Townes v. City of New York, s. 682

• Citation: 176 F.3d 138
• Decision Date: 06 May 1999
• Docket Number: D,683,Nos. 682,s. 682
• Parties: Victor TOWNES, Plaintiff-Appellee-Cross-Appellant, v. The CITY OF NEW YORK; Joseph Hamilton; Kenneth J. Donohue; and Jeffrey Timerman, Defendants-Appellants-Cross-Appellees. ockets 98-2259, 98-2309.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (2nd Circuit)

Page 138

176 F.3d 138

Victor TOWNES, Plaintiff-Appellee-Cross-Appellant, v. The CITY OF NEW YORK; Joseph Hamilton; Kenneth J. Donohue; and Jeffrey Timerman,

Defendants-Appellants-Cross-Appellees.

Nos. 682, 683, Dockets 98-2259, 98-2309.

United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

Argued Oct. 20, 1998.

Decided May 6, 1999.

Dana S. Gershon, New York, N.Y. (Gerald A. Rosenberg, Frances K. Browne, Rosenman & Colin LLP, on the brief), for Plaintiff-Appellee-Cross-Appellant.

Ronald E. Sternberg, Assistant Corporation Counsel (Michael D. Hess, Corporation Counsel of the City of New York, Leonard Koerner, Assistant Corporation Counsel, on the brief), for Defendants-Appellants-Cross-Appellees.

Before: NEWMAN and JACOBS, Circuit Judges, and TSOUCALAS, Judge. ^*

JACOBS, Circuit Judge:

Victor Townes, currently incarcerated for matters not the subject of this case, initiated this 42 U.S.C. § 1983 lawsuit pro se in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Wood, J.), claiming that his constitutional rights were violated by several officers of the New York Police Department--and derivatively by the City of New York ("the City")--during a 1984 police stop of a taxicab in which he was a passenger. After halting the taxicab, the officers ordered Townes out, searched him (finding nothing), searched the taxicab (finding handguns), arrested Townes, and searched him again at the police station (finding cocaine). Townes alleges that he was subjected to an unconstitutional seizure and search that resulted in his spending more than two years in prison on weapons-possession and drug-possession charges.

The individual defendants' qualified immunity motion was denied on the ground that Townes had a clearly established right to be free from an unreasonable stop of the taxicab in which he was a passenger. Although we agree that as of 1984, Townes's Fourth Amendment rights were clearly established as to the stop of the taxicab and the seizure of his person when he was ordered out and searched, Townes is not seeking damages for these specific invasions of his privacy, but rather for injuries derivative of these invasions--his arrest, conviction, and incarceration. We conclude that these injuries are not fairly traceable to the actual violations of his civil rights. Therefore, Townes fails to state a claim upon which the relief he seeks can be granted. Accordingly, we reverse.

BACKGROUND

For purposes of this appeal, we accept as true the factual allegations contained in Townes's complaint. See Boice v. Unisys Corp., 50 F.3d 1145, 1147 (2d Cir.1995). In November 1984, Townes and two other persons were passengers in a livery taxicab en route to Manhattan from the Bronx. The taxicab pulled over after it entered Manhattan, and Townes waited inside while his companions stepped away. Sitting there, Townes noticed several on-duty plainclothes officers of the New York City Police Department watching him from an unmarked police car. He then removed two fully loaded handguns from his person, and hid them, one under the front seat, the other under the passenger seat. After Townes's companions returned, and the three resumed their trip, the officers stopped the taxicab. We assume (as the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court later found, and the parties do not dispute) that the taxicab did not violate any traffic law, that the driver did not signal for help, and that the police lacked probable cause to make the stop.

The officers identified themselves, ordered the three passengers from the taxicab at gunpoint, and frisked them, but found nothing. The officers proceeded to search the taxicab, and found the two handguns that Townes had hidden. The three passengers were taken into custody and driven to the 32nd Precinct, where they were searched again, at which time cocaine was discovered on Townes's person. Townes was arrested and charged with two counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree and one count of criminal possession of a controlled substance in the seventh degree.

Townes's motion to suppress the evidence concerning the handguns and the cocaine was denied (without a hearing), after which he entered a plea of guilty and was jailed. More than two years later, the Appellate Division reversed the conviction on the ground that the police lacked probable cause to stop and search the taxicab. People v. Victor, 149 A.D.2d 363, 540 N.Y.S.2d 670 (1st Dep't 1989). The New York Court of Appeals later remitted the case to the New York Supreme Court for a hearing on the original motion to suppress. People v. Victor, 74 N.Y.2d 874, 547 N.Y.S.2d 831, 547 N.E.2d 86 (1989). Eventually, the indictment was dismissed.

Townes commenced the present action in 1994, pleading: (1) claims against each of the individual police officers under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for violating his Fourth Amendment rights; (2) a § 1983 claim against the City for failing to train or supervise the individual police officers; and (3) a state-law claim against the officers and the City for violating Townes's rights under Article I, section 12 of the New York State Constitution.

The defendants moved to dismiss Townes's complaint pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6), arguing that the Fourth Amendment rights Townes asserted were not established with the requisite clarity in 1984, and therefore that the individual defendants were entitled to qualified immunity, and the City could not be held liable for a failure to train or supervise them. The defendants also argued that the state constitutional claim was foreclosed by the statute of limitations for suits against the City and its employees, see N.Y. Gen. Mun. Law §§ 50-i, 50-j (McKinney 1986 & Supp.1998).

On September 2, 1997, Magistrate Judge Ellis recommended to Judge Wood that the defendants' motion be granted. Judge Ellis reasoned that although New York caselaw prior to 1978 had clearly and consistently held that the searches and seizures of taxicabs implicated the Fourth Amendment rights of passengers, see, e.g., People v. Boyer, 65 A.D.2d 840, 841-42, 410 N.Y.S.2d 167, 169 (3d Dep't 1978), the Supreme Court's opinion in Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 99 S.Ct. 421, 58 L.Ed.2d 387 (1978), so unsettled this area of law that by 1984 Townes's asserted Fourth Amendment rights were no longer Judge Wood rejected the Magistrate Judge's recommendation and denied the defendants' motion to dismiss the § 1983 claims. Her March 6, 1998 opinion and order detected no post-Rakas confusion sufficient to call into question the rules that a taxicab stop implicates the Fourth Amendment rights of passengers, see Rios v. United States, 364 U.S. 253, 260-62, 80 S.Ct. 1431, 1435-36, 4 L.Ed.2d 1688 (1960); Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 352 & n. 12, 88 S.Ct. 507, 511 & n. 12, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967) (citing Rios ), and that such a stop must be justified by reasonable and articulable suspicion, see Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 20-22, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1879-80, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968); People v. Sobotker, 43 N.Y.2d 559, 563-64, 402 N.Y.S.2d 993, 995-96, 373 N.E.2d 1218 (1978). Judge Wood concluded that the Fourth Amendment rights asserted by Townes were "established with sufficient clarity at the time of ... arrest to survive defendants' motion to dismiss," and denied qualified immunity on the § 1983 claims. However, Judge Wood granted defendants' motion to dismiss the state law claim on the ground that the statute of limitations had run. ¹ This appeal follows.

clearly established, compare People v. Judge, 117 Misc.2d 912, 917-18, 455 N.Y.S.2d 926, 930 (Sup.Ct. N.Y. County 1982) (taxicab passenger lacked standing to challenge stop of taxicab), with People v. Castro, 125 Misc.2d 15, 19-23, 479 N.Y.S.2d 414, 418-20 (Sup.Ct. N.Y. County 1984) (taxicab passenger's Fourth Amendment rights implicated by stop of taxicab). Because the recommended dismissal would eliminate the claims on which federal jurisdiction was predicated, Judge Ellis recommended dismissing the state constitutional claim as well.

Defendants have brought an interlocutory appeal from the denial of their motion to dismiss Townes's § 1983 claims on the ground of qualified immunity, and Townes cross-appeals the dismissal of his state law claim. We have jurisdiction over the order denying qualified immunity, see Golino v. City of New Haven, 950 F.2d 864, 868 (2d Cir.1991), and are exercising our discretion to assert pendent appellate jurisdiction over the closely related issue of whether the complaint adequately stated a claim that the allegedly unlawful stop and search was a proximate cause of the damages the plaintiff seeks for his subsequent incarceration. We decline to exercise pendent appellate jurisdiction over the cross-appeal.

DISCUSSION

I

The individual defendants argue that they are immune from suit for their conduct.

A

Police officers generally enjoy a qualified immunity from liability for their discretionary actions if their conduct does not "violate clearly established rights of which a reasonable person would have known," or if it is "objectively reasonable to believe that [their] acts did not violate these clearly established rights." Soares v. Connecticut, 8 F.3d 917, 920 (2d Cir.1993) (quoting Finnegan v. Fountain, 915 F.2d 817, 823 (2d Cir.1990) (internal quotation marks omitted)) (alteration in original); see also Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818-19, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 2738, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982). Similarly, municipal liability under a failure to train theory requires, in part, that municipal employees violate or are likely to violate a clearly established federal constitutional right. See City of Canton v. Harris, 489 U.S. 378, 388, 109 S.Ct. 1197, 1204, 103 L.Ed.2d 412 (1989) ("[T]he inadequacy of police training In deciding whether a particular right was clearly established as of a particular time, we must determine (i) whether the right at issue was defined with reasonable clarity; (ii) whether the Supreme...