Court Opinion

ID: 9486896
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:03:32.435674+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:59.976360
License: Public Domain

HEANEY, Senior Circuit Judge,
concurring and dissenting.
Unable to affirm the district court on the only two issues presented — collateral estop-pel and qualified immunity — the court today pieces together a series of rationales why Vennes should not be allowed to continue, labels them “special factors” under Bivens, and believes that by so doing the whole will somehow exceed the sum of its parts. There are no “special factors counselling hesitation in the absence of affirmative action by Congress” present in this ease that were not present in Bivens; the only difference is that Bivens stated a Fourth Amendment claim and Vennes seeks to recover under substantive due process. Rather than reverse the district court and allow Vennes to proceed, as existing law compels, the majority shapes a basis for affirmance out of rationales that are already accounted for under the existing doctrines of qualified immunity and collateral estoppel or that are simply inapplicable and irrelevant. Consequently, I dissent.
If we are to believe the facts alleged and testified to by Vennes — and for purposes of this appeal we must — the defendants engaged in absolutely outrageous behavior. Vennes tells us that IRS agents posing as Chicago businessmen approached Vennes through a business acquaintance and solicited his participation in a scheme to launder money. These businessmen offered Vennes a share of the proceeds if he would launder the “dirty” money through his European connections. At the prompting of these “businessmen,” Vennes made two trips to Switzerland to launder money provided to him by the agents. Vennes successfully laundered $100,000 on the first trip, but on the second trip, associates of Vennes made off with the other $100,000. (These “associates” have apparently since been prosecuted for theft.)
When Vennes returned without the money, the Chicago businessmen revealed themselves to be members of the mafia and threatened, inter alia, to dismember his children if he failed to recoup this money (perhaps suspecting that their superiors would be none too pleased at the loss of $100,000 of government money). These newly-revealed mobsters then suggested that Vennes engage in illegal drug and firearms transactions in an effort to recoup this money and thereby avoid serious bodily harm to him and his family. Vennes did so, the efforts to recoup the money were unsuccessful, and Vennes was eventually charged with a panoply of crimes. He was given an offer he could not refuse, which caused the district judge who accepted Vennes’ guilty plea to question the government’s reason for offering such a generous bargain. The government told the court that Vennes “could make a fair case” that he “was trying to recoup” the lost $100,-000, that he believed he was “dealing with people from the underworld or organized crime out of Chicago,” and that as a result he engaged in the drug and firearms transactions. App. at 67. “So as a result of that,” the assistant U.S. attorney continued, “we felt that they were all interrelated and it’s a question whether or not the defendant on his own would have entered into these [crimes] if not for the shortage of the $100,000 and that’s why we thought that this would be a *1455just decision or just result of these as far as the acceptance of the plea.” Id. at 67-68.
What the government did not mention at the hearing on the acceptance of the plea, but which was alluded to by the district court in this case, is the embarrassing spectacle that would be created if this case went to trial. See Vennes v. Unknown Number of Unidentified Agents of the United States of America, No. A1-92-84, slip op. at 1 (D.N.D. Jan. 13, 1993) (hereinafter Vennes) (“The court acknowledges that the underlying factual situation ... is wondrously bizarre. Especially fascinating is speculating about the scene which occurred when the undercover agents tried to explain the loss of the $100,-000.00_”). Were Vennes’ Bivens action to go to trial, or even were discovery to proceed and any of Vennes’ claims to be borne out, it is likely that the government would face significant embarrassment. The district court avoided such a possibility when it declared that Vennes is collaterally estopped by his guilty plea from pursuing this claim against the agents. Vennes, supra, slip op. at 2. Although this might well be a convenient way to dispose of this case, it is, as the majority notes, foreclosed by the Supreme Court’s decision in Haring v. Prosise, 462 U.S. 306, 103 S.Ct. 2368, 76 L.Ed.2d 595 (1983). See supra at 1452. In that case the Court specifically noted that both the “prospect of a favorable plea agreement” and “the expectation or hope of a lesser sentence” are valid reasons why a defendant might choose not to pursue possible defenses at trial, see Haring, 462 U.S. at 319, 103 S.Ct. at 2376 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted), but that because an acceptance of a guilty plea involves “no adjudication whatsoever of any issues that may subsequently be the basis of a § 1983 claim,” collateral estoppel is “simply inapplicable.” Id. at 322 n. 11, 103 S.Ct. at 2377 n. 11. This holding is equally applicable to what the court correctly labels the “analog” to § 1983, the Bivens action.
The only other basis for affirmance offered by the defendants is qualified immunity, but it fails as certainly as does the collateral estoppel argument. Although the court chooses not to address this issue, because, it says, the district court did not address it, see supra at 1451, the failure of this argument to carry the day can come as no surprise to the defendants. The district court, although not expressly ruling on qualified immunity, stated that “even the most zealous law enforcement agent would understand that coercion applied through threats of dismemberment of children is prohibited conduct.” Vennes, supra, slip op. at 2. Likewise, when defendants’ counsel lingered on this issue during oral argument, another member of the panel informed him in no uncertain terms that this court would “not ... affirm on qualified immunity.”
The unavailability of the two argued bases for affirmance leads the court into uncharted territory. Rather than reverse the district court and remand this case for further proceedings, the court gathers together several reasons why, it believes, Vennes’ case should not be allowed to proceed and then labels these reasons (none of which standing alone would suffice as a basis for affirmance) “special factors counselling hesitation” under Bivens. That none of these factors has ever before been considered a Bivens “special factor” is apparently of no consequence.
The Supreme Court has defined two situations in which a possible Bivens action may be defeated:
The first is when defendants demonstrate special factors counselling hesitation in the absence of affirmative action by Congress. The second is when defendants show that Congress has provided an alternative remedy which it explicitly declared to be a substitute for recovery directly under the Constitution and viewed as equally effective.
Carlson v. Green, 446 U.S. 14, 18-19, 100 S.Ct. 1468, 1471, 64 L.Ed.2d 15 (1980) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). The second exception is what prevents Ven-nes from proceeding with a Bivens action regarding the tax levy — as discussed in part III of the court’s opinion, which I join — but it is the first exception that the majority purports to find applicable to Vennes’ claim involving outrageous conduct.
There are few cases delineating the “special factors” mentioned in Bivens, and those cases that do address the issue fall neatly *1456into two categories. The first category includes the military cases, United States v. Stanley, 483 U.S. 669, 107 S.Ct. 3054, 97 L.Ed.2d 550 (1987), and Chappell v. Wallace, 462 U.S. 296, 103 S.Ct. 2362, 76 L.Ed.2d 586 (1983), which hold that Bivens actions are not available to those who suffer injury incident to military service, and those cases in which defendants “enjoy such independent status in our constitutional scheme as to suggest that judicially created remedies against them might be inappropriate.” Carlson, 446 U.S. at 19, 100 S.Ct. at 1472; see Davis v. Passman, 442 U.S. 228, 246, 99 S.Ct. 2264, 2277, 60 L.Ed.2d 846 (1979) (finding that such special factors counsel no greater protection for Congressmen than that provided by the Speech and Debate Clause). The second category involves concerns about “federal fiscal policy.” See Bivens, 403 U.S. at 396, 91 S.Ct. at 2005; see also FDIC v. Meyer, — U.S. -, -, 114 S.Ct. 996, 1006, 127 L.Ed.2d 308, 323 (1994) (refusing to allow Bivens action against federal agency, in addition to federal agents, in part because of the “potentially enormous financial burden” such claims would impose on the federal government); Bush v. Lucas, 462 U.S. 367, 380, 103 S.Ct. 2404, 2412, 76 L.Ed.2d 648 (1983) (finding that, similarly, questions of “federal personnel policy” are best left for Congressional action).
The “factors” put forward by the court in the instant ease follow neither of these tracks. Neither of the existing lines of cases supports the court’s holding — the defendants are federal law enforcement agents, not military men or Congressmen or anything else; and any financial burden imposed would fall on the agents themselves — leaving the court to invent “special factors” of its own. In all relevant respects, this cause of action against federal agents for violating Vennes’ substantive due process rights is identical to Bivens’ action for violation of his Fourth Amendment rights.
Furthermore, the “special factors” suggested by the court cannot begin to bear the weight of the court’s holding. The first and third factors — essentially that we have never found conduct in this context sufficiently outrageous to state a substantive due process claim and that, were we to do so, it would have a chilling effect on law enforcement officers and flood the courts — are already provided for by the doctrine of qualified immunity. Taken together, they support allowing Vennes to go forward precisely because the conduct he alleges is so outrageous that it will rarely be duplicated, and, given the existing precedents on substantive due process, virtually every potential defendant will be immune from suit.
The key to this case is that the conduct alleged does go further than any of the previous cases this court has addressed. Unlike the facts in Gunderson v. Schlueter, 904 F.2d 407, 411 (8th Cir.1990), the defendants in this case did apply “extraordinary pressure on [Vennes] to convince him to join their scheme.” They did not “simply ask[ ] him to commit the violations”; they threatened that if he did not they would dismember his children. The conduct alleged does “shock the conscience” and it certainly offends my “judicial notions of fairness.” Hall v. Lombardi, 996 F.2d 954, 958 n. 4 (8th Cir.1993), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 114 S.Ct. 698, 126 L.Ed.2d 665 (1994). Such facts are not likely to be repeated with any frequency, but to the extent that they are, plaintiffs are entitled to recover damages.
The fourth factor relied on by the court is the speculative nature of Vennes’ claim for damages. The problem with the court’s analysis — beyond its utter irrelevance to the question at hand — is that it assumes Vennes is only claiming damages for harm that resulted from his incarceration. See supra at 1453. As I read Vennes’ complaint and briefs, however, he asserts damages that run independently from the two-year period prior to his guilty plea during which he was under constant threat from the defendants to continue committing crimes in an attempt to recoup the lost $100,000. Any reasonable jury could find harm to Vennes from this conduct independent of Vennes’ incarceration, and any argument about the degree of the stated harms caused by his incarceration is best left for trial.
That leaves the court’s second argument, suggesting that Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S. 527, 101 S.Ct. 1908, 68 L.Ed.2d 420 (1981), *1457has some bearing on the validity of Vennes’ cause of action. The most that can be said about this argument is that it misunderstands certain dicta from this court’s decision in Weimer v. Amen, 870 F.2d 1400, 1406 (8th Cir.1989). In that case, the court first dismissed Weimer’s substantive due process claim on the ground that “none of our previous recognitions of substantive due process come close to the right asserted by Weimer.” Id. at 1406. The court thought “it evident that Weimer [sought] to have Amen’s conduct declared a violation of due process simply because it violated state law,” which the court refused to do. Id. The court then went on to state, as an alternative holding, that “[i]n situations where procedural due process claims alleging property deprivation are prohibited by Parrott, claims based on the same actions but alleging denial of substantive due process should be barred as well.” Weimer, 870 F.2d at 1406.
Regardless of the validity of that statement (I have found no subsequent decisions that rely on this rationale in a manner essential to judgment), it has absolutely no applicability to the facts of this case. It might be relevant to Vennes’ claim involving the tax levy, but it has no relevance to his claim that he was denied substantive due process by the agents’ outrageous conduct. Parrott could not bar a procedural due process claim in the latter case because there is no procedural due process claim to be made, and this court has previously held (prior to Weimer) that “Parrott does not bar claims based on substantive due process from being brought in federal court” because the “violation of a substantive constitutional right, including substantive due process, is complete irrespective of subsequent procedures accorded to the person whose rights have been violated.” Williams v. City of St. Louis, 783 F.2d 114, 118 (8th Cir.1986). Furthermore, any argument that Vennes passed up what process was his due — the opportunity to present an entrapment or outrageous conduct defense at trial — is simply a rehashing of the collateral estoppel argument rejected by Haring.
To the extent that any “special factors” are present in this case, they counsel allowing Vennes to go forward. In Carlson, the court noted that one reason for allowing plaintiffs a Bivens action in addition to an action under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) is the deterrent effect of such an action for damages: “Because the Bivens remedy is recoverable against individuals, it is a more effective deterrent than the FTCA remedy against the United States. It is almost axiomatic that the threat of damages has a deterrent effect, surely particularly so when the individual official faces personal financial liability.” 446 U.S. at 21, 100 S.Ct. at 1473 (footnote and citation omitted). Were Ven-nes simply to have pursued his entrapment or outrageous conduct defenses, he might well have escaped conviction (at least on the drug and firearms charges), but a successful defense in a criminal trial will have far less deterrent effect on this type of outrageous behavior than will a damages action. Any fear about inhibiting vigorous law enforcement is, as mentioned earlier, rectified by the broad availability of qualified immunity.
To sum up, the court rejects Vennes’ substantive due process claim under Bivens because of so-called “special factors” — none of which have previously been relied on as “special factors counselling hesitation in the absence of affirmative action by Congress” to defeat a Bivens action, and all of which, to the extent they have any merit whatsoever, are already accounted for under the doctrines of qualified immunity and collateral estoppel. The “special factors” analysis is not intended to “concern the merits of the particular remedy that was sought. Rather, [it] relate[s] to the question of who should decide whether such a remedy should be provided.” Bush, 462 U.S. at 380, 103 S.Ct. at 2413. On that question, Vennes’ claim is indistinguishable from Bivens’, and although some may disagree with the judiciary inferring causes of action directly from the Constitution, see Bivens, 403 U.S. at 411, 91 S.Ct. at 2012 (Burger, C.J., dissenting), that battle has long since been fought, and any concern about flooding the courts with frivolous eases, see id. at 430, 91 S.Ct. at 2021 (Black-mun, J., dissenting), has been similarly dealt with. See id. at 391 n. 4, 91 S.Ct. at 2002 n. 4.
*1458In closing, I note one final matter about the court’s decision that troubles me greatly. Only two bases appear in the record before us for affirming the summary judgment grant below and thereby thwarting Vennes’ efforts to have his day in court. Neither of those two grounds for affirmance, collateral estoppel or qualified immunity, supports the district court’s decision. Nonetheless, the court reaches out into the ether to shape a basis for affirmance that neither side has had an opportunity to address. Rejection of Ven-nes’ claim that the defendants violated his substantive due process rights by posing as mobsters and threatening to dismember his children does him an injustice, but to do so on a novel legal basis, of which Vennes has had no notice, only compounds the error, and from this procedure I dissent as well.