Jacobs v. City of Chicago

Citation215 F.3d 758
Decision Date01 June 2000
Docket NumberNo. 99-2507,99-2507
Parties(7th Cir. 2000) Willie Jacobs and Linda Siller, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. City of Chicago , a municipal corporation; the estate of Sergeant Michael Garner; Officers Quintero, Buckner, McLean, Keith, and Garrido; and Metropolitan Enforcement Group Officers Huff, Martin, Sowinski, and McIntyre, Defendants-Appellees
CourtUnited States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (7th Circuit)

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 98 C 0954--Charles R. Norgle, Sr., Senior Judge. [Copyrighted Material Omitted]

[Copyrighted Material Omitted]

[Copyrighted Material Omitted]

[Copyrighted Material Omitted] Before Flaum, Easterbrook, and Ripple, Circuit Judges.

Flaum, Circuit Judge.

Willie Jacobs and Linda Siller brought claims under 42 U.S.C. sec. 1983 against the City of Chicago and several individual Chicago police officers (the "Defendant Officers"), alleging violations of their Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures and excessive use of force. The district court dismissed the complaint under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), finding that the defendants enjoyed qual ified immunity for all of the claims brought against them. For the reasons stated herein, we reverse and remand.

I. BACKGROUND1

Plaintiffs Willie Jacobs and Linda Siller live in Apartment #2 at 15138 Lincoln Avenue in Harvey, Illinois. There are three apartments in the building at this address. The wall next to the door of each apartment is marked by the word "Apt." followed by a number. Each apartment has its own separate outside entrance and its own doorbell. There are two gas meters located on the outside of the building providing service to the first and second floor apartments. The three apartments are each billed separately for electricity and telephone service. Apartment #2 is located on the second floor and has an outside entrance at the side of the building.

On February 18, 1997, defendant Officer Quintero of the Chicago Police Department obtained a search warrant for "Troy," a 30-year-old black male, and a single family residence at 15138 Lincoln Avenue in Harvey. The warrant was issued based on information, provided by a confidential informant, that a large amount of cocaine base was being sold out of the building.

Later that afternoon, the Defendant Officers went to the apartment building at 15138 Lincoln Avenue. They executed the warrant on the first floor apartment, which is entered through a door at the front of the building. The owner of the building Marie Golden lived in this apartment. She informed the officers that there were two other apartments in the building, that no one named Troy lived in the building, and that she did not know anyone named Troy. Golden also told the officers that someone named Jacobs lived in the upstairs apartment and that Jacobs was ill, having recently returned from the hospital. The Defendant Officers searched Golden's apartment.

The Defendant Officers then went back outside the building and around to the side entrance of Apartment # 2. They broke down the door without knocking or announcing that they were police officers executing a search warrant. An officer approached plaintiff Jacobs, a sixty- year-old man, and pointed a gun at his head. The officers then asked Jacobs if he was Troy, the thirty-year-old man who was the subject of the search warrant. Jacobs responded that he was not Troy and that no one named Troy lived in the apartment. Jacobs provided the officer with identification and told the officer that he needed to sit down because he felt faint. The officer kept the gun at Jacobs' head for over ten minutes while the other Defendant Officers began searching Jacobs' apartment. During the search, several items of furniture and many of the plaintiffs' personal belongings were damaged. One of the Defendant Officers claimed to have found a small amount of cocaine on a dresser in a bedroom used by Jacobs' grandchildren. The Defendant Officers then continued to search Jacobs' apartment for over three hours, detaining Jacobs in his home throughout the search. During this time, the Defendant Officers called in a canine unit to assist with the search, but the dog did not indicate the presence of any drugs in the apartment or on Jacobs' person.

Jacobs alleges that he suffered severe emotional injury as a result of the Defendant Officers' search of his apartment, their detention of him during the search, and their use of force by holding a gun to his head for several minutes. Shortly after this incident, Jacobs suffered a heart attack. Linda Siller was also an occupant of the apartment. She returned home after the search had been completed to find her property damaged. No one was arrested or prosecuted as a result of the search of the apartment building.

Jacobs and Siller filed suit under 42 U.S.C. sec. 1983 against the City of Chicago and the Defendant Officers, claiming that their Fourth Amendment rights were violated by the search of their apartment and the seizure of Jacobs as well as by the excessive use of force against Jacobs. The district court dismissed plaintiffs' complaint under Rule 12(b)(6), finding that the defendants enjoyed qualified immunity for all of the claims brought by the plaintiffs. Jacobs and Siller now appeal.2

II. DISCUSSION

The plaintiffs appeal the district court's dismissal of their complaint under Rule 12(b)(6) on the ground that the defendants are entitled to qualified immunity for all of the claims brought against them. We review the district court's dismissal de novo. See Payton v. Rush-Presbyterian St. Luke's Medical Center, 184 F.3d 623, 625 (7th Cir. 1999). We accept all of the plaintiffs' allegations as true and draw all reasonable inferences in their favor. General Elec. Capital Corp. v. Lease Resolution Corp., 128 F.3d 1074, 1080 (7th Cir. 1997).3

A. Consideration of Matters Outside of Complaint

The plaintiffs first contend that the district court erred when it considered several photographs of the apartment building, submitted by the defendants and the plaintiffs, and a copy of a police report, submitted by the defendants, in ruling on the defendants' motion to dismiss.

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b) states:

If, on a motion asserting the defense numbered (6) to dismiss for failure of the pleading to state a claim upon which relief can be granted, matters outside the pleading are presented to and not excluded by the court, the motion shall be treated as one for summary judgement and disposed of as provided in Rule 56, and all parties shall be given reasonable opportunity to present all material made pertinent to such a motion by Rule 56.

By the plain language of this rule, when the defendants submitted photographs of the apartment building and a copy of a police report and the plaintiffs submitted their own photographs in response, the district court was obligated to either not consider the extraneous submissions in ruling on the motion or to convert the motion to one for summary judgment and provide the parties with an opportunity to submit supplementary materials. See Carter v. Stanton, 405 U.S. 669, 671 (1972). It is evident that the district court relied on the photographs as well as the report in ruling on the motion to dismiss and that it did not convert the motion to one for summary judgment. We hold that the district court's reliance on matters outside the complaint in ruling on the motion to dismiss was in error.

The error committed by the district court may constitute grounds for reversal. See id.; Travel All Over the World, Inc. v. Saudi Arabia, 73 F.3d 1423, 1430 (7th Cir. 1996). However, rather than remand for the district court to reconsider its opinion without looking at matters outside of the compliant, our usual practice is to determine whether the error was harmless by conducting our own de novo analysis of the complaint under the Rule 12(b)(6) standard without considering the extraneous materials relied upon by the district court. See General Elec. Capital, 128 F.3d at 1084 ("[W]e may consider the error harmless and affirm if Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal would have been appropriate without examination of the extrinsic documentation."); Travel All Over, 73 F.3d at 1430. We will affirm the district court's dismissal only if we determine by conducting our own analysis of the complaint alone that the plaintiffs fail to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. B. Qualified Immunity

State officials who occupy positions with discretionary or policymaking authority and are acting in their official capacity may have qualified immunity for claims alleging that the state officials violated the constitutional rights of a plaintiff. Siegert v. Gilley, 500 U.S. 226, 231 (1991); Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 815-16 (1982). These officials "are shielded from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known." Harlow, 457 U.S. at 818; see Wilson v. Layne, 119 S.Ct. 1692, 1696 (1999); Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 638 (1987).

To evaluate a claim of qualified immunity, we engage in a two-step analysis. First, we determine whether the plaintiffs' claim states a violation of their constitutional rights. Then, we determine whether those rights were clearly established at the time the violation occurred. See Wilson, 119 S.Ct. at 1697; Khuans v. School Dist. 100, 123 F.3d 1010, 1013 (7th Cir. 1997). If the rights were clearly established, the official may be liable for monetary damages and the suit proceeds to the next stage. If the rights were not clearly established, then the official is immune from suit and the claim is dismissed. See Richardson v. McKnight, 521 U.S. 399, 403 (1997).

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