Court Opinion

ID: 9656703
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 19:56:35.208392+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:34.753397
License: Public Domain

Tom Glaze, Justice, dissenting. The facts are not disputed. e, August 9, 2000, Officer Jana Cordes arrested Jeffrey Baldridge for driving a motor vehicle while intoxicated, careless driving of a vehicle, and having no proof of insurance to operate a motor vehicle. Cordes charged Baldridge with these traffic offenses as a result of Baldridge’s riding a horse alongside Highway 62 in Carroll County when his horse saw something causing it to shy onto the road and hit the mirror of a car traveling on the highway. Cordes had Baldridge submit to two breathalyzer tests that showed Baldridge’s alcohol content to be .007 and .008, weE under the .08 limit for a person operating a motor vehicle. Cordes did not administer a field sobriety test at the scene of the accident. The BerryviEe Municipal Court dismissed the charges against Baldridge, because the violations involved a horse, which the court found was not a motor vehicle as contemplated by Arkansas’s laws. During the pendency of Baldridge’s traffic offense charges, Baldridge filed suit against Cordes, aEeging the violation of his rights under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. Cordes responded, stating she was immune from suit except to the extent she was covered by insurance and she was protected under qualified immunity under federal law. The circuit court ruled in Cordes’s favor, granting her request for summary judgment and finding Cordes had sufficient reason and probable cause to arrest Baldridge for the offense of driving a motor vehicle while intoxicated. Baldridge appeals that decision, and this court affirms the circuit court. As hard as I try, I am simply unable to understand how anyone — much less a state police officer — can reasonably believe a horse can be characterized as a motor vehicle under Arkansas law. Therefore, I respectfuEy dissent. It is weE settled that law enforcement officials who “reasonably but mistakenly conclude that probable cause is present” are entitled to immunity. Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635 (1987). Government officials are qualifiedly immune from liability in civil actions to the extent their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known. Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800 (1982). The qualified immunity defense protects “aE but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law.” Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335 (1986). Thus, if an officer acts in a manner about which officers of reasonable competence would disagree, the officer should be immune from liabEity. Accordingly, in Section 1983 cases involving charges of improper arrest, we have held that “the issue for immunity purposes is not probable cause in fact but arguable probable cause.” Myers v. City of Morris, 810 F.2d 1437 (8th Cir. 1987); see also Habiger v. City of Fargo, 80 F.3d 289 (8th Cir. 1996); Johnson v. Schneiderheinz, 102 F.3d 340 (8th Cir. 1996). The Eighth Circuit, in Pace v. City of Des Moines, 201 F.3d 1050 (2000), recently held that a plaintiff can defeat a motion for summary judgment on the grounds of a qualified-immunity defense if the following three elements are present: 1) if the plaintiff has alleged a deprivation of an actual constitutional right; 2) if the right was clearly established at the time of the alleged violation; and 3) a genuine issue of fact as to whether the officer would have known that his/her alleged conduct would have violated plaintiffs rights. In the case at bar, Baldridge alleged several deprivations of his Fourth Amendment rights, i.e., Trooper Cordes’s actions of stopping Baldridge, detaining him to issue the citation, arresting him, requiring him to submit to the breathalyzer, and requiring him to attend court. The right not to be arrested or prosecuted without probable cause is a clearly established constitutional right. Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 200 (1979); Robinson v. Beaumont, 291 Ark. 477, 725 S.W.2d 839 (1987). Probable cause exists if “at the moment the arrest was made . . . the facts and circumstances within [a police officer’s] knowledge and of which [the officer] had reasonably trustworthy information were sufficient to warrant a prudent man in believing” that the person arrested committed the crime with which he was charged. Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89 (1964). There need not be actual probable cause for an officer to be shielded by qualified immunity; an objectively reasonable belief that there was probable cause is enough. Hunter v. Bryant, 502 U.S. 224 (1991). The Pace court stated that courts deciding questions of qualified immunity must also recognize “that whether summary judgment on grounds of qualified immunity is appropriate from a particular set of facts is a question of law.” Pace further states the following: What must be kept in mind, however, is that once the predicate facts have been established, for the purposes of qualified immunity there is no such thing as a “genuine issue of fact” as to whether an officer “should have known” that his conduct violated constitutional rights. The conduct was either “reasonablfe] under settled law in the circumstances,” Hunter, 502 U.S. at 228, 112 S. Ct. at 537, or it was not, and this is a determination of law that should be made at the earliest possible stage of litigation. Pace, 201 F.3d at 1056. Also, “predicate facts” include only the relevant circumstances and the acts of the parties themselves, and not the conclusions of others about the reasonableness of those actions. When there is no dispute among the parties as to the relevant facts, a court should always be able to determine as a matter of law whether or not an officer is eligible for qualified immunity — that is, whether or not the officer acted reasonably under settled law given the particular set of facts. The relevant facts in this case are that Baldridge was arrested and charged with three motor vehicle traffic violations while riding a horse. The issue boils down to whether it was reasonable for Trooper Cordes to believe that Baldridge had committed the offenses with which she charged him. As previously mentioned, Baldridge was charged with DWI, a violation of Ark. Code Ann. § 5-65-103. Section 5-65-103(a) provides, “It is unlawful and punishable as provided in this act for any person who is intoxicated to operate or be in actual physical control of a motor vehicle.” (Emphasis added.) In Fitch v. State, 313 Ark. 122, 853 S.W.2d 874 (1993), this court looked at the issue as a matter of first impression when a man was charged with DWI while operating an all-terrain vehicle. The Fitch court concluded that “a motor vehicle is generally defined as a self-propelled wheeled conveyance that does not run on rails.” American Heritage Dictionary, 817 (2d Ed. 1982). Under the Transportation Title chapter on Registration and Licensing, Ark. Code Ann. § 27-14-207(b) (Supp. 1991) defines the term “motor vehicle” as follows: “ ‘Motor Vehicle’ means every vehicle which is self-propelled and every vehicle which is propelled by electric power obtained from overhead trolley wires, but not operated upon rails.” The term “motor vehicle” is defined the same throughout the various chapters of the Transportation Title, e.g., see §§ 27-16-207(b), 27-19-206, and 27-49-219(b) (1987). In sum, in my view, Baldridge may have violated some law because he was riding a horse alongside a highway, but I suggest that Cordes was not reasonable or acting competently when she charged Baldridge with a motor-vehicle offense. The most she could have charged Baldridge with was public intoxication, and even with that charge, the facts are very much in question.