Maldonado v. Fontanes, 08-2211.

Citation568 F.3d 263
Decision Date04 June 2009
Docket NumberNo. 08-2211.,08-2211.
PartiesMadeline MALDONADO, individually and on behalf of her minor children A.M.V., E.M.V., and C.M.V., et al., Plaintiffs, Appellees, v. Sol Luis FONTANES, Mayor of Barceloneta, in his personal and official capacities, Defendant, Appellant, Municipality of Barceloneta, et al., Defendants.
CourtUnited States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (1st Circuit)

Luis F. Colon Gonzalez with whom Colon Gonzalez & Co., P.S.C. was on brief for appellant.

Pedro R. Vázquez with whom Mara S. Kortright was on brief for appellees.

Before LYNCH, Chief Judge, FARRIS* and HOWARD, Circuit Judges.

LYNCH, Chief Judge.

Residents of three public housing complexes brought a civil rights suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the Mayor of Barceloneta, Puerto Rico, protesting the precipitous seizures and cruel killings of their pet cats and dogs. The twenty named plaintiff families assert violations of their Fourth Amendment rights to be free from unreasonable seizures of their "effects" and their Fourteenth Amendment procedural and substantive due process rights.

The pets were taken in two successive raids, within ten days of the Municipality of Barceloneta assuming control of the public housing complexes from the Puerto Rico Public Housing Administration ("PRPHA") on October 1, 2007. Plaintiffs allege that before that transfer, they had been permitted to have their pets. Only a few days before the raids, the residents were told to surrender their pets on pain of being evicted from their homes. They allege that after many of the pets were seized, the pets were killed by slamming them into the sides of vans and by hurling the survivors off a 50-foot-high bridge. Some plaintiffs eventually found their family pets dead under the bridge.

The Mayor, in his personal capacity, moved to dismiss all damages claims against him on grounds of qualified immunity. That motion was denied; the Mayor has taken an interlocutory appeal. This court denied the Mayor's motion to stay proceedings in the district court. We are informed that discovery is being completed and that the case is nearly ready for trial.

We affirm the denial of the Mayor's motion for qualified immunity on the Fourth Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment procedural due process claims. Applying the Supreme Court's new decision in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, ___ U.S. ____, 129 S.Ct. 1937, ___ L.Ed.2d ____ (2009), we reverse the denial of qualified immunity to the Mayor as to the plaintiffs' Fourteenth Amendment substantive due process claims and order those claims dismissed. We also revise our prior circuit law on the steps to follow in the qualified immunity analysis in light of superceding Supreme Court precedent.

I.

On interlocutory appeal from the denial of qualified immunity through a motion to dismiss, "we must take all the factual allegations in the complaint as true." Iqbal, 129 S.Ct. at 1950. Yet we need not accept as true legal conclusions from the complaint or "`naked assertion[s]' devoid of `further factual enhancement.'" Id. at 1960 (alteration in original) (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 557, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007)).

The Municipality assumed operational control over three public housing complexes in Barceloneta from the PRPHA on October 1, 2007. Between October 3 and 7, 2007, the Municipality delivered notices to residents of those complexes that it would be enforcing a pet policy, which prohibited the residents from having cats or dogs. The notices threatened eviction for those who did not surrender their pets and included an English-language copy of the pet policy, but not a Spanish-language version. The residents of those complexes are predominantly Spanish speakers. Plaintiffs allege that few speak, read, or write English. Before the Municipality took control of the housing complexes, residents had kept pets with the knowledge and consent of the housing complexes' administrators, and there was no enforced prohibition on the ownership of a cat or dog.

On October 8, 2007, without any further notice to the residents, uniformed municipal employees and workers from Animal Control Solutions, Inc. ("ACS"), a private contractor hired by the Municipality, arrived at the three public housing complexes and violently captured numerous pet cats and dogs. They went door-to-door and demanded that the residents give up their pets or face eviction. Many people complied. Some residents who were not home at the time had their pets taken from inside their enclosed patios and laundry areas. Municipal employees and ACS workers also captured several pets that were in the common areas of the housing project, even taking pets away from children. The Mayor and other high ranking municipal officials were present that day at least at one of the housing complexes while the animals were seized.

Once the pets were captured, municipal employees and ACS workers injected some of the animals with an unknown substance. They also slammed the animals against the side of a van, causing some witnesses to believe that their pets had been killed in their presence. Those animals surviving the initial trauma were then thrown to their deaths off a 50-foot-high bridge, known as El Paseo de Indio ("The Indian Walk"). Some residents eventually found their pets dead underneath the bridge.

Similar raids occurred two days later at each of the three housing complexes, also resulting in the cruel killings of the residents' animals. There is no claim that the defendant Mayor was present at these raids. The residents protested. On October 17, 2007, the Municipality resigned its position as the administrator of the public housing complexes in Barceloneta.

On October 19, 2007, the residents sued the Mayor and other municipal officials under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, claiming violations of their rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, as well as under other federal and state laws that are not involved in this appeal. The complaint sought, inter alia, punitive damages and compensatory damages of at least $1500 for the value of each pet and $500,000 for the harm inflicted on each plaintiff, as well as injunctive and declaratory relief.

On April 29, 2008, the Mayor moved to dismiss all the damage claims against him, asserting qualified immunity. On July 29, 2008, the district court issued an opinion and order denying the Mayor qualified immunity on the plaintiffs' Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment claims.1 This interlocutory appeal from the district court's denial of qualified immunity followed.

II.
A. Appellate Jurisdiction over Denials of Qualified Immunity

An order rejecting a public official's qualified immunity defense is immediately appealable as a "final" judgment within the meaning of 28 U.S.C. § 1291 to the extent that it turns on an issue of law. Iqbal, 129 S.Ct. at 1947 ("[T]his court has been careful to say that a district court's order rejecting qualified immunity at the motion-to-dismiss stage of a proceeding is a `final decision' within the meaning of § 1291."); Behrens v. Pelletier, 516 U.S. 299, 306-07, 116 S.Ct. 834, 133 L.Ed.2d 773 (1996); Bergeron v. Cabral, 560 F.3d 1, 5 (1st Cir.2009). That is, "when the district court assumes a set of facts favorable to the plaintiff and decides as a matter of law that those facts do not form a satisfactory basis for a finding of qualified immunity, an interlocutory appeal is available under the collateral order doctrine." Bergeron, 560 F.3d at 6.

Here, we have jurisdiction to consider the Mayor's legal argument that the plaintiffs have not stated cognizable constitutional violations, accepting the facts alleged in the complaint as true. We also have jurisdiction to decide whether the constitutional rights that the Mayor allegedly violated were clearly established at the time. But we do not at this stage in the litigation have jurisdiction to decide whether any constitutional violations actually occurred or to resolve any factual disputes necessary to make that determination.

Assessing qualified immunity at the motion to dismiss stage requires that we evaluate the sufficiency of the plaintiffs' pleadings. Indeed, because "whether a particular complaint sufficiently alleges a clearly established violation of law cannot be decided in isolation from the facts pleaded," Iqbal, at 1946, we must scrutinize the plaintiffs' complaint to determine whether it states a plausible entitlement to relief.

Two underlying principles guide our assessment of the adequacy of the plaintiffs' pleadings. "First, the tenet that a court must accept as true all of the allegations contained in a complaint is inapplicable to legal conclusions. Threadbare recitals of the elements of a cause of action, supported by mere conclusory statements, do not suffice." Id. at 1949 (citing Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555, 127 S.Ct. 1955). Such conclusory statements are "not entitled to the assumption of truth." Id.

"Second, only a complaint that states a plausible claim for relief survives a motion to dismiss." Id. (citing Twombly, 550 U.S. at 556, 127 S.Ct. 1955). This second principle recognizes that the court's assessment of the pleadings is "context-specific," requiring "the reviewing court to draw on its judicial experience and common sense." Id. "[W]here the well-pleaded facts do not permit the court to infer more than the mere possibility of misconduct, the complaint has alleged—but it has not `show[n]'`that the pleader is entitled to relief.'" Id. (second alteration in original) (quoting Fed.R.Civ.P. 8(a)(2)).

B. The Qualified Immunity Doctrine

The qualified immunity doctrine provides defendant public officials an immunity from suit and not a mere defense to liability. Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 526, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985). For this reason, immunity is to be resolved at the earliest possible stage in litigation. Hunter v. Bryant, 502 U.S. 224, 227, 112 S.Ct. 534, 116 L.Ed.2d 589 (1991). In some ...

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