Acosta v. Ames Department Stores, Inc.

• Decision Date: 22 September 2004
• Docket Number: No. 04-1016.,04-1016.
• Citation: 386 F.3d 5
• Parties: Casilda ACOSTA, etc., et al., Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. AMES DEPARTMENT STORES, INC., et al., Defendants, Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

386 F.3d 5

Casilda ACOSTA, etc., et al., Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. AMES DEPARTMENT STORES, INC., et al., Defendants, Appellees.

No. 04-1016.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Submitted July 19, 2004.

Decided September 22, 2004.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island, Ernest C. Torres, Chief Judge.

Bruce P. Gladstein on brief for appellants.

Marc DeSisto, Kathleen M. Daniels and DeSisto Law on brief for appellees.

Before SELYA, Circuit Judge, COFFIN and CYR, Senior Circuit Judges.

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

Plaintiff-appellant Casilda Acosta invites us to vacate a summary judgment order terminating her suit for false arrest under, inter alia, 42 U.S.C. § 1983.¹ Discerning no error in the district court's disposition of the matter, we decline Acosta's invitation.

The facts are uncomplicated. Glenn Powers worked as a store detective for Ames Department Stores, Inc. (Ames). On October 18, 1999, he called the Middletown, Rhode Island, police department to report a shoplifting at a local Ames emporium. Officer Kelly Mitchell responded to the call and Powers informed her that the appellant, her sons, and a group of other persons had entered the shop that evening. He watched the appellant take two jackets, emblazoned with the logo of the New England Patriots, from a rack and outfit her sons with them. He then surveilled the trio as they walked around the store and proceeded through the checkout line without making any attempt to pay for the jackets.

Powers stopped the suspected shoplifters as soon as they left the premises. When he confronted them with the alleged larceny, one of the boys admitted that he had donned the jacket in the store.

Once she had interviewed Powers, Officer Mitchell talked with the appellant. She found communication difficult because of a language barrier; Mitchell spoke no Spanish and the appellant lacked fluency in English. Nonetheless, Mitchell was able to glean the essence of the appellant's claim: that she had purchased the jackets on an earlier shopping trip. To bolster that claim, the appellant gave Mitchell a layaway receipt dated October 5, 1999. This receipt indicated that ten items had been rung up (including two labeled "PATRIOTS OUT" at a sale price of $22.41 each); that $49.94 had been paid toward a previous balance; and that the layaway was complete. The receipt did not indicate what "PATRIOTS OUT" meant.

Officer Mitchell then inspected the jackets. She observed a wet spot on one of them, consistent with what might appear if soda or juice had just been spilled on it. She also found a used tissue in a jacket pocket. At that point, Mitchell took the appellant into custody and charged her with shoplifting. Although at least one other officer had by then responded to the scene, the police did not converse with any other Ames personnel before effectuating the arrest. By the same token, they did not interview other customers (not even those persons who had originally accompanied the appellant to the store).

For reasons that need not concern us, the criminal charges were subsequently dropped. The incident, however, was not forgotten. The appellant brought suit in a Rhode Island state court alleging seventeen different causes of action against a myriad of defendants. The complaint, as amended, named Ames, Powers, the Town of Middletown, the Middletown police department, the town's finance director, and several police officers (among them, Officer Mitchell) as defendants.² The municipal defendants removed the case to the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island. See 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331, 1441(b).

In due course, the municipal defendants moved for summary judgment. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 56. The district court found probable cause for the arrest and, accordingly, granted the motion. This appeal ensued.

The summary judgment device enables a court "to pierce the boilerplate of the pleadings and assay the parties' proof in order to determine whether trial is actually required." Wynne v. Tufts Univ. Sch. of Med., 976 F.2d 791, 794 (1st Cir.1992). That device functions successfully when "the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c). Faced with a properly documented summary judgment motion, the nonmovant can thwart the motion only by showing through materials of evidentiary quality that a genuine dispute exists about some material fact. Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 247-48, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986); Medina-Munoz v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., 896 F.2d 5, 8 (1st Cir.1990). This evidence "must have substance in the sense that it limns differing versions of the truth which a factfinder must resolve at an ensuing trial." Mack v. Great Atl. & Pac. Tea Co., 871 F.2d 179, 181 (1st Cir.1989).

In assessing such a proffer, an inquiring court must resolve all evidentiary conflicts and draw all reasonable inferences in the nonmovant's favor. Id. If the proffer, viewed through this prism, "is merely colorable, or is not significantly probative, summary judgment may be granted." Anderson, 477 U.S. at 249-50, 106 S.Ct. 2505 (internal citations omitted). In an ensuing appeal, we afford plenary review, Mesnick v. Gen. Elec. Co., 950 F.2d 816, 822 (1st Cir.1991); Garside v. Osco Drug, Inc., 895 F.2d 46, 48 (1st Cir.1990), utilizing the same criteria as the trial court, Perez v. Volvo Car Corp., 247 F.3d 303, 310 (1st Cir.2001); Werme v. Merrill, 84 F.3d 479, 482 (1st Cir.1996).

We turn now from the general to the particular. Before us, the appellant mounts a four-pronged attack on the district court's probable cause determination. She contends (i) that the existence vel non of probable cause is always for the jury (and, thus, not susceptible to summary judgment); (ii) that genuine issues of material fact preclude judicial resolution of the probable cause question here; (iii) that even absent such a dispute, the facts of record do not support the lower court's probable cause determination; and (iv) that, in all events, the determination was infirm because further investigation would have dispelled the basis for it. We discuss these contentions sequentially.

With respect to her first asseveration, the appellant relies upon our decision in B.C.R. Transport Co. v. Fontaine, 727 F.2d 7 (1st Cir.1984). That reliance is mislaid. In B.C.R. Transport, the defendant argued that probable cause necessarily existed because a warrant, based upon information supplied by an alleged victim, had been obtained. Id. at 9-10. We rejected that broad proposition, describing the probable cause inquiry as situation-specific. See id. at 10 (explaining that "whether or not probable cause exists ... invariably depends on the particular facts and circumstances of [each] case"). We went on to note that the alleged victim was disoriented and ranting, and, accordingly, the arresting officers needed to engage in further inquiry before relying on that account to find probable cause. See id. at 10-11.

The appellant tries to ride this horse well past the boundary that we staked out in B.C.R. Transport. Although we ruled there that the issue of probable cause was for the jury, that ruling was not, as the appellant suggests, intended to have universal applicability. The outcome in B.C.R. Transport represented the exception, not the rule. More relevant here is our recent observation that "it is pointless to submit ... [a] probable cause question[ ] to the jury at all unless the facts are disputed." Bolton v. Taylor, 367 F.3d 5, 8 n. 2 (1st Cir.2004); see also Ornelas v. United States, 517 U.S. 690, 696, 116 S.Ct 1657, 134 L.Ed.2d 911 (1996) (explaining that when the relevant facts leading to the officer's involvement are established, probable cause is a "mixed question of law and fact" suitable for determination by the court); Bell v. Irwin, 321 F.3d 637, 640 (7th Cir.) (holding that the existence of probable cause is ordinarily for the court, not for the jury), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 124 S.Ct. 84, 157 L.Ed.2d 36 (2003).

In the case at hand, the material facts — what the police knew at the moment of the arrest, the source of their knowledge, and the leads that they pursued or eschewed — are not in dispute. When that is so, the existence vel non of probable cause ordinarily is amenable to summary judgment. See, e.g., Roche v. John Hancock Mut. Life Ins. Co., 81 F.3d 249, 254-56 (1st Cir.1996) (affirming the entry of summary judgment in such a situation). The question, then, is whether brevis disposition was appropriate on the facts of this case.

The appellant's second argument begins the dialogue on that question. She hangs her hat primarily on the layaway receipt. This need not detain us. The dispute over the meaning of the layaway receipt is, at bottom, merely whether the receipt fairly indicated to a reasonable officer that the appellant purchased two Patriots jackets on October 5. Even were we to resolve this question in the appellant's favor, the fact that she bought two jackets on October 5 would not change the outcome of the probable cause inquiry.

There are at least two conflicting inferences that could be drawn from such a fact. One possibility is that the appellant bought the coats in question and did not steal them. Another is that she bought two other coats on October 5, and was using the receipt as a cover for a theft on October 18. To resolve the issue of probable cause, it does not matter which inference is correct. It is sufficient that a reasonable officer in possession of this information might nonetheless find it likely that the store detective's eyewitness account was true and that the appellant had committed a crime. See United States v. Figueroa, 818 F.2d 1020, 1023-24 (1st Cir.1987). In...