Caban v. U.S.

• Decision Date: 07 February 1984
• Docket Number: No. 1456,D,1456
• Citation: 728 F.2d 68
• Parties: Salvador CABAN, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Defendant-Appellee. ocket 83-6077.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

Page 68

728 F.2d 68

Salvador CABAN, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 1456, Docket 83-6077.

United States Court of Appeals Second Circuit.

Argued June 13, 1983.

Decided Feb. 7, 1984.

Melvin L. Wulf, New York City (Beldock Levine & Hoffman, Leon Rosen, New York City, on brief), for plaintiff-appellant.

Steven E. Obus, Asst. U.S. Atty., New York City (Rudolph W. Giuliani, U.S. Atty. S.D.N.Y., Thomas D. Warren, Asst. U.S. Atty., New York City, on brief), for defendant-appellee.

Before FRIENDLY, KEARSE and CARDAMONE, Circuit Judges.

KEARSE, Circuit Judge:

This case, before us for a second time, see Caban v. United States, 671 F.2d 1230 (2d Cir.1982) ("Caban I ") (reversing grant of summary judgment in favor of defendant), comes to us on the appeal of plaintiff Salvador Caban from a judgment entered in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York after a bench trial before Lee P. Gagliardi, Judge, dismissing his action against defendant United States for damages under the Federal Tort Claims Act ("FTCA"), 28 U.S.C. Secs. 1346(b) & 2671-2680 (1976). Caban, a native of Puerto Rico and an American citizen, sued the government for damages resulting from his six-day detention by Immigration and Naturalization Service ("INS") agents when he attempted to enter the country at John F. Kennedy International Airport ("JFK Airport") from a flight originating in the Dominican Republic. At issue is whether the district court properly looked to federal law to determine the standard of care applicable to the INS agents' detention of Caban, and whether it properly concluded that the duration of the detention was not unreasonable. We affirm the district court's dismissal of Caban's complaint.

I. BACKGROUND

A. Facts

The facts, as stipulated by the parties or found by the court after trial, are as follows. On Thursday, January 5, 1978, Caban, a native Puerto Rican and an American citizen, disembarked at JFK Airport from a flight that had originated in the Dominican Republic. An INS agent stopped Caban for routine questioning to determine whether he should be permitted to enter the country. After their conversation, the agent was not convinced that Caban was an American citizen and referred Caban to another INS inspector, Beverly Gordon. Caban is illiterate and speaks only Spanish. Through an interpreter, Gordon asked Caban to produce documents to establish his citizenship. He did not have a passport but presented a recently issued birth certificate showing that he was born in Puerto Rico in 1941. To evaluate the validity of his claim of citizenship, Gordon asked Caban a number of questions about Puerto Rico and the information on the birth certificate. Caban did not know the month or date of his birth, which were stated on the birth certificate, and did not know the name of the hospital that had issued the certificate to him. Nor could he answer basic questions about Puerto Rico, such as the colors in its flag, although he claimed to have lived there until he was eighteen.

Subsequently, Caban was questioned through an interpreter by Angelo Marrone, the Supervisory Immigration Inspector at the airport. Caban's answers failed to satisfy the INS agents that his claim of citizenship was valid. The agents therefore decided to detain Caban at the INS detention center in Brooklyn, New York. A hearing was scheduled for Tuesday, January 10, 1978, to determine his status, but was postponed until January 11 at the request of his attorney. Upon posting a bond on January 11, Caban was released. It was eventually determined that he was a United States citizen.

B. Caban I

In May 1979, Caban commenced the present action pursuant to the FTCA seeking damages of $1,000,000 for alleged negligence, invasion of privacy, and false imprisonment by the INS agents who had detained him for six days without recognizing his right to enter the United States. ¹ The government successfully moved in the district court for summary judgment on the ground that the action was barred by Sec. 2680(a) of the FTCA, which provides that the government may not be sued on account of an employee's exercise of a discretionary function, whether or not the discretion involved be abused. In Caban I, familiarity with which is assumed, we reversed the summary dismissal of the complaint, ruling that the activities of the INS agents who detained Caban were not of the kind that involved the weighing of important policy choices to which discretion is essential within the contemplation of Sec. 2680(a). 671 F.2d at 1232-33. In remanding for further proceedings, the Caban I panel declined to address the issue of what standard governed an INS determination to detain a would-be entrant, but observed that that standard was not the same as the standard for judging the legality of an arrest:

It has long been the law that people have significantly less rights at a border than they have in the interior.... It may very well be that because of the broad power given the immigration authorities, on these facts it will be very difficult for appellant to prove that a tort was committed.

Id. at 1235.

C. The Decision after Trial

Following a bench trial after remand, the district court concluded that Caban's complaint should be dismissed. In an opinion dated January 25, 1983 ("Opinion"), the court began by noting that under 28 U.S.C (1) the defendant intended to confine [the plaintiff], (2) the plaintiff was conscious of the confinement, (3) the plaintiff did not consent to the confinement and (4) the confinement was not otherwise privileged.

Sec. 1346(b), the United States is to be held liable for the torts of its employees in accordance with the law of the place where the act occurred. The court noted that the New York Court of Appeals had defined the tort of false imprisonment as the unlawful deprivation of another's freedom to choose his own location if

Opinion at 4 (quoting Broughton v. State, 37 N.Y.2d 451, 456, 373 N.Y.S.2d 87, 93, 335 N.E.2d 310, 314 cert. denied, 423 U.S. 929, 96 S.Ct. 277, 46 L.Ed.2d 257 (1975)). Observing that there was no dispute that Caban satisfied the first three elements of the New York definition, the court considered the matter of whether the INS agents' actions were privileged. Rejecting Caban's contention that the agents' conduct was privileged only if they had reasonable or probable cause to believe Caban had committed a crime such as false representation of United States citizenship, see 18 U.S.C. Sec. 911 (1976), the court ruled that "the detention of plaintiff was privileged if the INS agents acted in conformance with the federal standards regarding treatment of applicants for entry to the United States." Opinion at 4.

The court noted further that 8 U.S.C. Sec. 1225(b) (1976) provides that an entering alien "who may not appear to the examining immigration officer at the port of arrival to be clearly and beyond a doubt entitled to land shall be detained for further inquiry to be conducted by a special inquiry officer," and noted that a regulation promulgated under Sec. 1225(b) provides that "[a] person claiming U.S. citizenship [either] must establish that fact to the examining immigration officer's satisfaction," or he is to be inspected as an alien. 8 C.F.R. Sec. 235.1(b) (1983). The court found that the evidence adduced by Caban during the INS interviews had not established beyond a doubt his right to enter the United States, that the INS officials who questioned Caban were not satisfied that he was a United States citizen, and that their lack of satisfaction was not unreasonable. Opinion at 7-9. Accordingly, the court concluded that the agents had acted in conformity with applicable federal law in deciding to detain Caban.

Finally, the court found that Caban's detention, reasonable at the outset, had not become unreasonable by virtue of its duration. The court found that Caban's case had been processed, in accordance with INS policy, on a "first-in, first-out" basis, and that Caban had failed to establish that a hearing should have been scheduled for either the first day after his detention or for the weekend. Id. at 10. The court found that its conclusion that the detention was not unreasonably long was supported by the fact that the sixth and final day of the detention was caused by Caban's attorney, who requested a postponement of Caban's scheduled hearing. Id. at 11.

Having concluded that the detention of Caban was initially privileged and was not unreasonably prolonged, the court ruled that the government was not liable to Caban for false imprisonment and dismissed the complaint. This appeal followed.

II. DISCUSSION

Caban's principal contentions on appeal are (1) that once he established a prima facie case of false imprisonment, the court should have recognized that the government had the burden of proving that his detention was justified under New York law, as contrasted with federal law; (2) that the actions of the INS agents should have been judged against the New York principles that impose liability for false imprisonment (a) upon police officers arresting a person without probable cause to believe that the person arrested has committed a crime, or (b) upon private citizens arresting a person who has not in fact committed a crime; and (3) that in any event the duration of Caban's detention resulted from the gross negligence of the INS agents in failing to investigate more thoroughly

his claim to be a citizen. We reject the first two contentions as an erroneous interpretation of the law, and reject the last because we see no clear error in the district court's findings of fact.

A. The Initial Detention

The pertinent FTCA provisions circumscribing the United States' waiver of its sovereign immunity with respect to claims of false imprisonment are set out in 28 U.S.C. Secs. 1346(b), 2674, and 2680(h). Section 2680(h), as amended in 1974, specifies acts for which...