Court Opinion

ID: 9481254
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:12:19.553847+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:10.637505
License: Public Domain

FLAUM, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I join the majority’s opinion that Soldal’s false arrest claims must be remanded for trial. I also believe that his due process claim should be remanded, however, and therefore respectfully dissent as to the disposition of that claim.
I differ with the majority largely because I cannot agree that “denial of procedural rights” is a “good description of the acts of the deputy sheriffs in this case.” See supra at 1248. The majority discusses substantive due process, and acknowledges that the damage done to the Soldáis’ trailer was a ’ deprivation of property, one that raises at least a “plausible” substantive due process claim, but maintains that the Soldáis’ suit was not “an action so conceived.” See supra at 1248. Even the defendants concede, however, that Soldal alleged a violation of substantive due process, see Brief at 2, and elsewhere in its opinion the court seems to acknowledge the same as well — see supra at 1245 (defendants “are accused of conspiring ... to damage the Soldáis’ trailer”). In my view, the Soldáis’ complaint should settle the matter, for it alleges -that the defendants conspired to deprive them of their substantive due process rights by, among other things,' damaging the trailer. See Complaint IT 31 (“Defendants ... conspired together to violate the constitutional rights of Plaintiffs by unlawfully evicting Plaintiffs, removing them from the trailer park, and destroying their property_”) (emphasis added); see also ¶ 33 (explicitly alleging violation of “substantive due process”). Respectfully, these allegations do not support the majority’s view that the nature of the Soldáis’ due process claim is procedural only.
The majority maintains that the damage to the Soldáis’ trailer was merely the consequence of the procedural violation, rather than an independent deprivation, but that is a neither a meaningful nor instructive distinction. An eviction order does not constitute a license to pillage the property subject to the order, and it is hard to imagine how wanton destruction inflicted during the course of an otherwise lawful eviction would be an “incidental” effect of carrying out the eviction. In my judgment, no amount of procedure could have legitimized an effort to intentionally damage the Sol-dais’ trailer, which — reading the facts in the light most favorable to the Soldáis — is what happened. As Judge Posner’s factual narrative suggests, there is sufficient evidence to support an inference that the trailer park employees, aided by the actions of the sheriff’s deputy, deliberately damaged the trailer. Since, as the majority recognizes, “severe damage is a partial ... but *1252actionable deprivation,” I would remand the fourteenth amendment claim for trial.
I should also note that I do not share the majority’s confidence that an unreasonable repossession conducted by state officers is not actionable under the fourth amendment. The majority fears that recognizing the Soldáis’ fourth amendment claim would thwart the Supreme Court’s “efforts to set limits on constitutional claims of procedural irregularities ... because every deprivation of property without due process of law would be redescribed as a seizure of property in violation of the Fourth Amendment.” Supra at 1250. The Court, however, seems less concerned with limiting procedural due process claims, and the fourth amendment, than does the majority. As Judge Posner acknowledges, the Court left this question open in Fuentes; even more instructive, in Fuentes the Court explicitly premised its reserve on the condition that a preseizure hearing take place. See 407 U.S. at 96 n. 32, 92 S.Ct. at 2002 n. 32 (“once a prior hearing is required, at which the applicant for a writ must establish the probable validity of his claim for repossession, the Fourth Amendment problem may well be obviated.”). The Court again declined to address whether the plaintiff had a fourth amendment claim in Zinermon, but did point to the fourth amendment specifically as a ground that would support a § 1983 action even if state remedies to redress a deprivation were available. See 110 S.Ct. at 983 & n. 12. In light of the Court’s language of reservation, I am reluctant to attribute to it a position that would limit fundamental constitutional rights like those encompassed in the fourth amendment.
“The strictures of the Fourth Amendment ... have been applied to the conduct of governmental officials in various civil activities.” O’Connor v. Ortega, 480 U.S. 709, 714, 107 S.Ct. 1492, 1496, 94 L.Ed.2d 714 (1987) (plurality opinion). Granted, the judicial process required to make the state’s seizure of property in the course of a civil proceeding comport with the fourth amendment differs from that required in a criminal investigation. See, e.g., Murray’s Lessee v. Hoboken Land and Improvement Co., 59 U.S. (18 How.) 272, 285, 15 L.Ed. 372 (1856); Founding Church of Scientology v. United States, 409 F.2d 1146, 1150 (D.C.Cir.) (Wright, J.), cert. denied, 396 U.S. 963, 90 S.Ct. 434, 24 L.Ed.2d 427 (1969). But that is not to say that the amendment does not impose some minimum requirements to protect citizens from unlawful intrusions in the course of civil proceedings, whether the government institutes the action directly or whether it is acting at the behest of private parties. It does. See, e.g., Specht v. Jensen, 832 F.2d 1516 (10th Cir.1987); United States v. Device More or Less Labeled Theramatic, 641 F.2d 1289 (9th Cir.1981); United States v. Articles of Hazardous Substance, 588 F.2d 39, 43 (4th Cir.1978); Founding Church of Scientology, supra; Dawes v. Philadelphia Gas Commission, 421 F.Supp. 806, 824 (E.D.Pa.1976); Miloszewski v. Sears Roebuck & Co., 346 F.Supp. 119 (W.D.Mich.1972); Laprease v. Raymours Furniture Co., 315 F.Supp. 716 (N.D.N.Y.1970) (three-judge court); cf. Wyman v. James, 400 U.S. 309, 318, 91 S.Ct. 381, 386, 27 L.Ed.2d 408 (1971) (home visits by caseworker did not violate fourth amendment because they were not unreasonable); Benigni v. City of Hemet, 879 F.2d 473, 477 (9th Cir.1988) (fourth amendment applies to harassing “inspections” by police of a local bar); Harris v. City of Roseburg, 664 F.2d 1121, 1127 (9th Cir.1981) (upholding § 1983 action when police assisted an unlawful eviction but not specifying the source of the constitutional violation).
The majority would confine operation of the fourth amendment to “law enforcement activities,” a term that presumably encompasses civil proceedings instituted by the government, but not those instituted by private parties. Whether the government conducts a search or seizure for private or public ends, however, is but a factor bearing on the reasonableness of its action; it does not obviate the need to make the fourth amendment inquiry. Cf. Ortega, 480 U.S. at 730-31, 107 S.Ct. at 1504 (Sca-lia, J., concurring) (whether search is conducted by police or government employer does not affect availability of fourth *1253amendment protection; identity of government actor is relevant only to purpose and reasonableness). In either case, the government participation is just as real. By the majority’s logic, an individual the police suspect of illegality, but against whom they have an insufficient quantum of cause to arrest, or to search or seize property, is entitled to greater constitutional protection against unlawful seizures than one against whom the police harbor no suspicions at all. A suspected malfeasor would have a § 1983 action, but a completely innocent victim of a governmental invasion would not.
The Supreme Court rejected a similar approach when it held the fourth amendment applicable to administrative searches in Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523, 530-31, 87 S.Ct. 1727, 1731-32, 18 L.Ed.2d 930 (1967). The Court observed that “[i]t is surely anomalous to say that the individual and his private property are fully protected by the Fourth Amendment only when the individual is suspected of criminal behavior” for “even the most law-abiding citizen has a very tangible interest in limiting the circumstances under which the sanctity of his home may be broken by official authority....”; see also Wyman, 400 U.S. at 317, 91 S.Ct. at 386 (“one’s Fourth Amendment protection subsists apart from his being suspected of criminal behavior”); Go-Bart Co. v. United States, 282 U.S. 344, 357, 51 S.Ct. 153, 158, 75 L.Ed. 374 (1931) (The fourth amendment “is general and forbids every search that is unreasonable; it protects all, those suspected or known to be offenders as well as the innocent_”). The anomaly is particularly graphic in the majority’s opinion, which affirms Soldal’s § 1983 action for false arrest while denying his right to sue for the wrongful seizure of (and damage to) his trailer the day before, and where both actions stem from the same property dispute.
Reasonableness, which is the linchpin of the fourth amendment inquiry in all other contexts, should govern in this one as well. “A determination of the standard of reasonableness applicable to a particular class of searches requires ‘balancing] the nature and quality of the intrusion on the individual’s Fourth Amendment interests against the importance of the governmental interests alleged to justify the intrusion.’ ” Ortega, 480 U.S. at 719, 107 S.Ct. at 1498 (quoting United States v. Place, 462 U.S. 696, 703, 103 S.Ct. 2637, 2642, 77 L.Ed.2d 110 (1983); Camara, 387 U.S. at 536-37, 87 S.Ct. at 1735). When, as here, there is no significant legitimate governmental interest at stake, the alleged government action is patently unreasonable. I agree that there is little “to be gained by turning every repossession by state officers into a Fourth Amendment case,” but neither do we gain by completely restricting the scope of constitutional protection to cases in which the government suspects one of illegal activity. Certainly, the fourth amendment should not bar every repossession or other type of governmental seizure, but it should be applied to those that, like the one alleged here, are clearly arbitrary and unreasonable.