Court Opinion

ID: 9496081
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:17:41.576114+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:21.723640
License: Public Domain

DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I agree with the majority that Mark Lee has standing to contest the constitutionality of the act of agents of the City of Chicago in spray painting his car and that *472further proceedings are warranted on this claim. I also agree that Lee’s substantive due process claim was correctly rejected by the district court. With respect to both those aspects of the case, I am happy to join as well in the majority’s rationale. It is the Fourth Amendment claim that gives me pause, although in the final analysis I too believe that Lee should not succeed on this claim. For the reasons I explain below, however, I think it undesirable to hold sweepingly that the Fourth Amendment has nothing to do with the reasonableness of the continued detention of property after the rationale supporting the initial seizure no longer holds. The implications of such a holding might end up being broad indeed. I am also concerned that the legal picture might have looked different if it had been more complete, and Lee had presented a fully developed claim under the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause. Taking the Fourth and Fifth Amendment theories one at a time gives rise to a risk that we might reject each one in turn, thinking that the other would remain available to a proper plaintiff. Even taking into account the fact that constitutional gaps can and do exist, it is not a good idea to create them inadvertently.
Before turning to the Fourth and Fifth Amendment arguments that could be postulated here, it helps to set the stage. As the majority notes, Lee was a victim of a stray shooting in the City of Chicago. There is no hint in this record that he was anything but an innocent bystander, who happened to have some property (his car) that was likely to be of use to the police in their investigation of a crime. There is also no hint that his car was in an area restricted by any state or local law, such' that it was subject to towing and impoundment under well established police powers. If the police had seized anything else belonging to such an innocent bystander/victim, such as a camera or a tape recording that might have proven valuable to their investigation, no one would have assumed that the City could charge a fee for the return of the property. The question here, in a sense, is why should a car be different? More fundamentally, the question is whether there is any recourse for an innocent party like Lee when the government takes his property, initially for law enforcement purposes, and then refuses to return it unconditionally when the original raison d’etre of the seizure has expired.
Lee rested his principal hopes on the argument that the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable seizures offered a remedy for him. He made it clear that he was not challenging the right of the police to effect the initial seizure. Instead, he focused only on the constructive “second seizure” of his car, which took place in the time period after the police no longer needed the car, when the City was taking the position that it would allow Lee to recover his car only upon the payment of the same towing and impoundment fees that parking ticket scofflaws and other traffic violators must pay. The majority rejects the conceptual separateness of the “second seizure,” and instead resolves Lee’s claim by relying on this court’s longtime rejection of the idea of a “continuing” seizure for Fourth Amendment purposes. See Wilkins v. May, 872 F.2d 190, 194-95 (7th Cir.1989). I am not so confident that the Fourth Amendment is utterly irrelevant to the reasonableness of a decision to refuse to relinquish seized property once the government has no need for it. Furthermore, if that is the path we are to go down, I think it important to realize that we risk creating an unwarranted gap in the constitutional protections that exist with respect to governmental takings of property.
*473I consider first the Fourth Amendment point that Lee has urged before us. As the majority acknowledges, ante at 460, Lee agrees that both the initial impoundment of his car for evidentiary purposes and the delay between the City’s seizure of his car and its completion of the search of the car ten days later were reasonable for Fourth Amendment purposes. As of the 11th day, however, the City’s position was that Lee was not entitled to show up at the auto pound and retrieve the car — at least not without the usual payment in hand. To the contrary, he was told that he either had to produce the money within the next 20 days or so, or the car would be crushed or sold at auction. It is at this point, Lee contends, that a second seizure occurred. Moreover, this second seizure was unreasonable, within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, because it was unsupported either by law enforcement needs or by any of the laws that normally entitle police to take someone’s car to the pound. Ransom, Lee claims, should not be the price of recovering property that is unlawfully held by the government.
The City’s argument in response is that the demanded payment had no impact at all on Lee’s freedom to recover his car. But that cannot be right: if the City had told Lee he could retrieve his car only upon the payment of $100,000, or only if he signed the deed to his home over to the City, he still would have been “free” in this sense to get the car, but in my view, at least, such a condition would be plainly unlawful. As a fail-back, the City also argues that certain ancillary costs go along with seizures of automobiles in particular — towing and storage are not free services — and that it is entitled to apportion those costs to the victims of crimes (whether or not they wish to press charges). If this kind of apportionment is constitutional, and if the only condition upon retrieval of property is the payment of these reasonable ancillary costs, then the affected person is indeed free to reclaim the property as a legal matter.
The City’s latter argument, in my view, comes closer to providing a sound basis for resolving the Fourth Amendment aspect of this case. First, it is well recognized that the touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is reasonableness. See Ohio v. Robinette, 519 U.S. 33, 39, 117 S.Ct. 417, 136 L.Ed.2d 347 (1996) (quoting Florida v. Jimeno, 500 U.S. 248, 250, 111 S.Ct. 1801, 114 L.Ed.2d 297 (1991)). We have further noted that all individuals in society are benefited by law enforcement activities, and all (presumably including crime victims) must therefore bear some of the burdens that go along with police activity. See Miller v. City of Chicago, 774 F.2d 188 (7th Cir.1985) (upholding, over a substantive due process challenge, the constitutionality of the City of Chicago’s assessment of costs for the towing of recovered stolen automobiles as part of their return to their rightful owners). Even so, the government’s law enforcement interests surely do not confer on the police a roving warrant to seize and keep any private property they want, for however long they want to keep it. Our task is to find the proper balance between those law enforcement interests and the general citizen’s interest in her property. I therefore disagree with the majority, to the extent it has taken the position that the City’s interest was primarily fiscal by the time Lee wanted to retrieve the car. Instead, we need to look at the events as a whole. Doing so, it is important to me that (1) the second seizure was brief in duration, (2) the condition imposed on Lee was only to pay the actual cost of the towing and storage (ie., an objectively reasonable sum), and (3) the City never carried out its threat to destroy the car. (I do not comment here on Lee’s other claim for the damage to his vehicle *474while it remained in the City’s custody, as I agree with the majority’s disposition of that part of the case.) On these facts, I would say that there was no Fourth Amendment violation commencing with the second seizure, because whatever continued seizure occurred in this particular situation was not unreasonable.
The majority, however, has chosen to rule broadly that the Fourth Amendment has nothing to say about a seizure beyond the instant when that seizure occurs. I agree that the Second Circuit’s decision in United States v. Jakobetz, 955 F.2d 786 (2d Cir.1992), and the Sixth Circuit’s decision in Fox v. Van Oosterum, 176 F.3d 342 (6th Cir.1999), are of limited utility here, because both the facts and the legal contexts were different. I am not convinced, however, that simply saying that a seizure is a temporally limited act, see ante at 462-463, is enough to resolve the question. How short a time period are we talking about? The word “seizure” also implies that the property is being held long enough to ensure that it will not be recaptured. At the other end of the spectrum would be a permanent taking of the property. This, the majority agrees, would amount to a de facto forfeiture. Ante at 465-466. It assumes- that the government would not do this without the proper forfeiture proceedings, brought within the proper time, but I am not so sanguine. Lurking just below the surface of Lee’s case is the knotty problem of what can be done about this set of cases.
One possibility, endorsed by some, would be to find a Fourth Amendment violation in the continued retention of the property. See generally Fern Lynn Kletter, Destruction of Property as Violation of Fourth Amendment, 98 A.L.R.5th 305 (2002). If Wilkins indeed imposes the instantaneous view of “seizure” on us, then that avenue will not be available in this court. See also Reed v. City of Chicago, 77 F.3d 1049, 1053 (7th Cir.1996). Yet it is troubling indeed to think that no remedy at all exists for people whose property is taken by the government and not properly returned. The question is what can that remedy be, if the Fourth Amendment does not provide it?
The obvious candidate, as the majority notes in footnote 5, ante at 466, is the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment, as incorporated against the states by the Fourteenth Amendment. Chicago, Burlington & Quincy R.R. v. City of Chicago, 166 U.S. 226, 17 S.Ct. 581, 41 L.Ed. 979 (1897). The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution states that “private property shall not be taken for public use, without just compensation.” U.S. Const, amend. V. The Takings Clause has been held to apply to two types of governmental action: first, the taking of physical possession or control of an interest in property for some public purpose; and second, regulations prohibiting private uses. See Tahoe-Sierra Pres. Council, Inc. v. Tahoe Reg’l Planning Agency, 535 U.S. 302, 321-23, 122 S.Ct. 1465, 152 L.Ed.2d 517 (2002). The first kind of action is part of the inherent sovereign power of eminent domain. Regulatory takings, by contrast, occur without the formalities of eminent domain: they result from the state’s general powers to impose regulations that, in effect, condemn some or all of the use of the property and thereby diminish the value to its owners to such an extent that it is as if the government had condemned the property.
Viewed from a takings perspective, Lee suffered from the former kind of taking: governmental authorities physically took some of his personal property for a public purpose and kept it for a period of time. The fact that the taking (which occurred after the permissible seizure was over) was temporary rather than permanent is of no consequence. The Supreme Court has *475made it clear that compensation is required even when the government’s physical occupation is temporary. See Tahoe-Sierra, 535 U.S. at 322, 122 S.Ct. 1465; see also First English Evangelical Lutheran Church v. County of Los Angeles, 482 U.S. 304, 318, 107 S.Ct. 2378, 96 L.Ed.2d 250 (1987) (collecting cases).
Looking briefly at Lee’s (hypothetical) takings claim, we would begin with the question whether he had a property interest in the item taken. As of the time the City’s need for the car ended, there can be no doubt that he did. Even the City has argued only that his interest was terminated at the end of the thirty-day period, and the majority has shown in the standing portion of its opinion that Lee continued to have a defeasible property interest in the car even after that. Second, the government must have actually taken the property. This is not a formalistic inquiry about title; instead, a claimant need only prove that “property,” in the sense of “the group of rights inhering in the citizen’s relation to [a] physical thing,” has been “taken.” United States v. General Motors Corp., 323 U.S. 373, 378, 65 S.Ct. 357, 89 L.Ed. 311 (1945). Any physical occupation is enough, even where the owner retains at least some use. See Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp., 458 U.S. 419, 426-28, 102 S.Ct. 3164, 73 L.Ed.2d 868 (1982). Nor, as I have already noted, does the duration of the im-poundment matter for a physical taking. Duration of the restriction is “one of the important factors that a court must consider in the appraisal of a regulatory takings claim,” Tahoe-Sierra, 535 U.S. at 342, 122 S.Ct. 1465 (emphasis added), but the duty to compensate an owner for a physical taking is “categorical,” id. at 322, 122 S.Ct. 1465. Third, a physical taking must be for a public use. But that element goes to the legitimacy of the government’s taking to begin with; if a taking is not for a public purpose, the government has no right to complete the act of eminent domain. See, e.g., Hawaii Housing Auth. v. Midkiff, 467 U.S. 229, 241, 104 S.Ct. 2321, 81 L.Ed.2d 186 (1984) (“[O]ne person’s property may not be taken for the benefit of another private person without a justifying public purpose, even though compensation be paid.”) (citing Thompson v. Consol. Gas Corp., 300 U.S. 55, 80, 57 S.Ct. 364, 81 L.Ed. 510 (1937)). In any event, the City here makes a public use argument both about its need to retain or destroy cars in its pound, and so that element is not likely to be problematic in Lee’s case.
If a plaintiff in Lee’s position proceeds under a theory that she has suffered a temporary taking, then she might seek to recover two different kinds of compensation. First, she might seek compensation for the reasonable value of the use of the car during the period that it was held by the City after the initial seizure was finished. The usual measure of “just compensation” in such a situation is “the property owner’s loss rather than the government’s gain.” See Brown v. Legal Found., — U.S. -, 123 S.Ct. 1406, 1419, 155 L.Ed.2d 376 (2003); see also Boston Chamber of Commerce v. City of Boston, 217 U.S. 189, 195, 30 S.Ct. 459, 54 L.Ed. 725 (1910). “Just compensation” might therefore require the City to reimburse the plaintiff for the cost of renting a car in the meantime, or the cost of alternate means of transportation. Second, a plaintiff might seek compensation for damage caused to her vehicle — in Lee’s case, the spray-painting — during its temporary use by the City. This latter form of compensation for damages incurred while in the government’s possession was squarely upheld by the Supreme Court in General Motors. 323 U.S. at 378.
I do not mean to suggest in this discussion that Lee, or any other particular *476plaintiff, would necessarily prevail on a Fifth Amendment Takings claim. Some courts have ruled, at least in the context of relatively limited retentions of property, that nothing legally cognizable has been “taken” from the plaintiff because all citizens have a duty to assist the police. See, e.g., Eggleston v. Pierce County, 148 Wash.2d 760, 64 P.3d 618, 623-24 (2003); Emery v. State, 297 Or. 755, 688 P.2d 72, 79-80 (1984). Other courts have disagreed. See Wallace v. City of Atlantic City, 257 N.J.Super. 404, 608 A.2d 480, 483 (1992). The Supreme Court held, in the rather different context of the duty of an incarcerated material witness to assist the law enforcement authorities, that no takings claim had been stated because citizen contributions to criminal investigations are in the nature of a public duty. See, e.g., Hurtado v. United States, 410 U.S. 578, 588-89, 93 S.Ct. 1157, 35 L.Ed.2d 508 (1973). Hurtado, however, speaks narrowly of the “giving of testimony” and “attendance upon court,” id., and it is not clear that the Court meant to extend its holding to the temporary forfeiture of property that was no longer needed by the police.
The City might also point out that in rem forfeitures of property used for illicit purposes are non-compensable exercises of the government’s police power. See, e.g., Calero-Toledo v. Pearson Yacht Leasing Co., 416 U.S. 663, 680, 686-87, 94 S.Ct. 2080, 40 L.Ed.2d 452 (1974); Bowman v. United States, 35 Fed.Cl. 397, 404 (1996); United States v. One 1979 Cadillac Coupe De Ville, 833 F.2d 994, 1000-01 (Fed.Cir.1987); see also C.J. Hendry Co. v. Moore, 318 U.S. 133, 137, 63 S.Ct. 499, 87 L.Ed. 663 (1943) (noting long, pre-Founding history of forfeiture of property used in violation of the law). But there is nothing in these cases to indicate that in rem forfeitures of the property of innocent bystanders are equally acceptable. See Bowman, 35 Fed.Cl. at 404; Froudi v. United States, 22 Cl.Ct. 290, 297-98 (1991); see also Federal Ins. Co. v. United States, 11 Cl.Ct. 569, 570-71 (1987) (analyzing but reserving judgment on the question whether “the Government can effect a taking by holding the property of an innocent bystander as evidence in a criminal investigation”).
Moreover, while the circuits are split on the question whether damages are available as part of a motion under fed. R. Crim. P. 41(e) for return of property that is damaged, transferred, or lost while in government possession pursuant to a criminal investigation, compare Mora v. United States, 955 F.2d 156, 160 (2d Cir.1992); United States v. Martinson, 809 F.2d 1364, 1367-68 (9th Cir.1987) (damages available), with Okoro v. Callaghan, 324 F.3d 488, 491 (7th Cir.2003); United States v. Hall, 269 F.3d 940, 943 (8th Cir.2001); United States v. Potes Ramirez, 260 F.3d 1310, 1316 (11th Cir.2001); United States v. Jones, 225 F.3d 468, 470 (4th Cir.2000); United States v. Bein, 214 F.3d 408, 413 (3d Cir.2000); Pena v. United States, 157 F.3d 984, 986 (5th Cir.1998) (damages not available), the sticking point in those cases has not been whether the plaintiff must internalize the costs of criminal investigations because of the use of the property in illicit conduct or out of public duty. It has instead been whether sovereign immunity prevents recovery of damages at all — an issue not implicated in a suit against the City.
Other arguments might also be available to both Lee and the City. Because the issue was not raised or briefed, there is no reason to explore every last detail at this point. My principal point is simple: the protection of private property is a high enough value in the Constitution that I would hesitate long before I concluded that there were no constitutional restrictions on the State’s power to seize proper*477ty and keep it (or to do the equivalent by imposing such a costly condition on the recovery of the property that it is functionally unavailable to the owner). At least when the “second seizure” characterization is apt, I believe that the Fourth Amendment’s prohibitions against unreasonable seizures are triggered. To the extent that the Fourth Amendment does not speak to the issue, I am reassured that today’s opinion leaves open the possibility of finding in a proper case that a plaintiff might be able to assert a claim under the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause.
I respectfully concur.