Court Opinion

ID: 9861044
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 23:40:03.503784+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:27:08.920294
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE O’MALLEY delivered the opinion of the court: Plaintiff, Hilario Mercado, Jr., attended a family birthday party on September 27, 2003. When a fight broke out at the party, the police were called. They learned that a bench warrant had been issued for Hilario Mercado, Jr., for failing to appear in court on charges of shoplifting and obstructing justice. Later, it was learned that plaintiffs identity had been stolen and that the person who failed to appear was not plaintiff, but Ruben Vazquez. Plaintiff then sued defendant, the Village of Addison, for false arrest and false imprisonment. The trial court granted defendant summary judgment, holding that the officers had probable cause to arrest plaintiff and that their actions were not willful and wanton as a matter of law. Plaintiff appeals, contending that the officers had a duty to investigate his claim of mistaken identity. We affirm. Addison police officers Steven Anderson and Barry Muniz and Sergeant Steve Ruggiero responded to a report of a disturbance at a party. As they arrived, plaintiff and another person were leaving the building and appeared to be upset. When Anderson requested identification, plaintiff presented his state identification card. Anderson had the dispatcher run plaintiffs name, race, sex, and date of birth through the LEADS system and learned that a “no bond” warrant had been issued for Hilario Mercado, Jr., on a charge of retail theft. The dispatcher called the entering agency, the Du Page County sheriff’s office, and learned that the warrant was still valid. The Du Page County warrant indicated plaintiffs name, date of birth, address, driver’s license number, social security number, eye color, hair color, height, and weight. The officers explained the warrant to plaintiff and arrested him. Muniz took him to the Du Page County jail. According to plaintiff, he protested repeatedly that he was not the subject of the warrant, had never been arrested for shoplifting, and had never missed court. The officers denied that plaintiff ever said that he was not the person they wanted. Anderson testified at his deposition that, even if plaintiff had complained, they had discretion to take him to the county jail anyway. According to Anderson, the officers had no reason to believe that plaintiff was not the person for whom the warrant was intended, but, even if they had, the jail would have been better equipped to decide if plaintiff was the person wanted, because the jail presumably had a photograph of the suspect. In his complaint, plaintiff alleged that an arrest report from the original incident was on file at the Bloomingdale police department. However, plaintiff was arrested about 2:30 a.m. on Sunday, September 28, 2003. The officers testified that it was unlikely that anyone would have been at the Bloomingdale police station to provide information. Photographs or fingerprint cards faxed to the Addison police station would not have been legible. Muniz took plaintiff to the county jail. Plaintiff complained to a woman behind a window that he had been misidentified, but she said that there was nothing she could do. On Monday, September 29, 2003, plaintiff appeared in court, but he said nothing about a possible mistaken identification. He merely requested a court-appointed attorney. Later that day, plaintiff contacted his personal attorney, Paul DeLuca. DeLuca attended an October 2, 2003, court hearing. At that hearing, the court ordered a fingerprint analysis, which revealed that plaintiff was not the person who committed the retail theft in Bloomingdale. Plaintiff was released later that day. Plaintiff then sued defendant for false arrest and false imprisonment. Defendant moved for summary judgment. The trial court granted the motion, finding that the officers had probable cause to arrest plaintiff and that their actions were not willful and wanton. Plaintiff timely appealed. Plaintiff contends that the trial court should not have granted defendant summary judgment, because questions of material fact existed regarding whether the officers had a duty to investigate his claims of mistaken identity and whether their failure to do so amounted to willful and wanton conduct. Defendant responds that the officers’ conduct could not be considered willful and wanton where the warrant named plaintiff, all of the identifying information in the warrant matched plaintiff, the only reason to suspect that plaintiff was not the person for whom the warrant was intended was his own unsubstantiated claims, and there was no expeditious way to investigate those claims at 2:30 a.m. on Sunday. Initially, we note that summary judgment is proper when the pleadings, depositions, and affidavits demonstrate that no genuine issue of material fact exists and that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. 735 ILCS 5/2 — 1005(c) (West 2006). “Although summary judgment can aid in the expeditious disposition of a lawsuit, it remains a drastic means of disposing of litigation and, therefore, should be allowed only where the right of the moving party is clear and free from doubt.” Williams v. Manchester, 228 Ill. 2d 404, 417 (2008). In ruling on a motion for summary judgment, the court must construe the evidence strongly against the movant and liberally in favor of the nonmovant. Caponi v. Larry’s 66, 236 Ill. App. 3d 660, 670 (1992). We review de novo a challenge to the propriety of an order granting summary judgment. Bagent v. Blessing Care Corp., 224 Ill. 2d 154, 163 (2007). To succeed on his claims of false arrest and false imprisonment, plaintiff needed to show that defendant, through its police officers, arrested or restrained him without reasonable grounds to believe that he committed an offense. Meerbrey v. Marshall Field & Co., 139 Ill. 2d 455, 474 (1990); Ross v. Mauro Chevrolet, 369 Ill. App. 3d 794, 798 (2006). In addition, because the Local Governmental and Governmental Employees Tort Immunity Act immunizes defendant’s employees for their “act or omission in the execution or enforcement of any law unless such act or omission constitutes willful and wanton conduct” (745 ILCS 10/2 — 202 (West 2006)), and because a governmental entity is not liable where its employee is not liable (745 ILCS 10/2 — 109 (West 2006)), plaintiff also had to establish that defendant’s conduct was willful and wanton. Willful and wanton conduct is a course of action that either is intentional or “shows an utter indifference to or conscious disregard for the safety of others or their property.” 745 ILCS 10/1 — 210 (West 2006). Initially, we note that the trial court held that the officers had probable cause to arrest plaintiff. The parties also use the term “probable cause.” While many cases involving warrantless arrests use the “probable cause” terminology (see, e.g., Ross, 369 Ill. App. 3d at 800, quoting Hernandez v. Sheahan, 455 F.3d 772, 775 (7th Cir. 2006) (“ ‘All the police need is probable cause’ ”)), the “probable cause” test does not translate to cases of arrests based on warrants, because police in those situations act on warrants already presumably supported by probable cause. Instead, as the Georgia Supreme Court has stated, the “defendant police officer who pleads justification must show for a warrantless arrest that he acted on probable cause [citations] and for an arrest under a warrant that he reasonably executed it.” Stewart v. Williams, 243 Ga. 580, 583, 255 S.E.2d 699, 701-02 (1979). In making this statement, the Georgia Supreme Court cited the Restatement (Second) of Torts, which provides a workable test where the arresting officers are effecting a facially valid warrant: “ ‘An arrest under a warrant is not privileged unless the person arrested (a) is a person sufficiently named or otherwise described in the warrant and is, or is reasonably believed by the actor to be, the person intended, or (b) although not such person, has knowingly caused the actor to believe him to be so.’ ” Stewart, 243 Ga. at 583, 255 S.E.2d at 702, quoting Restatement (Second) of Torts §125, at 221 (1965). We adopt the above principle from the Restatement. The question here, then, is whether Anderson and Muniz reasonably believed that plaintiff was the person named in the warrant. The trial court found that they did, and we agree. After the officers encountered plaintiff, a check of the LEADS system revealed a warrant commanding them to arrest Hilario Mercado, Jr. The name, date of birth, address, driver’s license number, social security number, eye color, hair color, height, and weight on the warrant matched plaintiff’s information, and the officers verified plaintiff’s name, date of birth, race, and sex before arresting him. In short, plaintiff was unquestionably the person named in the warrant. His alleged protests that he was not the person wanted were vindicated when plaintiff was later exonerated, but the fact remains that plaintiff was the person identified in the warrant, even if the warrant actually identified the wrong person. Accordingly, because plaintiff was in fact the person identified in the warrant, we hold that the officers did not act unreasonably in arresting plaintiff based on the warrant. Plaintiff cites Riley v. Fairfield, 160 Ill. App. 3d 397 (1987), to support his contention that the officers had a duty to investigate his claim of mistaken identity. There, police arrested the plaintiff pursuant to a warrant for someone with the plaintiff’s name and birth date, but with a different address. The dispatcher informed the officer that the subject of the warrant, like the plaintiff, was an African-American woman, but the warrant subject was approximately 2 inches taller and 20 to 30 pounds heavier than the plaintiff. The appellate court reversed summary judgment for the defendant on the plaintiffs claims of false arrest and false imprisonment. Riley, however, is readily distinguishable. The issue in Riley was whether the officers acted reasonably in arresting the plaintiff after noting discrepancies between the plaintiff and the identifying information in the warrant. Here, by contrast, plaintiff does not contest that the warrant identified him. The officers here correctly believed that plaintiff was the person named in the warrant, and thus the officers’ conduct was not unreasonable, let alone willful and wanton. The fault here, if any, lies with the authority that apparently mistakenly issued a warrant for plaintiffs arrest, not with the police officers who executed the warrant. The judgment of the circuit court of Du Page County is affirmed. Affirmed. BOWMAN, J., concurs.