Opinion ID: 616740
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Walters's Fourteenth Amendment Claim

Text: The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment provides that [n]o state shall . . . deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. U.S. Const. Amend. XIV, § 1. As the Supreme Court has recognized, [p]rocedural due process imposes constraints on governmental decisions which deprive individuals of `liberty' or `property' interests within the meaning of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth or Fourteenth Amendment. Mathews, 424 U.S. at 332, 96 S.Ct. 893. All parties concede that Walters's interest in his handgun and associated ammunition constitute a valid, constitutionally protected property interest. Consequently, the issue is what process Walters is owed for the City's and Chief Wolf's continued deprivation of that property. In Mathews, the Supreme Court observed that its preceding decisions underscore the truism that due process, unlike some legal rules, is not a technical conception with a fixed content unrelated to time, place and circumstances, but instead is flexible and calls for such procedural protections as the particular situation demands. Id. at 334, 96 S.Ct. 893 (quotations and citations omitted). In that vein, the Mathews Court outlined the factors that a court must balance in determining what process is owed and when that process is due in order for a state to deprive an individual of his or her private property without running afoul of the Fourteenth Amendment: First, the private interest that will be affected by the official action; second, the risk of an erroneous deprivation of such interest through the procedures used, and the probable value, if any, of additional or substitute procedural safeguards; and finally, the Government's interest, including the function involved and the fiscal and administrative burdens that the additional or substitute procedural requirement would entail. Id. at 335, 96 S.Ct. 893. Applying this test, the [Supreme] Court usually has held that the Constitution requires some kind of a hearing before the State deprives a person of liberty or property. Zinermon v. Burch, 494 U.S. 113, 127, 110 S.Ct. 975, 108 L.Ed.2d 100 (1990). In some circumstances, however, the Court has held that a statutory provision for a postdeprivation hearing, or a common-law tort remedy for erroneous deprivation, satisfies due process. Id. at 128, 110 S.Ct. 975. Whether Walters is entitled merely to a postdeprivation action in replevin, or deserved the customary predeprivation process, depends on the applicability of the Supreme Court's decisions in Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S. 527, 101 S.Ct. 1908, 68 L.Ed.2d 420 (1981), overruled on other grounds by Daniels v. Williams, 474 U.S. 327, 330-31, 106 S.Ct. 662, 88 L.Ed.2d 662 (1986), and Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U.S. 517, 104 S.Ct. 3194, 82 L.Ed.2d 393 (1984). As the Supreme Court explained in Zinermon,  Parratt and Hudson represent a special case of the general Mathews v. Eldridge analysis, in which postdeprivation tort remedies are all the process that is due, simply because they are the only remedies the State could be expected to provide. 494 U.S. at 128, 110 S.Ct. 975. In Parratt, the plaintiff was an inmate in the Nebraska prison system who sued prison officials under § 1983 for $23.50 worth of hobby materials that he had purchased through a mail-order catalog and that, upon delivery, the prison officials negligently [2] misplaced. 451 U.S. at 529, 101 S.Ct. 1908. Faced with these facts, the Supreme Court had to decide whether the tort remedies which the State of Nebraska provides as a means of redress for property deprivations satisfy the requirements of procedural due process. Id. at 537, 101 S.Ct. 1908. The Supreme Court held that, in cases where the predicate deprivation is, or is akin to, a tortious loss of a prisoner's property resulting from a random and unauthorized act by a state employeeversus some established state procedureadequate postdeprivation remedies satisfy the requirements of due process. Id. at 541, 101 S.Ct. 1908. The Parratt Court reasoned that, [i]n such a case, the loss is not a result of some established state procedure and the State cannot predict precisely when the loss will occur. It is difficult to conceive of how the State could provide a meaningful hearing before the deprivation takes place. Id. Because [t]he loss of property . . . is in almost all cases beyond the control of the State, in most cases it is not only impracticable, but impossible, to provide a meaningful hearing before the deprivation. Id. As the Court later expounded in Zinermon, Parratt is not an exception to the Mathews balancing test, but rather an application of that test to the unusual case in which one of the variables in the Mathews equationthe value of predeprivation safeguardsis negligible in preventing the kind of deprivation at issue. Therefore, no matter how significant the private interest at stake and the risk of its erroneous deprivation, see Mathews, 424 U.S., at 335, 96 S.Ct., at 903, the State cannot be required constitutionally to do the impossible by providing predeprivation process. 494 U.S. at 129, 110 S.Ct. 975. In Hudson, the Supreme Court extended Parratt 's holding that predeprivation process is obviated where the deprivation stemmed from a state employee's unilateral negligence to cases where the deprivation stemmed from a state employee's unauthorized, intentional acts. 468 U.S. at 533, 104 S.Ct. 3194. As the district court observed, [t]he parties here are in agreement that defendants' retention of the firearm and ammunition were undertaken pursuant to an established policy rather than an unauthorized or random act. Walters, 2010 WL 4290105, at . Moreover, the district court recognized that, when an established state procedure or a foreseeable consequence of such a procedure causes the loss, an adequate postdeprivation remedy is of no consequence, and the Court focuses solely on the process afforded by the established procedure. Id. (citing Clark v. Kansas City Mo. Sch. Dist., 375 F.3d 698, 702 (8th Cir.2004)). Despite these correct statements of fact and law, the district court proceeded to assess whether post deprivation replevin under Missouri law satisfies the Mathews factors for adequacy of process. Determining that it did, the district court concluded that [p]laintiff's failure to seek replevin, a postdeprivation remedy, is fatal to his due process claim, reasoning that, [i]n order to prevail on a due process claim, a plaintiff must take advantage of the processes available to him, unless the processes are unavailable or patently inadequate. Id. at . Supreme Court and Eighth Circuit precedents hold otherwise. Parratt and its progeny hold that, when an established state procedure deprives one of property, postdeprivation remedies generally fail to satisfy Mathews. See Zinermon, 494 U.S. at 132, 110 S.Ct. 975 (acknowledging that the reasoning of Parratt and Hudson emphasizes the State's inability to provide predeprivation process, but affirming that, [i]n situations where the State feasibly can provide a predeprivation hearing before taking property, it generally must do so regardless of the adequacy of a postdeprivation tort remedy to compensate for the taking). As the Supreme Court supplemented in Logan v. Zimmerman Brush Co., this maxim especially holds true when the proffered postdeprivation remedy is a subsequent tort suit: Here, in contrast [to Parratt ], it is the state system itself that destroys a complainant's property interest, by operation of law. . . . Parratt was not designed to reach such a situation. Unlike the complainant in Parratt, Logan is challenging not the Commission's error, but the established state procedure that destroys his entitlement without according him proper procedural safeguards. In any event, the Court's decisions suggest that, absent the necessity of quick action by the State or the impracticality of providing any predeprivation process, a post-deprivation hearing here would be constitutionally inadequate. That is particularly true where, as here, the State's only post-termination process comes in the form of an independent tort action. Seeking redress through a tort suit is apt to be a lengthy and speculative process, which in a situation such as this one [(involving employment discrimination)] will never make the complainant entirely whole. . . . 455 U.S. 422, 436-37, 102 S.Ct. 1148, 71 L.Ed.2d 265 (1982) (internal citations omitted) (footnote omitted) (emphasis added). Indeed, this court has emphasized the insufficiency of postdeprivation remedies for state-authorized deprivations. In Coleman v. Watt , for example, we reversed the district court's grant of summary judgment and remanded the case for further proceedings, concluding that a one-week delay between an impoundment [of a car] and a first hearing [addressing that impoundment's propriety] may constitute a denial of due process. 40 F.3d 255, 257 (8th Cir.1994). Initially, we clarified that the plaintiff in that case ha[d] not suggested that he was entitled to a predeprivation hearing, and that, instead, [the plaintiff's] claim rest[ed] upon the issue of promptness: whether the order's provisions for the timing of the post-deprivation hearing satisfy the demands of procedural due process. Id. at 260. Still, we rejected the district court's conclusion that, under Parratt and Hudson, the Arkansas replevin statute provides a meaningful postdeprivation remedy. Id. at 262. Rather, we stated unequivocally that the availability of state law postdeprivation remedies bears relevance only where the challenged acts of state officials can be characterized as random and unauthorized. Id. This case actually involves two deprivations: the first being Officer Mitchell's initial seizure of the handgun and ammunition incident to Walters's arrest and the second being Chief Wolf's subsequent and continued refusal to surrender the property following the St. Louis County Circuit Court's dismissal of the unlawful-use-of-a-weapon charge. Under our precedents, these are two distinct deprivations and constitute separate Fourteenth Amendment events. The initial deprivationthe seizure of Walter's handgun and ammunition incident to arrestwas a valid deprivation. We recently noted that, `[w]hen seizing property for criminal investigatory purposes, compliance with the Fourth Amendment satisfies pre-deprivation procedural due process as well.' PPS, Inc. v. Faulkner Cnty., Ark., 630 F.3d 1098, 1107 (8th Cir.2011) (quoting Sanders v. City of San Diego, 93 F.3d 1423, 1429 (9th Cir.1996)). Accordingly, neither the City nor Chief Wolf owed Walters any predeprivation process for this first deprivation at the time of Walters's arrest. Officer Mitchell's probable cause determination that Walters was a fugitive unlawfully in possession of a firearm, while ultimately unfounded, was validly supported at the time of arrest. The Fourth Amendment analysis subsumed any predeprivation due process protections. Cf. id. (Where the plain view doctrine justifies a warrantless seizure for valid law enforcement purposes in a criminal investigation under the Fourth Amendment, any predeprivation due process protections are necessarily subsumed within the Fourth Amendment analysis.). The City's and Chief Wolf's valid seizure ended with the dismissal of the predicate charges in St. Louis County and the fugitive warrant in Edmundson County. A second deprivation occurred requiring a new due process analysis when the defendants, with no legal grounds, refused to return Walter's property. This second deprivation had no attendant exigencies prohibiting or making impractical a reasonable predeprivation process. Our decision in Lathon v. City of St. Louis, 242 F.3d 841 (8th Cir.2001), is on point and controlling. In Lathon, St. Louis police, while executing a valid search warrant on Lathon's residence as part of a sprawling narcotics investigation, seized 18 firearms and 21 boxes of assorted ammunition. Id. at 842. Authorities never filed criminal charges against Lathon, and he requested the return of his weapons and ammunition. Id. The St. Louis Police Department refused Lathon's request based upon its decision that because of the circumstances of the seizure and the nature of the weapons as assault weapons (though it was not illegal for the plaintiff to possess them), the weapons and ammunition should not be returned absent a court order to do so. Id. After the seizure and before Lathon's filing suit, the police department gave five of the weapons to the sheriffs' offices of three different Missouri counties. Id. In Lathon's ensuing § 1983 lawsuit, the district court granted the defendants' motion for summary judgment, acknowledging that, under Parratt and Hudson, when state officials deprive an individual of property pursuant to a state procedure or policy without predeprivation process, a § 1983 action may be brought regardless of whether there are adequate state postdeprivation remedies, but concluding nevertheless that this rule did not apply to [Lathon's] case because . . . there was predeprivation process, namely, the probable cause found by the state court to support the search warrant. Id. at 843. In reversing the district court's summary judgment, this court observed that [t]he pivotal deprivation in this case was not the initial seizure of the ammunition and weapons, but the refusal to return them without a court order after it was determined that these items were not contraband or required as evidence in a court proceeding. Id. at 843. Based on this observation, this court concluded that [t]he record establishes that this refusal to return Mr. Lathon's property was not a random or unauthorized act. The authorized decision not to return Mr. Lathon's property is not the sort of action for which postdeprivation process will suffice in this context. Thus the adequacy of a postdeprivation remedy is not relevant to whether Mr. Lathon may maintain his § 1983 claims. See Coleman v. Watt, 40 F.3d 255, 262 (8th Cir.1994) (the availability of state law postdeprivation remedies bears relevance only where the challenged acts of state officials can be characterized as random and unauthorized). Id. at 843-44. Likewise, in Walters's case, the pivotal deprivation was not the initial seizure supported by probable cause because [t]he constitutional violation actionable under § 1983 is not complete when the deprivation occurs; it is not complete unless and until the State fails to provide due process. Zinermon, 494 U.S. at 126, 110 S.Ct. 975. Thus, the pivotal deprivation is the City's and Chief Wolf's continued refusal to return Walters's handgun and ammunition after the St. Louis Circuit Court dismissed the unlawful-use-of-a-weapon charge on October 23, 2007, or sometime thereafter when authorities deactivated the Edmundson County warrant for Walters's arrest. The constitutionally impermissible deprivation commenced on one of those two dates and, under Lathon, relegation to a post-hoc state tort action to address the deprivation is inherently insufficient. 242 F.3d at 844. Accordingly, the district court erred in granting the City and Chief Wolf's motion for summary judgment on Walters's procedural due-process claim, and we reverse and remand.