Opinion ID: 770420
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The cross-appeal--qualified immunity

Text: 45 The doctrine of qualified immunity generally shields government officials from civil liability for performing discretionary functions insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known. Bloch v. Ribar, 156 F.3d 673, 678 (6th Cir. 1998) (quoting Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982)). For a defendant not to be entitled to summary judgment on the basis of qualified immunity, [t]he contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he isdoing violates that right. Daughenbaugh v. City of Tiffin, 150 F.3d 594, 602-03 (6th Cir. 1998) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted) (alteration in original). 46 An individual's right not to have her real property confiscated by governmental officials for reasons that lack any rational connection to a plausible conception of the public interest has been clearly established for a very long time. See Citizens' Sav. & Loan Ass'n v. Topeka, 87 U.S. (20 Wall.) 655, 663 (1875) (declaring that a statute providing that the homestead now owned by A should no longer be his, but should henceforth be the property of B would be invalid because of the limitations on [government] power which grow out of the essential nature of all free governments); see also Madisonville Traction Co. v. St. Bernard Mining Co., 196 U.S. 239, 251-52 (1904) (It is fundamental in American jurisprudence that private property cannot be taken by the government, national or state, except for purposes which are of a public character. . . .That principle, this court has said, grows out of the essential nature of all free governments.). 47 Moreover, it is inconceivable that reasonable public officials would not know that they are prohibited from taking privately owned real property for the sole purpose of giving the owner's neighbor the use of the property. On the basis of the summary judgment record, a reasonable trier of fact could conclude that the county defendants knew that the driveway was the property of Mary Nave and not a county road, but simply refused to give it back for a reason that has no connection however tenuous to some at least minimally plausible conception of the public interest. Gamble v. Eau Claire County, 5 F.3d 285, 287 (7th Cir. 1993). We thus conclude that the county defendants were not entitled to summary judgment on the basis of qualified immunity.