Barrett v. Pae Gov't Servs., Inc.

• Decision Date: 15 September 2020
• Docket Number: No. 19-1394,19-1394
• Citation: 975 F.3d 416
• Parties: Kerrin BARRETT, Plaintiff - Appellant, v. PAE GOVERNMENT SERVICES, INC.; Areyal Hall, Officer, Arlington County Police Department; William K. Lietzau; Sean Horner; Shanedria Wilborn; Brian Galway; Joshua Luzier, Officer, Defendants - Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

975 F.3d 416

Kerrin BARRETT, Plaintiff - Appellant,

v.PAE GOVERNMENT SERVICES, INC.; Areyal Hall, Officer, Arlington County Police Department; William K. Lietzau; Sean Horner; Shanedria Wilborn; Brian Galway; Joshua Luzier, Officer, Defendants - Appellees.

No. 19-1394

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued: May 28, 2020

Decided: September 15, 2020

ARGUED: Peter Charles Cohen, CHARLSON BREDEHOFT COHEN & BROWN, P.C., Reston, Virginia, for Appellant. Ara Loris Tramblian, BANCROFT, MCGAVIN, HORVATH & JUDKINS, P.C., Fairfax, Virginia; Charles McNeill Elmer, JACKSON LEWIS P.C., Reston, Virginia, for Appellees. ON BRIEF: Hans H. Chen, CHARLSON BREDEHOFT COHEN & BROWN, P.C., Reston, Virginia, for Appellant. Ryan Samuel, COUNTY ATTORNEY'S OFFICE, Arlington, Virginia, for Appellees Areyal Hall, Brian Galway, and Joshua Luzier. Crystal L. Tyler, Meredith F. Bergeson, JACKSON LEWIS P.C., Richmond, Virginia, for Appellees PAE Government Services, Inc., William Lietzau, Sean Horner, and Shanedria Wilborn.

Before DIAZ and THACKER, Circuit Judges, and TRAXLER, Senior Circuit Judge.

Affirmed by published opinion. Senior Judge Traxler wrote the opinion, in which Judge Diaz and Judge Thacker joined.

TRAXLER, Senior Circuit Judge:

Plaintiff Kerrin Barrett brought this action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and Virginia state law against Arlington County police officers Areyal Hall ("Hall") and Joshua Luzier ("Luzier"), and Arlington County mental health examiner Brian Galway ("Galway")—collectively the "Arlington County defendants." Plaintiff alleges that the Arlington County defendants unlawfully seized and detained her for a mental health evaluation in violation of the Fourth Amendment and falsely imprisoned her in violation of Virginia state law. Plaintiff also sued her employer, PAE Governmental Services, Inc. ("PAE"), and three of PAE's employees, Sean Horner ("Horner"), Shanedria Wilborn ("Wilborn"), and William Lietzau ("Lietzau")—collectively the "PAE defendants." She alleges that the PAE defendants conspired with the Arlington County defendants to unlawfully seize her and falsely imprison her, also in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and Virginia state law.

The district court granted the PAE defendants’ motion to dismiss the Complaint in its entirety, and granted the Arlington County defendants’ motion to dismiss the state law conspiracy claims. The district court later granted summary judgment to the Arlington County defendants on the remaining federal and state law claims.¹ We now affirm.

I.

Plaintiff lived and worked in the Middle East for six years—from 2010 to 2016. From April 2012 to July 2013, she worked as a contractor for PAE in Kabul, Afghanistan, on a U.S. State Department contract that was dedicated to improving the rule of law in that country. In 2014, Plaintiff moved to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Plaintiff claims that she became a victim of constant stalking and harassment by Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and other Southeast Asian men while she was living in Dubai, and that the stalkers followed her when she traveled into Oman and Thailand.

Plaintiff moved back to the United States in early 2016. In May of that year, she began working for PAE on another U.S. State Department contract. Plaintiff worked out of PAE's Arlington, Virginia office, and "was responsible for gathering and reporting on prison data, which included women and children incarcerated in the prisons, high value targets, and members of ISIS, the terrorist group in the Middle East." J.A. at 23. As explained in more detail below, in July 2017, Plaintiff informed Defendants Horner and Wilborn that she was being stalked and harassed by Southeast Asian men, who were reporting back to the Dubai-based network on their cell phones, and that she had taken steps to identify her stalkers and their location in the United States. After consulting with PAE's legal staff, Horner contacted the Arlington County Police Department for assistance. Defendants Hall and Luzier responded to the call, and a decision was made to issue an emergency custody order ("ECO") for an involuntary mental health evaluation. The evaluation was performed by Defendant Galway with the Virginia Department of Health Services, who determined that there was probable cause to believe that Plaintiff was suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

("PTSD"), and possibly a delusional disorder, and that she posed a genuine danger to herself and others. Galway filed a petition for a temporary detention order ("TDO") for further evaluation and treatment of Plaintiff, which was granted by a state magistrate judge.

II.

For purposes of the appeal from the district court's grant of summary judgment to the Arlington County defendants, we relate the undisputed facts that the PAE defendants and the Plaintiff reported to them during their investigations.

A. The PAE Defendants

The events that led the PAE defendants to contact the Arlington County police for assistance began in July 2017, when Plaintiff reported the stalking and harassment to Defendants Horner and Wilborn. Plaintiff reported that two incidents had occurred in or near the PAE offices, and they were of particular concern to Horner and Wilborn. First, Plaintiff claimed that a strange "man who fit the pattern of her stalkers came up to her while she was sitting at her desk and said, ‘Hello, [long pause] Kerrin’ before leaving." J.A. 28 (alteration in original). Second, Plaintiff claimed that she saw a Bangladeshi stalker in the courtyard between the PAE office building and the adjacent Verizon building, and that the man urgently grabbed his cell phone and began talking on it when he saw her. When she returned through the courtyard, Plaintiff approached the security guard in the Verizon building and asked him if he knew anyone who met the description of the man. The security guard told her that there were "a bunch of them up on the 11th floor and that they work for [the] FDIC." J.A. 468.

Plaintiff had previously told her supervisor, Defendant Lietzau, that she believed she was being stalked and harassed by Southeast Asian men. She also informed him about the courtyard incident and asked for his advice. According to Lietzau, Plaintiff also asked him to "go with her to kind of confront these people." J.A. 564. At Lietzau's suggestion, Plaintiff instead reported the stalking incident to Defendant Horner, who was PAE's Security Manager. Horner testified that Plaintiff also told him that she was being stalked and harassed by:

a coordinated, sophisticated complex[ ] network of primarily Southeast Asian males, always different men following her, different vehicles following her, having the ability to follow her, track her phone to the extent where they knew what floor in a building she was at, that her e-mails were compromised. She thought her house was bugged. ... They would do things like knocking on her door in the middle of the night. They would whistle at her dogs to make them bark. They would run into her car ... and then take off.

J.A. 163. Plaintiff also told Horner that she had discovered that the stalkers were centralized on the 11th floor of the Verizon building. According to Horner, Plaintiff "was convinced that that's where the centralization[,] or hive was the word she used ..., were located and she was hoping to figure out a name or something like that to be able to figure out who they are, track them down, who they're sending information to." J.A. 137-38. Horner testified that Plaintiff "was hoping that [he] could help her gain access to [the 11th floor of the building] to help identify potentially one of the stalkers." J.A. 136. Horner advised Plaintiff that he could not do so, and that she should not either. According to Horner, Plaintiff told him that she did not own a firearm, but was considering getting one.

Horner asked Plaintiff to document her concerns in a written report. However, in an ensuing series of emails, Plaintiff accused Horner of being derisive and disrespectful, and cut off their communication:

To be clear, there is absolutely nothing that can be done about my situation legally. These networks operate just inside the law, here and abroad. My one hope was that I could get assistance identifying who they are reporting back to – or at least the name of one of these "followers," since I now finally determined their location on [Floor] 11 in the adjacent building.

Once again, there is no point in taking any more of your valuable time, nor anyone else's. I will, however, restate that I now am fully aware of the complexity and severity of the war we are fighting, because I live it every day.

J.A. 208. In reply, Horner "strongly recommend[ed]" that Plaintiff not try to "identify the perpetrators or confront[ ] them." J.A. 211. He also contacted Defendant Wilborn, a PAE Human Resources manager, and asked Wilborn to speak to the Plaintiff. Wilborn documented her conversation with Plaintiff in an Arlington County police report:

[Plaintiff] stated that when she moved back to the [United States from Dubai], a hive of Southeast Asian men followed her here. According to [Plaintiff], these men have been to her home, knocking on her door at odd hours, sitting outside of her home in black cars and following her every move. I asked [Plaintiff] how these men knew where she lived and she responded that her phone was hacked and they are tracking her through her phone. She also mentioned that she has been followed to work, surrounded in the garage and surveilled in the courtyard. She says that there is a nest of them working for FDIC on the 11th floor of the Verizon building. [Plaintiff] says that on more than one occasion, she has seen these men on phones in the courtyard talking to someone in Dubai (the hub) about her. She said that she needs the phone that the men are talking on. I asked her how she planned to get the phone and she said that she just has to walk up to them and take it. She mentioned that her Afghanistan friends advised

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