Court Opinion

ID: 9495448
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:03:17.791684+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:01.768170
License: Public Domain

DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
If this appeal had come to us after a full trial had taken place, I would probably not be dissenting. But the procedural posture of a case on appeal has a critical bearing on the way in which this court must consider the facts. With respect, I cannot *658agree with my colleagues that the facts before us here, taken in the light most favorable to plaintiff Martin Abrams, require the conclusion that defendant Kent Walker is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. To the contrary, the record here shows that there are disputed issues of material fact that make summary judgment inappropriate. I therefore dissent.
Without repeating the facts that the majority has set forth, I wish to highlight those that seem to me fairly disputed on the summary judgment record. There are four alleged admissions from Abrams that are central to the majority’s analysis. It claims that Abrams admitted that (1) he repeatedly disobeyed Walker’s order to return to his car, (2) he attempted to flee the scene once Walker informed him that he would be ticketed, (3) he retrieved the knife that Walker had taken from his car once Walker returned to his squad car to call for backup, and (4) his actions had the effect of interrupting and delaying Walker’s traffic stop of Trent Forte (Abrams’s client). If there were indeed no material issues of fact about these points and Abrams had really made such admissions, then I would agree that the district court properly entered summary judgment for Walker. No malicious prosecution action could lie, because Walker would have had probable cause to arrest Abrams for obstructing a police officer, and no trier of fact or court could find that Abrams had engaged in speech protected by the First Amendment, which is the predicate for Abrams’s retaliation claim.
A closer look at these four admissions, however, shows that they are not what they appear to be. The first one — that Abrams allegedly repeatedly disobeyed Walker’s order to return to the car — is contested. According to Abrams’s version of the facts, when Walker ordered him to return to his car, Abrams simply asked why. Walker told him that Walker could give him tickets for having tinted windows and for backing up on the highway. Abrams laughed, and said that the windows were not tinted. Walker then responded (without any further requests about returning to the car) that Abrams was going to get ticketed. Abrams then indicated that he was going to comply with Walker’s request that he return to the car (and note that Walker did not testify that he had at that point also ordered Abrams to remain on the scene' — it was only later that he ran over and grabbed Abrams’s keys), and said, “You know what, I’m going to get in my car and leave.” Obviously, this is not Walker’s version of the events, but we cannot resolve disputed facts like who said what to whom, at what time, and who walked where, on summary judgment, when we are looking at the accounts of. two eyewitnesses or participants. Indeed, the majority explicitly agrees with the proposition that mere argument about the validity of an arrest is not enough to show probable cause, because it cites the Illinois case so holding, People v. Finley, 49 Ill.App.3d 26, 6 Ill.Dec. 924, 363 N.E.2d 871, 873 (1977) (obstruction statute proscribes only some physical act that imposes an obstacle to the officer’s performance of his duties, not mere argument), ante at 654. Similarly, the majority also acknowledges the holding of People v. Crawford, 152 Ill.App.3d 992, 106 Ill.Dec. 88, 505 N.E.2d 394, 396 (1987) (resistance statute proscribes the use of physical force, not mere argument), ante at 654. The facts as Abrams portrayed them show nothing more than argument or disagreement, and they show that Abrams eventually proposed doing exactly what Walker was asking him to do: returning to his car.
The second alleged admission relates to Abrams’s supposed attempt to flee the scene. The use of the word “flee” here is *659problematic. It makes it sound as if Abrams raced off through the fields in an attempt to avoid Walker, or leapt into his car and gunned the accelerator. In fact, Abrams, in keeping with Walker’s direction to return to his car, said that he was going to leave the area, and he said this only after Walker suggested a trumped-up charge about tinted windows (recalling that for present purposes we must assume that the windows were in fact not tinted). After Abrams voluntarily offered to leave, Walker grabbed his keys, looked in his car, and retrieved a small hunting knife from the back. The knife was not an unlawful weapon or implement, and Walker was so unconcerned about it that he simply tossed it onto the roof of Abrams’s car. Walker’s actions do not imply that he was trying somehow to secure the knife. Instead, Walker just walked away while Abrams remained unrestrained in his car and made several telephone calls. If believed by a trier of fact, this sequence would refute any claim that Abrams was trying to flee the scene. According to Abrams, after he finished his telephone calls, Walker returned, ordered him out of the car, and Abrams obeyed. Walker then handcuffed Abrams and told him that he was under arrest for possessing the hunting knife. Abrams did not resist the handcuffing, but Walker put the cuffs on so roughly that he broke Abrams’s watch in the process. At that point, Walker did not mention charges of obstructing a police officer or resisting arrest. That arose only later at the police station, when Walker realized that he could not charge Abrams with anything based, on the small knife.
This shows that the claim about the knife is also disputed. According to Walker, Abrams retrieved the knife without permission after Walker left the car. Abrams disputes the critical assertion here, which is whether Walker verbally or otherwise instructed him to leave the knife on the roof of the car. Either version of the events is possible; this is a quintessential example of something that cannot be resolved on summary judgment.
Finally, with respect to the fourth alleged admission, Abrams took the position in the district court and in his affidavit that he was cooperative, courteous, and did nothing to impede Walker’s traffic stop of Forte.
This leaves us with an arrest based solely on the words Abrams spoke to Walker, questioning the validity of the stop and inquiring what basis for an arrest existed. Walker had no right to retaliate against Abrams by arresting him just because Walker was offended by Abrams’s words. Finley and Crawford make this clear as a matter of Illinois law, and the First Amendment does not permit state actors to impose punishment because of the communicative content of words. See Houston v. Hill, 482 U.S. 451, 461, 107 S.Ct. 2502 (“[T]he First Amendment protects a significant amount of verbal criticism and challenge directed at police officers.”). Nothing in the lengthy quotes from Abrams’s testimony that the majority has furnished refutes these points as a matter of law.
I would reverse the district court’s judgment in favor of Walker and remand this case for a trial on the merits, so that these factual disputes can be resolved properly. I therefore dissent.