Court Opinion

ID: 9493296
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:03:43.771495+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:45.682913
License: Public Domain

GILMAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I agree with the majority’s ultimate conclusion that the district court did not err in granting summary judgment in favor of the defendants. Because no seizure occurred until Watkins’s car was forced to a stop, his admitted failure to pull over when the police signaled for him to do so was a legitimate factor for the police to consider in determining whether they had reasonable suspicion to justify making the stop. See California v. Hodari D., 499 U.S. 621, 626, 111 S.Ct. 1547, 113 L.Ed.2d 690 (1991) (holding that a “seizure” under the Fourth Amendment “requires either physical force ... or, where that is absent, submission to the assertion of authority”) (emphasis in original); United States v. Santamaria-Hernandez, 968 F.2d 980, 983 (9th Cir.1992) (“The determination [of] whether [officers] have founded suspicion to justify a stop may take into account all of the events that occur up to the time of physical apprehension of a suspect who flees.”). Without this added factor, however, I would be inclined to reach a contrary conclusion in the case before us. I also write separately because I believe that, regardless of whether the officers’ alleged conduct was “extreme and outrageous,” Watkins failed to present sufficient evidence that he suffered “severe emotional distress.”
A.The lawfulness of the stop
During the course of its analysis, the majority writes that “[t]he officers may have suspected that [Watkins] was intoxicated or that he was ‘casing’ the area.” In support of this proposition, the majority states that Watkins’s car “was proceeding in the dark morning hours at half the speed limit of the streets in a residential area.” I find such inferences on the facts before us too attenuated to justify a stop under Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968).
The majority relies on eight cases to justify its conclusion, none of which I find controlling. More importantly, a close review of these decisions reveals that each is, to a greater or lesser degree, distinguishable. See United States v. Pineiro, No. 95-3923, 1997 WL 413656, at *3 (6th Cir. July 17, 1997) (unpublished opinion) (defendant was violating an Ohio statute by driving too slowly in the passing lane); United States v. Ramos, No. 93-6196, 1994 WL 560870, at *2 (6th Cir. Oct. 12, 1994) (unpublished opinion) (defendant was operating his vehicle below the minimum interstate speed limit); United States v. Basey, 816 F.2d 980, 984, 989 (5th Cir.1987) (area residents had seen the defendant’s car “aimlessly wandering back and forth” on little-traveled rural roads prior to the discovery of a nearby burglary, the victim saw the car close to his home shortly before he discovered the burglary, the victim took note of the car’s description and license plate number, and the victim identified the car in the presence of the police officers when the car passed them after the discovery of the crime); United States v. Rickus, 737 F.2d 360, 362, 365 (3d Cir.1984) (car was moving “extremely slow” past closed stores in a commercial district at 3:30 a.m., and then proceeded in an “apparently aimless course” in a residential area); United States v. Holland, 510 F.2d 453, 454 (9th Cir.1975) (officers were notified of an “armed and dangerous” fugitive believed to be in the intermediate area, they noticed a vehicle traveling toward them “at five to eight miles per hour,” the occupants stared at the officers for “an unusually long time” as they passed, and the vehicle eventually slowed to “walking speed”); Carpenter v. Sigler, 419 F.2d 169, 170-72 (8th Cir.1969) (officers noticed that a car with out-of-county tags “moved very slowly past several closed business establishments and pursued a rather erratic course” in a town of approximately 2,000 persons where “unidentified cars do not routinely travel at that time”); Leaper v. State, 753 P.2d 914, 915 (Okla.Crim.App.1988) (car was moving “extremely slow” at only five miles per hour at 3:30 a.m.); State v. Stuart, 192 *892W.Va. 428, 452 S.E.2d 886, 887, 891-92 (1994) (police were alerted to the defendant’s vehicle by a sufficiently-corroborated 911 call that identified the defendant as driving while intoxicated).
This last case, Stuart, is worthy of further comment because of its discussion regarding facts that, but for the anonymous call, are very similar to our own. In Stuart, a late-Saturday night anonymous caller had informed the police that the caller had witnessed the defendant operating his vehicle in an erratic manner. Officers soon located the car (the witness had noted the license plate number) traveling on a straight road that had a thirty-five miles per hour speed limit. When the defendant passed the officers in the opposite direction, they executed a U-turn and began following him. After determining that the defendant’s car was going approximately twenty-five miles per hour, the officers signaled the defendant to stop. One of the officers explained that he “based [the decision] upon the defendant’s slow driving, the time of day, and the day of the week.” Stuart, 452 S.E.2d at 888. The defendant was arrested and thereafter convicted of driving while intoxicated. In response to the defendant’s challenge to the lawfulness of the stop, the trial court first ruled that the substance of the telephone tip could not be relied upon by the police as a factor to support making the stop because it was from an unknown and potentially unreliable caller. The trial court further concluded, however, that the stop was justified based on the fact that the defendant was driving slowly down a straight road late at night. Id. at 889.
The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, which is that state’s highest court, affirmed. It first ruled that the trial court could in fact have taken into account that the officers had received an anonymous telephone tip. In holding that the stop was lawful, the Supreme Court of Appeals then stated that “given the totality of the circumstances, the anonymous call, and the police officers’ observations once they arrived on the scene, we conclude the police officers did have sufficient reasonable suspicion to stop the defendant to make a further investigation.” Id. at 892. Most notably, however, the court specifically rejected the notion that a driver’s actions similar to those present in the case at bar could give rise to reasonable suspicion:
[E]ven without the anonymous call, the trial court concluded [that] the police officers had sufficient reasonable suspicion to stop the defendant based upon the defendant’s driving 25 miles per hour in a 35 miles per hour zone on a relatively straight road at 1:00 a.m.
We disagree with the court’s legal conclusion .... [T]he purely innocuous facts mentioned by the trial court, without more, clearly are insufficient to establish reasonable suspicion to stop the defendant.
Id. at 891.
Like the Stuart court, I do not believe that driving ten miles per hour below the speed limit, even in a high-crime area at night, is sufficient in and of itself to constitute reasonable suspicion “that illicit activity might be in progress.” Spear v. Sowders, 71 F.3d 626, 631 (6th Cir.1995); see also United States v. Nicholas, 448 F.2d 622, 624-25 (8th Cir.1971) (distinguishing Carpenter v. Sigler, 419 F.2d 169 (8th Cir.1969), and holding that the stop of the defendant’s out-of-state car, which occurred in an high-crime area at 11:00 p.m., was unjustified because the (1) the police were not investigating any particular crime, (2) the police had no information regarding the car or its occupants, (3) there was no showing in the record that the police had been informed of suspicious activities in the vicinity, and (4) the defendant was a black man in a predominantly black neighborhood); People v. Burrell, 417 Mich. 439, 339 N.W.2d 403, 408 (1983) (“[A] stop cannot be justified by individualized, articulable suspicion when a police officer merely observes two black men in a dark automobile ’driving slowly through a white or predominantly white community and [the officer] recalls that armed rob*893beries occurred the month before which were allegedly committed by two black males in a dark vehicle.”); City of Minot v. Johnson, 603 N.W.2d 485, 488 (N.D.1999) (holding that the police officer’s stop of the defendant’s vehicle was based on “no more than a vague hunch of illegal activity” and was therefore unlawful when, at approximately 4:00 a.m. in an area that had experienced several recent burglaries, the defendant pulled his car into a lounge’s parking lot and, without slowing down or speeding up, returned to the public roads). The added factor in the case before us, however, is Watkins’s failure to stop when the police signaled for him to do so. For the reasons stated by the majority, this provided the police with justification to make a forced stop. I therefore concur in the court’s judgment on this issue.
B.The intentional infliction of emotional distress claim
The majority has also held that the officers’ conduct was not, as a matter of law, “extreme and outrageous,” and therefore the district court did not err when it granted summary judgment in favor of the defendants with respect to Watkins’s common law claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress. Without either agreeing or disagreeing, I find no need to reach this issue because Watkins failed to present sufficient evidence that he has suffered severe emotional distress as a result of the defendants’ alleged actions.
In Roberts v. Auto-Owners Insurance Co., 422 Mich. 594, 374 N.W.2d 905 (1985), the Supreme Court of Michigan noted that the two essential elements for a claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress are that the alleged conduct must be “extreme and outrageous” and that the conduct must cause the plaintiff to suffer “severe emotional distress.” See id. at 908. Recovery is permitted “only in the most egregious of cases.” Bonelli v. Volkswagen of Am., Inc., 166 Mich.App. 483, 421 N.W.2d 213, 228 (1988). With respect to the element of severe emotional distress, this court has written as follows:
“Emotional distress passes under various names, such as mental suffering, mental anguish, mental or nervous shock, or the like. It includes all highly unpleasant mental reactions, such as fright, horror, grief, shame, humiliation, embarrassment, anger, chagrin, disappointment, worry, and nausea. It is only where it is extreme that the liability arises. Complete emotional tranquility is seldom attainable in this world, and some degree of transient and trivial emotional distress is a part of the price of living among people. The law intervenes only where the distress inflicted is so severe that no reasonable man could be expected to endure it. The intensity and the duration of the distress are factors to be considered in determining its severity.”
Pratt v. Brown Mach. Co., 855 F.2d 1225, 1240 (6th Cir.1988) (quoting Restatement (Second) of Torts § 46 cmt. j) (emphasis added).
Here, although Watkins stated in his deposition that at certain times he was “scared,” “frightened,” and “surprised,” he has failed to set forth any evidence that he has suffered a level of distress that is “so severe that no reasonable man could be expected to endure it.” Pratt, 855 F.2d at 1240; see also Bonelli, 421 N.W.2d at 229 (holding that the plaintiffs alleged harm “fell far short” of that required to establish severe emotional distress where he “made no mention of severe depression, substantial psychological trauma, or even minor physical consequences,” even though he testified that he was “shocked ... surprised, and upset” as a result of the defendant’s conduct); Roberts, 374 N.W.2d at 912 (holding that the plaintiffs’ testimony to the effect that they felt disappointed, mad, and upset “d[id] not even approach the level of emotional distress contemplated by the Restatement drafters”); cf. Haverbush v. Powelson, 217 Mich.App. 228, 551 N.W.2d 206, 209 (1996) (holding that the element of severe emotional distress was satisfied when the plaintiff, a *894doctor, testified that (1) he was especially fearful after the defendant left an ax and a hatchet on his vehicles, (2) the defendant’s letters accusing him of harassment caused him great concern that the defendant was going to interfere with his wedding, (3) he was worried about his reputation because of what the defendant had said about him to others, (4) he was concerned with his patients’ safety, and (5) the defendant’s actions affected the way he worked).
I therefore agree with the majority that the district court properly granted summary judgment in favor of the defendants on Watkins’s claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress, albeit for reasons other than those stated by the majority and by the district court.