Opinion ID: 203690
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Mayor's sudden decision to arrest

Text: Mayor O'Neill also argues that he could not possibly have perceived a risk of violating federal law because he decided to arrest Méndez-Ayala with little or no calculation. For support, the Mayor points to our decision in Iacobucci, 193 F.3d at 27, where we held that the plaintiff had not met the threshold requirement for a punitive damage award. There we found it dispositive that the defendant, a police officer, had made a split-second decision to arrest the plaintiff. Such a decision, we observed, does not lend itself to the inference that [the officer] acted with an evil motive or a conscious awareness that the arrest might violate [the plaintiff's] civil rights. Id. at 26. Punitive damages should not lie where the evidence showed only an exasperated police officer, acting in the heat of the moment, [who] made an objectively unreasonable mistake. Id. at 26-27. Seeking to analogize this case to Iacobucci, Mayor O'Neill points to Méndez-Ayala's testimony that the Mayor's decision to arrest the Comagro employees occurred [a]ll of a sudden, or immediately. The Mayor interprets this testimony to mean that he, like the police officer in Iacobucci, made a split-second decision, in the heat of the moment, and therefore could not have perceived a risk that his conduct would violate Méndez-Ayala's federal rights. Iacobucci does not stand for the proposition that a change of decision made without prior warning, in a short period of time, is always immune from punitive damages under section 1983. Such a rule would exempt a large class of conduct from punitive damages, including conduct for which we have previously affirmed awards. See, e.g., Davis, 264 F.3d at 115 (affirming an award of punitive damages against a nurse who, during an altercation, punched a patient in the head). Iacobucci involved a rapidly developing situation which demanded an immediate response. See Iacobucci, 193 F.3d at 26. The plaintiff, Iacobucci, had insisted on filming a meeting that city officials insisted should not be filmed. His conduct forced the defendant officer to act quickly, in the heat of the moment, to defuse a contentious situation. Id. Because he was forced to confront an emergency, the defendant did not have an opportunity to consider the range of risks his conduct created. Taken in the light most favorable to the jury's verdict, the facts in this case do not fit the Iacobucci pattern. The Mayor was not called to the location by a distressed party seeking assistance or protection. He was uncertain about the right of the Comagro employees to be on the site. [13] Moreover, before the police arrived, the Mayor had an opportunity to contemplate the legal consequences of different courses of action. After asking the Comagro employees to leave the building, no exigency presented itself that required him to decide then to arrest those employees. There was no need to act precipitously. Méndez-Ayala's question to the Mayor And I said, well, hey, wait a minute. What's going on?was not provocative. The Mayor's conduct and his inflammatory, profane language indicate that he simply lost control of his temper and his judgment. His statement to Méndez-Ayala that he was already angry at Comagro because it sought arbitration and Méndez-Ayala's claim that the Mayor was looking for trouble could have reasonably suggested to a jury that the Mayor was not acting in the heat of the moment, but was seeking retaliation. Then, instead of immediately releasing Méndez-Ayala and the Comagro employees, the Mayor kept them under arrest for about two hours, when he had an ample opportunity to contemplate the consequences of his conduct. Iacobucci does not insulate such conduct from punishment. We reject the contention in the cross-appeal that the threshold requirement for an award of punitive damages was not met.