Opinion ID: 3066451
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Williams-Cherry

Text: There is no question that Williams-Cherry’s “own individual actions,” Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 676, were instrumental to the seizure: She took the notebook from Elkins. WilliamsCherry argues that she is nonetheless entitled to summary judgment on the grounds of qualified immunity. Elkins responds that this argument is waived because WilliamsCherry failed to raise it before the district court. Appellants’ Reply Br. 32; see also District of Columbia v. Air Fla., Inc., 750 F.2d 1077, 1084 (D.C. Cir. 1984) (“It is well settled that issues and legal theories not asserted at the District Court level ordinarily will not be heard on appeal.”). But the defendants raised a qualified immunity defense in three separate motions, Defs.’ Mot. to Dismiss 37-40, ECF No. 7; Defs.’ Updated Mot. for Summ. J. 30-33, ECF No. 43; Defs.’ 19 Opp’n to Pls.’ Mot. for Recons. 8-9, ECF No. 105, and the district court ruled on the issue in its first opinion in the case, Elkins I, 527 F. Supp. 2d at 51 (“Qualified immunity does not shield the individual Defendants from liability on Plaintiffs’ Fourth Amendment claim.”). We must therefore consider the merits of Williams-Cherry’s defense when reviewing the district court’s grant of summary judgment against her. Qualified immunity protects government officials “from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.” Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982). Under this standard, “[t]he relevant, dispositive inquiry . . . is whether it would be clear to a reasonable officer that his conduct was unlawful in the situation he confronted.” Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 202 (2001); see also id. at 206 (explaining that the doctrine ensures “that before they are subjected to suit, officers are on notice their conduct is unlawful”). The doctrine “gives government officials breathing room to make reasonable but mistaken judgments,” and “protects ‘all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law.’” Aschroft v. al-Kidd, 131 S. Ct. 2074, 2085 (2011) (quoting Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 341 (1986)). The district court denied Williams-Cherry qualified immunity on the ground that it has long been clearly established that seizing items based on a warrant that does not authorize such seizure is unconstitutional. In doing so, the district court misapplied the “clearly established” inquiry. That Elkins’s rights were clearly violated does not mean Williams-Cherry clearly should have known she was violating them. The appropriate question for us to ask is whether it would have been clear to a reasonable official in Williams-Cherry’s situation that seizing Elkins’s notebook was unlawful. 20 Williams-Cherry was one of several people who carried out the search, including MPD officers and officials from DCRA and HPO. The MPD officers led the search along with DCRA employee Juan Scott, one of Williams-Cherry’s supervisors,3 who provided primary oversight of the agency officials. Williams-Cherry was never given a copy of the warrant. She was not shown the warrant. Scott had the warrant in hand when he and the other agency officials arrived first at the home. When MPD officers arrived, Scott gave the warrant to them. According to Elkins, no one searched for any documents until an MPD officer announced that they had the right to do so. Elkins Decl. ¶ 24; see also Elkins Dep. 37:14-38:18 (explaining that seizures began after an MPD officer gave “permission”). After the search began, Scott told Williams-Cherry, who was taking pictures of the outside of the house, to come inside and photograph its interior. Inside, Williams-Cherry saw officials searching through drawers. She asked Scott if that was allowed. Scott conferred with an MPD officer within earshot of WilliamsCherry, and the officer said again that anything related to construction, including documents, could be seized. When Elkins produced the notebook Williams-Cherry, who was standing nearby, took it from her. We do not think it would be clear to “a reasonable officer . . . in the situation [Williams-Cherry] confronted” that taking the notebook from Elkins was a violation of the Fourth Amendment. Saucier, 533 U.S. at 202. Williams-Cherry was but a junior member of the search team present to take pictures in an inspection led by police and her superiors. 3 Although Williams-Cherry is an HPO inspector, she was also a contract worker for DCRA at the time of the search. Elkins I, 527 F. Supp. 2d at 41. As the search was DCRA’s operation, not HPO’s, Scott was her supervisor for purposes of the search. 21 Before taking the notebook from Elkins, Williams-Cherry asked her superiors about the permissible scope of the search and relied upon the judgment of her supervisor and the police officer in charge. We do not find any one of these factors dispositive, but viewing them together, we conclude that Williams-Cherry’s actions, though mistaken, were not unreasonable. Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 244 (2009) (“The principles of qualified immunity shield an officer from personal liability when an officer reasonably believes that his or her conduct complies with the law.”). Several other circuits have addressed the reasonableness of an inferior officer’s reliance upon the conclusions of a superior and reached similar outcomes. In the underlying Groh case, the Ninth Circuit addressed an almost identical situation and held that “[w]hat’s reasonable for a particular officer depends on his role in the search.” Ramirez v. ButteSilver Bow Cnty., 298 F.3d 1022, 1027 (9th Cir. 2002), aff’d sub nom., Groh v. Ramirez, 540 U.S. 551 (2004). The court explained that although those who lead the team must read the warrant and assure themselves of its sufficiency, Line officers, on the other hand, are required to do much less. They do not have to actually read or even see the warrant; they may accept the word of their superiors that they have a warrant and that it is valid. So long as they make inquiry as to the nature and scope of the warrant, their reliance on leaders’ representations about it is reasonable. . . . Because they were not required to read the warrant, the line officers conducting this search cannot reasonably have been expected to know that it was defective. Id. at 1028 (citations, alterations, and internal quotation marks omitted). The First Circuit has similarly held that an official 22 “may reasonably rely on a fellow officer or agent who does (or by position should) know the substantive law and the facts and who (based on that knowledge) asserts” that some action is lawful. Liu v. Phillips, 234 F.3d 55, 57 (1st Cir. 2000); see also id. at 58 (“In the few pertinent cases we could find, officers who reasonably relied on superior officers have been held to be entitled to qualified immunity even if the officer who gave the direction acted on a misapprehension as to the law.”); Baptiste v. J.C. Penney Co., 147 F.3d 1252, 1260 (10th Cir. 1998) (“[A] police officer who acts ‘in reliance on what proves to be the flawed conclusions of a fellow police officer’ may nonetheless be entitled to qualified immunity as long as the officer’s reliance was ‘objectively reasonable.’” (quoting Rogers v. Powell, 120 F.3d 446, 455 (3d Cir. 1997))); cf. KRL v. Estate of Moore, 512 F.3d 1184, 1192-93 (9th Cir. 2008) (distinguishing Ramirez on the ground that the line officers there, like Williams-Cherry here, did not play a key role in the overall investigation). Whether an official’s reliance is reasonable will always turn on several factors, but there is no basis in this record to find that Williams-Cherry’s was not. She is entitled to summary judgment based on qualified immunity.