Court Opinion

ID: 9849108
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:34:49.344975+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:19:01.206822
License: Public Domain

MANION, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
After. Daraina Gleason’s vehicle broke down on the Indiana Toll Road, the state police had it towed to Bill’s Towing in Orland, Indiana. The vehicle at issue in this case was a 1998 Plymouth Voyager minivan with 272,833 miles on its odometer and a failed transmission. It was registered to Gleason, who received it as a gift from the mother of her then-fiancé, Ryan Belcher. It is undisputed that the Bill’s Towing had a valid possessory interest in the impounded minivan under Indiana’s lien statute.
*755A few days after the minivan was impounded, Gleason and Belcher arrived at Bill’s Towing to retrieve some personal items and possibly the minivan. The confrontation at the tow yard between Bel-cher, Gleason, and the tow yard employees began when Belcher and Gleason started removing various items from the minivan. Despite Bill’s Towing’s policy against removing items from impounded vehicles, the tow yard’s owner, Wilburn McClana-han, agreed to allow Belcher and Gleason to remove some legal papers and their child’s medicine from the minivan. Bel-cher and Gleason, however, decided to remove many additional items. Gleason made several trips from the minivan to her borrowed car carrying items that Belcher had taken out of the minivan. In addition to the legal papers, the baby medicine, and some tools (including a heavy tire tool and jack), Belcher removed a radio that he had installed in the minivan’s dashboard. The fact that Belcher removed the installed radio along with his personal belongings is of particular importance because Indiana’s lien statute provided the tow yard with a lien on the vehicle (i.e., the minivan), which includes all of the vehicle’s fixtures, such as its tires, its hubcaps, and its installed radio. Thus, when Belcher removed the minivan’s radio and refused to return it, he violated the tow yard’s possessory interest in the minivan.1
When a Bill’s Towing employee observed Belcher removing the minivan’s radio, he called McClanahan, who then confronted Belcher. McClanahan and Belcher engaged in a heated discussion before McClanahan called the police. The officer who responded was Deputy Marshal Vaughn Norton. The Town of Orland employed Norton as its Street Superintendent, but he also was the acting Town Marshal at that time because the regular Town Marshal was deployed in Iraq. Norton also was not wearing a police uniform that day because he was on duty as Street Superintendent. The record indicates that McClanahan told Norton that Belcher had removed the minivan’s radio without permission. The parties dispute whether Belcher became verbally abusive to Norton, but they agree that once it was apparent that Bel-cher and Gleason could not pay the costs necessary to recover the minivan, Norton gave them two options for resolving the standoff: (1) Gleason could sign over the minivan’s title to Bill’s Towing; or (2) he would arrest Belcher for disorderly conduct. Those stark choices were incomplete. Under Indiana’s lien statute, which gives a vehicle’s title holder thirty days to recover an impounded vehicle, Ind.Code § 9-22-5-15, Norton should have given Belcher and Gleason an additional choice: return the radio and any other fixtures that they had removed and leave the premises. That latter option would have enabled Belcher and Gleason to make the minivan whole, preserved the tow yard’s possessory interest in the vehicle under Indiana’s lien statute, allowed Gleason to retain the title to her minivan, and provided her with the remainder of her statutorily mandated period to pay the towing and storage fees and recover the minivan.2
*756Accordingly, I concur with the court’s reasoning that when construing the facts in the light most favorable to Belcher and Gleason, there is a genuine issue of triable facts as to whether Norton violated their Fourth Amendment rights based on his “seizing” them during the confrontation without probable cause. Also at this point, based on the facts contained in the record before the court, qualified immunity is not available to Norton. I also concur with the court’s conclusion that the district court erred in granting summary judgment to Norton on Belcher and Gleason’s procedural due process claim, because when viewing the record in the light most favorable to Belcher and Gleason, Norton’s failure to give them the third option discussed above rendered his conduct random and unauthorized. Furthermore, I concur with the court’s reasoning regarding why Norton’s entitlement to immunity under the Indiana Tort Claims Act resulted in an inadequate state law remedy for Belcher and Gleason. Finally, I agree with the court that the Town of Orland is not liable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.
Where I disagree with the court is on its conclusion that, when viewing the record in the light most favorable to Belcher and Gleason, a reasonable trier of fact could conclude that Norton violated Belcher’s and Gleason’s substantive due process rights. In this circuit, the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Russell, 411 U.S. 423, 93 S.Ct. 1637, 36 L.Ed.2d 366 (1973), “has been found to present ‘an extremely narrow opportunity ... to challenge government conduct.’ ” Kramer v. Vill. of N. Fond du Lac, 384 F.3d 856, 865 (7th Cir.2004) (quoting United States v. Davis, 15 F.3d 1393, 1415 (7th Cir.1994)). “The scope of substantive due process ... is very limited and protects plaintiffs only against arbitrary government action that ‘shocks the conscience.’ ” Montgomery v. Stefaniak, 410 F.3d 933, 939 (7th Cir.2005) (citation omitted); see also Bublitz v. Cottey, 327 F.3d 485, 491 (7th Cir.2003) (“It is generally only deliberate action intended to harm another that is the type of conduct targeted by the Fourteenth Amendment: ‘[Cjonduct intended to injure in some way unjustifiable by any government interest is the sort of official action most likely to rise to the conscience-shocking level.’ ” (emphasis in original) (quoting County of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833, 849, 118 S.Ct. 1708, 140 L.Ed.2d 1043 (1998) (citations omitted))). As we previously have stated, “[i]t is one thing to say that officials acted badly, even tortiously, but — and this is the essential point — it is quite another to say that their actions rise to the level of a constitutional violation.” Tun v. Whitticker, 398 F.3d 899, 903 (7th Cir.2005). For that reason, we have “declined to impose constitutional liability in a number of situations in which we find the officials’ conduct abhorrent.” Id. (citing Bublitz v. Cottey, 327 F.3d 485 (7th Cir.2003) (finding no substantive due process violation when police used a tire-deflation devise during a highspeed chase which caused the target vehicle to lose control, hit another vehicle, and kill two people); Schaefer v. Goch, 153 F.3d 793 (7th Cir.1998) (finding no substantive due process violation when officers shot a woman to death on her own front steps during a standoff with the woman’s husband)). While the record could, and very well may, indicate that Norton acted improperly, nothing in the record evinces that his behavior was abhorrent. Despite Belcher’s and Gleason’s comments in their depositions that “we might possibly be lynched,” and “I felt like I was going to be lynched,” there is no evidence in the record even remotely describing a physical threat. Norton did not have a weapon. He did not use physical force or violence, did not taunt or mock them, did not use racial or sexual epitaphs, nor did he subject them to public ridicule. Marshal Norton was summoned to resolve a heated argument over property. When he warned Belcher that he would be arrested, Norton also called for backup from *757his County Sheriffs office. Perhaps intervention by a uniformed, professional officer would have solved the problem, but Norton canceled his call for backup when Gleason reluctantly signed over the title to the minivan to Bill’s Towing. The whole process was unfortunately clumsy and mishandled, but by no means shocking to the conscience. Therefore, on the issue of substantive due process, I respectfully dissent.

. Although Bill's Towing posted a rule prohibiting removal of any personal property from impounded vehicles, that policy was not enforceable under the Indiana lien statute.

. The entire situation probably could have been resolved if McClanahan would have allowed Belcher and Gleason to use a telephone to call Belcher’s mother. Because the vehicle was a gift to Gleason from Belcher's mother, Gleason likely wanted to consult with Bel-cher’s mother before signing over the title. Both testified that if Belcher's mother was not willing to put up the money for the tow lot's towing and storage charge (and likely the additional cost for towing the disabled van to Fort Wayne), Gleason willingly would sign over the title to the minivan. Based on the monetary value of the inoperable minivan visa-vis the towing and storage costs owing, a simple call to Belcher’s mother probably would have resolved this situation in the same way it ultimately played out, with Gleason signing over the minivan's title and without making a federal case out of it.