Court Opinion

ID: 9473887
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:42:36.82862+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:47.763591
License: Public Domain

SPROUSE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent. The district court, and to some extent the majority opinion, denigrate Tomai-Minogue’s lawsuit against the insurance company as a pursuit of triv*1239ial rights. I disagree both with the characterization of the nature of her suit and with the majority’s construction of the controlling principles of constitutional law. I cannot agree that Dixon v. Love, 431 U.S. 105, 97 S.Ct. 1723, 52 L.Ed.2d 172 (1977), denies her the right to a pre-deprivation opportunity to show that the Maryland judgment was void nor that the Virginia statute provided Tomai-Minogue with an adequate opportunity for a post-deprivation hearing. I also feel that the district court erred in dismissing her malicious prosecution action.
I.
Tomai-Minogue was entitled to some predeprivation opportunity to have the validity of the Maryland judgment considered.
The majority relies heavily on Dixon v. Love for its conclusion that the fourteenth amendment plays only a limited role in resolving Tomai-Minogue’s grievance. I agree that due process protection for holders of driver’s licenses is finely structured as a result of the Supreme Court’s decisions in Dixon and Bell v. Burson, 402 U.S. 535, 91 S.Ct. 1586, 29 L.Ed.2d 90 (1971). I think, however, the majority misconstrues those decisions and their impact on this case. The essential basis of my disagreement with the majority is its failure to appreciate that Dixon considered revocation of a license for violation of road safety laws while Bell involved revocation for violation of financial responsibility laws. The Supreme Court, in adopting the Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319, 335, 96 S.Ct. 893, 903, 47 L.Ed.2d 18 (1976), balancing test in Dixon, 431 U.S. at 112-13, 97 S.Ct. at 1727-28, recognized the primary importance of the public interest in road safety and minimized the comparative importance of financial responsibility laws balanced against the erroneous deprivation of a right to drive an automobile. The Court left intact the Bell rule requiring some pre-deprivation right to be heard for the latter type of revocation. In Bell the district court considered a Georgia statute that required suspension of a driver’s license after an accident unless the licensee established financial responsibility to pay for any judgment that might result from damages caused by the accident. The Court reasoned that the licensee, although not entitled to a full pre-deprivation hearing, was entitled to a pre-deprivation inquiry “limited to the determination whether there is a reasonable possibility of judgments in the amount claimed being rendered against the licensee.” 402 U.S. at 540, 91 S.Ct. at 1590.
The court in Dixon did not overrule Bell. To the contrary, it was cited with approval and found “fully distinguishable].” Dixon, 431 U.S. at 114, 97 S.Ct. at 1728. It is true, as stated by the majority, that in license revocation cases our inquiry must focus on “how much due process” is required in these cases. The majority also correctly notes that in Dixon the court used the Mathews criteria in determining this question. What the majority overlooks, however, is that Dixon involved revocation of a driver’s license for safety violations, and the Court took pains to emphasize that the result might have been different if the revocation had been for financial responsibility purposes. Dixon, 431 U.S. at 114-15, 97 S.Ct. at 1728-29. There is no question that Tomai-Minogue’s license was revoked pursuant to the financial responsibility sections of Virginia’s Motor Vehicle Code. Sections 46.1-417 through 46.1-441.2 of the Virginia Code provides for revocation for violations such as reckless or drunken driving, and for revocation of the licenses of mentally incapacitated individuals — all of which relate to driving safety. Section 46.1-442, et seq., however, are financial responsibility provisions requiring revocation for failure to satisfy judgments. As State Farm states in its brief, “[i]n this case, State Farm decided to enforce the judgment through Virginia financial responsibility statutes Va.Code 46.1-442-443.” The majority, likewise, emphasizing the nature of the proceeding against Tomai-Minogue, states:
*1240State Farm’s objective in bringing its civil suit in Maryland, and then requesting suspension of plaintiff’s license in Virginia, was to compel payment of plaintiff’s debt. This is precisely the purpose of the state procedures in question. Civil process designed to aid debt collection may be employed for the object contemplated by law without incurring the threat of an abuse of process suit. Suspension of a driver’s license where an accident judgment is outstanding under the Virginia statute is manifestly intended to enable the creditor to satisfy his judgment, for the suspension is lifted once the judgment is paid.
The Georgia statute considered in Bell required proof of financial responsibility before judgment, while the Virginia statute we consider created revocation procedures to aid judgment creditors in their collections. That difference in degree does not alter application of the Bell rationale, undisturbed by Dixon, requiring some pre-determination opportunity when a license is revoked as an aid to judgment collection. The Supreme Court has made a sharp distinction between due process requirements for revocations based on convictions for safety violations and those brought about solely to assist one party to an accident in collecting damage judgments. The Court, in discussing the three Mathews criteria, emphasized that the most important one implicated in Dixon was the governmental interest — in that case “public interest in safety on the roads and highways, and in the prompt removal of a safety hazard.” The Court further explained:
This factor fully distinguishes Bell v. Burson, supra, where the “only purpose” of the Georgia statute there under consideration was “to obtain security from which to pay any judgments against the licensee resulting from the accident____ In contrast, the Illinois statute at issue in the instant case is designed to keep off the roads those drivers who are unable or unwilling to respect traffic rules and the safety of others.
We conclude that the public interests present under the circumstances of this case are sufficiently visible and weighty for the State to make its summary initial decision effective without a predecision administrative hearing.
Dixon, 431 U.S. at 114-15, 97 S.Ct. at 1728-29 (citation and footnote omitted).
It would take considerable straining to conjure much of a difference in interest the public might have in providing security for the collection of a contingent judgment (as in the Georgia statute) and in ensuring that the final judgment was actually collected (as in the Virginia statute). Essentially, the two statutes embody the same public interest. The Court in Bell did not consider that public interest sufficient to override a licensee’s right to some pre-deprivation consideration.
I agree with the majority that requiring full pre-deprivation hearings in these cases would impose an intolerable burden on the administration of the motor vehicle laws and certainly would throw the Mathews scales out-of-balance. The Supreme Court recognized this in Bell, however, even before it adopted in Dixon the Mathews criteria for resolving driver’s license revocation cases. In cases like this one, an opportunity to have the appropriate administrator meaningfully consider the void judgment might be sufficient. Given some concise objection readily provided by a licensee alerted by adequate pre-deprivation notice, an administrator could decide the issue by a simple administrative inquiry. See Bell v. Burson, 402 U.S. at 540, 91 S.Ct. at 1590.
II.
The Virginia statute does not provide for a post-deprivation hearing.
The majority concedes that Tomai-Minogue was entitled to due process protection but opines that she is sufficiently protected by a post-deprivation hearing after her driver’s license was revoked. It then concludes that the Virginia statutory scheme provided her an opportunity at *1241such a post-deprivation hearing to show that the Maryland judgment was void, and to have her license restored at that time. I have indicated my opinion that Tomai-Minogue was entitled to some pre-deprivation opportunity but assuming for the moment that a post-deprivation hearing could provide her all the due process to which she was entitled, I am persuaded that the Virginia statutory scheme does not provide even a constitutionally adequate post-deprivation hearing.
Virginia Code section 46.1-437(a) (1980) provides:
No appeal shall lie in any case in which the revocation of the license or registration was mandatory except to determine the identity of the person concerned when the question of identity is in dispute.
The Supreme Court of Virginia has twice considered identical language in predecessor statutes and each time has held directly that the only issues permitted to be treated in such post-deprivation hearings are issues relating to the identity of the licensee.
In Dillon v. Joyner, 192 Va. 559, 66 S.E.2d 583 (1951), the driver whose license had been revoked contested the validity of a predicate conviction for reckless driving. Like section 46.1-437(a), the section construed in Dillon read:
No appeal shall lie in any case in which the revocation of the license or registration was mandatory except to determine the identity of the person concerned when the question of identity is in dispute.
The Virginia court said:
The narrow issue now presented is whether a person, whose license to drive a motor vehicle has been revoked by the Commissioner of the Division of Motor Vehicles, based upon convictions on two offenses of reckless driving within twelve consecutive months, can raise the question of the validity of the judgments in a proceeding instituted under section 46-424 of the Code of 1950, where the judgments are valid on their face, and where there is no question as to the identity of the person involved. Our answer to this is in the negative.
There is no review under section 46-424 where the revocation was mandatory, except on the question of identity.
192 Va. at 561, 563, 66 S.E.2d at 584, 586.
Four years later the Virginia court decided Lamb v. Curry, 197 Va. 395, 89 S.E.2d 329 (1955). A driver’s license had been revoked for the combination within a twelve-month period of a reckless driving conviction and a speeding conviction. The mandatory provisions requiring revocation for these two offenses became effective after both underlying convictions. The driver contested the mandatory revocation, contending that it was applied ex post facto to him in violation of the Virginia Constitution. The Virginia court refused to consider the merits of even a validly presented constitutional argument, holding that the court was limited to considering issues of identity. Approving its previous language expressed in Dillon, it went on to state:
Under the certain and mandatory language of § 46-424 and the authority of Dillon v. Joyner, supra, it is clear that the issues sought to be presented by Curry on this appeal could not be considered by the court. The character of the offenses for which he was convicted limited the inquiry on appeal under § 46-424 to one of identity. The demurrer should have been sustained and the appeal dismissed.
The majority relies on Lamb v. Butler, 198 Va. 509, 95 S.E.2d 239 (1956), to support its position that the Virginia Supreme Court would interpret section 46.1-437(a) to allow a hearing on the question of personal jurisdiction. The quick answer to that is that Butler did not construe or make any observation on the language of that section, whereas Dillon and Curry were direct holdings on the very question we consider — holdings squarely contrary to the position taken by the majority. Apparently, the Virginia court considered the facts in Butler not controlled by the statutory limiting language, perhaps because it in*1242volved the question of whether a conviction even existed. At any rate, it was decided outside the context of the statutory language limiting the issues on appeal to identity, and the definitive cases on that language, Dillon and Curry, were not even mentioned in Butler.
With all respect, I also think the majority confuses a venerable term of art with elementary proceedings concerning the determination of personal jurisdiction. The sections of the Virginia motor laws with which we deal repeatedly refer to judgments “rendered by a court of competent jurisdiction.” Under this the majority believes that Tomai-Minogue could have shown that the Maryland court was not “competent” because she was not personally before it. This attributes to the Virginia Legislature the intent to encompass the concept of in personam jurisdiction into the term. Understandably, the issue has not been frequently litigated, but the normal reference of the phrase “courts of competent jurisdiction” is to courts which have subject matter jurisdiction. United States v. Morton, — U.S. -,---, 104 S.Ct. 2769, 2772-73, 81 L.Ed.2d 680, 687-88 (1984). A legislature uses a word or expression in its usually understood sense unless it expresses an intention to the contrary. American Tobacco Company v. Patterson, 456 U.S. 63, 68, 102 S.Ct. 1534, 1537, 71 L.Ed.2d 748 (1982). There is no such expression in these statutes.
I share with the majority an apparent sense that a capable legislature such as that of the State of Virginia simply would not have purposefully enacted a scheme whereby its citizens could lose their drivers’ license on the basis of a void judgment entered in a minor court of another jurisdiction. In the myriad of details that might be administered in policing over-the-road drivers, however, even the most conscientious legislature could be guilty of an oversight. The reason here is administrative expediency. As the Virginia Supreme Court said in Dillon:
In the course of a single year the Division of Motor Vehicles will process eighty or ninety thousand reports of convictions furnished to it in the form of abstracts by the clerks of the courts throughout the Commonwealth. The abstracts of conviction are presumed to be correct, and if they are valid on their face as was true in the instant case, the Commissioner cannot question their validity.
66 S.E.2d at 583. The Virginia Supreme Court said again in Butler:
The integrity of the judicial process would be set at stake if judgments valid on their faces should be voided by actions of administrative officers or by the opinions of executives or officers of the government to the effect that they are invalid.
95 S.E.2d at 247.
True, the burden of administration is one factor to weigh in the Mathews due process balancing test. As the United States Supreme Court held in both Bell and Dixon, however, it is but one of several important factors. The majority concedes that in the face of administrative burdens implicit in this important governmental function, a private citizen is entitled to at least a post-deprivation hearing in satisfaction of his due process rights. In my view, the Virginia legislature and Virginia Supreme Court have deferred too much to the State’s administrative burden and, in this discrete area, have overlooked the constitutional right of Virginia license holders to even a post-deprivation hearing.
III.
Tomai-Minoque should have been allowed to pursue her malicious prosecution claim.
Finally, I think the district court erred in directing a verdict on Tomai-Minogue’s malicious prosecution claim. The majority accurately summarized the factual underpinnings necessary to sustain this claim but *1243concluded that State Farm had “probable cause” to bring their action against Tomai-Minogue. Probable cause is defined as “a reasonable ground for belief of such a state of facts as would warrant institution of the suit or proceedings complained of.” Herring v. Citizens Bank & Trust Co., 21 Md.App. 517, 539, 321 A.2d 182 (1974) (quoting Owens v. Graetzel, 149 Md. 689, 696, 132 A. 265 (1926)).
In the first place, I think it would defeat the purpose of the definition of probable cause to limit the concept of “state of facts” to facts relating only to the substantive merits of the controversy. State Farm had no independent claim against Tomai-Minogue — it was subrogated only to whatever claim its insured, Webster, had against her. He may have had no claim against her and State Farm took no steps to ascertain this. An experienced claims administrator, nevertheless, instructed a compliant attorney to pursue an action against her which even a law student should have known was void for lack of personal jurisdiction. The suit regarding an accident occurring in the District of Columbia was pursued in Maryland against a Virginia resident. A jury could have inferred that all of this amounted to lack of probable cause to pursue the action. The sometimes deviant practices of the now ancient justice-of-the-peace system is not yet so blurred in memory that we are not alert to the possibility of these practices in other minor judicial systems. A large and respected company like State Farm certainly would not countenance such practices in the pursuit of small claims. But who is to know if motives of exasperation, frustration, or even vengeance, might not surface in the offices of far removed employees or agents. These are matters for juries to determine.
It is true that Tomai-Minogue suffered no great out-of-pocket monetary damage. She was, however, a real estate salesperson, who, needing her car, perhaps lost two months’ opportunity for commissions. She suffered the embarrassment, fear, and chagrin of a citizen deprived of long accepted constitutional rights. A jury might not have considered her case worthy of a large damage award. That, however, should have been left to the prerogative and responsibility of the jury. I agree with the practically universal feeling that federal courts are overburdened — frequently with frivolous litigation — and that frivolous litigation should be summarily treated and sanctions imposed where appropriate. I do not, however, associate with the castigation cast by the district court and the majority on Tomai-Minogue for bringing this action. I do not think this is a frivolous case. She may well have felt that the deprivation of her constitutional rights was intentional. It might have been. Many constitutional principles have evolved from resolution of less egregious violations. We should be slow to criticize our citizens for using federal courts for the purposes for which they were designed or to limit access to courts on preconceived hierarchical concepts of personal rights.
To be sure Tomai-Minogue candidly admitted fault. She struck Webster’s car in a parking lot and caused a dent. The size of the dent and her dereliction may be gauged from the size of the repair bill which, in these times of inflated automobile repair bills, represents minor damage indeed. The extent of the damage or absence of it, however, was only the start of a scenario that, innocent at first, eventually developed into a fairly serious intrusion on Tomai-Minogue’s rights. This was despite Tomai-Minogue’s attempt to rectify her error. She spent considerable time finding Webster and, having found him, paid him the $100 that he asked for damages. She thought she settled with Webster for the damage. State Farm had no relationship with Tomai-Minogue. The only right it would have had to sue her anywhere was Webster’s right assigned to it by subrogation. Webster, however, had no right to sue Tomai-Minogue; he had settled with her.
*1244State Farm thus brought an action in Maryland against Tomai-Minogue, a known Virginia resident with no connections to the State of Maryland, for an accident that occurred in the District of Columbia. This suit was filed and pursued to judgment in a Maryland court which, of course, had no power to effectuate valid personal service. The district court attached significance to Tomai-Minogue’s failures to respond to letters from State Farm’s Maryland office demanding that she pay $200 — -a fact also alluded to in the majority opinion. She, however, had no obligation to State Farm, which had not even communicated with its insured. She did what most lay persons would have done — she consulted her lawyer. The lawyer told her correctly that even if the claim was meritorious — which it was not — any judgment would be invalid. State Farm and the trial court suggest that she should have jumped into her car and hastened to Maryland in order to enter a special appearance in the state court. That to me simply suggests a bad legal fantasy where laws are designed primarily for the protection of insurance companies and bill collectors. Tomai-Minogue received a rudimentary lecture on our Constitution when she called her lawyer and she had every right to be secure in her thoughts that she could not be harassed on a collection matter whether out of spite, incompetence, or on any other basis. Such intrusion, I feel, is sufficiently serious to be protected by the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment, and she should be allowed to pursue her section 1983 and state law claims against State Farm.