Opinion ID: 4534166
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: defamation and absolute immunity

Text: In her first assignment of error, Viers asserts that the circuit court erred by ruling that Baker enjoyed absolute immunity from her defamation claim, both because (1) his defamatory statements to the DCDC were not made within the performance of his official duties and (2) she alleged that he acted maliciously. She argues that under Andrews v. Ring, 266 Va. 311, 320 (2003), immunity arises only if the tortious act is “intimately associated with the judicial phase 4 of the criminal process.” She contends that the circuit court did not evaluate whether Baker’s statement to the DCDC met that standard because it mistakenly applied federal immunity law, on which Baker had incorrectly relied below. Under Andrews, absolute immunity is an issue of state, not federal, law. Under Virginia law, absolute immunity arises from judicial immunity, which enables judges to exercise their discretion in judicial proceedings without fear of retaliatory private litigation. According to Viers, the context of Baker’s statements is so attenuated from that purpose that absolute immunity cannot apply. She argues that the mere fact that he was the Commonwealth’s attorney at the time he made the statements does not clothe him with absolute immunity when performing acts unrelated to his official duties. We agree both that the circuit court erroneously applied federal immunity law and that, under the standard applicable in Virginia law, Baker does not enjoy absolute immunity from Viers’ claim for defamation. In Lux, the only Virginia case Baker cited in his demurrer to support his immunity argument, the Court of Appeals reviewed a claim by a criminal defendant that a Commonwealth’s attorney should have been disqualified in a proceeding to revoke his suspended sentence. The defendant, who had sued the Commonwealth’s attorney in a thenpending federal court action for damages under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, asserted that the federal lawsuit created a conflict of interest and moved that he be disqualified. 24 Va. App. at 566-67. The Court of Appeals, affirming the circuit court’s denial of the motion, ruled that the federal lawsuit created no conflict of interest because the Commonwealth’s attorney was absolutely immune from suit under § 1983. Id. at 570 (citing Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U.S. 409, 430-31 (1976)). Reviewing the relevant federal caselaw, the Court of Appeals noted that § 1983 afforded 5 either qualified immunity or absolute immunity. See Buckley v. Fitzsimmons, 509 U.S. 259, 268-69, (1993). Under qualified immunity, government officials are not subject to damages liability for the performance of their discretionary functions when “their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.” Id. (quoting Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982)). With absolute immunity, government officials have “absolute protection from damages liability.” Id. While state prosecutors have qualified immunity from liability under § 1983 for actions performed in their administrative and investigative functions, id. at 271-75, they enjoy absolute immunity from monetary judgments for actions “intimately associated with the judicial phase of the criminal process,” including “initiating a prosecution and . . . presenting the state’s case.” Imbler, 424 U.S. at 430-31. Lux, 24 Va. App. at 570-71 (footnote omitted). This immunity includes intentional torts, such as malicious prosecution. Id. at 571 (citing Elder v. Athens-Clarke Cnty., 54 F.3d 694, 695 (11th Cir. 1995) and Rose v. Bartle, 871 F.2d 331, 347 (3d Cir. 1989)). However, federal immunity law applies to state officials only when subjected to claims under federal law, such as 42 U.S.C. § 1983. 2 Consequently, the federal immunity doctrines discussed in Lux are independent of state immunity doctrines. Applying these principles to the facts of this case, federal immunity does not apply because Viers presented no § 1983 claim or any other claim under federal law. 3 2 Compare Andrews, 266 Va. at 320 (noting that questions of immunity for state officials from state tort claims in state court are a matter of state, not federal, law) and Elwood v. Rice Cnty., 423 N.W.2d 671, 677 (Minn. 1988) (rejecting an argument that § 1983 immunity applied to state law claims against state officials) with Cantu v. Rocha, 77 F.3d 795, 805 (5th Cir. 1996) (“Federal immunity law shields state officials from personal liability under federal law for civil damages.” (emphasis added.)) and Burke v. Twp. of Cheltenham, 742 F. Supp. 2d 660, 676 (E.D. Pa. 2010) (construing the defendants’ motion to dismiss as applicable only to the federal law claims, not state law claims joined under the court’s pendent jurisdiction, because the motion invoked only § 1983 immunity to the exclusion of separate state law immunity defenses). 3 In his demurrer, Baker also asserted that he was entitled to qualified immunity, noting that in Lux, the Court of Appeals recognized that the “[a]dministrative . . . functions” giving rise 6 Under Virginia law, judges are entitled to absolute immunity, except “when they act in ‘clear absence of all jurisdiction.’” Harlow v. Clatterbuck, 230 Va. 490, 493 (1986) (quoting Johnston v. Moorman, 80 Va. 131, 142 (1885)). 4 This immunity ensures judicial independence “without fear of being sued for damages by dissatisfied persons.” Id. (citing Johnston, 80 Va. at 139). Absolute judicial immunity is limited to judges, but “quasi-judicial immunity may extend to other public officials.” Id. to such immunity include giving statements to the media. Id. at 571 n.3 (citing Buckley, 509 U.S. at 273-77). However, qualified immunity is also a federal immunity doctrine and does not apply to state tort claims brought against state officials in Virginia courts. Rather, in appropriate cases, such officials may invoke sovereign immunity, see Amato v. City of Richmond, 875 F. Supp. 1124, 1143 (E.D. Va. 1994), which is analyzed under the familiar four-prong test articulated in James v. Jane, 221 Va. 43, 53 (1980). Pike v. Hagaman, 292 Va. 209, 215 (2016). 4 We have explained the distinction between judges who act merely “in excess of their jurisdiction,” who are afforded judicial immunity, Harlow, 230 Va. at 439, and those who act in “the clear absence of all jurisdiction over the subject-matter,” who are not, Johnston, 80 Va. at 141, as the difference between “where there is a clear absence of all authority as contradistinguished from mere excess of authority.” Id. at 142. “‘Where there is clearly no jurisdiction over the subject-matter, any authority exercised is a usurped authority, and for the exercise of such authority, where the want of jurisdiction is known to the judge, no excuse is permissible.’” Id. at 141 (quoting Bradley v. Fisher, 80 U.S. (13 Wall.) 335, 351-52 (1871)). Thus, if a probate court, invested only with authority over wills and the settlement of estates of deceased persons, should proceed to try parties for public offences, jurisdiction over the subject of offences being entirely wanting in the court, and this being necessarily known to its judge, his commission would afford no protection to him in the exercise of the usurped authority. But if on the other hand a judge of a criminal court, invested with general criminal jurisdiction over offences committed within a certain district, should hold a particular act to be a public offence, which is not by the law made an offence, and proceed to the arrest and trial of a party charged with such act, or should sentence a party convicted to a greater punishment than that authorized by the law upon its proper construction, no personal liability to civil action for such acts would attach to the judge, although those acts would be in excess of his jurisdiction, or of the jurisdiction of the court held by him, for these are particulars for his judicial consideration, whenever his general jurisdiction over the subject-matter is invoked. Bradley, 80 U.S. (13 Wall.) at 352. 7 Whether quasi-judicial immunity applies turns on “whether the defendants were (1) performing judicial functions, (2) acting within their jurisdiction, and (3) acting in good faith.” Harlow, 230 Va. at 494; accord Andrews, 266 Va. at 325 (“[Q]uasi-judicial immunity may extend to certain non-judicial public officials acting within their jurisdiction, in good faith, and while performing judicial functions.”). The question of whether a defendant was performing a judicial function depends on “whether the procedure in question ‘shares enough of the characteristics of the judicial process that those who participate in such adjudication should also be immune from suits for damages.’” Id. (quoting Butz v. Economou, 438 U.S. 478, 512-13 (1978)). In Andrews, we held that quasi-judicial immunity afforded “absolute immunity [to] prosecutors from civil liability for acts within the scope of their duties and intimately associated with the judicial phase of the criminal process.” 266 Va. at 320. The precise issue in that case was whether absolute immunity applied to a Commonwealth’s attorney’s initiation of criminal process. Id. at 321. We reasoned that the underlying policy justifications for judicial immunity also applied to prosecutors, id. at 320 (citing Imbler, 424 U.S. at 422-23)—i.e., ensuring that the prosecutor is not deterred from doing his duty by fear of retaliatory lawsuits from those he had accused whose charges were later dismissed or who were acquitted. Imbler, 424 U.S. at 423-24 (quoting Pearson v. Reed, 44 P.2d 592, 597 (Cal. App. 1935)). Baker argues that under Virginia law, judicial officers enjoy absolute immunity because they must be free to exercise their judgment without fear of being sued. He argues that this includes the operation of a Commonwealth’s attorney’s office, citing Penick v. Ratcliffe, 149 Va. 618, 627-28 (1927). In Penick, we ruled that absolute privilege applied to every proceeding relating to the administration of justice. He contends that he was not free to exercise his 8 judgment because he could not access his computer, which the circuit court correctly recognized was an “essential tool” for the performance of his official duties. Baker’s argument reveals a fundamental misapprehension of the nature of Viers’ claim, which does not challenge his decision to fire her. Rather, it is based on the allegedly false justification for that decision that he gave in his statements to the DCDC and the county administrator. 5 We need not and do not consider in this case whether absolute, quasi-judicial immunity applies to a Commonwealth’s attorney’s decision to fire an employee because the only issue here is whether it applies to a Commonwealth’s attorney’s allegedly defamatory statements about why he made that decision. Under the facts as alleged in this case—i.e., that Baker made the statements solely for the purpose of assuaging the discontent growing among his constituents and members of his political party, without any plausible connection to a tenable pending or forthcoming criminal prosecution—it does not. That context does not “share[] enough of the characteristics of the judicial process” to qualify as “performing judicial functions” as required for quasi-judicial immunity under Harlow. 230 Va. at 494. It likewise did not fall “within the 5 Baker also argued in his demurrer that his alleged statement to the DCDC, as Viers described it in her second amended complaint, did not specifically name her as the person who had wiped his computer clean, thereby rendering it unusable. However, she alleged that Baker “intended by his statement for the listeners to believe that [she] was responsible for his computer’s condition” and that the context in which he made it was to provide his supposed justification for firing her. These allegations sufficiently allege the necessary colloquium to survive demurrer. Webb v. Virginian-Pilot Media Companies, LLC, 287 Va. 84, 88 (2014) (noting that a colloquium is “an explanation of how the allegedly defamatory statement refers to the plaintiff, if he is not explicitly named”). At trial, she must of course prove that the statement “was intended to refer to [her] and would be so understood by persons [hearing] it.” Gazette, Inc. v. Harris, 229 Va. 1, 37 (1985). The statement “is not actionable, unless the allegations and supporting contemporaneous facts connect the libelous words to the plaintiff.” Id. 9 scope of [his prosecutorial] duties and [was not] intimately associated with the judicial phase of the criminal process” under Andrews. 266 Va. at 320. Accordingly, we will reverse the circuit court’s judgment sustaining Baker’s demurrer to the defamation claim in Viers’ second amended complaint.