her to a damage remedy in addition to the substantial benefit she already ha[d] received from dismissal of the indictment and release from incarceration.” Id. ¶ 52. We conclude that, in the absence of any applicable legislation addressing constitutional torts, restrictions similar to those imposed in Town Highway are appropriate and necessary in civil actions seeking damages for violations of Article 11. The principal concerns that caused us in Town Highway to impose limitations on obtaining damages for claimed deprivations of common benefits, in violation of Article 7, were the potential flood of litigation for every alleged constitutional violation and the potential chilling effect on citizens serving on local boards. 2012 VT 17, ¶¶ 52, 56. We have similar concerns in the context of this case. On a daily basis, law enforcement officers must make numerous decisions on how to handle interactions with citizens, particularly motorists. Even with liability falling on the State rather than the individual officer, a rule that exposes the State to a potential civil damages suit following every roadside stop, or whenever a motion to suppress is granted, could inhibit law enforcement officers from taking some effective and constitutionally permissible actions in pursuit of public safety. This would not be an appropriate result. 30 ¶ 53. Accordingly, imposing restrictions akin to qualified immunity is appropriate. See id. ¶ 57 (stating that imposing restrictions on constitutional torts “serves the equivalent function of the qualified immunity doctrine” and acts “as a buffer against liability in all but the most egregious of cases”); see also M. Wells, Civil Recourse, Damages-As-Redress, and Constitutional Torts, 46 Ga. L. Rev. 1003, 1038-39 (2012) (noting that U.S. Supreme Court has justified qualified immunity “as an accommodation between the social value in compensating the plaintiff and deterring constitutional violations, on the one hand, and the social need to avoid overdeterrence of bold and effective official action, on the other”); L. Rosenthal, A Theory of Governmental Damages Liability: Torts, Constitutional Torts, and Takings, 9 U. Pa. J. Const. L. 797, 800, 856 (2007) (opining that although discretionary and categorical immunities are inappropriate for constitutional violations, damages-limiting doctrines such as qualified immunity are appropriate to “protect the interests of the taxpayers and avoid unwarranted reallocation of scarce public resources”); cf. Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 643-44 (1987) (rejecting plaintiff’s argument in Bivens action “that it is inappropriate to give officials alleged to have violated the Fourth Amendment—and thus necessarily to have unreasonably search or seized—the protection of a qualified immunity intended only to protect reasonable official action”). Although we have rejected herein a blanket governmental immunity from constitutional tort actions, we are cognizant of our need to be cautious when judicially recognizing potential damage liability to be imposed on another branch of government. See D. Dobbs et al., The Law of Torts § 334, at 331 (2d ed. 2011) (retaining limited immunity prevents judicial branch from intruding upon functions of legislative and executive branches through adjudication of tort suits); see also Meyer, 510 U.S. at 486 (“If we were to recognize a direct action for damages against federal agencies, we would be creating a potentially enormous financial burden for the Federal Government.”). ¶ 54. With these considerations in mind, we hold that a plaintiff seeking damages against the State directly under Article 11 based on a law enforcement officer’s alleged violation of that 31 constitutional provision must show that: (1) the officer violated Article 11; (2) there is no meaningful alternative remedy in the context of that particular case; and (3) the officer either knew or should have known that the officer was violating clearly established law or the officer acted in bad faith. Cf. Spackman, 2000 UT 87, ¶ 23 (stating that requiring flagrant conduct “ensures that a government employee is allowed the ordinary human frailties of forgetfulness, distractibility, or misjudgment without rendering [him or her]self liable for a constitutional violation” (quotation omitted)). “A clearly established right is one that is sufficiently clear that every reasonable official would have understood that what he is doing violates that right.” Mullenix v. Luna, ___ U.S. ___, ___, 136 S. Ct. 305, 308 (2015) (quotation omitted); see Anderson, 483 U.S. at 641 (stating that relevant question is “whether a reasonable officer could have believed [the] warrantless search to be lawful, in light of clearly established law and the information the searching officers possessed”). “This ‘clearly established’ standard protects the balance between vindication of constitutional rights and government officials’ effective performance of their duties by ensuring that officials can reasonably anticipate when their conduct may give rise to liability for damages.” Reichle v. Howards, 566 U.S. 658, 664 (2012) (quotations omitted); see Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 341 (1986) (noting that qualified immunity’s clearly-established-right test protects “all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law”). On the other hand, bad faith, which may exist even when the officer’s conduct could be viewed as objectively reasonable, is characterized by ill will or wrongful motive, including discriminatory animus. ¶ 55. The third element set forth above includes a potential alternative showing of bad faith that in some instances would require the factfinder to make an objective assessment of the officer’s subjective motivations. We recognize that the U.S. Supreme Court has abandoned a subjectively based malice component that would defeat a qualified immunity defense, reasoning that a judicial inquiry into subjective motivation might entail broad-ranging discovery that is inherently incompatible with immunity from suit. See Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 81532 18 (1982). We also recognize that plaintiff is suing the State, and that qualified immunity is generally recognized as a common law defense against government officials. We emphasize, however, that the third element set forth above, although akin to qualified immunity in some respects, is not an immunity from suit but rather an element that a plaintiff must prove to obtain damages in a civil action directly under Article 11 for alleged constitutional violations. ¶ 56. To the extent that the element is similar to qualified immunity, imposing such an element is appropriate not only for the reasons discussed above, but because a plaintiff’s claims against the State in such circumstances will generally be derivative of a law enforcement officer’s actions. Cf. Czechorowski v. State, 2005 VT 40, ¶ 28, 178 Vt. 524, 872 A.2d 883 (mem.) (rejecting plaintiff’s argument that trial court erred by immunizing State from suit for actions of its employees because “claims against the State are derivative of the claims against the individual defendants”). Moreover, we emphasize that although subjective motivation may often have to be resolved by the factfinder, a plaintiff cannot withstand summary judgment without producing colorable facts upon which a reasonable jury could find bad faith. Cf. Lee v. Cline, 863 A.2d 297, 312 (Md. 2004) (concluding that there was jury question with regard to malice where officer sought to search plaintiff’s car without cause or consent, officer unnecessarily and unjustifiably extended stop for suspected motor vehicle violation in order to obtain canine unit, and officer unjustifiably labeled plaintiff as uncooperative).