Court Opinion

ID: 9437905
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 05:00:31.12702+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:25:11.303928
License: Public Domain

HARTZ, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part, dissenting in part:
I join all of the majority opinion except that I would affirm the denial of qualified immunity on the illegal-arrest claim against McCants. As the majority opinion states, Vondrak told McCants that he had “bought a beer about three or four hours earlier, and consumed approximately one-third of it.” Op. at 1201. I do not think that Vondrak’s statement in itself (and there is nothing else to support McCants) gave McCants reasonable suspicion, or even arguable reasonable suspicion, to believe that Vondrak was violating the law. Perhaps McCants, through training or experience, had come to learn (1) that a driver could be impaired by the drinking described by Vondrak or, more likely, (2) that someone who admitted to the drinking described by Vondrak (yet, like him, displayed no sign of intoxication, such as alcohol on the breath or erratic driving) had likely imbibed more than described and was impaired in driving. But there was no such evidence in this case.